Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios

Five days later, the weather turned cooler.

Jin City had already entered autumn for quite a while, but the weather only became cooler this period.

After a DNA test, the headless corpse they found at the basement was confirmed to be Mao Guigui.

Xiang Wan did a possible analysis of what Mao Guigui experienced before her death, as well as a relationship chart between the characters…

Mao Guigui was Ye Lun’s fan. When she went to look up Ye Lun, due to some unknown circumstances, Jia An must have seen her and recommended her to Zhou Dequan. From there onward, she was brought to Zhou Dequan’s villa by Jia An—and met her death…

As for the “unknown circumstances”, she was unable to get an answer from Zhou Dequan if everything happened because of reading her novel…

Some detectives supported the notion that Zhou Dequan was replicating Xiang Wan’s novel with regards to Mao Guigui’s murder.

From the deaths of the people they saw in the basement, some detectives felt that there might be something with Mao Guigui that caught Zhou Dequan’s eye. It might be something about his painful past or she had resembled someone that he really hated.

There were some others who felt that Zhou Dequan was a complete psychopath who indulged in abusing and torturing women. As long as he could obtain depraved gratification from doing so, he did not need any reason to kill a female college student.

The above were the three types of opinions the whole team debated for half a day without a conclusion. Everyone held on to their opinion strongly.

There were a total of 19 corpses found in the basement together with Mao Guigui.

Of the 19 corpses, 15 of them belonged to young women ranging from 18 to 25 years old.

As Zhou Dequan had recorded in detail the origins as well as the reasons for the murder of these people, the identities of these people were quickly affirmed. These people had come from all over the country. Not all of them were from Jin City. Some of them were dead for 25 years, while there were some whose families were still searching for their whereabouts. Of course, there were also some who had been totally forgotten…

It was an abominable case.

The large number of deaths and the brutal manner of committing the crimes sparked off widespread concern in the society.

Online and offline media channels took turns reporting the case. Bai Muchuan and his Criminal Investigation Unit of Hongjiang District were pushed to the teeth of the storm due to the furor.

Tang Yuanchu was once again appointed as the spokesman on behalf of the Criminal Investigation Unit to speak to the media about the case. Due to that, he stole the spotlight in the case where he gained tons of followers—nearly having one million followers on Weibo.

About half a month later, the Municipal Bureau and the Criminal Investigation Unit of Hongjiang District held a press conference with regards to the case.

The case was now considered closed.

At the press conference, the media mainly raised the following questions:

Question One: Was there a sexual relationship between Ye Lun and Mao Guigui?

Question Two: Who was the person that Zhou Dequan originally wanted to kill? Was it really Mao Guigui, or he had wanted to go after Xie Wanwan right from the beginning and framed Ye Lun for it?

Question Three: Making use of Kong Qingping to steal Xie Wanwan’s doll, and then plot for Kong Qingping’s death by making use of Kong Qingping’s father. After that, triggering a battle between the fans of Xie Wanwan and Ye Lun which caused the death of Xie Wanwan’s assistant, Yu Hui, followed by Cao Mengjia’s suicide. Was Zhou Dequan the one who directed all of these? All these cases that happened on the film set of “The Grey List”—are all of these cases related or unrelated?

Question Four: Did Mao Guigui play a part in framing Ye Lun in the first place? And then killed by Zhou Dequan to pin her death on Ye Lun?

Question Five: Zhou Dequan, a real estate businessman in Jin City, must have relied on his powerful connections to deceive the public and committed heinous crimes. Who was exactly the big fish behind him that provided him legal or political protection? Will Zhou Dequan’s death mark the closure of the case? Will the police continue to pursue the case to catch the big fish behind Zhou Dequan?

Well, the media sure raised some sharp and tricky questions.

For the first question, Tang Yuanchu expressed with firmness and certainty, “No.”

The possibility of Jia An targeting Mao Guigui since way back was much greater. From the fact that he had placed a real bullet in the prop gun, there were signs to suggest that he had planned to frame Ye Lun as a murderer and then silence Mao Guigui off.

After the police did a lot of ground work investigations as well as the statement of Ye Lun’s assistant, Dong Bu, it was evident that Jia An took advantage of Dong Bu’s gambling addiction to lure him into accumulating a huge amount of gambling debt. After Ye Lun refused to lend Dong Bu money to repay the gambling debt, he received help from Jia An, but at the same time, he got threatened by Jia An as well—he made a false statement against Ye Lun.

The Ye Lun lookalike who entered the hotel with Mao Guigui at the same time was also arranged by Jia An.

From this, the answer to the fourth question could be deduced—Mao Guigui definitely knew who had entered the hotel room with her. Yet, she never clarified this point in the social media. Thus, she was suspected to be involved in framing Ye Lun.

However, with the deaths of Mao Guigui, Jia An and Zhou Dequan, the police was unable to verify this point.

As for the second and third question, including the reason why Zhou Dequan had to kill Mao Guigui, it could only be left as a mystery as those who knew the reasons were already dead.

“We believe that in the future, we will definitely be able to have an answer to all these doubts.”

When Tang Yuanchu replied this, a reporter suddenly raised his hand and asked another question, “From what I know, the act of Zhou Dequan killing Mao Guigui originated from replicating a plot from an online novel called ‘Murder The Dream Guy’. May I know if this is true? And, why did Zhou Dequan replicate from a novel which is not so popular? Does the police have an answer to this?”

Argh! So embarrassing!

Xiang Wan was watching the livestream using her mobile phone and her cheeks was burning when she saw this.

“This reporter is annoying! Why did he have to stress the point ‘not so popular’?”

Bai Muchuan did not participate in the press conference. At this moment, he was sitting beside her leisurely.

He smiled at her remark. “The reporter can’t be saying that it’s a popular book? That’s not very respectful to the facts?”

“…”

Alright, her book was still not so popular.

Xiang Wan gave a snort and muttered. “It will be, one day.”

Bai Muchuan was expressionless. “Hm, the reporter can’t be asking—why did Zhou Dequan replicate from a novel that will be very popular one day?”

“You… hateful!” Xiang Wan was irked by his comments and glared at him. “If you continue to mock at me again, do you believe I’ll use Second Young Master Mu against you?”

“…”

Use Second Young Master Mu against me?

Bai Muchuan raised an eyebrow. “What about him?”

Xiang Wan raised her chin and wore a belittling look on her face. “Since you feel that my book is not popular, why don’t you write a book that is as popular as my idol—Second Young Master Mu? Hats off to you if you have the guts and capability to do that!”

Hah! Bai Muchuan gave a disdainful grunt.

“He’s your idol? Then what about me?”

“My captain, of course!”

“Little Xiang Wan!” Bai Muchuan narrowed his eyes, sat up straight and caught her by the chin provokingly where he suddenly lowered his head and kissed her. “You’re in big trouble—”

“Wait, you’re being a rogue again!” Xiang Wan wiped her mouth and gave him a sidelong glare. “You always play rogue whenever you can’t outtalk me! I despise you!”

“You sure can talk—” Bai Muchuan’s line of gaze was fixed on her and showed a menacing smile. “But you’re in big trouble.”

“You—”

Her heart stuttered, yet Bai Muchuan suddenly released her.

“Look! Tang Yuanchu’s answering the question.”

“…”

At the press conference, Tang Yuanchu gave a soft sigh.

“It’s true that he might have replicated the murder plot. As to the reason why he did that, we felt that Zhou Dequan might have gotten inspired from Zhao Jiahang’s case, or he thought that could give him pleasure if he did so.”

“Detective comrade, thank you. I still have another question.”

“Please go ahead.” Tang Yuanchu wore an earnest smile.

“It’s about the big fish behind Zhou Dequan. You have not answered that.”

This reporter is really—he lets nothing slip through the cracks…

Tang Yuanchu sighed helplessly in his head while his face showed a warm smile.

“Everyone, please be rest assured. We are a society ruled by law, and law will not take sides with anyone. The Anti-Corruption Bureau will be following up on this matter. No matter how big the fish is, it’s going to end up in the net of justice—of course, the police will cooperate fully with the relevant authorities on that.”

He was brief and straight to the point.

He had accounted that the Criminal Investigation Unit were not the main force to catch the big fish.

The press conference ended peacefully.

The doubts left behind triggered numerous discussions and speculations on the Internet, but had little impact on the closure of the case.

…

That night, the whole team had a dinner gathering.

After being busy with the case for so long, everyone was exhausted and really needed to destress themselves and chill out.

Hence, Bai Muchuan arranged the ultimate luxurious enjoyment—dinner at “The Palace” plus a session of KTV.

By now, the manager there already knew him very well. The moment he made a call, the manager immediately booked the best room on the ninth floor.

At the beginning, everyone was a little ambivalent as they knew that “The Palace” was an expensive place and would surely cost a bomb. Furthermore, everytime when the team went out for dinner, KTV, or both, Bai Muchuan would be the one picking the tab. They were feeling conflicted as they felt embarrassed for having someone to treat them, but if they were to pay out of their own pocket, they were unwilling as their salary were really not a lot to begin with.

Bai Muchuan was as though able to know what they were thinking.

“The owner of ‘The Palace’ has said that he will give us a 50 percent discount to thank us for working hard and contributing to the security of Jin City.” He said casually, “Don’t worry, I can afford!”

Fifty percent discount!

Nobody knew if the owner of “The Palace”—Bai Munian—felt heartache for the huge discount.

When everyone heard that from Bai Muchuan, they started to cheer in joy.

“Captain Bai, thank you!”

“I feel so bad for Captain Bai having to pay for us every time.”

“Bro, you can always choose not to go!”

“How can I not go? I care more for my stomach—it likes good food!”

“Just scram! Our Captain Bai is tall, rich and good-looking. He’s not like you, you need not worry for him! Am I right, Captain Bai?”

“You bunch of monkeys! Stop monkeying around! You two even dare to joke about me?”

“Of course not! You’re the tall, rich and good-looking, I don’t dare to joke about you.”

“…”

Everyone was getting more familiar with Bai Muchuan as time went by.

His chilly air of indifference and unapproachability was slowly diminishing. Everyone started to get along with him better, behave more casually with him, and even crack jokes about him.

At this time, someone suddenly asked a question.

“Should we ask Captain Cheng and his team along?”

In this case, the forensics team had fully cooperated with them and had put in a lot of effort as well.

If they went ahead to enjoy and ignored their pals over at the forensics team, everyone felt that it would be wrong of them to do so.

Nonetheless, whenever they went for gatherings like this, Captain Cheng and his team had never joined in. So much so that they did not dare to ask them as they had been rejected too many times.

Everyone looked at each other.

“So—Tang Yuanchu, you’ll go invite Captain Cheng!” A detective suggested.

Tang Yuanchu nearly jumped out of his seat upon hearing that.

“Why is it always me?”

“Use your looks to move him into nodding his head.” Everyone else started to agree. “After all, we only have our talent to depend on, unlike you.”

“What! Brothers, how can you add insult to injury? Knowing that I only have my dashing looks to depend on, how can all of you order me about? Hmph!”

Bai Muchuan let out a laughter upon seeing that sight.

“I’ll invite him!”

“Ah?” The detectives exchanged glances with each other as they thought they might have misheard something.

These two captains had always ignored each other privately and would only talk about work with each other. Or were they wrong after all?

Earlier on when they suggested to invite Cheng Zheng, they were worried that Bai Muchuan would be displeased. Who would have known that he actually volunteered to ask Cheng Zheng to come along?

“Okay! Having Captain Bai ask him is better than the two of us asking him.”

Tang Yuanchu clapped his hands, grinning away but got despised by everyone.

“You’re always currying favor!”

“…” Tang Yuanchu pulled a face, looking innocent and grieved. “Brothers, I need face, too! Don’t humiliate me so openly, deal?”

They were still young after all but lived a life similar to the ascetic monk. When they get a chance to have some entertainment and enjoyment, they behaved like birds freed from their cages.

Their mood heightened when Bai Muchuan came down 10 minutes later and shared with them a piece of good news.

“Captain Cheng not only wanted to join us, he even expressed warmly that he will pick up the tab tonight. All of you feel free to go ahead and pick what you want to eat. In addition, he also wanted to treat all of you for tonight’s KTV session. His reason being that he has not joined everyone for such a gathering for too long and felt bad about it. Take this as an apology from him.”

“…”

Did Cheng Zheng really say this?

Not only that, did he actually say so much in one go? Even the way it was said did not sound like him.

However, everyone was not bothered by all these.

It was a rare opportunity that they could “extort” Cheng Zheng a meal. Everyone was so happy that they ignored their doubts.

When Cheng Zheng came down from his office, the detectives came up to him to express their thanks.

“Captain Cheng, we are already glad that you’re joining us tonight. Not only that, you actually want to give all of us a treat! You make everyone of us—so happy!”

Cheng Zheng’s lips pursed tightly together as he swept a glance at Bai Muchuan who was smiling. Cheng Zheng revealed an awkward but polite smile.

“I should do that. We’re all brothers, no need to be so polite.”

“Hahahaha! We’re not trying to be polite at all? We’ve discussed among ourselves. We’re going to ‘King Crayfish’ tonight!”

In Jin City, hotpot, kebabs and crayfish were popular amongst its citizens. It was said that a Jin City citizen could eat 35,000 kilograms of crayfish in a year. A crayfish restaurant was definitely a booming business in Jin City.

The “King Crayfish” the detectives mentioned was the most expensive crayfish restaurant in Jin City. Since their Captain Cheng wanted to buy them dinner, everyone was perked up to indulge in the palatable crayfish, totally not trying to be polite at all.

When it was slightly after eight o’clock in the evening, everyone finally got a table after queuing up for a long time.

They ordered some beer as well as about a dozen plates of crayfish on the table. When the dishes were served, everyone let loose of themselves and started to feast on the crayfish.

As they ate, they also talked to each other and cracked jokes.

Nobody mentioned the case.

This major case had “tortured” them for too long. There were too many corpses, and they were sick of it.

If they were to hear anything related about the case, it was going to affect their appetite—

“Hey, brothers, so the case’s just closed like this?”

Famous online celebrity—Detective Tang—suddenly blurted.

Everyone looked at him simultaneously.

“Drink up three glasses of wine as penalty!”