Chapter 82: Another Victim

"Hello? Captain Su!"

On the other end of the line, the agent's voice was trembling with excitement.

Su Qingzhu forced herself to keep her breathing steady. She glanced at the man beside her, whose lips curled with a knowing smile.

It was this man who, with a mysterious address, had mobilized her police force for a bizarre and absurd search.

"Get to the point," Su Qingzhu replied in a low, steady voice.

"Yes, ma'am!"

A brief pause, as if the agent was gathering his thoughts, then a thunderous revelation exploded through the receiver.

"At the location you sent us... we've found a body!"

Boom.

The man known as Pipe, who had been feigning composure, suddenly jolted as if struck by lightning. The mask of professionalism he had worn for so long shattered in an instant.

He snapped his head up, pupils contracting violently, eyes fixed on the phone in Su Qingzhu's hand. The color drained from his face, leaving him ashen and lifeless.

A body...

How could this be...

Su Qingzhu's heart skipped a beat. She forced down the storm of emotion surging inside her and pressed on, "A body? What kind of body? Describe it in detail!"

"This... this body is really strange," the agent replied, confusion thick in his voice. "The coroner's preliminary assessment is that the person has been dead for a very long time—at least ten years! But... but the body... there’s no sign of decomposition at all!"

No decomposition?

Su Qingzhu's mind buzzed. She instinctively turned to look at Chen Yu.

The man's smile hadn't faltered; it was as if everything was unfolding exactly as he had anticipated.

A strange chill crept into Su Qingzhu’s heart—a sense of dread she couldn't explain.

"Where was the body found?" she asked quickly, her voice now trembling.

"In a... a very strange upright cabinet! Hidden behind a false wall in the basement, which had a newly built wall in front. If we hadn’t used a detector, we’d never have found it!"

At that, Chen Yu stepped forward.

His movement was unhurried, yet carried a suffocating weight.

He didn’t snatch the phone from Su Qingzhu; instead, he placed his hand gently atop hers.

Su Qingzhu froze.

Chen Yu leaned down, speaking slowly and deliberately:

"Don’t describe the scene just yet. Take a careful look at the body first."

"Tell me, is there anything... unusual on the abdomen?"

He asked with such certainty, as though he had orchestrated it all himself.

In that moment, Su Qingzhu noticed—for the first time—a trace of tension in Chen Yu’s expression.

No, not tension. It was a look of anticipation, as one awaiting final judgment.

There was a long silence on the other end—at least ten seconds, likely as the agent consulted the coroner.

The air in the interrogation room seemed to solidify, pressing down on everyone inside.

Pipe’s breathing had all but ceased.

Finally, the agent’s voice returned, quivering uncontrollably.

"Yes... yes! There’s a cross-shaped incision on the abdomen! Like... like someone cut it open while the person was still alive!"

"Just as I thought."

A heavy weight settled on Chen Yu’s heart, followed by a sense of release.

He let go of Su Qingzhu’s hand, straightened, and—completely unconcerned with the others—stretched lazily, his joints cracking loudly.

As Su Qingzhu and Pipe stared at him in shock, he turned his back to them, flashed a discreet "victory" sign toward the camera's blind spot.

Su Qingzhu’s mind went blank.

She stared at Chen Yu’s relaxed figure, feeling as though every inch of him radiated an unearthly, almost demonic aura.

Genius deduction?

This was clearly...

A wild guess, wasn’t it?!

No!

It couldn’t be!

Who could possibly guess so accurately?

At that moment, Pipe—the proud teacher, the brilliant amateur detective—collapsed completely.

He slumped in his chair like a pile of mud, his body no longer supported by bones, but by the cold embrace of his handcuffs.

His eyes were vacant, their light extinguished, leaving only bottomless darkness.

Fifteen years of pretense.

Fifteen years of waiting.

Fifteen years of hatred.

Fifteen years spent as a devout guardian of a secret, a cold corpse, turning himself into a living tomb.

He believed himself to be the hand of justice, the executioner of evil.

But now, this young man, who had appeared out of nowhere, shattered the world he’d painstakingly built for fifteen years with a single phone call.

Chen Yu slowly turned around, the cocky grin gone from his face.

He cursed under his breath:

"You old bastard... you really know how to hide."

Then, his gaze sharpened like a blade, piercing straight into Pipe’s heart.

"Shen Tao."

He no longer called him "Pipe," but addressed him by his real name, his voice cold and devoid of emotion.

"Now, do you have anything left to say?"

Shen Tao's body convulsed. Summoning all his strength, he raised his head.

What a face it was.

Despair, regret, confusion, pain...

Countless emotions twisted together into a grotesque mask.

His lips trembled, as if a thousand words struggled to escape—yet not a single one emerged.

He knew perfectly well the agents were searching his home.

He also knew that the perfectly preserved corpse, hidden for fifteen years by chemicals, was that of his wife, who had been brutally slaughtered fifteen years ago.

"...Heh..."

After a long pause, a dry, bitter laugh escaped from deep in his throat.

With the last vestige of stubbornness, he looked at Chen Yu, his voice barely audible:

"Even if... even if you’ve found her..."

"At most, that’s illegal handling of a corpse, isn’t it?"

"Shen Tao!"

Chen Yu slammed the table, enunciating each word:

"Your wife's death was a tragedy! You should have been the one most deserving of sympathy! Everyone would have pitied your fifteen years of pain and perseverance!"

"But now?!"

"Look at you—what path have you chosen?"

"You thought you killed the murderer! You thought you’d fulfilled a long-overdue revenge! Do you still think you’re some kind of hero?!"

Chen Yu's voice thundered through the interrogation room.

"But what if I told you—you’re wrong! Utterly wrong!"

"Brother Lei was never the killer!"

"You were all played—manipulated by a true devil!"

"Fifteen years, Shen Tao! You wasted fifteen years—more than five thousand days and nights—consumed by hatred! In the end, you killed someone just as pitiful as yourself!"

"Zhang Fu was mistaken! And so were you! All you self-proclaimed clever men were wrong!"

"Shut up!"

Shen Tao erupted like a wild beast, springing from his chair, the handcuffs clattering, and roared at Chen Yu:

"She wasn’t your wife! It’s easy for you to talk!"

"Oh?"

Chen Yu’s anger vanished, replaced by a glacial calm.

He sneered and shook his head.

"For all your pride as a detective, you missed the simplest, most basic logic."

He sat down, leaned against the backrest, arms folded, gazing at the half-crazed Shen Tao as if he were a fool.

"Let me ask you, who is Brother Lei?"

"He’s the underground king of River City! When he stomps his foot, the whole city—cops and criminals alike—tremble!"

Chen Yu’s voice was soft, but cut to the bone.

"A man like that—if he wanted a woman dead, would he need to do it himself?"

"Would he use such a crude, conspicuous method as slicing her open?"

"He has a hundred ways to make someone vanish without a trace! Countless rabid dogs at his command, fighting for a chance to do his bidding!"

"Even if, for argument’s sake, he was a psychopath who liked to kill personally—he could just kidnap someone, torment them in secret, then dump the body in the river. Who could ever trace it to him?"

"But you? A business tycoon and a star teacher—you’d rather believe he’d commit murder in broad daylight, in the stupidest, most attention-grabbing way, against a woman he had no connection to!"

Chen Yu’s lips curled into a mocking smile.

"If that’s not stupidity, what is?"

"I..."

Shen Tao was stunned.

Every word was a hammer blow to his chest.

Yes…

Who was Brother Lei? And who was his wife?

There was no connection, no enmity.

Such a simple truth... such an obvious flaw...

Why had he never questioned it in fifteen years?

Hatred.

Hatred had blinded him, turned him from a man into a beast who knew only vengeance.

A long, weary sigh escaped Shen Tao’s chest.

His tense body slackened instantly.

He slowly raised his head; for the first time, a glimmer of something human returned to his dead eyes.

It was utter, complete defeat.

"Corpse Whisperer..." he murmured, calling Chen Yu by his moniker. "Your reputation is well-earned."

"I’ve lost."

"Can you tell me... how did you figure all this out?"

He asked not to overturn his fate, but like a gambler who had lost everything, desperate to know how he had lost.

Looking at the defeated man before him, the chill finally faded from Chen Yu’s face.

He knew the man’s last psychological defenses had collapsed.

With a gentle smile, he answered sincerely:

"To be honest, when I came here, I didn’t know your wife was also one of the victims of the ‘Ripper’ case fifteen years ago."

"When I sent the team to search your house and they found that hidden body..."

"…That was pure guesswork."

"Guesswork?!"

Su Qingzhu, who had been silently processing everything, finally couldn’t contain herself.

Her elegant, cold face was filled with incredulity.

"Chen Yu! Are you messing around again?!"

He looked back at her, helpless amusement in his eyes.

He shook his head with a wry smile and turned back to Shen Tao.

"It was a guess," he admitted.

"But... not entirely without basis."

"What basis?" Shen Tao asked, like a drowning man reaching for a final straw.

Chen Yu met his eyes and pronounced, word by word:

"The basis is..."

"Why you came here."