Futile Devices Scans

The Heart Breaks Free (HB)

By: Chu He Er

Native Title: ćżƒæŒŁ by ćˆçŠŸäșŒ

Genres: Action, Adult, Drama, Mature, Mystery, Romance, Shounen Ai, Thriller

Tags: Character Growth, Clever Protagonist, Crime, Detectives, Devoted Love Interest, Dual POV, Fictional Setting, Happy Ending, Investigations, Modern Day, Murders, Mystery Solving, Police, Professional Protagonist, Secret Organizations, Slow Burn Romance, Smart Couple, Strong Couple, Teamwork, Younger Love Interest, 1v1

Content: 190 Chapters + 11 Extras

Status: Original Complete | Translation Coming Soon

Synopsis:

Once, Chen Zheng stood at the center of everything.

As captain of a criminal investigation unit, he was capable, respected, and accustomed to carrying the weight of difficult cases on his shoulders. He had spent years at the peak of his profession, surrounded by colleagues who trusted him and subordinates who looked to him for direction.

Then something happened that changed the course of his life.

By the time the story begins, Chen Zheng has stepped away from the front lines and transferred himself to a quiet research post. The position is safe, undemanding, and far removed from the person he once was. To everyone else, it looks as though a brilliant investigator has simply chosen to disappear.

Perhaps Chen Zheng thinks so too.

Until a murder case draws him back in.

In the city of Zhuquan, the death of a woman named Zeng Yan initially appears to be an ordinary homicide. But the deeper the police investigate, the stranger the victim’s past becomes. Identities fail to match. Old records contradict one another. People who should be easy to trace seem to have vanished, and secrets buried more than a decade ago begin surfacing one after another.

Chen Zheng had not intended to become involved.

Yet once he begins following leads again—questioning witnesses, reconstructing timelines, noticing the details others overlook—something he thought had gone quiet inside him begins to stir.

Then Ming Han appears.

Ming Han is a member of the provincial Mobile Unit: exceptionally tall, sharp-eyed, athletic, highly capable, and currently suffering the indignity of having been temporarily sent to work at a police-dog center. Despite his reputation as an elite officer, he has none of the solemnity Chen Zheng expects. He smiles easily, jokes with everyone, inserts himself wherever he pleases, and from their very first meeting casually begins calling Chen Zheng “Ge.”

Chen Zheng tries to correct him.

Ming Han has no intention of being corrected.

Behind that easygoing exterior, however, is an investigator far more perceptive than he lets on. Ming Han quickly realizes that the supposedly retired-from-the-action Chen Zheng still sees a crime scene more clearly than most active detectives. And rather than treating him as someone who has fallen from grace, Ming Han behaves as though Chen Zheng is still exactly the person worth following.

The first case leads to another.

Then another.

What begins as an investigation into one woman’s death gradually opens into something far larger: old crimes, missing people, concealed identities, buried conspiracies, and an organization whose shadow reaches far beyond any single city or police department.

For Chen Zheng, those cases also lead inexorably toward the part of his own past he has spent years trying to leave behind.

Ming Han, meanwhile, has his own reasons for remaining at his side.

Years ago, when Chen Zheng was still standing at the summit of his career, countless people admired him.

Ming Han was one of them.

But admiration from afar is easy.

The real question is what someone will do after the person they admired falls.

Ming Han’s answer is simple:

He will catch him.

And then he will accompany him toward another summit.

The Heart Breaks Free is a modern crime-investigation novel about murder, buried secrets, professional trust, and two exceptionally capable men solving cases side by side. At its center is not a story about one person rescuing another, but about a man rediscovering the part of himself he believed he had lost—and someone who quietly remains beside him while he does.

Chen Zheng does not return to life because Ming Han pulls him there.

He returns because, case by case, decision by decision, he begins standing up again on his own.

And somewhere between crime scenes, late-night investigations, arguments, shared meals, dangerous operations, and Ming Han’s shameless cries of “Ge,” the man who once merely looked up at Chen Zheng gradually becomes the person walking beside him.

A strong × strong, younger-gong/older-shou police procedural with dual POV, slow-burn romance, interconnected mysteries, teamwork, character growth, and a 1v1 happy ending.

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