Fan Jialuo usually did not work at all. Apart from taking Xu Yiyang to and from school, he spent the rest of his time learning all sorts of knowledge. In his free time, he would sit on the balcony in a daze. Such days could also be considered interesting. On this day, Fan Kaixuan, who had disappeared for a long time, actually sent him two photos with the message, “Thank you.” He clicked it and smiled immediately.
The photo was taken on a certain yacht. Fan Kaixuan was wearing a loose white shirt, which was not buttoned properly, revealing a large portion of a strong chest. His skin was much tanner than before, and he looked very healthy. The most eye-catching thing was the smile on his face that was so cheerful and wanton, completely different from his calm and restrained appearance of the past. He looked at the camera with a smile, his eyes sparkling with joy. His right hand holding the beer bottle was wrapped around Ding Yu’s neck, pulling the man into his arms. Ding Yu was also wearing a casual shirt, but it was black, and his skin was still pale, but the shadowy look and fatigue that were always in his eyes had disappeared completely, and his smile was brighter than the scorching sun in the sky.
The two seemed to be joking around and laughing, and the warm and intimate atmosphere almost spread out of the photo, infecting those who looked at them.
Another photo showed the two people standing on a rock. Ding Yu looked up at the boundless sea and sky, while Fan Kaixuan turned his head and stared at the other man’s face for a long time. The afterglow of the setting sun lengthened the silhouettes of the two people and blurred their borders…
Fan Jialuo stared at these two photos for a long time. He could sense the love surrounding the two of them even without a magnetic field. They were in love.
A smile lingered in Fan Jialuo’s eyes for a long time. He didn’t know how to reply, so he could only sigh with satisfaction. When he was about to close the chat interface, Yang Shengfei sent a concise message: [Teacher Fan, the murderer has been caught! Based on the clues you provided, we found witnesses and physical evidence!]
Fan Jialuo was about to congratulate him when a series of messages were sent in quick succession, and the other seemed to be unsettled:
[But the prosecution period has expired! August of this year just passed!]
[I’m still a step too late!]
[He was very arrogant, and refused to confess anything in the face of conclusive evidence. He just told me that the prosecution period has expired!]
[He is torturing me on purpose!]
[Teacher Fan, what exactly is the law used for?]
[I have doubts about my work.]
[Teacher Fan, I hate it so much! I want to kill him!]
Fan Jialuo wanted to persuade him to calm down, but his fingertips stayed on the screen of his mobile phone for a long time, unable to formulate effective words. When he couldn’t sense the other person’s inner world, his ability was actually very limited, and he was just an ordinary person who often felt helpless. There was nothing the law could do, and it seemed that he could do even less. A simple consolation could not extinguish the raging anger in Yang Shengfei’s heart. The tragic death of his loved ones must be repaid with blood.
After thinking about it, he habitually took screenshots of these messages and sent them to Dr. Song. He didn’t know when, but Dr. Song had become his exclusive psychological counselor, yet he was completely unaware of this.
[This is a small matter.] Song Rui replied quickly, and his tone was as calm as usual. In his eyes, there seemed to be no difference between easy and difficult things in the world, it just depended on whether you were willing to do it.
[According to my assessment, the murderer is very skilled in committing crimes and is experienced in handling criminal evidence. He has extremely strong anti-reconnaissance ability and extremely high psychological quality. The death of Yang Shengfei’s sister is by no means the first time he has committed a crime, nor is it his last. There must be other cases against him. As long as these cases are dug out, his self-confidence that “the prosecution period has passed” will not be tenable at all, because there is no prosecution period for a serial murder case. This is a serious case. No matter how much time passes, the public prosecutors and law enforcement agencies retain the right to prosecute him.]
[Ask where Yang Shengfei is now. I will go over immediately to help him interrogate the suspect.]
Song Rui’s message was like a guiding light, lighting up Fan Jialuo’s eyes and making his pursed lips raise a slight arc. He immediately replied: [I will go with you.]
Song Rui: [Okay.] No one knew how he was smiling contentedly on the other side of the screen. After saying so much, he just wanted to go on a casual trip with this person.
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.
Fan Jialuo sent a screenshot of the conversation between himself and Dr. Song to Yang Shengfei and asked: [Where are you now?]
Yang Shengfei immediately replied: [Teacher Fan, thank you! We are in Nanshi now! At present, we can only detain him for twenty-four hours. At the present, eighteen hours have passed. You must hurry!] At this time, he no longer cared about being polite. The key was to quickly invite reinforcements!
[Okay, Dr. Song and I will come right away.] Fan Jialuo was like a porter, diligently transferring the screenshots of Yang Shengfei’s chat to Dr. Song.
Song Rui: [I’ll book a flight. Later, we can go to school to pick up Yangyang, and we can take him there too.]
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[Dr. Song, what would I do without you? ] He sent this sentence seriously, then went to the balcony, transferred the frog to a small fish tank, took a photo, and continued to ask: [Can it come with us?]
Song Rui almost laughed out loud when he saw the stupid frog with bulging eyes in the photo, and sighed. [No, it can’t get on the plane without corresponding quarantine procedures. You can place it in a large fish tank with a complete ecological system, which contains water, wetlands, vegetation, and of course insects, so that it can survive on its own for a long time without your careful care.]
[But I don’t have a fish tank like that.] Fan Jialuo typed with a tangled expression.
[I do.] Song Rui turned around and took a picture of the huge ecological chain fish tank that he had carefully prepared and sent to the young man. After that, he ordered as a matter of course: [Pack your things and take your pet downstairs. I will pick you up. We’ll settle the frog first, then pick up Xu Yiyang, and then we can set off. I’ve already bought the tickets.] He conveniently sent another screenshot of the ticket ordering.
Fan Jialuo frowned in confusion: [How did you buy them? I was about to send you my ID number.]
[Have you forgotten? How many times have you been to the police station? How many times have I looked at your form? I have already memorized your ID number.]
Fan Jialuo’s face turned red, and he sighed sincerely again. [Dr. Song, having a friend like this, what more can one ask for!]
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—
Fan Jialuo visited Dr. Song’s home for the first time. It was a large flat covering an area of more than 200 square meters. The space was very open and the decoration was very careful. The three main colors of black, white, and gray divided the room into many functional areas, including a gym, study room, meditation room, etc. Directly opposite the living room was a huge fish tank. It was five or six meters long and more than one meter high. There was a shallow border of water, moss-covered wetlands, a flowerbed with narcissus and calla lilies blooming, and clumps of wild grass.
Because the room was so quiet, Fan Jialuo could even hear the soft chirping of crickets coming from the fish tank. A human would obviously see it as a glass tank at a glance, but it was undoubtedly a complete world to a frog.
“I doubt it will be too happy to move home.” Fan Jialuo raised the small and pitiful fish tank in his hand and joked, “The gap between the rich and the poor is too big.”
“Then when you come back, take this fish tank with you. I originally planned to give it to you.” Song Rui held the suitcase in one hand and put his other hand around the young man’s shoulder. His tone and behavior were very affectionate.
Fan Jialuo had long grown accustomed to such intimacy, and naturally reported his next plan, “Let’s wait until I move back to the old Fan family mansion.”
Song Rui had attended a banquet at the old Fan family mansion before and said, “I remember there is an artificial garden there. A pond was dug in the garden and many lotus plants were planted. It should be more suitable for raising frogs. No matter how luxurious a glass tank is, it’s not as spacious as the outside world.”
“You are right, I have long thought about releasing it. Although it can live peacefully for a long time under my eyes, I think it is more willing to return to nature. Even if it only lives for one day, it is better than a hundred years in prison.”
The young man’s last words contained a hint of sadness and reminiscence, but Song Rui captured them keenly. He evaluated this sentence carefully, and then his eyes gradually darkened. One day in the outside world is worth more than a hundred years in prison, so you have also been imprisoned, right? That’s why you like this frog so much, because it’s a reflection of you in a sense.
Even though he had never asked about the young man’s past, Song Rui already understood him deeply. When he looked at him, he used his heart, not his eyes.
The two of them took Xu Yiyang and rushed to Nanshi overnight. By the time they arrived at the Nanshi General Bureau, twenty-one hours had passed and the murderer would be released in three hours. Zhuang Zhen and Yang Shengfei, whose eyes were red, hurriedly walked out of the listening room to greet them. In order to avoid suspicion, they did not participate in the detection and interrogation of the case, and only provided many clues to their colleagues in Nanshi.
“He is very tight-lipped and refuses to admit anything. We interrogated him for more than 20 hours and he always has this expression.” Yang Shengfei gritted his teeth and stared at the murderer opposite the two-way mirror. Twenty years had passed, and he was already in his fifties, but his figure was still strong, with an honest face and a mouth like a clam shell. He was the most difficult type of suspect to deal with.
He was wearing a blue shirt, a pair of good-quality trousers, and black leather shoes. He was dressed very simply, and his appearance was unforgettable and unremarkable. Walking on the street, you would never look at him twice, but you could conclude from his kind face that he was an honest person.
However, an honest person would never kill someone, let alone be able to withstand the police’s interrogation for more than 20 hours. If that case was an impulsive crime and it was his only crime, the guilt would cause him continuous torture, and his physical features would not be as strong, dark, and strong as they were now.
“There must be other cases against him. Let the comrades inside come out and let Fan Jialuo and I go in,” Song Rui said quietly.
“Okay!” Yang Shengfei immediately ran to inform the people in the interrogation room.
Zhuang Zhen looked at Fan Jialuo and said sincerely, “Thank you. The information you provided was correct, which allowed us to find witnesses, physical evidence, and the murderer. That dress was kept by the girl’s parents for twenty years. I didn’t dare to wash it, as Yang Shenglan’s blood and the murderer’s DNA still remained on it.”
“You’re welcome.” Fan Jialuo waved his hand.
Zhuang Zhen took out a roll of something from his briefcase and said seriously, “This is the thank you gift I prepared for you.”
“Thank you for your trouble…” After unfolding the gift, Fan Jialuo’s expression became indescribable.
Song Rui put his fist to his lips and chuckled.
If they were sorted according to the rank of gift-giving, Song Rui would have graduated as a postdoctoral fellow, while Zhuang Zhen would not have even attended kindergarten. The roll he gave was a banner with a bright red background and golden characters. From right to left, it said—Guardian of the Law, Conscience of Society.
Fan Jialuo stared at these seven words and silently digested them for a while, before smiling sincerely. “Thank you, I like this gift very much. People have to defend something while they live in this world.”
Zhuang Zhen stared closely into his eyes to make sure that he really liked it, and then his stern face finally softened. “I’m sorry, I misunderstood you before. Everyone in the bureau said that you are very good, and I feel the same now.” He rarely complimented people, and being able to do so to this extent was already his limit.
However, Fan Jialuo’s attitude made him completely relax. The other party gently nodded and thanked him. He did not hold on to the past, nor was he proud of himself. As the team members always preached, Teacher Fan was a person worthy of respect.
While the two were talking, Yang Shengfei had already returned. When he saw the banner, he felt like the world was falling apart. “Captain, did you really give it to Teacher Fan? Didn’t we agree to go back and think about it carefully? Aiya, you are really…”
Yang Shengfei’s wailing was blocked by the door of the interrogation room. A transcriber was staring at Fan Jialuo with a curious and burning gaze. He was obviously also a loyal audience member of “The World of Strange People.”
“Huh?” The murderer raised his hand to block the bright light, squinted his eyes to look at Fan Jialuo, then knocked on the table and laughed sarcastically. “You are the charlatan who is good at acting. I recognize you, you have been getting a lot of hype recently. The police actually asked you to interrogate me? That’s fine, I was just looking for someone to tell my fortune.” He obviously didn’t believe in the ability of psychics.
“Then let’s help him figure it out? You first or me?” Song Rui raised an eyebrow and looked at the young man sitting next to him. This was his first time working with him, and it felt very fresh and enjoyable. If working for the police was always like this, he would probably work as their advisor for the rest of his life.
“You first,” Fan Jialuo made a gesture of invitation.
“Okay, I’ll go first.” Song Rui quickly looked through all the information on the murderer provided by the Nanshi police. His eyes were like scanners, summarizing one piece of subtle but important information after another, and said slowly, “You had a very unpleasant childhood. You were a child with very delayed language development, which caused you to be ridiculed and ostracized by your peers. You had a very low self-esteem, and you couldn’t find a way to blend in with them, so you gradually became a taciturn and withdrawn person.”
The murderer looked at Song Rui expressionlessly, unmoved.
“People like you can’t find beautiful girls willing to date you, so you can only hide in the corner and observe them secretly. In the dead of night, you toss and turn with all kinds of bold and wild fantasies. They have become your deepest desire you yearn for. Everyone has their youthful moments, and you are no exception, but your first time was a failure. Let me guess, that person was a sex worker, right? She should have been much older than you, and she laughed at your incompetence, trampled on your self-esteem, and left you with a deep scar and a lifelong shadow.”
This was Song Rui’s reasonable guess. The murderer’s character was so withdrawn that he couldn’t find any other way to satisfy himself. He could only spend money, and his age at that time meant that he couldn’t spend much money, so the quality of the service he bought was naturally the worst. He got divorced because his married life was not harmonious, and it was the woman who filed for divorce, which showed that he was not able to do that, but his physical examination report confirmed that he was in very good health. This sort of inability due to psychological reasons was typically caused by some unbearable experiences during their youth…
With all kinds of information gathered together, it was not difficult for Song Rui to guess his experiences in childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood.
The murderer’s cold eyes began to tremble slightly as many painful memories were stirred up by these words, slowly emerging from the depths of his filthy memories to his cerebral cortex. As he stared at Song Rui, Fan Jialuo had wrapped him in a magnetic field, receiving all these memory fragments.
Dr. Song was Fan Jialuo’s spear, piercing the hard shell of his prey for him and dragging out their secrets, laying them out one by one for him to see at a glance. This method of cooperation was undoubtedly much easier than sensing it himself, because he did not need to use a magnetic field to forcefully break through the murderer’s defense and capture the other person’s soul.
The murderer obviously knew nothing about Fan Jialuo’s invasion and just stared straight at Song Rui.
Song Rui continued, “From that day on, your disgust and rejection of adult women reached its peak. At the same time, your fantasies and desires for young girls deepened. The reason why you divorced your wife was because you hated her adult body, right? You only like little girls.”
The murderer’s eyes darkened, and his fists couldn’t help but clench. Images of quarrels and fights with his wife all day long flashed in his mind, making him restless. That woman made him hate adult women to the core!
Sensing his extremely repressed emotions, Song Rui’s analysis suddenly stopped. He closed his eyes and quickly sorted through all the information. When he opened his eyes again, he said decisively, “Not only do you like to fantasize about how to abuse little girls, you also like to fantasize about how to torture and kill adult women, especially those with aggressive personalities. They are the sex worker and your wife, the epitome of your hatred. There are two kinds of prey for you, belonging to both ends of the female spectrum. There are also two kinds of motivations for you, one is desire and the other is hatred. You sadistically kill both types of women periodically to satisfy your fantasies!”
Song Rui came to such a shocking conclusion just by relying on a trace of profound hatred that was unintentionally revealed in the murderer’s eyes. The police officer responsible for taking the notes looked at him in a dumbfounded manner, not knowing what to write.
More memory fragments surfaced from the foul-smelling depths of the murderer’s heart, and were caught in the big net quietly woven by Fan Jialuo. He closed his eyelids slightly and whispered in a deep voice, “I see it. The first victim was a female, about eight or nine years old, and the body was buried in… The second victim was a female, about thirty or forty years old, the girl’s mother, who came out to look for her missing daughter, and was buried in… The third victim was a female, about twelve or thirteen years old…”
The transcriber turned his head and looked at Fan Jialuo with an even more dumbfounded gaze. How were these conclusions drawn? Were they based on evidence? Hey, hey, are you two really here for an interrogation, not to tell a story?
“Go find the bodies quickly! Go quickly!” Yang Shengfei was so anxious that he pushed the comrade standing next to him.
Zhuang Zhen had already taken out his cell phone to get help from his friends who worked at the burial site. He had a large number of contacts in the police force, which allowed him to respond quickly.
However, the policemen in Nanshi stood still. In their view, this interrogation did not look like an interrogation at all, but a one-sided performance by Fan Jialuo and Song Rui. The credibility was too low.
However, the murderer obviously didn’t think so. His hateful gaze instantly shifted from Song Rui to Fan Jialuo, his expression became increasingly distorted, and he blurted out, “How do you know? How do you know!” He suddenly lunged over and tried to attack Fan Jialuo, but his hands and feet were handcuffed to the interrogation chair, unable to move.
He struggled and shouted, “Stop talking, shut the hell up! I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t kill anyone at all!”
His reaction said it all! It was only then that the police from the Nanshi General Bureau suddenly woke up and quickly looked for the new evidence. If this was really a serial murder case, and there were up to twenty victims, then the so-called prosecution period was a joke!
Ty for the chapter 💕
serial murders became a happy walk in the park, ok MCs, I believe you, you’re powerful 😂😂
Thanks for the chapter!!! ❤️❤️❤️
I absolutely love this novel!!!! Its so good omg😍❤️🤭