Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
It was another sleepless night. Cold air blew outside, but warm air from the fireplace was filling the house. If anyone spoke, a vapor would be visible coming from their mouths.
While waiting for Miao Ying, Zhao Yu had taken a good nap, so he wasn’t especially tired. The thoughtful Ms. Miao had also bought him a warm and comfortable down jacket so he wouldn’t be affected by the cold.
“This time, I’ve tasked Zeng Ke with working on Wu Fangfang’s case from Chang Ming’s police station,” Miao Ying said sleepily as she burrowed under the thick quilts. “I’m worried Wu Fangfang’s understudy won’t handle the case well or will make some mistake, so I’ve sent Wu Xiumin to her hometown in Jing Hai. And Ran Tao… is in Yao Ming attempting to find you! Everyone’s so worried!”
“We can’t let them know yet…” Zhao Yu said, erasing and changing some information on the whiteboard. “The more people that know, the more the plan changes. It’s not that I don’t believe in our people, but I’m afraid our mysterious enemy is simply too strong! If they can use people to put that much pressure on me, they can surely do the same to others!”
“Right, okay! Anyway, there are still a few things I haven’t told you,” Miao Ying said. “Before Gao Facai’s team came to Gao Lanqi they had already finished preliminary investigations. Apparently, the photographs and envelopes had been placed in Wu Fangfang’s drawer only recently!”
“Oh…” Zhao Yu said. He seemed to have expected this to be the case.
“Still, the items may have been newly placed, but the photographs themselves were indeed old. So, we still can’t eliminate the possibility that Wu Fangfang was the one who placed them there,” she said.
“No,” Zhao Yu said firmly. “They did this to lead me into Jiang Ke’s trap, it was definitely Yu Fusheng who placed them! Wu Fangfang might not even have known!”
“Oh…” Miao Ying nodded. “Also, over in Yao Ming, Ran Tao and I checked into some things that I haven’t told you about. When we saw you get pushed over the bridge, we were all a mess and all we could think about was finding your corpse! Who would have the heart to keep investigating under those conditions?”
“What was it?” Zhao Yu stopped writing and turned to her.
“You know… back when you were helping Jiang Ke escape from prison, when you rushed out of the detention center, why didn’t the police catch you?” Miao Ying asked. She then proceeded to answer her own question. “When you ditched the police, they used GPS to track you but realized you had thrown your phone away! Then, they tried to find the prison guard, but his SIM card had been swapped out, so the whole time they were running in circles!”
“Oh…” Zhao Yu realized. “No wonder there weren’t any obstacles after we changed cars. I was wondering why the police weren’t chasing us. It was because they had already swapped out the SIMs! They were really thorough…”
As he was talking about being thorough, Zhao Yu felt something else was off. Something just didn’t feel right every time he tried to connect Yu Fusheng to the mysterious person.
“Another thing I just found out today…” Miao Ying said, not noticing Zhao Yu’s confused expression. “Tian Xu’s seafood market may have exploded, but not everyone died! Ran Tao went to question some of the people today.”
“Oh? And what did he find?” Zhao Yu asked, getting excited.
“Those people were Cao Sifen’s lackeys!” Miao Ying said. “The whole timeline isn’t that complicated after all. Cao Sifen received information from his men beforehand and he sent them to Yao Ming on standby. But we don’t know what happened that day. They were following Cao Sifen’s orders and took control of the van, only to realize that the driver was not Jiang Ke!”
“They had no choice but to interrogate the driver to find out where Jiang Ke was,” she continued. “But, when they were at the seafood market and tried to sneak in, the driver named A Rong suddenly fought back and crashed the car right into the market. Now that their plan to sneak in was ruined, they could only go in openly. Who would have thought the van would explode…”
Zhao Yu finally understood what had happened at the seafood supermarket. It was just a cascading chain of accidents. The crash happened because the driver resisted, while the explosion happened because Jiang Ke’s stun gun caught fire and detonated the bomb beneath the car! This meant that the seafood market incident wasn’t in the mysterious person’s original plans, rather, it had actually ruined them!
“Cao Sifen’s lackey admitted that the mission given to them by Cao Sifen was to catch Jiang Ke alive and bring him back, not to kill him,” Miao Ying said. That made sense! From the start, Zhao Yu had felt like the mysterious person didn’t want to kill Jiang Ke.
“I get it. The mysterious person’s original plan was to let Jiang Ke drive the van away and destroy it after I jumped into the river! But Jiang Ke is cunning, and he was worried something was up, so he ran away in advance and sent A Rong to settle the rest. If he hadn’t, he would have been caught by Cao Sifen!” Zhao Yu exclaimed.
“When I followed him to the seafood supermarket, Jiang Ke was already wearing the police officer’s uniform. From the looks of it, the uniform was not prepared by the mysterious person, but instead Jiang Ke prepared it for himself in advance! Haha! This means that Jiang Ke’s prison break can be explained!” Zhao Yu said, clapping.
“Oh? Really?” Miao Ying squinted at Zhao Yu. “Then tell me, after jumping off of the bridge, how did you follow Jiang Ke to the seafood market?”
“This, uhm… hehe. Guess I’ll tell you. I had to steal a car! And hey, guess what! That car belonged to an acting troupe, so there were tons of costumes in the back. Since my clothes were wet, I borrowed one of their dope-*ss costumes. If you had seen it, I’m sure you would have laughed so hard you’d have rolled around on the floor!” Zhao Yu explained.
After seeing Miao Ying’s intense face, Zhao Yu wiped cold sweat off of his forehead. “What if I told you I attached a tracking device to Jiang Ke beforehand, would you believe me?” he asked.
“Bullsh*t! If there was really a tracking device, then why didn’t you contact the police? Were you cosplaying some hero?” she asked angrily.
“There was really a tracker! I was afraid that you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but before going to Yao Ming, I already felt that something was amiss and attached both a tracker and an eavesdropping device to him. If not, I wouldn’t have been able to track him to the seafood market, hear Jiang Ke and Tian Xudong’s conversation, and track him to the outskirts of Jian, right?” he asked.
“And it’s not that I want to be a hero, but in that situation, I was already a fugitive. If I didn’t catch Jiang Ke I’d be done for!” Zhao Yu said. His ability to feign innocence was second to none. “But I didn’t expect to be in such a pit, I was totally buried in it! Miaomiao, I didn’t mean it, I was just going with the flow.”
Miao Ying was not entirely convinced, but Zhao Yu had lied without even flinching, which caused her to believe about half of what he said. “How… how can you be so reckless? What if the tracker failed or if Jiang Ke had seen it?” she asked him.
“Miaomiao, do you think I cared about that at the time?” Zhao Yu said, throwing the question back at her. It seemed to work since she didn’t answer. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he turned his head back and focused on the case. Based on the information she had provided, he started to circle someone’s name, pressing the marker into it. As the case became clearer, he felt more and more certain that this would be the key person to crack the case!
