Chapter 96: The Erroneous Evidence

Night had fallen, deep and black as ink.

Inside the hotel suite, the silence was so complete that it seemed he could hear his own heart pounding.

Chen Yu lay sprawled on the two-meter-wide bed, his body slumped with exhaustion, his unfocused eyes fixed on the ceiling.

The light was soft, yet it still stung his eyes raw.

Somewhere in the air, there still seemed to linger a faint sweetness, a trace of Li Qing’s fragrance.

But the woman who should have been lying beside him, the woman who liked to nudge him with her hips and wind her supple, graceful body tightly around his, his cherished moonlit obsession, was gone.

Gone without a trace.

The empty space beside him was cold as iron.

Chen Yu had not left that bed all night.

He had not even gone downstairs to the bar.

The place he had practically haunted every day for the past few days in search of pretty women now held no attraction for him at all.

In his head, one question circled like a curse, over and over again.

Who was Li Qing, really?

He had once believed she was an undercover agent sent by Yan Zheng, but that had now been proven false.

Yet she was an outstanding graduate of the police academy, and she knew how to use Morse code.

But if she was not undercover, then who was she?

And what, exactly, had been her purpose in pretending to stay by his side all these days?

Chen Yu racked his brains, but still found no answer.

That woman was like a riddle conjured out of thin air, and just as suddenly gone, leaving behind only a scattering of clues that churned his mind into chaos.

At last, he irritably raked a hand through his hair and pulled out the phone he had exchanged from the system.

He unlocked it, opened the notes app, and began to type in a daze, writing a diary.

April 5. Clear.

Today is the fifth day since I arrived here.

It should have been a happy day. Before millions of people, I tore open a serial murder case that had been hidden for fifteen years.

That feeling was exhilarating.

But all that pleasure was ruined by that damned woman. No, by my moonlit obsession.

He paused there and erased the words "that damned woman."

He realized he was no longer all that angry with her.

What remained was only worry.

He let out a slow breath and kept typing.

Who is she, really?

Before I knew it, I have already come to care about her this much.

Damn it.

He muttered the curse under his breath and felt the pressure in his chest only grow heavier.

Forcing himself to move his thoughts away from Li Qing, he turned back to the case itself.

That old schemer Yan Zheng had stopped me from going on about Luo Xiangdong at the very end of the live broadcast.

My guess is, he probably has just as many unanswered questions as I do.

From the gossip Liu Gang told me this morning, it is perfectly possible to connect every step of the logic behind Luo Xiangdong murdering Liu Gang’s wife, all because of the twisted possessiveness born of his homosexuality.

Motive established.

But...

Then how the hell am I supposed to explain everything I saw through that rewind?

The name Luo Xiangdong kept muttering before he died, inside that sealed room...

"Wind"...

Was that really just a meaningless anomaly?

If Liu Hong’s husband and Liu Gang’s wife were both killed by Luo Xiangdong alone, then how did he himself die in that abandoned house?

Could it really have been an accident? The wind blew the latch shut?

Impossible.

Would a murderer capable of planning and carrying out such a brutal, perverse crime, a genius with an extraordinary mind, die in such a pathetic way?

There is no way the truth is that simple.

Chen Yu’s gaze grew sharper by the second, and his fingers moved faster and faster across the screen.

At present, almost all the clues, witnesses, and physical evidence point toward...

Wait.

As he wrote that far, his hand suddenly froze, then began to tremble uncontrollably.

His pupils shrank to pinpoints in an instant.

No.

Something was missing.

Damn it, he had actually overlooked the most important piece of evidence.

A piece of evidence he had still never examined with his own hands.

That notebook.

Luo Xiangdong’s notebook, the one found on the second floor of Liu Hong’s villa.

Before, that notebook had been taken by the contestant Foer, that idiot.

And on the pretext of the show’s rules, he had guarded it with extreme care, not allowing anyone to touch it.

But now...

Because Luo Xiangdong’s case had led to a far more complicated serial murder investigation, the production team had temporarily put it on hold.

Which meant Foer no longer had the right to keep that notebook.

It should have been returned.

At that thought, Chen Yu sprang up from the bed.

All the weariness in him vanished in an instant.

He glanced at his phone.

The time read 11:48 p.m.

It was already nearly midnight.

But he could not afford to wait.

Without the slightest hesitation, he took out the other phone the production team had given him, found that familiar name in the contacts, and called immediately.

The phone rang for a long time.

Just as Chen Yu was thinking the other person must already be asleep and was about to hang up, the call connected.

From the receiver came a woman’s voice, tinged with sorrow and a hint of surprise.

"Hello?"

It was Liu Hong.

"Sis Hong, it’s me, Chen Yu." Chen Yu kept the excitement out of his voice by force.

"Chen... Chen Yu?"

On the other end, Liu Hong’s voice instantly began to tremble, carrying traces of panic and complicated emotion. "So late... do you need something from me?"

Chen Yu could imagine that this beautiful, still alluring woman must be feeling deeply upset and conflicted at that moment.

After all, he had just interrogated her younger brother.

Even if that brother had only ever dragged her down, even used her as a shield.

"Sorry to bother you so late, Sis Hong."

He got straight to the point, his tone urgent.

"I want to ask whether the notebook that Foer took from the production team before, Luo Xiangdong’s notebook, has already been returned to you?"

At the mention of the notebook, Liu Hong clearly froze for a moment.

Then her tone turned oddly strange, as if mixed with confusion and disappointment.

"Oh, it’s been returned."

"What’s wrong? Did Detective Chen suddenly remember in the middle of the night that there’s still an unsolved case?"

Her voice had gone a little cold.

In that instant, Chen Yu understood.

The woman was sulking.

She thought he had called just to explain something.

"Can I take a look at it?" Chen Yu offered no explanation, his breathing growing quick. "That notebook is very important to me."

"Now?" Liu Hong’s voice rose a little. The expectation that had just seemed to settle down surfaced once more. "Chen Yu, it’s already midnight. It’s too late..."

"But... I miss you."

Chen Yu cut her off without hesitation.

The line fell silent at once.

Chen Yu could even hear Liu Hong’s breathing suddenly quicken, along with the pounding of her heart like a drum.

A long while passed.

Then a voice, almost inaudible yet full of boundless allure, came through, trembling.

"All right."

"I’ll... wait for you..."