CJLTNS Chapter 13

At 8:30 in the morning, Jiang Chong walked into the office. Ma Pingchuan and Yuan Kai were eating steamed buns, Tang Qijun was still glued to his mobile game, and Li Fangfei was watering the lush green pothos plant.

“Get ready—in ten minutes, we’re having a meeting!”

Ten minutes later, Ma Pingchuan and Yuan Kai had finished their buns, Tang Qijun finally put down his game, and Li Fangfei sat obediently in front of Jiang Chong, notebook in hand.

“Old Ma, give us an update on what you’ve found these past two days.”

Standing in front of the whiteboard, Ma Pingchuan began:
“These past two days, Yuan Kai and I visited people in the victim Li Gui’s personal and work circles. We found out that Li Gui was really into gambling—especially cards and mahjong. He was quite skilled, and quite a few people had lost money to him. But the amounts weren’t large—some lost just a few dozen, others a few hundred yuan.”

“Li Fangfei, what about you and Tang Qijun?” Jiang Chong asked.

Li Fangfei cleared her throat and replied,
“Tang Qijun and I checked with the telecom company about Li Gui’s phone activity. There were a lot of unfamiliar incoming and outgoing calls, but considering his job as a delivery driver, it’s actually normal. We also checked his bank statements from the past year—mostly small transactions, just tens or hundreds of yuan. There were his wages and some transfers from his son. So far, nothing unusual.”

When it comes to murder cases, it usually boils down to two things: money or revenge. Especially with someone in Li Gui’s financial situation—money is the more likely motive.

Since they had no solid leads, the only option was to start over. Jiang Chong thought for a moment, then decided to revisit the crime scene.

“Old Ma, let’s go check out the scene again.”

“Tangyuan, you two follow up with Li Gui’s gambling buddies. See if any leads pop up, especially whether he owed or was owed any large sums.”

“And me, Captain?” Li Fangfei asked.

“You go bring some snacks and sweet-talk Fang Xu into doing a more detailed autopsy. See if he missed anything.”

After assigning the tasks, the four men quickly left the office—leaving Li Fangfei behind all by herself.

She gritted her teeth and stared at their retreating backs, especially shooting daggers at Jiang Chong:
“What the hell? Not taking me again?”

Two days had passed since the murder. Life around the neighborhood continued, but whenever people walked past the building, they instinctively kept their distance.

As long as the killer remained at large, it was like a sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s heads—no one could feel truly at ease.

Jiang Chong and Ma Pingchuan went upstairs. The door to Li Gui’s apartment still had the police seal on it. After putting on shoe covers, they re-entered the home.

The place had been sealed off for two days, and the air was musty. On the floor was the chalk outline of where Li Gui’s body had been. Most of the surrounding items had already been taken by forensics for evidence collection.

Jiang Chong went into the bedroom, Ma Pingchuan into the kitchen. They meticulously searched every corner again, looking for anything they might have missed.

They spent the entire morning going over the apartment again but found nothing new. Jiang Chong silently told himself:
“There’s no such thing as a perfect crime. If we haven’t solved it yet, it just means we’ve overlooked something.”

Just as they were stepping out and getting ready to leave, the door across the hall suddenly opened. Standing there was Wu Gang—the man who had reported the crime. He froze for a moment when he saw them, then greeted them casually,
“Officers, you’re back again!”

Considering the murder had happened right across from him and he’d even touched the body when reporting it, Wu Gang’s calm demeanor felt a little off. Most people would be somewhat shaken.

“Shouldn’t you be at work right now?” Jiang Chong asked.

Wu Gang let out a huge yawn.
“I just got off a shift. Came back to shower and change, was planning to grab some noodles downstairs before crashing.”

“Oh? A murder happened right across from your place, and you’re not scared at all?” Ma Pingchuan lit a cigarette and handed one to Wu Gang, who accepted it, then patted himself down—no lighter.

Ma Pingchuan lit his own, then helped Wu Gang light his.

Wu Gang took a puff and blew out a stream of smoke.
“Officer, if I’m being honest, I am scared. The guy died under such strange circumstances. But I’m broke. I just paid three months’ rent on this place. If I move out, that money goes down the drain. So scared or not, I can’t afford to leave.”

“That makes sense.”

With Ma Pingchuan’s understanding, Wu Gang looked like he’d found a kindred spirit. He closed his door and offered,
“Have you two eaten yet? Wanna grab a bowl of noodles downstairs? There’s this noodle shop that’s actually pretty good.”

When Wu Gang closed the door, he didn’t do it gently — the force of it stirred up a gust of wind, and Jiang Chong suddenly noticed a few fingernail-sized pieces of paper fluttering up from the corner near Wu Gang’s door.

The edges of the paper bits were blackened — burnt — and the paper itself was a pale yellow.

In these older apartment complexes, it’s not unusual for elderly residents to burn joss paper to honor the dead. But the Qingming Festival had passed over a month ago. And the property manager had said the hallways were cleaned every two days. So where had this scorched paper come from?

Jiang Chong pulled out a pair of gloves, picked up a piece through the fabric. The texture was that of notebook paper, not joss paper. There was even a single character left — “控” — possibly part of a company logo.

Notebook paper being burned… that usually meant someone had written something they didn’t want found.

Jiang Chong held the burnt scrap out to Wu Gang. “This your trash?”

Wu Gang quickly shook his head. “Officer, who burns paper for no reason? If I mess something up, I just crumple it and throw it away. Burning it? That’s extra effort.”

Jiang Chong and Ma Pingchuan exchanged a look. This could be a new lead. Ma took out an evidence bag from his pack and carefully sealed the paper scrap inside — they’d check later for fingerprints or other clues.

At 11:00 a.m., the two returned to the station. Before they could even hand the scrap to forensics, Li Fangfei came rushing over.

“Captain! Ma-ge! I found something new on the surveillance footage.”

“Old Ma, take that to forensics,” Jiang Chong ordered. “I’ll go check the video.”

Jiang Chong sat in front of the computer while Li Fangfei pulled up footage from the camera outside Li Gui’s building. The timestamp stopped at 6:58:23 p.m. The camera faced the unit’s entrance; on the right, a few electric scooters were parked.

“I gave snacks to the forensic guy, and then didn’t have much else to do,” Li Fangfei said, “so I dug into the footage again — and found this. Captain, look here.”

In the rearview mirror of one of the scooters, a face appeared. Jiang Chong clicked to zoom — twenty times magnification. Though the image was blurry, the face was clearly identifiable: Yu Xin.

They moved the timeline forward. At 7:18:20 p.m., Yu Xin’s face appeared once again in the scooter’s mirror.

The timing matched Yu Xin’s statement exactly. With this footage, they could finally confirm he had indeed left — Li Gui’s death really had nothing to do with him.

“Fangfei, good job. You mentioned a concert earlier? I’ll reimburse you.”

“Ahhh! Captain — no, god-tier boss — that’s amazing!”

Li Fangfei spun in place with excitement, as if she might grab her idol’s hand and have a once-in-a-lifetime encounter at any second.

Inspired by the scooter mirror clue, Jiang Chong and Li Fangfei rewatched all the footage from the beginning. Unfortunately, after 7:30 p.m., night had fully fallen. The rearview mirrors turned pitch black. Nothing else could be seen.

“Captain, the forensics team checked the burnt paper scrap. Here’s the report.” Ma Pingchuan handed the forensics report to Jiang Chong.

Jiang Chong opened the report. No fingerprints, no unusual findings—just a piece of scorched paper. Only the lower right corner had a single printed character: “控” (“surveillance”).

The top floor of Li Gui’s building wasn’t a place anyone would go unless they lived there. They’d just asked the property management—since someone had died there, the cleaner was too scared to go past the fifth floor in the last couple of days. And if Wu Gang said he didn’t burn it, then it was either Li Gui or the murderer who did.

Normally, if a regular person messes up writing something, they just crumple the paper and toss it in the trash. Burning it? That usually means someone wanted to destroy evidence.

“Captain, we’re back!”

By late May, the days were getting hotter and hotter. Yuan Kai and Tang Qijun were both drenched in sweat and went straight for a big glass of water as soon as they walked in.

“Any findings?”

Tang Qijun shook his head while gulping water: “Not much. Everyone said they had minor friction with Li Gui—some losses from card games, stuff like that. But they all have alibis.”

No matter how intense the case was, people still needed to eat. Jiang Chong told Ma Pingchuan and the others to grab some lunch.

Since they were late to the cafeteria, it was nearly empty. After getting their food, Li Fangfei sat down next to Tang Qijun with her tray and called out to the two guys across the table: “Hey, I found something today. Wanna hear it? It’s about the Captain!”

Yuan Kai snatched a meatball from Tang Qijun’s tray, chewing as he raised his eyebrows: “Spill. What is it?”

Li Fangfei leaned in close, and the other three followed suit. “Remember that guy Yu Xin we caught a few days ago? Didn’t you all think the Captain was acting really weird with him?”

Tang Qijun scratched his head, thinking it over. “Now that you mention it, yeah. Captain actually let him use his own cup for water. And usually, we give suspects instant noodles, but that day he asked Yuan Kai to go buy wontons.”

“That’s not all!” Yuan Kai jumped in, clearly worked up. “Yu Xin was seriously suspicious. We had every right to detain him for 24 hours. But then his family showed up, said a few words, and Captain just let him go.”

Li Fangfei nodded excitedly: “Right? Doesn’t it seem off? So last night, I brought two oranges and went to talk to Uncle Wei.”

For over twenty years, in the Kangzhou City Police Department, people came and went—some got promoted, some got taken down, others transferred in or out. But Chief Wu and the gatekeeper Uncle Wei were like immovable anchors in that sea of change. If you wanted to know the inside scoop, these two were your best bet.

As a rookie, Li Fangfei would tremble just talking to Chief Wu, let alone asking him about this kind of thing. So she turned to the more approachable Uncle Wei.

“I showed him a photo of Yu Xin. Uncle Wei recognized him immediately and said Yu Xin used to be the Captain’s friend. He used to visit the station all the time, then one day just stopped coming.”

Cough… cough…

Behind her, Ma Pingchuan started coughing loudly, clearly trying to get her attention. Unfortunately, Li Fangfei completely missed the hint. “Ma-ge, are you getting sick? Want me to grab some medicine for you later?”

Ma Pingchuan looked like he was going to explode. He furiously signaled with his eyes, and finally, Li Fangfei followed his gaze—

And froze. Her voice started to tremble: “C-Captain… I… I was just talking nonsense…”

Ma Pingchuan saw Li Fangfei trembling and felt both exasperated and helpless. He couldn’t help but say a few kind words on her behalf:
“Captain, Fangfei is still a kid. Don’t take it to heart.”

Jiang Chong sat down beside Li Fangfei with his tray. After a few seconds, he finally spoke:
“Li Fangfei, what you said isn’t completely wrong. Yu Xin is my friend… and also my ex-boyfriend.”

Yuan Kai dropped the meatball he had just picked up. It thudded onto the table and rolled off to the floor.

Tang Qijun, who was drinking soup, nearly spit it all out. His face flushed red as he struggled to hold it in.

Ma Pingchuan, at least more worldly than the younger ones, had a flash of surprise in his eyes but quickly suppressed it.

Li Fangfei looked up in shock, swallowed the rice in her mouth, and asked the question that shook the entire room:
“Did you dump him or did he dump you?”

Jiang Chong pressed his lips tightly together. Ma Pingchuan shut his eyes, wishing he could just crumple Li Fangfei up and toss her to the moon.

“He broke up with me.”

Jiang Chong said this and then turned to leave with his tray. Ma Pingchuan pointed at Li Fangfei, his hand trembling, practically jabbing at her forehead:
“Li Fangfei, if you don’t know how to talk, then just shut up! Look at that foul mouth of yours.”

Still shocked by the whole Jiang Chong and Yu Xin thing, Li Fangfei’s amazing dullness shielded her from Ma Pingchuan’s scolding. She looked at the three of them and asked,
“Captain, does this count as coming out?”

Ma Pingchuan thought this kid was beyond saving. He sighed, picked up his tray, and walked off. Yuan Kai and Tang Qijun looked at their half-finished meals and decided not to waste food. They quickly finished up in a few bites, leaving Li Fangfei all alone in the now empty cafeteria.

Jiang Chong walked into his office, shut the door, and hesitated for a moment before sending a message on his phone:
[Yu Xin, what are you doing now?]

Jiang Chong stared at his phone. Over ten minutes later, Yu Xin finally replied:
[Surveilling someone.]

Jiang Chong figured Yu Xin was probably holed up in some godforsaken corner, likely with that dumb apprentice of his tagging along.

He took out his wallet and pulled a photo from behind his ID. The edges were a bit yellowed, clearly aged. In the photo, a younger Jiang Chong and Yu Xin stood side by side, looking like they were in their early twenties. Yu Xin was half a head shorter than Jiang Chong. Jiang Chong was in a police uniform, and Yu Xin wore a graduation gown. Jiang Chong’s hand rested on Yu Xin’s shoulder, both of them smiling.

Jiang Chong tapped Yu Xin’s face in the photo with his fingertip, then slid the picture back into his wallet.