CJLTNS Chapter 14

After lunch, Li Fangfei walked nervously into the office. Seeing that Jiang Chong wasn’t there, she let out a big sigh of relief.

“We’re all here, let’s begin the meeting.”

Jiang Chong’s voice suddenly came from behind her. Li Fangfei immediately stood up straight, like a cat that just had its tail stepped on. She scrambled to prepare the whiteboard, terrified that being a second late would get her killed and buried on the spot.

A scorched scrap of paper was stuck on the whiteboard. Jiang Chong pointed at it and said:
“This is what Old Ma and I found during the site re-examination this morning. Based on our analysis, it’s very likely something the killer left behind. On the lower right corner of the paper is the character ‘控’ (control), which suggests it might be from a company notebook. Tang Qijun has looked up all the companies in Kangzhou City with the character ‘控’ in their names. There are 22 in total. So next, we’ll be visiting each of these companies to trace the source of this paper.”

“Old Ma, you’ll be with Li Fangfei. Yuan Kai, you’re with me. Tang Qijun, keep searching online for any information about this piece of paper. If anyone finds anything, share it immediately.”

That evening, the criminal investigation team was utterly exhausted. They had visited every company they could think of but still couldn’t trace the origin of the paper.

Li Fangfei collapsed halfway onto a chair, too tired to even sit properly. But she didn’t dare utter a word of complaint. She’d already offended Jiang Chong at noon and didn’t want to give him any reason to kick her out of the unit, so she silently endured and kept working.

Once again, the case had hit a dead end—no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints, no blood or hair samples. The victim’s social relationships and financial dealings all appeared clean. So who would have had a motive to kill them?

Time ticked by. The longer it dragged on, the slimmer their chances of solving the case. Jiang Chong stared at the shredded paper in the photo, massaging his temples in frustration.

“Everyone go home and rest for now. We’ll pick this up again tomorrow.”

By 11 p.m., the office was empty. Jiang Chong pulled out his phone, only to see that his last conversation with Yu Xin was still from earlier that afternoon. He turned off the screen and made a sudden decision—to revisit the crime scene.

In the early hours of the morning, Jiang Chong stood downstairs at the scene. Only a few lights were on in the apartment building; most of the units were cloaked in darkness.

He looked up at the surveillance camera above the entrance. The camera wasn’t aimed at the door itself, but at the open area outside.

Jiang Chong scanned the surroundings thoughtfully. For the killer to have avoided the camera and entered the building, they must’ve scouted the place in advance—or they were already familiar with it.

Surveillance!

A thought suddenly flashed through Jiang Chong’s mind. He immediately pulled out his phone and called Tang Qijun. “Tang Qijun, check right now—what company is responsible for the surveillance system at Liguo Residential Complex?”

Tang Qijun had just fallen asleep and was still groggy. It took a few seconds for his brain to boot up before he replied, “Got it, Captain.”

Five minutes later, Tang Qijun sent over an image. Jiang Chong opened it—an official notice regarding a bidding contract. It stated that the company in charge was “Kangzhou Xinyu Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.”

An hour later, Jiang Chong and Tang Qijun were in the property management office of Liguo Residential Complex. The property manager, bleary-eyed and visibly tired, looked resentfully at the two of them. But given their height and status, whatever complaints he had, he dared not say them aloud.

“Have you seen this notebook?” Tang Qijun held up a photo of the shredded paper and showed it to the manager.

The manager yawned, his eyes tearing up from fatigue. He squinted at the photo. “This… looks familiar, but I can’t quite place it right now.”

“Did you maybe see it when the cameras were being installed?” Jiang Chong prompted.

The manager slapped his forehead and immediately pulled open a drawer in his desk. He dug through a stack of papers and handed one over. “Officers, could this be it?”

Jiang Chong put on gloves and carefully took the paper, comparing it to the shredded piece from the crime scene. In the lower right corner was the phrase “Xinyu Surveillance,” and the word “surveillance” (“控”) matched exactly with the character on the fragment.

“Where did this paper come from?” he asked.

“End of last month, we arranged for a check-up on the old surveillance system. This was left by the technicians from the surveillance company after their inspection. These numbers here are all the faulty camera units.”

Written in black pen were over a dozen surveillance IDs. Jiang Chong scanned them and found the exact camera ID for the one under Li Gui’s building—the scene of the crime.

“Who came to install the surveillance cameras back then? What’s his name?”

The property manager pulled out his phone, scrolled through his WeChat contacts, tapped on a profile picture, then handed the phone to Jiang Chong. The name displayed was: “Xinyu Surveillance – Yang Chao.”

Early the next morning, Jiang Chong led the criminal investigation team to stake out in front of Yang Chao’s residence. Jiang Chong stood downstairs pretending to talk on the phone. Tang Qijun and Ma Pingchuan guarded the two intersections, while Yuan Kai and Li Fangfei acted like a quarreling couple near the trash bins.

Yang Chao, forty years old, 1.76 meters tall, married with one daughter, joined Kangzhou’s Xinyu Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. two years ago, primarily responsible for surveillance camera installations.

With a cigarette between his fingers, Jiang Chong watched Yang Chao’s movements from about six or seven meters away.

It was Thursday. Yang Chao came out of the building with his wife and daughter. The three of them wore happy expressions — they looked like a picture-perfect family.

Ma Pingchuan and Tang Qijun slowly closed in from opposite directions. Just as they were about to make a move, Jiang Chong suddenly said, “Wait.”

Ma Pingchuan and Tang Qijun quickly pulled back and walked in different directions.

Yang Chao squatted down to straighten his daughter’s red scarf. His wife urged him to hurry up, and Yang Chao smiled and joked with her, handing over his daughter’s schoolbag.

As his wife and daughter got on the electric scooter and rode off, Jiang Chong said immediately, “Move.”

Jiang Chong and the others approached Yang Chao from four directions. Tang Qijun placed a hand on Yang Chao’s shoulder from behind. “Yang Chao, I’m Ma Pingchuan from the Municipal Criminal Investigation Division. We need your cooperation in a homicide investigation.”

Yang Chao instinctively looked like he was going to run, but seeing he was surrounded within a two-meter radius, he hesitated and nodded with a flicker of panic in his eyes. “Officers, I have to go to work. Whatever you want to ask, make it quick.”

Half an hour later, Yang Chao sat in the interrogation room. Yuan Kai and Ma Pingchuan were seated across from him, while Li Fangfei sat at the computer, recording everything. Jiang Chong and Tang Qijun observed through the one-way mirror.

“Yang Chao, you’d better tell the truth!”

When dealing with suspects, it’s best to suppress their defiance right from the start. Ma Pingchuan struck first — his usually Buddha-like gentle face now transformed into a wrathful, intimidating glare.

Yang Chao kept his head down, making it hard to read his expression.

A suspect refusing to speak isn’t unusual. Many believe that staying silent means the police can’t get anything out of them. But in reality, when a suspect clams up, the police have a hundred ways to make them open up.

Ma Pingchuan took a sip of water and gave a cold smile. “Yang Chao, we specifically waited for your wife and daughter to leave before bringing you in, so we wouldn’t scare them. But if you stay silent, I can’t promise we won’t show up at your wife’s workplace or your kid’s school next time.”

At the mention of his wife and child, Yang Chao finally reacted. He slowly raised his head, his eyes unfocused. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out.

The hard approach had worked — now it was time for the soft one.

“Yang Chao, where were you on the evening of May 24th, between 9 PM and 11 PM?” Yuan Kai placed a cup of water on the table in front of Yang Chao.

Yang Chao picked up the cup of water and drank it all, then wiped the corners of his mouth with his sleeve.

“I… I was at Li Gui’s house that night.”

Yang Chao admitted that he had gone to Li Gui’s place that evening. However, surveillance footage in front of the apartment building didn’t show any sign of him. But Yang Chao was in the surveillance business himself — he knew exactly where the cameras pointed and where the blind spots were. Avoiding them wasn’t difficult for someone like him.

Ma Pingchuan and Yuan Kai exchanged a look and continued questioning. “Why did you go to see him?”

“I went to talk business.”

“What kind of business?”

Yang Chao lowered his head again and fell into silence. Ma Pingchuan switched back to his tough cop persona: “Yang Chao, I’m warning you. We only brought you in because we already have solid evidence. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t waste our time.”

Yuan Kai played the good cop, gently patting Ma Pingchuan on the shoulder to calm him down. “Yang Chao, we’ve been looking into you all night — we’re exhausted too. Just tell the truth, alright? If you confess now, it still counts as turning yourself in. Leniency for those who confess, you know the drill. Even a three-year-old could tell you that.”

Yang Chao lifted his head again, and this time, his eyes weren’t vacant — they burned with intense hatred. Ma Pingchuan and Yuan Kai noticed the shift. His psychological defenses had crumbled. Both men sat up straighter, sensing the truth was about to come out.

Yang Chao gripped the disposable cup tightly and twisted it until it was crushed in his hands. “It was… it was me. I killed Li Gui.”

“Why did you kill him?” Ma Pingchuan immediately followed up.

“Because… because he’s not human.”

Suddenly, Yang Chao’s emotions exploded. He slammed both hands on the table violently. Yuan Kai stood up and went to his side, pressing down on his shoulders. “Yang Chao, calm down!”

Yang Chao wrapped both arms around his head, breathing heavily and repeating over and over, “Li Gui isn’t human. He’s not human.”

“What happened between you two exactly?”

Yang Chao’s voice became hoarse and muddled, like something was stuck in his throat. “About half a year ago, I started doing maintenance on the surveillance system in Li Gui’s neighborhood. We got pretty close not long after. Li Gui liked to play cards and often invited me to play with him. At first, it was just small bets, ten, twenty, maybe a couple hundred at most. But later on…”

“What happened later?” Yuan Kai poured him another glass of water and set it down in front of him.

Yang Chao picked up the water cup and took a sip. His hoarse voice became slightly clearer:
“Later, he felt that playing cards wasn’t exciting enough, so he said he knew a great place and took me to a casino in the suburbs. Compared to mahjong, the casino was indeed much more thrilling. At first, I won quite a bit—within half an hour, I’d made three thousand, which was equal to half a month’s salary for me.”

Yang Chao paused, a hint of a sarcastic smile curling at the corner of his mouth:
“At that time, aside from going to work, I was following Li Gui around to gamble. But later on, I started winning less and losing more. I was gambling like a man possessed, convinced that I’d win everything back in the next round. But I had no more capital.

That’s when Li Gui offered to lend me money—but only if I signed an IOU, with 4% monthly interest. I signed the notes just to get the money. From one thousand to five thousand, and eventually twenty thousand. With compounding interest, it became fifty thousand in less than three months.”

Gambling is another kind of drug.
Drugs make you feel physical pleasure at its peak. Gambling, though—gambling brings you spiritual ecstasy.

Gambling exploits human greed. On a table, within mere inches, you can experience both heaven and hell. When you win, adrenaline surges, your heart races—the rush of victory is like an electric jolt, making you euphoric in an instant. This instant gratification is a deadly temptation, fooling you into believing you’ve found a shortcut to financial freedom.

However, good times don’t last. As the gambling continues, the reality of more losses than wins becomes unavoidable. But by then, the addiction has already taken root. It’s like a bottomless pit, devouring your logic and judgment. You become anxious, restless, constantly fantasizing that the next round will let you break even—or even hit it big. So, you raise the stakes again and again, trying to cover past losses, but instead you fall deeper and deeper into a vicious cycle.

Behind a one-way mirror, Jiang Chong looked at the bloodshot eyes of Yang Chao. That kind of look—he had seen far too many times over the years.

Everyone who ends up in prison because of gambling comes in weeping, full of regret, vowing they’d rather cut off their own hands than touch cards again.

But after being released, 90% of them repeat the same mistakes. Once someone experiences the ultimate mental high of gambling, the ordinary joys of life start to feel small, like needle pricks on numb flesh—too dull to feel anymore.

Even if you swear off gambling and stay far away from your old environment, gambling is everywhere—mahjong, poker, lottery tickets, sports betting, even something as simple as dice. If you want to gamble, anything can become a tool for it.