POTL Chapter 13

“So, whether it was resigning or moving out, none of it was communicated by Yao Ying in person?”

Xiang Ling ladled out meat slices and lotus roots from the pot. Yu Shi sat right across from her, a hot pot separating the two of them.

“Yeah, it’s incredibly suspicious,” Yu Shi said, taking a sip of iced tea.

After leaving Yuyang Hospital, she and Li Yu had headed to the address listed in the records. Unsurprisingly, the current residents had changed to a married couple. The time they moved in coincided perfectly with the time Yao Ying resigned. After contacting the landlord, the landlord stated they had received a phone call from Yao Ying saying she was immigrating. She had only taken her clothes with her and asked the landlord to help clear out the rest of her belongings, leaving a stack of cash on the table inside the room as a cleaning fee.

“How could she be sure that the phone call was actually made by Yao Ying herself?” Xiang Ling raised a question that pierced right to the heart of the matter.

“She said the phone number belonged to Yao Ying, no doubt about it.” This was something that could be verified simply by checking the call logs from three years ago with the service provider.

“Both of her parents are deceased, so there’s no one to provide a DNA match to confirm the identity of her bones. Everyone knows she was going to immigrate, yet there are no records of her leaving or entering the country. It’s exactly as if she vanished off the face of the earth.” Xiang Ling had already learned from Yu Shi earlier that Yao Ying’s parents had been cremated back then.

Once a body is burned to ash, it is impossible to extract DNA. Therefore, for Yao Ying, who had no other living relatives, even if these bones really did belong to her, they would have no other way to confirm the identity of the skeletal remains aside from the distinctive features on her fingers.

“There’s still a bit of hope. The landlord said she didn’t actually throw away all of Yao Ying’s things back then. She kept some items that she thought might be useful and put them in a warehouse, intending to return them if Yao Ying ever suddenly wanted them back.” She hoped she could find something useful among those left-behind belongings.

The next day, Xiang Ling went to the hospital again. She wandered around, walking through the entire building, and finally spotted the cleaning lady she had met yesterday in the hospital cafeteria. The short auntie was sitting in a corner, eating lunch with several of her colleagues. Xiang Ling bought a bottle of milk and went over to join their table.

“Hello, Auntie!” Xiang Ling stood before the table as three or four cleaning ladies stared up at her in unison.

“Oh my, it’s the girl from yesterday!” The short auntie clearly recognized her.

“Auntie, do you remember telling me yesterday to check out Dr. Liu? I’ve decided to go take a look at him,” Xiang Ling said, letting out a bashful smile.

“Dr. Liu is great! He’s handsome and successful. Sit down, girl, Auntie will tell you all about him…” The short auntie pulled out an adjacent chair and gestured for Xiang Ling to sit.

The group of aunties then began filling her in on Dr. Liu’s character, family background, and his type in women. Xiang Ling sat there playing along for a good ten minutes.

Finally, Xiang Ling found her opening and asked, “If Dr. Liu’s background is so good, why is he still single?”

The short auntie replied, “He says he’s too busy with work and doesn’t have time to find a girlfriend.”

“Dr. Liu has worked at the hospital for so many years, and there are so many nurse sisters here. He hasn’t taken a liking to a single one?” she subtly guided the conversation.

“I think his standards might just be a bit high,” a plump cleaning auntie said with absolute certainty. She had once tried to network with Dr. Liu for her own daughter’s sake, but couldn’t even manage a foothold.

Xiang Ling glanced around her surroundings to make sure the subject of their conversation wouldn’t suddenly appear before asking, “Do a lot of people in the hospital like him? I need to see how much competition I have.”

“Oh, tons of people like Dr. Liu! Looking around, there’s practically no one who doesn’t. He and Dr. Fang are basically the ‘Twin Heartthrobs’ of our Yuyang Hospital.” The short auntie made an exaggerated gesture, splaying her fingers out and sweeping them across the hospital cafeteria.

“Then what about that nurse named Yao Ying you guys mentioned before? Did she like Dr. Liu, too?” Xiang Ling tried her best to adopt a look of pure curiosity.

“If Da Ying liked Dr. Liu, it probably would’ve worked out. But from what I saw, she seemed to like Dr. Fang a bit more.” The short auntie motioned for everyone to lean in closer, leaning forward to drop some gossip.

This matter didn’t seem to be much of a secret. The aunties all began chiming in on the topic.

“I heard Da Ying say she’d hooked a sugar daddy. Her saying she was going to immigrate was probably so she could go abroad with him!”

“No, that’s not it. I’ve seen her giving Dr. Fang the eye!”

“Then is that sugar daddy Dr. Fang?”

“To be honest, that wouldn’t be right. That makes her a homewrecker.”

“Exactly. Dr. Fang has been married to the head nurse for several years now, and their kid is already a few years old…”

Xiang Ling raised an eyebrow. She had just stumbled upon an unexpected harvest.

When Yu Shi received the phone call, she and Li Yu were busy rummaging through the warehouse. After hanging up, she left Li Yu by himself and walked out of the warehouse to find the landlord.

The warehouse where Yao Ying’s belongings were stored was located right behind the landlord’s house. Once the items were put inside, they hadn’t been sorted through for several years. Since then, the landlord had also piled in their own rarely used household items, making it completely impossible to distinguish which things belonged to Yao Ying. The light inside the warehouse had also been broken for a long time, and it had never been cleaned, forcing Yu Shi and Li Yu to rely on their phones for light as they searched.

She walked outside, her hands covered entirely in dust. After turning on the tap to give them a quick wash, she entered the house through the back door to look for the landlord. The landlord was sitting in the living room watching television when, upon seeing Yu Shi come in, she asked if she had found what she was looking for.

Yu Shi replied, “No, I actually just wanted to ask if you knew whether Yao Ying had a boyfriend?”

“I never heard her mention one. Every time I went to see her, she was always by herself. I never saw her bring a man home.”

The landlord’s house wasn’t far from Yao Ying’s place, so she used to bring food over to Yao Ying quite often. No matter what time she went, Yao Ying was always the only one in the house.

“Sister Yu—” Li Yu’s voice called out from the warehouse.

Yu Shi walked over and saw Li Yu waving at her with a photo frame in his hand. Stepping closer to take a look, she saw it was a solo photo of Yao Ying, seemingly taken in some park. Li Yu pointed at Yao Ying’s ear, signaling for her to look. She immediately pulled out her phone and opened the photo of the earring they had found near the skull of the skeletal remains. The two were an exact match.

It could now be essentially confirmed that the remains belonged to Yao Ying herself.

They hadn’t arrived at the conclusion that the skeleton was Yao Ying based solely on the earring so easily. There were also the distinctive finger features. More importantly, however, this pair of earrings was handmade, making it the only pair of its kind in the world.

Li Yu had found this photo frame inside a storage box. He moved the entire box into the light. The two of them glanced over everything inside. They discovered a book titled 《Long-Awaited Anticipation》, which looked like a romance novel. It was already very old and clearly looked as though it had been flipped through many times. There was also a bookmark tucked inside the book.

It wasn’t a standard bookmark. It was one made from two strands of hair.

Yu Shi glanced at the page number at the bottom: page 115. It hadn’t even reached the halfway mark of the book.

“Is it possible that this hair belongs to Yao Ying?” Li Yu turned the bookmark over to inspect it.

“We’ll know once we test it.” Yu Shi placed the bookmark back inside the book and handed it over to Li Yu.

The two dug through the storage box a bit more, but failed to turn up any more useful clues.

By the time Xiang Ling was getting ready to leave the hospital, it was nearly seven o’clock. After the gossip session ended and the other aunties returned to their duties, the short auntie kept holding her back, coming up with a bunch of strategies for her to win over Dr. Liu. This chat had dragged on for over an hour, leaving Xiang Ling with no choice but to politely play along. It wasn’t until she promised that she would be the very first to break the good news to her once she successfully won Dr. Liu over that the auntie finally let her go.

She walked to the parking lot and got into her car. Just as she fastened her seatbelt, she saw someone pass by in front of the vehicle. The man was tall and thin, dressed in a suit and wearing glasses. Crucially, she noticed a dark scar at the corner of his mouth.

The man walked to a parking spot a few cars away from hers, got into a black car, and prepared to leave the hospital.

Xiang Ling was completely stunned. She hadn’t expected her target to appear so caught-off-guard. By the time she snapped out of it, he had already driven up to the exit, so she immediately started her car and followed him.

Following the car from a distance, they arrived at a sparsely populated street. The scarred man pulled his car over to the curb and got out. Xiang Ling also parked her car at a distant corner, then quickly grabbed a black hat, a pair of non-prescription glasses, and a face mask from the glove compartment before getting out to follow him on foot.

There were some shops around the area, but they were mostly deserted. Separated by just a single street, it felt as though the area had been split into two entirely different worlds: the left side had a bit of life to it, while the right side was dark and damp. The ground, which had just seen rain, was dotted with several shallow puddles, and the air carried a heavy moisture. The weather was starting to turn cold, and the occasional gust of wind carried the distinct scent of a changing season.

Watching the scarred man walk past a row of shops and turn into an alleyway, she followed him, keeping her footsteps as silent as possible. The further she moved from the lights of those shops, the heavier her heartbeat became. She had no idea where he was going. It felt like he was walking in circles as he turned through several alleys. The sky was too dark, leaving her afraid to stay too far back for fear of losing him, yet afraid to get too close for fear of being discovered.

After following him around another corner, the person ahead of her was gone. She cautiously quickened her pace to catch up, but he had vanished completely.

They say that when a person’s vision is compromised, their ears become sharper than usual. She heard a single footstep come from far behind her. The other person seemed to realize they had made a sound, as they instantly froze in place, making no further noise. Xiang Ling merely turned her face halfway. Through the corner of her eye, she could faintly make out a figure standing in the distant shadows, a figure that immediately darted back into the darkness the moment she turned.

Her intuition told her that the person was the scarred man!

In that split second, she made a swift and decisive choice. She bolted, running toward a spot within her line of sight that could break the scarred man’s line of vision. Footsteps echoed behind her. He was giving chase.

The sounds of their racing footsteps slammed against the asphalt road, creating a considerable racket. The screeching sound of shoe soles frictioning against the ground during decelerations and sharp turns stimulated the nerves in her brain. Stagnant puddles that had gathered on the ground were violently kicked up into splashes and ripples, only to return to a state of calm some time later.

As she ran, she assessed her current position to avoid heading into a dead end. The person behind her was hot on her heels, closing the distance bit by bit. As the two chased each other through the narrow alleyways, she grabbed, threw, and overturned every single thing she could lay her hands on. As long as an object along their path wasn’t bolted to the ground or too heavy, she basically made a complete mess of it, leaving everything scattered across the ground.

Xiang Ling reached a fork in the road and noticed people passing by the exit of the alleyway to her right, so she quickly made a turn and ran toward where the people were.

The moment she burst out of the alley, she was greeted by a bustling street filled with people walking to and fro. It turned out to be a night market street. That dark and dangerous world from a moment ago vanished instantly, replaced by warmth and stability. With no time to overthink, she knew she couldn’t just stop here. She immediately decided to turn left, pushing her way through the crowd. As she passed a clothing stall, she swiftly ripped down a display coat and stuffed all the cash she had on her into the employee’s hands.

Before the employee could even utter a sales pitch, several large bills were shoved into their hands, and the customer had already run off with the coat. The employee could only stare blankly at her retreating figure and mutter, “That coat wasn’t even that expensive…”

Xiang Ling quickly discarded her hat, glasses, and face mask, and unfastened her hair tie, letting her long hair fall loosely over her shoulders. After nimbly slipping on the coat and briefly tidying herself up, she walked into a convenience store. As the door opened, the bell above it let out a crisp chime.

“Welcome!” came the polite, mechanical greeting from the clerk.

She casually picked up a few small snacks from the shelves and stood in front of the beverage cooler, looking at the drinks. The convenience store bell chimed again as someone else entered the store. Xiang Ling pulled out her phone and dialed a number. Through the mirrored surface of the beverage display case, she could see a man dressed in a suit walking inside.

“Hey, honey, I can’t find the peach-flavored drink you wanted… Yeah, or maybe you could pick something else? Orange flavor is pretty good…”

The man in the suit took a deep breath and gradually approached the woman standing in front of the beverage shelves. He heard her say, “How about an apple instead? Why are you being so picky…”

He walked up next to her, stopping just two paces away, and turned his head to look at the woman beside him. She was still on the phone. He could catch a glimpse of the calling interface on her screen. She had long hair cascading over her shoulders, wore a beige coat, and through the open collar, he could faintly see a white tank top underneath, not the dark-colored shirt he had seen in the alleyway just moments ago. Looking at her breathing and the rise and fall of her chest, it was perfectly steady, showing none of the heavy panting that follows a frantic sprint.

Xiang Ling suddenly felt someone tap her shoulder. Her body froze. While she was still hesitating over whether or not to look up, a hand holding a bottle of juice appeared.

“The peach-flavored one is over here…” a voice said.

In a split second, Xiang Ling looked up, flashed a sweet smile, and politely took the drink. “Thank you,” she said with a nod of gratitude, before walking over to the counter to pay.

While Xiang Ling was checking out, his eyes followed her the entire time. She pulled out her phone to pay, walked out of the convenience store, and melted into the crowd. The convenience store bell behind her never chimed again. It wasn’t until she had walked a good distance away that she finally dared to turn her head and look. No one was following her. She quickly ducked into a corner.

The shopping bag in her hand dropped to the ground. Supporting herself with her hands on her knees, she bent halfway over against the wall, gasping heavily for air, barely able to catch her breath. Because she had forced herself to suppress her breathing after running to feign normalcy, she now felt utterly starved of oxygen. Her head spun with dizziness, and a sharp pain flared in her lungs. Once she had gradually recovered, she properly buttoned up her silk shirt, which she had frantically unbuttoned down to the last two buttons earlier, and scanned her surroundings once more. Having confirmed that the scarred man was not around, she went back to retrieve her car and drove home.

Xiang Ling leaned against the edge of her desk. On the whiteboard were the new notes she had just written down: Scarred man spotted at Yuyang Hospital. She had a gut feeling that the person who had just chased her was the very same scarred man who had delivered the money to Bao Shihei’s parents. Because she had only caught a brief glimpse of him in the hospital parking lot, she suddenly cursed herself for not knowing how to draw. Otherwise, she could have sketched his face.

As things stood, however, she could only desperately try to recall that face, terrified that she might accidentally forget it if she wasn’t careful.

Right at that moment, the door to her home was swung open unceremoniously. Yu Shi rushed inside, slamming the door shut behind her. She marched straight up to Xiang Ling, scanning her up and down as if checking to ensure she wasn’t hurt, and demanded, “You had better give me a clear explanation about what just happened.”

“I’m fine. It was just a bit of a surprise,” Xiang Ling replied with a relaxed smile.

“A surprise? When I picked up your call and heard you calling me ‘honey’, I thought you’d dialed the wrong number! It was only after I kept listening that I realized something was wrong. I didn’t dare make a sound. After you hung up, I didn’t dare call you back either for fear of messing things up for you. All I could do was rush over to your house to see if you were still alive!” Yu Shi stormed into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water to calm her nerves.

Xiang Ling couldn’t help but feel that Yu Shi’s ability to grasp the situation instantly and stay composed without ruining anything proved she was truly a sharp detective. If Yu Shi had voiced an ill-timed question over the phone just then, given how close the scarred man had been standing to her, there was no guaranteeing he wouldn’t have seen through her disguise. Had that happened, she certainly wouldn’t have escaped so easily.

As Xiang Ling watched Yu Shi sit on the sofa, the latter gestured toward the spot beside her, signaling for her to sit down. Still secretly mourning for her innocently battered front door, Xiang Ling had no choice but to go over and sit.

“Speak up, I’m listening. If your explanation makes sense, I’ll let it slide.” Yu Shi put down her water glass and stared straight at Xiang Ling. She was entirely serious.

She didn’t want to receive another baffling phone call from her next time and go through another round of worrying. No matter how strong her heart was, it couldn’t take these kinds of scares.

Looking very much like a primary school student admitting to a mistake, Xiang Ling recounted everything regarding the scarred man.

“So you spent several hundred bucks to grab this crappy coat?” That was Yu Shi’s immediate reaction after listening to the whole story.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Xiang Ling mechanically offered up her mantra. She had been genuinely terrified at the time that if she hadn’t given enough money, the stall owner would have chased after her, which would have instantly given away her position.

“I don’t even know what to say to you. In the end, you went through this whole chase and didn’t even get anything out of it.” Instead, she had nearly exposed herself like a fool.

“At least I saw his face. Before this, I was entirely relying on my imagination,” Xiang Ling sighed. Besides, her imagination was notoriously terrible. She hadn’t been able to picture a proper human face at all.

She had already checked her car’s dashcam footage. The scarred man’s face hadn’t appeared at all, as it had only captured his retreating figure. Nevertheless, she had immediately printed it out and pinned it to the whiteboard anyway.

Besides, what was the man with the scar doing at the hospital?

She might need to drop by Yuyang Hospital from time to time in the future to see if she could bump into him again.

“Since you’re here, tell me about the case!” Xiang Ling recalled the clues she had provided earlier that afternoon.

Yu Shi could naturally tell that she was deflecting, but didn’t expose her. Going with the flow, Yu Shi shifted the topic: “I plan to meet with Fang Shuli and his wife again later. I wonder if Wang Qin knows about the rumors of her husband’s affair with someone else.”

“If Wang Qin knows, then she has a motive.”

The scenario of a legitimate wife beating up the mistress is already a staple in soap operas, so it’s entirely possible that the wife, driven by resentment over her husband’s infidelity, murdered the other woman.

“We found some hair, but the lab results won’t be out until tomorrow. After that, we still need to check Yao Ying’s bank records first.” Yu Shi described the bookmark containing the hair to Xiang Ling.

“What kind of romantic novel plot is this? From what you said, the hair must belong to two different people.”

Xiang Ling grabbed a strand of her own hair and toyed with it. It was an act resembling a traditional lovers’ vow to tie their hair together. She sighed, “Hey, I think Dr. Liu might also be involved. Those aunties said that if Yao Ying liked Dr. Liu, things likely would have worked out between them.”

Their current discussion could only pass for casual chit-chat at this point. It had turned into a full-blown gossip session.

“I haven’t asked you yet. How did you manage to coax so much information out of the cleaning ladies?”

Yu Shi was curious. She felt she could learn a thing or two from a reporter’s working style, like techniques for coaxing information out of people.

Xiang Ling thought back on everything she had done that day and felt a bit embarrassed to speak of it, so she said, “Trade secret, an exclusive technique. It’s passed down only to insiders, never shared with outsiders.”

“The hell with ‘passed down only to insiders’…” Yu Shi rolled her eyes and added, “I’m crashing at your place tonight.”

Xiang Ling frowned and pushed her away. “Go back home! Mine is a studio apartment!”

“It’s not like I’m taking your bed. It’s just for one night. My place has another water outage.” Yu Shi flopped onto the sofa and pulled out her phone.

Seeing that Yu Shi couldn’t even stretch her legs out properly, Xiang Ling had no choice but to get up to take a shower. “They cut the water all the time. You should file a complaint or just move to a different place.”

“Whatever…” Yu Shi mumbled, stretching her legs. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Xiang Ling drawing a black curtain closed.

She had noticed long ago that there was something behind that black curtain, but she had never tried to pull it back. Even when she was so close to it just now, she hadn’t looked in that direction.

The next morning, when Xiang Ling got out of bed, Yu Shi was still curled up on the sofa, her entire body wrapped tight in the blanket with only her head exposed to breathe.

Xiang Ling leaned over the upstairs railing. Looking down from there gave a direct view of the sofa. She walked downstairs quietly and stood beside the couch, looking down at Yu Shi’s sleeping face. She leaned in, then slapped a small warm towel onto Yu Shi’s face with a sharp “smack”, covering it completely, before walking off to wash up.

Removing the towel from her face, Yu Shi sat there completely dazed. She felt like she had almost been murdered just now. Wiping away the water on her face, she sat up on the sofa, pondering why Xiang Ling had done that.

An exclusive wake-up technique?

……

Shu Xia listened to Yu Shi’s confusion. Yu Shi had rushed over to see her first thing in the morning to ask about the hair test results, sharing this story along the way. Without hesitation, Shu Xia replied, “Probably just because it was fun.”

“Why does it sound kind of cute when you say it like that?” What kind of elementary school prank was Xiang Ling playing?

“I don’t care to understand whatever flirtatious banter you two have going on. The hair results are here. Can you be quiet for just one minute?” Shu Xia pressed her down into a chair and left the office.

“I demand a clarification!” Yu Shi rested her hands behind her head, staring toward the doorway.

Shu Xia returned shortly, operating her computer as she spoke: “I ran the tests. The hair inside the bookmark yielded DNA from two different people. One matches the skeletal remains. Based on all indications, we can essentially confirm that the remains belong to Yao Ying herself. As for who the other person is, that’s still unknown.”

“Tying two people’s hair together definitely wasn’t meaningless. It seems she had someone she liked, but that person’s identity is a mystery.” Now that the results were out, Yu Shi decided to go see Mr. and Mrs. Fang Shuli right away.

“May you catch the killer real soon!” Sitting in her chair, Shu Xia gave Yu Shi a salute and ushered her out.

Looking at Jiu Hua not far away, she still had a mountain of things to do.

This time at Yuyang Hospital, Yu Shi didn’t just bring Li Yu. She also brought along Jun Zi and Xiao Lang, instructing them to talk to some of the longer-tenured hospital staff for clues, especially any juicy gossip. Meanwhile, Yu Shi and Li Yu took charge of conducting separate second meetings with Fang Shuli and Wang Qin.

“Mr. Fang, what was your relationship with Yao Ying?”

Yu Shi stared into Fang Shuli’s eyes. Under her gaze, he wasn’t as composed as he had been the first time. Instead, a trace of panic crept in.

“I wasn’t close to her. At most, we were just colleagues.”

Yu Shi raised an eyebrow. “There were rumors floating around the hospital about an affair between you and Yao Ying before she died. You weren’t aware?”

Fang Shuli panicked even more, his fluster mixed with a hint of anger. “Those really are just rumors! I’m married with a wife and kids. Besides, I’m a doctor. I have moral boundaries!”

“Then why did someone see you exchanging flirtatious glances with Yao Ying?”

……

“Did you know the whole hospital is gossiping about Yao Ying coming between your marriage?”

Li Yu straightened up. Wang Qin sat directly across from her. They had temporarily borrowed an off-duty doctor’s office to conduct the interview.

“I know.” Wang Qin was calmer than expected. With a touch of helplessness, she said, “I’ve heard people talking. But since my husband has always treated me very well and there’s been nothing suspicious in our day-to-day life, I choose to believe he wouldn’t do something like that.”

“After you found out, did you personally verify it with your husband or Yao Ying herself?” Naturally, Li Yu wasn’t so easily convinced.

She had never heard of a woman hearing rumors about her husband’s affair and remaining completely unsuspicious, placing absolute trust in him. As the saying goes, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Rumors are almost always built on some kernel of truth. Believing him was one thing, but looking into it was a given. A wife investigating her husband is never meant to catch him cheating, but rather in the hope of proving his innocence.

“I did.” Wang Qin smiled, her eyes crinkling into slight crescents. “I made sure things weren’t as the rumors claimed.”

“Then why didn’t you set the record straight?” Li Yu asked again.

Wang Qin shook her head. “There was no need. Rumors are rumors precisely because there’s no concrete evidence, keeping them as mere hearsay. Besides, no one knows our marriage better than the two of us. Trying to debunk rumors only makes the gossipers double down, because deep down, people just love watching a spectacle.”

……

“We checked Yao Ying’s bank records and found that for a period before her death, large sums of money were being deposited into her account on an irregular basis. Do you know where that money came from?”

Yu Shi had just gotten a call from Mie Mie, who, along with Da Gezi, had been ordered to dig into Yao Ying’s call logs and bank records.

Fang Shuli clenched his fists and then unclenched them. He licked his dry lips and said, “I don’t know.”

Yu Shi tapped open the files sent by Mie Mie on her phone, enlarged them, and placed the phone on the desk in front of Fang Shuli. “These are your bank records, withdrawal logs from the exact same period. I’m not sure if you’re still going to claim this is a coincidence?”

Fang Shuli stared silently at his own bank records displayed on the phone screen.

“And of course, there are the call logs. The last call Yao Ying made was to a phone number you used to use. On top of that, we tested Yao Ying’s resignation letter. There are only your fingerprints on it.”

If the resignation letter had truly been written by Yao Ying herself, there should have been at least two sets of fingerprints on it.

“Please come with us.” Yu Shi tucked her phone away, stood up, and walked over to the door.

Fang Shuli took off his white lab coat, hung it neatly on the coat rack, and used the desk phone to make a call, instructing them to have Dr. Liu substitute for his upcoming surgery.

As the two stepped out of the office, they bumped right into Li Yu and Wang Qin coming from the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” Wang Qin demanded nervously, staring intently at Fang Shuli.

“The police station. I’ll be back soon. Take good care of Xiao Rui.” Fang Shuli lovingly stroked Wang Qin’s hair, then walked off sandwiched between Li Yu and Yu Shi.

When Li Yu glanced back, Wang Qin was squatting against the wall, her head buried between her knees.

……

Fang Shuli sat inside the interrogation room with Yu Shi and Li Yu facing him. At one point, he had actually believed he would never end up in a place like this, but he never expected this day to come so soon.

“Yao Ying was blackmailing me. She found out about my illegal prescription drug sales.” Fang Shuli pressed his temples and continued, “So I gave her money. But I didn’t kill her.”

“Yao Ying’s last call was to you, and she died right after that. How do you explain that?”

Li Yu spread the call records open in front of Fang Shuli, the last contact number highlighted in fluorescent yellow.

“And right after Yao Ying died, you changed your phone number.”

Yu Shi tapped the tip of her pen against the desktop. The timing of Fang Shuli changing his number and Yao Ying’s time of death were practically seamless, back-to-back.

“My wife accidentally dropped my phone into the lake.” Fang Shuli kept his eyes glued to the tabletop, as if it were far more fascinating than the two women sitting across from him.

Shu Xia opened the door to the interrogation room and chimed in casually, “Sorry I’m late. Hello, Mr. Fang. Since there are a few things we need to verify, we’ll need to collect a sample of your DNA.”

Meanwhile, Xiao Lang and Jun Zi were waiting in the hospital parking lot for the forensics team to arrive. After Yu Shi and Li Yu left with the suspect, they were tasked with inspecting Fang Shuli’s car. Naturally, they had already confirmed that Fang Shuli had been driving this exact car for the past three years. If there were any remaining traces, there was still a slim chance of finding them. Otherwise, with the limited evidence currently on hand, securing a conviction would be difficult.

Another ten minutes passed before the forensics team finally arrived.

“Sister Jiu Hua, over here!” Xiao Lang waved at the approaching group.

Jiu Hua carried a toolkit herself, while her male assistant lugged a massive umbrella and a heavy bolt of black cloth. As the three of them walked over, she pointed at Fang Shuli’s car and asked, “This one?”

After Xiao Lang and Jun Zi nodded, she motioned for her assistants to set up. She placed her toolkit on the trunk, opened it, and pulled out several bottles of liquid to begin mixing them according to ratio.

They were going to conduct a luminol test on Fang Shuli’s car.

Once the assistants had shrouded the rear half of the vehicle under the large black umbrella, Jiu Hua handed Jun Zi and Xiao Lang each a pair of UV safety goggles. The three of them slipped under the black cloth, where Jiu Hua used a spray bottle to thoroughly coat the empty trunk before illuminating the entire space with a UV light.

Unless professional methods are used, bloodstains can never be washed completely clean. Sure enough, after the chemical liquid was sprayed into the trunk and illuminated under UV light, the area where blood had once been reacted immediately.

A glowing pool of blood appeared on the left side of the trunk. Jun Zi photographed the stain, while Jiu Hua collected a sample with a cotton swab and placed it into a test tube.

……

Li Yu answered her phone. After a brief exchange, she turned to Fang Shuli and said, “Our forensics team found bloodstains in your trunk. We’ll be running tests on them alongside Yao Ying’s remains.”

Yu Shi secretly let out a sigh of relief. At least they had found something. “You can choose to confess before the lab results come back.”

Fang Shuli bit his lower lip hard before admitting in frustration, “I confess. I killed Yao Ying.”

Fang Shuli had been illegally selling hospital pharmaceuticals for years. One night during a night shift, Yao Ying overheard his phone call with a buyer and used a recording to blackmail him multiple times. The bank records were indeed hush money he had paid her. But Yao Ying repeatedly grew more shameless and demanding, opening her mouth wide for exorbitant sums. She even openly bragged in public that she had found a sugar daddy, winking and casting flirtatious glances at him, making the entire hospital believe he was having an affair and an unspeakable relationship with her.

So one night, he asked Yao Ying out and struck her head with a brick, each hit harder and more brutal than the last, killing her before transporting her body to the mountain woods to bury her.

After that, he forged her resignation letter. Fearing what might happen if the police ever found her body, he kept the letter stashed away for three full years while spreading rumors that Yao Ying had emigrated, leading everyone to believe she had actually moved abroad.

While taking down the confession, Li Yu asked, “Was it also you afterward who disguised yourself as Yao Ying to pack up her luggage, making it look like she really emigrated?”

Fang Shuli tilted his head. “I don’t know what luggage you’re talking about. I only forged the resignation letter and spread the rumor.” Now that the truth was out, he actually felt a strange sense of relief.

Yu Shi and Li Yu exchanged a glance. She then asked, “Do you still remember what clothes you were wearing that night?”

Fang Shuli looked bewildered and said, “Just a really ordinary T-shirt and sweatpants.”

Where, then, did the button clutched in Yao Ying’s hand come from?

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