Chapter 10

Chapter 10: Murderous Joy (10)

After confirming the identities of the two victims, the scope of the investigation expanded further. On the whiteboard in the temporary office of the Criminal Investigation Team, the names of Wan Ze Yu and Yuan Zhong were written in the center, surrounded by a dense network of connections.

Sui Xing retrieved the public surveillance footage from all over Zhou Ping Town, and by dawn, she had drawn a map showing Yuan Zhong’s suspected movements on January 4th.

Hai Shu placed the breakfast she bought for herself on the desk and took the map. “Yuan Zhong appeared in the surveillance footage this many times?!”

Sui Xing sipped her milk tea and ate rice noodles. “Yes, completely different from Wan Ze Yu. We still don’t know where Wan Ze Yu went after leaving home that night. The locals know better than we do where the cameras are. Wan Ze Yu intentionally avoided the surveillance blind spots, but Yuan Zhong gives me the feeling that he wanted every camera to catch him.”

Hai Shu zoomed in on the map. “This matches his strange behavior before his disappearance, talking to people—he was probably trying to leave some trace.”

Sui Xing said, “Honestly, I didn’t expect to be able to draw this map. Yuan Zhong...”

Hai Shu understood. “Right, with his personality and knowledge of Zhou Ping Town, he didn’t have to appear on the surveillance footage.”

The Guiyong Glass Factory was located on the east side of Zhou Ping Town, and together with the residential area, it covered almost half of the town. In the surveillance footage, Yuan Zhong left the factory, passed through the residential buildings in the living area, stopped at the factory station for five minutes, then walked through the commercial street, heading northwest toward the outskirts of the town.

Along the way, he chose relatively busy areas. At 3 PM, he entered an arcade and didn’t leave until 6 PM.

The last time Yuan Zhong was captured on camera was in the second chicken lane to the northwest. Beyond that, he was outside the town, and there were no more people living there.

Hai Shu’s expression deepened. “That place is...”

Sui Xing nodded. “If he kept walking north, he would reach the factory’s earliest workshop. I’ve heard that place has been abandoned for a long time.”

Hai Shu pressed her hand on Sui Xing’s shoulder. “Finish eating and take a nap. I’ll go check it out.”

“Don’t need me?” Sui Xing’s eyes were almost closing, but she still seemed a bit reluctant.

Hai Shu smiled. “We’re almost out of power. Just take a nap.”

Yuan Zhong’s whereabouts were an extremely important clue, so Hai Shu immediately informed Cheng Wei and also called Xu, the director of the Glass Factory.

When Xu heard they were going to the old workshop, he was one hundred percent unwilling. “What’s there to see? No one’s been there for ages!”

On the way, Hai Shu asked, “What were the requirements when you built the workshop? I heard that building a workshop is pretty expensive, so why go to all that trouble to build it, then tear it down again?”

Xu clearly didn’t want to talk about it. “This has nothing to do with Yuan Zhong, does it?”

Hai Shu said casually, “Well, we’ll still be driving for a while. We might as well chat.”

Xu had a bitter face, caught in the middle by the police, and had no choice but to speak. “When we moved here, the leaders wanted to keep the factory away from the town, as far as possible. You all know why we couldn’t stay in Guiyong City, right? It was because the city wanted to look good, and so they couldn’t have a factory. The land we chose at that time was the best, but after it was built, accidents happened!”

Cheng Wei asked, “What? People died?”

Xu shrank back, and said there had been several workers who fell into the furnace.

Hai Shu had just checked the death records at the police station a couple of days ago, but there was no such record!

Xu continued, saying that when they first arrived in Zhou Ping Town, they heard rumors of vengeful spirits causing trouble. They were already a bit scared, but then workers started dying, and even the leaders were afraid. Fortunately, they had only built half of the factory, so they moved the location and started constructing the current glass factory on the east side of the town.

Hai Shu asked, “Do you remember who the workers were who fell in? Can you recall?”

Xu said, “If I knew who they were, I’d remember, but I don’t!”

Hai Shu’s suspicion deepened. Didn’t the Glass Factory report these accidents to the police? Had they even concealed the names of the workers?

“Such a big incident, didn’t anyone inquire who they were?” Hai Shu asked.

Xu sighed. “We couldn’t find out. No one knew!”

Hai Shu said, “That’s strange.”

Xu quickly explained, saying that when they first moved in, they were building the factory while starting production. The original workers weren’t enough, so they recruited temporary workers. The management wasn’t well-organized, and sometimes they didn’t even know who their coworkers were.

Hai Shu asked, “But someone must have seen who fell in, right?”

Xu said, “No! The workers only found the bones inside!”

Upon hearing this, Cheng Wei suddenly looked at Hai Shu.

Chapter 10: Murderous Joy (10)

Hai Shu's heart raced wildly, but she maintained a calm expression. "Then who says it must have been the worker?"

Director Xu was taken aback. "Everyone says so. It’s true that accidents can happen in the furnace workshop if there's an operational error."

As the car stopped, Hai Shu had a vague idea in her mind.

When the car door opened, a gust of wind rushed in. Hai Shu looked ahead and saw a building, about five stories high, standing under the ash-colored sky, surrounded by overgrown weeds, as if it had been forgotten for decades.

But it was clear that it hadn't been forgotten—someone had visited not long ago.

The factory's outer perimeter was enclosed by a wall, with an iron gate, but it was virtually useless. The gate was rusted and barely opened.

Cheng Wei said, "It rained on the 5th."

So the traces from the night of the 4th might have already been washed away.

Hai Shu walked into the factory. It was not powered, and the lighting was dim. The boilers, no longer in use, looked like terrifying monsters lying dormant in the darkness. The entire building was hollow, with zigzagging stairs and three floors of offices, leading up to the roof.

Hai Shu approached one of the boilers, which was rusted beyond use and lacked any energy source to operate it.

She ascended the stairs, and though she wore sneakers and moved lightly, the footsteps still made a dull sound.

The roof had been washed by rain, and there was little dust. Cheng Wei joined her, carefully searching for any possible clues.

"There’s blood," Hai Shu bent down, staring at the dried stains on the railing.

Not only the railing, but there were also stains in the gaps on the ground. The rain couldn’t wash them all away.

Hai Shu stuck her head out from the roof and circled around the railing. "Xiao Cheng, I'll go down first. After you finish collecting the samples, follow me."

"Got it!"

The bloodstains on the roof indicated that a conflict had occurred there, and Yuan Zhong’s limbs had been broken, which was a pre-mortem injury. There was a possibility of a fall from a height. The team had already searched around the town’s tall buildings, but nothing abnormal was found. As Hai Shu turned around the factory's two sides, she noticed a set of easily overlooked marks on the ground, which were darker than the surrounding area. She looked up at the roof—almost directly above, where she had been standing minutes ago, and there were large amounts of bloodstains there.

Hai Shu pondered. A struggle had likely occurred above, probably involving a sharp weapon, and the victim was pushed down. After the body was moved—or possibly during the move—it started to rain.

Though the old workshop was not as large as the current glass factory, it still took quite some time to investigate all the suspicious traces inside. Cheng Wei immediately took the blood samples back for testing, and by the afternoon, the results confirmed that the blood belonged to Yuan Zhong.

"So, we've found the location where Yuan Zhong was murdered..." Sui Xing’s phone was fully charged. "He came to the old workshop, fought with the killer on the roof, got stabbed, and was pushed down. Then, on the morning of the 7th, Wan Ze Yu also died. Could Wan Ze Yu have died in the old workshop too?"

The investigation was not over yet, and Hai Shu shook her head. "Not sure. We haven’t found any blood from Wan Ze Yu in there. And I think it’s unlikely that the killer killed Wan Ze Yu in the old workshop."

Sui Xing asked, "Why?"

"Because of the timing," Hai Shu replied. "Yuan Zhong was murdered sometime between the night of the 4th and the early morning of the 5th, which gave the killer enough time to dispose of the body and take the limbs to the forest. But Wan Ze Yu was still at his family’s banquet just hours before his death. The timeline is too tight."

Sui Xing rubbed her temples. "What troubles me most about this case is that the motive is so hard to figure out. The body was dismembered like that, which points to revenge, but that would mean Wan Ze Yu and Yuan Zhong did something to harm someone significantly. But the clues we have point to either Wan Ze Yu and the Guang family conspiring, or Yuan Zhong having a powerful backer, likely the Guang family, yet there’s no direct connection between them."

Hai Shu had already walked up to the whiteboard. Among all the connections, Guang Jun’s name was written the largest and most prominently. Hai Shu stared at the name and suddenly said, "Yes, Wan Ze Yu and Yuan Zhong’s common connection is the Guang family, Guang Jun."

When Guang Jun suddenly contacted the police and confessed about the 80,000 yuan, Hai Shu had felt that he was trying to cover up a deeper connection between himself and Wan Ze Yu. Could this connection be with Yuan Zhong?

Hai Shu decided to visit Guang Jun again, while Sui Xing stayed at the whiteboard, furrowing her brows and muttering to herself. "Guang Jun is the killer. Guang Jun and Wan Ze Yu used each other, Yuan Zhong was just a loyal dog doing their bidding, so even if he was late or absent from work, he had someone covering for him. But now, Guang Jun wants to silence him? But the scene still looks like revenge..."

At the Glass Factory’s Housing Department, Guang Jun learned that Hai Shu was coming and immediately became nervous, rushing to greet her at his private office.

"Yuan Zhong?" Hearing this name, Guang Jun was surprised. "I know him, that reclusive electrician, but I never spoke to him! What, the other dead one is him?"

Hai Shu waited for Guang Jun’s surprise to subside, then slowly asked, "You and Yuan Zhong really weren’t familiar?"

"How could I be familiar with him? No one in the factory could be familiar with him!" The air conditioner was on in the office, but beads of sweat were forming on Guang Jun’s forehead.

Hai Shu observed for a moment, then decided to take the initiative. "I’ve already confirmed the identity of the victim. Are you still pretending not to know Yuan Zhong?"

Guang Jun suddenly stood up. "What am I pretending for?"

Hai Shu pressed further, "Yuan Zhong was just getting by at his job, constantly absent, hard to find when there was work. Why hasn’t such a worker been fired all these years?"

Guang Jun paused for a long time, as if finally reacting. "So you think he had someone backing him? The Guang family?"

Hai Shu said, "Based on the clues we have, it’s hard for me to analyze it any other way. Of course, you can refute or explain."

"It wasn’t me! It wasn’t our Guang family!" Guang Jun was more agitated than ever, speaking quickly to deny his connection to Yuan Zhong.

Hai Shu stared at him, gradually becoming unsure. She had come to test Guang Jun, and his reaction was so familiar to her—it was the normal response of many innocent people who were suspected. They get angry, scared, excited, and fervently defend themselves.

Compared to now, Guang Jun, who used to hide and dodge, seemed even more suspicious.

Could it be that her judgment was wrong? Yuan Zhong’s preferential treatment in the factory really had nothing to do with the Guang family, at least not with Guang Jun?

Suddenly, Guang Jun stopped arguing, and a strange, almost gleeful light flashed in his eyes. "Officer Hai, Yuan Zhong was killed along with Yu Zi, right?"

Hai Shu looked at him thoughtfully but didn't respond immediately.

He, however, seemed to finally let out a breath, slowly sitting down. His expression was completely different from before, as if he had calmed down in an instant. A faint smile even appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"Officer Hai, if you have any more questions, feel free to ask. I am innocent, but I am willing to cooperate with the investigation."