The employee dormitory building of the Chemical Factory had a total of five floors. Usually, in order to avoid the danger of falling, the rooftop of this kind of accommodation building was closed. Out of nervousness, Yue Xingwen just turned around and saw a flash of black shadow on the rooftop.
Yue Xingwen decided to tell Jiang Pingce, “I think I saw someone on the rooftop, did you see them?”
“No.” The direction Jiang Pingce faced was not the rooftop, but he never doubted Xingwen. When he heard this, he immediately modified the formula and flew directly to the top floor with Yue Xingwen.
At this time, it was late at night, most of the lights in the dormitories had been turned off, and the curtains were closed. They would not be noticed by anyone as they flew quickly in the air according to Jiang Pingce’s trajectory.
Soon, Jiang Pingce gently carried Yue Xingwen to the roof like a feather, and with a volume that only the two of them heard, he whispered in his ear, “Where did you see it?”
Yue Xingwen said, “It’s the location of the guardrail over there.”
However, the location of the guardrail was empty when they went, and there was no trace of the dark shadow at all. Could the other party have already fled, or were his eyes blurred by his nervousness?
Yue Xignwen rubbed his eyes and was just about to speak when suddenly, a sound of footsteps rang out in front of him, and Jiang Pingce’s arm jerked hard, immediately took Yue Xingwen into the air, hiding in the corner of the 5th floor wall, hovering to a stop so as not to be discovered.
The two floated in the air in the middle of the night, their feet did not touch the ground and Yue Xingwen believed that Jiang Pingce would not let him fall. The footsteps were getting closer, and he immediately held his breath and carefully listened to the movement on the rooftop.
“What are you doing asking me to come to the rooftop in the middle of the night?” It was a low, calm male voice.
“I–I’ve been having nightmares every night lately, and I always feel that something’s wrong.” The woman’s voice trembled slightly, sounding very nervous. “On the 20th of last month, Old Cheng resigned. Didn’t his wife have Alzheimer’s disease? I heard that he resigned to go back to take care of his wife, but after resigning, he never replied to me after I sent him a message… On the 3rd of this month, Old Yu left the country, and on the 20th, Old Peng also left the country, and both of them broke off contact with me after they left the country as well.”
“What do you want to say?” The man interrupted her somewhat impatiently.
“Could–could it be, something– something happened to the three of them?” The woman trembled and said, “Why don’t they reply to the messages, and I can’t get through the phone.”
“You think too much.” The man said lightly, “Peng Yong and Yi Jianqiang have both gone to country M, and they will definitely change their local mobile phone numbers after going abroad, otherwise, will they still use their previous numbers to call you internationally eerie day? It’s normal to not be able to get through.”
“But–but, what about old Cheng?” Isn’t he still in China?” The woman wondered. “Why can’t I get through to his phone?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
“Yiv Jtfcu’r wbylif qtbcf kjr ibra yfobgf, jcv tf wera tjnf mtjcufv la.” Ktf wjc’r nblmf kjr mbiv jcv tlr abcf kjr oeii bo vlrqifjregf, “Tbe jiilfv wf ab atf gbboabq lc atf wlvvif bo atf cluta pera ab rjs atlr?”
“P–P’w pera kbgglfv, yjmx atfc…”
“Enough, there’s no need to bring up the past. I’m going back to bed, don’t be idle and suspicious every day.”
The sound of the man’s footsteps rang in her ears, and the woman walked to the guardrail and took a deep breath, muttering in a low voice, “Am I really overthinking this? Would it be too much of a coincidence that both people who left the country changed their numbers and one lost his mobile phone…” She lingered at the guardrail for a moment, then turned to leave as well.
The rooftop was quiet, Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce looked at each other, and said in a low voice, “The people who were talking on the rooftop just now should be Chen Xiumei and Lin Yusen, who are still alive.”
At that time, there were 7 people who entered the Chemical Factory, and the only ones who were still alive were Chen Xiumei, Xue Xiaolian, and Lin Yusen. Xue Xiaolian was a fat aunt who weighed more than 150 pounds, and the black shadow that Yue Xingwen had just seen was very thin, which was why he judged that it was Chen Xiumei and Lin Yusen who were talking.
Jiang Pingce nodded and said, “It seems that Chen Xiumei has a trouble in her heart, fearing that she will be retaliated against, and alertly noticing that the three old friends who ‘resigned’ have probably been killed. Relatively speaking, Lin Yusen seems very calm and doesn’t believe in retaliation, but since he knows about Chen Xiumei’s concerns, he must have been involved in what happened back then.”
Yue Xingwen frowned suspiciously, “What exactly happened back then?”
Jiang Pingce said, “I’m afraid only a few of them know this, and we won’t be able to ask directly.”
Yue Xingwen thought for a moment and said, “Could Xue Xiaolian also be an insider? I remember that she lived in room 501 on the 5th floor. Let’s go and see first, if we can’t find a clue tonight, then wait until dawn and let Qin Lu sneak in to investigate.”
Without saying a word, Jiang Pingce flew directly with Yue Xingwen to the window of room 501 on the 5th floor.
There was still a light in the room, and Xue Xiaolian was obviously not sleeping. With the curtains drawn, they couldn’t see what the people inside the room were doing, but soon, there was a knock outside, and Xue Xiaolian got up to open the door, conversing with someone at the door.
The other party asked her, “Sister Xue, can I borrow your hot water kettle? My kettle is broken.”
Xue Xiaolian smiled and said, “Of course, wait a moment, I’ll go and get it for you.”
There was a noise in the room, followed by Xue Xiaolian with a hot water kettle to the door and handing it to the other party. After the two of them exchanged a few polite words, Xue Xiaolian closed the door.
Yue Xingwen immediately typed in the chat channel: “The girl on the 5th floor, go out and see who the person who borrowed the hot water kettle from dormitory 501 is.”
Soon, Lan Yarong sent a reply: “Zhou Qiqi, 35 years old, entered room 503 with the kettle. I pretended to go out looking for something and happened to bump into her.”
Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce were in the air outside the dormitory building at this time, and they couldn’t see the situation in the corridor. He continued and said: “Senior sister, don’t go back to the room first, look in the corridor to see if there are any suspicious people.”
Lan Yarong; “No problem!”
Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce continued to stay outside the 501 window.
After Xue Xiaolian returned to the room, the room suddenly became extremely quiet, without any noise.
Through the gap in the curtain, Yue Xingwen could see a fat woman with gray hair sitting on the edge of the bed playing with her mobile phone. She lowered her head and they couldn’t see her expression clearly. Until 11:50 pm at night, she stood up, turned off the light, climbed into bed and went to sleep.
After a while, room 509 was pushed open, presumably because Chen Xiumei, who had sneaked up to the rooftop to chat with someone, had returned. Qin Lu typed on the chat channel: “Someone has entered 509, I think it’s Chen Xiumei who lived in 509.”
Qin Lu and Qin Miao happened to live in 508, and someone next door came back. Both of them heard the sound and immediately reported it on the chat channel.
Yue Xingwen looked at dormitory 509, and saw that the light in the room was on, and soon went out again. It seemed that Chen Xiumei had also fallen asleep. He asked in the chat channel: “How about the 3rd floor, did you hear any movement?”
Liu Zhaoqing: “Someone had opened the door in dormitory 301 and entered the room. If I remember correctly, Lin Yusen lived in this room.|
Yue Xingwen and Jiang Pingce looked at each other. Chen Xiumei and Lin Yusen went to the rooftop to chat in the middle of the night, and after chatting, they went back to their rooms, while someone had borrowed a kettle from Xue Xiaolian in the middle of the night…
These three key suspects all had unusual actions tonight.
The time had reached 00:00 am, and only their ‘examinees’ dormitory lights were still on. In order to avoid being seen as something wrong, Yue Xingwen said: “Everyone also turn off the lights, the suspects have all slept, take turns to sleep tonight and pay attention to the movements of several suspects. Immediately follow them once they go out in the middle of the night.”
Everyone replied: “Roger.”
Jiang Pingce asked: “Did the students who checked the duty list find any clues?”
Xu Yishen replied: “This factory has 6 production workshops. Zhang Xiaonian and I are in workshop 1, senior brother Liu and Zhuo Feng are in workshop 3, so we currently only have the duty schedule of worksop 1 and 3. We haven’t yet been able to get the duty list of workshop 2, 4, 5, and 6. Just now, the four of us have just double-checked that the night shift in workshop 1 rotates once every 10 days, and workshop 3 rotates once every 8 days. The shift personnel are different every Monday and Tuesday, so there are no suspects found who could have committed the crime at a fixed time.”
If Ke Shaobin’s ‘Black Tuesday’ conjecture was correct, the three people resigned on ‘Tuesday’, and the murderer also killed every Tuesday, then the murderer was likely to be a Chemical Factory worker who worked the night shift on Monday or Tuesday night, forged the resignation letter and then started at night to destroy the corpse.
There were no such people in workshops 1 and 3, and they had to continue to investigate the remaining workshops.
Yue Xingwen asked: “On Xin Yan and Ke Shaobin’s side, has there been any discovery in checking Lin Yusen’s line?”
Xin Yan said: “Ke Shaobin hacked the computer in the laboratory on the Internet, and found all the papers written by Lin Yusen, and I’ve already quickly scanned through them. His research direction is sodium cyanide, which can dissolve precious metals such as gold and silver with the participation of oxygen, is highly corrosive, and generates complex salts of highly toxic materials. Reacting with nitrates and nitrites, there is a risk of explosion. When it reacts with acids, it also produces highly toxic and flammable hydrogen cyanide gas. However, when it reacts with ferrous sulfate, the resulting sodium ferrocyanide is an important raw material for pharmaceuticals.”
Ke Shaobin concluded: “That is to say, this chemical is very dangerous. Once used improperly, it will poison and kill people in minutes. Lin Yusen’s professional research direction is this kind of thing, Xin Yan and I believe that it’s very likely for him to use his professional knowledge to kill people.”
Xin Yan added: “Another discovery is that he is 50 years old, but he is single and unmarried.”
The chat channel was silent for a few seconds and Liu Zhaoqing typed: “A senior student who graduated from a prestigious chemistry university more than 20 years ago, came to this kind of remote Chemical Factory in the middle of nowhere, is usually cold, has little contact with people, is still unmarried, and researches on the application of highly toxic chemicals, which feels quite in line with the characteristics of psychopath?”
Yue Xingwen said: “He was just chatting with Chen Xiumei on the rooftop of the building, talking about ‘what happened years ago’, and I heard their conversation with Pingce. Chen Xiumei has already begun to suspect that the resignation report of the three is abnormal, but Lin Yusen said that she is paranoid and interrupts her. If the murderer is Lin Yusen, maybe it’s to silence them?”
From Chen Xiumei’s words, it could be inferred that back then, they did something bad together, so Chen Xiumei was guilty and uneasy after her colleagues disappeared one after another, and asked Lin Yusen to discuss countermeasures.
Lin Yusen’s attitude was nonchalant, and he was impatient to interrupt the other party.
Then, Lin Yusen simply killed these people to silence them because he had leverage over them, and the motive for the crime was established.
Jiang Pingce said: “Everyone focus on these people and see if they will take action tonight.”
I’m really curious how it should turn into escape
Thank you for your translation ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️