Chapter 36: Gathering Evidence

With the high-definition front-facing photograph, the suspect’s identity was quickly established.

Lu Sheng, thirty-two years old, registered occupation: unemployed, home address: XXX.

Once the warrant was secured, the police immediately set out to make the arrest.

When the police showed up, Lu Sheng offered almost no resistance. He only showed a brief moment of surprise at the very beginning, perhaps not expecting to be exposed in less than two days. But he quickly accepted the reality, silently following the police back to the station, and went with them to the lab for a footprint analysis.

However, this did not mean he was willing to cooperate. Once inside the interrogation room, Lu Sheng remained tight-lipped. No matter how the interrogators accused or persuaded him, he refused to disclose any facts.

Even when the police threw the footprints found at the scene in front of him and told him the prison sentence he would face once the analysis results came back, he showed no intention of arguing back.

His quiet, taciturn demeanor made it hard to associate him with the criminal who had mutilated the corpse.

Qiong Cang asked a friend in another department to look into Lu Sheng’s bank accounts, only to find that he had not received any large transfers recently. His account had a fluctuating monthly income from an online platform; he usually made money through game streaming, though the earnings were low.

After a standoff lasting several hours, the results of Lu Sheng’s footprint analysis came back, confirming a match with the footprints found in Wu Ming’s home. This proved that Qiong Cang’s hypothesis was correct.

Unfortunately, this only proved that Lu Sheng was the culprit who mutilated the corpse. There was no direct evidence to prove that Li Yujia was involved in the matter.

Members of the team took turns going in to talk to him, using all kinds of tactics to get him to name the mastermind, but they all ultimately returned empty-handed.

Lu Sheng was determined to stay silent, and the team could not make any breakthrough with him.

Qiong Cang stood in the observation room, staring down at the man through the one-way glass. Her gaze was unfocused, making it impossible to tell what she was thinking.

Beside her, a colleague couldn’t help scratching his head and saying, “This guy is a tough nut to crack. He’s completely set on keeping his mouth shut.”

Qiong Cang turned around, no longer watching. “Find another angle,” she said flatly. “He won’t talk.” No matter how one looked at it, taking the fall alone was the choice that maximized Lu Sheng’s own interests. Self-interest was the strongest contract of all.

“I’ll go meet the friend who took Li Yujia in that night again. The rest of you, go check the street surveillance footage. From the moment Li Yujia left her house to the moment she entered the residential area, I need you to mark every intersection she passed and the exact time she passed it. Bring me the compiled data once you’re done.” Qiong Cang walked toward the door, holding it open with one hand as she left them with one final word. “Wu Ming’s death was an accident. No matter how meticulous Li Yujia is, she would have left many flaws in such a rushed plan. Let’s put in a bit more effort, everyone. The case will be closed soon.”

The officer nodded. “Understood.”

·

Li Yujia’s friend was Ms. Yu, a classmate of hers from college.

They were said to have been very close back then, but unfortunately, Li Yujia married too early. After her marriage, she devoted herself almost entirely to her family, communicating less with her friends, and they gradually drifted apart. It was only last year, when Ms. Yu came to work in the area and asked Li Yujia for help with something, that the two became close again.

Hearing the doorbell, Ms. Yu came to open the door. “Who is it?” she asked.

Qiong Cang and her colleague pulled out their badges. “We’re here to ask a few questions. Is now a convenient time?”

Seeing they were police officers, Ms. Yu immediately frowned, her tone sharp. “Didn’t you already ask me this before? Jiajia was with me the entire night. There’s no way she’s the Murderer! You’re completely wasting your time on her!”

Qiong Cang did not mind. Instead, she gave a gentle smile and said, “Actually, we have already caught the Murderer.”

“Huh?” Ms. Yu blinked in surprise. “You… you’ve already caught them?”

Qiong Cang said, “Yes. Once the formal prosecution begins, the police will make a public announcement. For now, please keep this confidential. We came today because we want to verify a few details with you again, which will help us write our final report.”

“I understand, I understand.” Ms. Yu’s expression softened, and she stepped aside. “Come on in.”

Qiong Cang walked inside, took off her shoes at the entrance, and sat on the edge of the sofa, keeping a one-seat distance from Ms. Yu. Her colleague sat on the single armchair nearby, pulling out a notepad and pen, ready to take notes.

Qiong Cang relaxed her posture, leaning forward slightly as she asked, “Li Yujia arrived at your residential area around one in the morning, correct?”

Ms. Yu nodded. “Well, she walked through my door around one-fifteen. I went downstairs to pick her up myself.”

Qiong Cang asked, “How was her state of mind when she arrived?”

“She was furious, of course!” Speaking of this, Ms. Yu felt deeply indignant on behalf of her friend, unleashing a torrent of complaints. “Back in college, I told her to keep her eyes open and not choose Wu Ming, but she just wouldn’t listen and stubbornly went ahead with it. And look what happened. Did Wu Ming treat her well after they got married? After struggling for so many years, they finally had money, but did she get to enjoy it? She stayed by that phoenix man¹‘s side as he built his wealth from scratch, only to watch him keep other women once he made it. Ha, I feel so bad for her! Even though Wu Ming is dead now, it’s hard to say how much of their marital property is left. Wu Ming was ungrateful and guarded against her like she was a thief. He was a total mama’s boy. If you ask me, Wu Ming’s mother is far more suspicious than Li Yujia. That old lady is not right in the head!”

The young officer’s hand shook, leaving a streak of ink on the paper. He wiped it with his finger and looked up at Qiong Cang with a complicated expression.

Qiong Cang asked, “So she spent the whole night crying and venting to you?”

“Yes,” Ms. Yu said with a look of disgust. “I only found out how awful Wu Ming’s mother was after listening to her!”

Qiong Cang asked, “Li Yujia ran out in the middle of the night. Didn’t her family try to call her?”

“No! Jiajia left in such a hurry that she didn’t bring her phone,” Ms. Yu said. “She borrowed my phone to call Wu Ming’s mother, saying she wanted a divorce and to split the assets, and gave her a piece of her mind. I told her she had finally snapped out of it!”

Qiong Cang gave a couple of casual nods, her expression unchanged, and continued, “Did you hear what the two of them said?”

Ms. Yu shook her head. “No. Jiajia is very proud, and she wouldn’t want me to see her lose her composure. She went out to the balcony to make the call, crying the whole time. It didn’t last long before the other person hung up on her.”

“Could I take a look at your phone?” Qiong Cang asked.

Ms. Yu picked up the phone, which was in a pink crystal case, from the coffee table. She unlocked the screen and handed it to Qiong Cang. “Jiajia deleted the call log, so you won’t see it now, but I swear I’m telling the truth.”

Qiong Cang swiped through it briefly and saw that it was indeed empty. She politely handed the phone back and asked, “Would you mind coming with me to the mobile service provider to pull the call records for this number? If we have to file a formal request, it will take a lot of time. Zhou Langxiu denied that this call ever happened. She claims that Li Yujia would never divorce Wu Ming because she wants his estate.”

Upon hearing this, Ms. Yu flared up in anger. “Of course! That old hag has gone too far. Let’s go right now! Isn’t perjury a crime? Can we get her locked up to teach her a lesson? If you ask me, more than half of the enemies her son made were thanks to her!”

Qiong Cang stood up. “Thank you for your help.”

The group went to the mobile service provider and retrieved the deleted call history. A colleague drove Ms. Yu home, while Qiong Cang stayed behind to have the provider’s backend trace the owner of the number.

Sure enough, the number did not belong to Zhou Langxiu, but to Lu Sheng.

The two had spoken that night, and Li Yujia had cleverly avoided using her own phone.

Unfortunately for her, things were not going to be that simple.

By the time Qiong Cang returned to the police station, the timeline analysis she had ordered her team to perform on Li Yujia’s vehicle was ready.

Although some of the street surveillance cameras had not yet been integrated into the smart monitoring system, leaving them unable to analyze the footage automatically and only capable of basic recording, Li Yujia’s travel window was clear. The streets had been empty at night, making the manual screening relatively straightforward.

Seeing her walk in, a young officer waved a printed document in his hand. “Boss, you’re back? We were just about to send this data to the tech department for modeling.”

Qiong Cang held out her hand. “Just give it to me.”

The officer handed it over with a puzzled look. Qiong Cang glanced down at the sheet. It was highly detailed, even noting the vehicle’s recorded speeds.

She entered the coordinates and timestamps into a digital map, though she had already run the calculations in her head. About a third of the way through, she paused.

“I need the full surveillance footage for the entire stretch between these two points,” Qiong Cang said. “Li Yujia made a stop in this area. She was there for ten to fifteen minutes.”

Her colleague leaned over to look. After checking the camera locations on his computer, he shook his head. “We don’t have coverage there. Li Yujia cut through a narrow alley, and there’s a blind spot along that stretch. But we could ask the local shopkeepers nearby to see if they noticed anything.”

“Are there any twenty-four-hour shops in the area?” Qiong Cang asked.

“There’s a KFC at the intersection,” her colleague replied. “And a twenty-four-hour convenience store nearby.”

Qiong Cang smiled. “Excellent. Let’s go ask.”

Without taking a break, the team rushed to the shops near the target area to ask the staff if they had seen Li Yujia that night.

Since the clerks who had worked the night shift were not on duty, getting witness statements proved difficult. In the end, they resorted to their usual routine: requesting the surveillance footage directly from the store owners.

Having watched so much footage already, they were thoroughly numb. Resting their chins in their hands, they stared at the fast-forwarding screens with dead, glazed expressions.

But this time, luck was on their side.

In the convenience store’s footage, they spotted Li Yujia walking through the front doors.

She pulled a hundred-yuan bill from her pocket, borrowed a phone from the clerk, and went to a corner to make a call.

Because her back was to the camera and she was too far away, they couldn’t gauge her expression or hear what she was saying. After speaking for about five minutes, Li Yujia walked back, returned the phone, and the clerk insisted on giving her money back.

Pressed for time, she didn’t argue and quickly hurried out.

The camera at the entrance showed her turning left after stepping outside. She walked about ten meters before disappearing from the frame.

Reinvigorated, the team eagerly headed to the neighboring shop to request their outdoor security footage, ready to focus on a new round of video analysis.

·

While Qiong Cang and her team of NPCs were energized by the breakthrough, the viewers in the Live Stream Room felt differently. They were genuinely exhausted.

“I thought it was almost over, but the workload is still insane. Gathering evidence is brutal.”

“When the boss was combing through those homework assignments earlier, I thought that was the ultimate torture. I was so naive. I never expected we’d have to watch security footage next. 【Smile】”

“I honestly can’t tell which is more terrifying: actual work or watching surveillance footage. 【Skull】”

“Boss: ‘Are you afraid to love me?’ … Yes, terrified.”

“Don’t they usually just bluff the suspects in TV dramas to get a confession? Maybe they should bring in a negotiator.”

“But in reality, most criminals won’t confess until they’re backed into a corner, and some won’t even then. Even with ironclad evidence staring them in the face, they’ll still scream their innocence until they believe it themselves. The only ones who crack easily are those with something to gain. Wu Ming is worth billions. Besides, the penalty for desecrating a corpse isn’t that severe. If I were in her shoes, I’d deny everything too and wait to inherit the fortune.”

·

By the time Qiong Cang and the others returned to the station with the evidence, night had fallen once again.

The cover of darkness seemed fitting for this stage of the investigation. It bred a quiet exhaustion, coaxing people into letting their guard down, even though the real drama was only just beginning.

He Jueyun sat on a cold, hard chair, his eyelids heavy with fatigue, waiting for the woman across from them to speak.

“It’s been a while, Li Yujia.” Qiong Cang leaned back in a relaxed posture, offering a warm, friendly smile in an attempt to build rapport. “I heard your friends call you Jiajia. Do you mind if I call you that too?”

He Jueyun believed his poker face had been honed to perfection through years of gaming, yet he found himself repeatedly losing control of it when facing Qiong Cang. He said coldly, “I do mind. If you dare call me that, I’ll report you for sexual harassment.”

Qiong Cang’s smile froze. Was he really this into character?

Translator’s Notes