C-Lab Experimental Building, 9th Floor
Zhen Nuan tucked the report under her arm just as the elevator doors opened. She looked up and smiled.
"Thought I wouldn't show?" Guan Xiaoyu stepped out, grinning. "You were the only woman at Ten-Ane Lane. Don't tell me you're still embarrassed about it."
"Not anymore." Zhen Nuan fell into step beside her. "Where are you headed?"
"Briefing the captain."
"Same."
"Then you're just in time. A few things came in while you were buried in paperwork." Guan Xiaoyu lowered her voice, the way she always did when the news was actually good. "The trace team examined the genital area you flagged on the body. They found a hair — one that didn't belong to the deceased. Most likely from a man who had sex with her before she died."
Zhen Nuan nodded. She was beginning to understand how this unit worked. Evidence arrived in fragments. A hair here, a pattern there, a name buried in a manufacturer's ledger — and then one day the fragments locked together and you had a chain.
"The bathrobe pattern matched," Guan Xiaoyu continued. "The impression on the deceased's arm came from a robe sold exclusively at the Yuechun Hot Spring Resort Villa in Shuanli. The recon team is already running checks on hotel staff."
"That fast?"
"Word travels in this team." Guan Xiaoyu shot her a sideways look. "You can blame yourself for setting the pace."
Zhen Nuan pressed her lips together, a little sheepish.
"The deceased's ID was a fake — nothing came of it. But they found the villa she rented. A team already went to collect evidence and I tagged along." Guan Xiaoyu paused at the stairwell door. "Also — the silicone pads you pulled from the deceased's chest? They traced the manufacturer to Suyang. Customer records are on the way. We might have a face for the faceless corpse before the week's out."
"That's good news."
"Oh — and Xiao Song mentioned Zheng Miaomiao is missing."
Zhen Nuan looked up.
Guan Xiaoyu's expression shifted, something dimming behind the eyes. "Professor Zheng called her the day he flew back to Yucheng. She texted him when he landed, said she was coming to pick him up with a birthday surprise. She never arrived. Missing persons went to the second unit, and everyone's been pitching in. But now with the faceless body case blowing up, there's no bandwidth left." She exhaled. "When the female corpse turned up at Ten-Ane Lane, everyone's heart stopped for a second. They thought it was her. Thank god the age was wrong."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Professor Zheng only has the one daughter. His wife's in the hospital — cancer. If something happened to Miaomiao on top of all that..."
Zhen Nuan's brow pulled together. "No word at all. That's the worst kind of waiting."
On the rooftop, Yan Han cupped a hand against the wind and lit a cigarette. He pulled out his phone and returned a missed call.
"Hua Jie."
"That person you asked me to look into. Ji Fala."
He narrowed his eyes against the wind, drew a long pull of smoke. "Go on."
"Word is she's Ji Ting's illegitimate daughter. He brought her home around ten years ago — nobody knows from where. The rumors weren't pretty."
"What kind of rumors?"
"The staff who worked in the Ji household back then were afraid of her. Said she drifted through the rooms like a ghost. A small girl, always talking about killing and blood. People wondered if something terrible had happened to her — like maybe Ji Ting had killed her mother. Eventually she grew up and the behavior faded. But..."
"Is illegitimate daughter the only theory?"
"Some people say there's no blood relation at all. That he adopted her."
"Got it. Thank you."
"Don't be so formal. Come by sometime."
Hua Jie had the good sense not to ask why he was looking into Ji Fala. She never did.
Yan Han hung up. Almost without thinking, he shut his eyes hard against the cold. Drew one slow breath. The air cut through him, sharp and clean, scraping through his chest like a blade along bone.
Nine years. The tenth was almost here.
A-Shi. I won't be much longer.
The cigarette burned down to his fingers. The sting pulled him back.
He looked down. Below, Zhen Nuan and Guan Xiaoyu were crossing the courtyard at a half-jog, coats pulled tight against the cold.
He dropped the stub in the bin and went back inside.
Su Ya was already in his office when he returned, sitting with practiced patience, her gaze resting on the small cactus sunning itself on his desk.
"You wanted to discuss the case?"
"Eventually." She smiled faintly. "You've had that cactus for over ten years and it's still alive. That's genuinely impressive."
He said nothing. Moved to the water dispenser and filled a cup.
Su Ya's eyes drifted to the flower pot. Painted in correction fluid on the ceramic, a little clumsy, slightly faded: yh&xs. The handwriting was young. Completely at odds with the man standing three feet away.
People change. That's how it works.
So why couldn't he?
Xia Shi's bones had been found. Confirmed. Years of evidence and still that woman had a grip on this room, on him, on the pot sitting in the window.
"The Scottish fold you have," Su Ya said. "The one called Penicillin."
"Still alive." He set a cup in front of her, placed two more to the side. "Doing well."
Her expression went briefly unfocused. "She's lasted this long. You must take good care of her."
"She had kittens recently. Two."
Su Ya knew exactly how much that cat meant to him — a stray Xia Shi had brought home, tolerated by Yan Han until it wasn't, until after, when its status in his life quietly inverted entirely. She smiled before she could help it. "Give me one. I want to try."
He glanced at her with an expression that said you already know the answer to that.
"The pet shop has plenty."
"You can't manage three cats by yourself."
He didn't answer.
"Have you named them?"
"Amoxicillin."
Su Ya went quiet. She stared at the xs on the pot and felt something irrational and sharp move through her. That woman really would not let go.
Zhen Nuan and Guan Xiaoyu arrived a few minutes later with their reports. Yan Han leaned against the edge of his desk, hands in his pockets, and listened without interrupting.
When they finished, Su Ya offered a theory:
"The deceased showed no signs of struggle. She endured long-term abuse prior to death. Is it possible she's the seventh victim in the serial suicide case? Someone who wanted to die — who cooperated?"
"There's no evidence for that yet," Zhen Nuan said. "We should treat it as a standalone case until something connects them."
Su Ya turned and looked at her. A long look. Long enough that Zhen Nuan felt it on her skin and couldn't explain why. Then Su Ya turned back to Yan Han.
"What do you think the killer was trying to accomplish by manipulating rigor mortis and body temperature to shift the time of death?"
Yan Han glanced at Zhen Nuan before he answered. "You have something to say."
Zhen Nuan shook her head slightly.
"Say it."
Su Ya turned again. Waiting.
Zhen Nuan looked at the floor. "Using rigor mortis to fake the time of death is mostly a fiction technique. It's clumsy. Any autopsy catches it."
"I know that," Su Ya said, unruffled. "I'm thinking from the killer's perspective. Maybe he didn't know. Maybe he picked it up from detective novels — this dramatic, theatrical method. Doesn't that fit the behavioral pattern we've seen from suicidesound?"
Zhen Nuan considered it. It wasn't wrong. She gave a small, genuine nod.
Then: "Although — breaking rigor might not have been about faking time of death at all. It could just have been to make the body easier to transport."
Yan Han looked between the two of them for a moment. Said nothing. Turned toward the desk as the office phone rang.
The trace team had an ID. The silicone pads led them to a customer record.
Sun Lin. Local.
He set the receiver down and, without making a show of it, said: "Without your observation, we wouldn't have had a name until much later."
Su Ya absorbed this in silence.
Zhen Nuan shook her head quickly. "That was just doing the job. Not finding it would've been a failure."
Guan Xiaoyu, sharper than she let on, saw the opening and took it. "Our captain almost never hands out compliments. You should pocket that one. Who knows when the next person gets theirs."
Yan Han looked at her sideways, mouth almost curving. "Keep it up, Guan Xiaoyu."
They were heading out when he called after her. "Zhen Nuan."
She turned, already resigned. "What do I need to do?"
"Reconstruct the death sequence."
She felt the weight of it settle across her shoulders immediately.
He raised an eyebrow. "Problem?"
"...No."
"Do good work." His expression shifted into something almost like amusement. "End-of-month bonus."
He waved her out.
The door had barely closed before Su Ya said, "You're quite protective of her."
Yan Han crossed back to his chair and sat down. "She's a kid. And she wasn't wrong."
Su Ya stared at him. "Kid? She's maybe a few months younger than me. You think she's eighteen?"
"Younger, I'd say."
Out in the corridor, Zhen Nuan pressed a hand to her temple. She still couldn't identify the weapon. Couldn't even narrow down its shape.
Guan Xiaoyu fell in beside her. "I don't like that Su Ya. The way she was looking at you in there — it got under my skin."
"What kind of look?"
"Forget it, you wouldn't pick up on it." She waved a hand. "Anyway. Tan Shu hasn't come near the main building in days. Just holed up in the lab drawing skulls. I guess people with real talent get to be a little cold."
Zhen Nuan said nothing. She was thinking about the serial suicide case, turning it over. Everyone around her treated Su Ya as the standout on that investigation. She couldn't understand why. To her, the most impressive person in that room had always been Yan Han.
She spent the entire afternoon on the wound pattern. No breakthrough. No weapon she could match it to.
When the lab received no overtime notice, she took off her coat, thought about what Yan Han had said, and made a decision. She would go to the Yuechun Resort herself. Walk the scene.
The bus dropped her at Ten-Ane Lane as the last of the light was leaving the sky.
Winter evenings collapsed fast. By the time the shuttle van arrived at the mountain entrance stop, the temperature had already dropped hard. The van was nearly empty — a few locals discussing the case in low voices. Somewhere in the retelling, the faceless corpse had become headless.
The van took half an hour to wind through the mountain roads, windows framing a sky that slid from grey to black. She got off at the last stop and followed the light from small houses scattered through the trees, asking directions as she went.
The security guard at Yuechun was mid-twenties, dark brows, easy to look at. He walked her to the Moon Bay villa in the west section and unlocked it for her.
"We already had officers here this afternoon." He pushed the door open. "Didn't expect another visit. You people take this seriously." He paused. "Also — they always say there are no real beauties in the police. Looks like that's not true."
Zhen Nuan kept her voice small. "There are plenty of beautiful women in the regular force. They probably meant detectives specifically."
"What's the difference?"
"If you're too distinctive-looking, suspects remember you. Hard to go undercover. And it makes you easier to find if someone wants revenge." She thought of Yan Han. He was the rare exception to that particular logic — striking in a way you couldn't ignore, and somehow still the sharpest person in the room.
"I see. So you—"
"I'm not a police officer."
The guard switched on the heat and left her to it.
She pulled on gloves and shoe covers and started with the ground floor. The villa was clean — almost pointedly so. Several markers from the trace team dotted the surfaces. The killer had wiped the blood, but you couldn't outrun a trained trace examiner.
She circled toward the stairs and went up. Dark up here. She found the bedroom, moved through it slowly, let her eyes adjust. Nothing jumped out. No obvious weapon. Nothing that felt wrong.
Then — a crack of thunder, and every light in the building went out at once.
Zhen Nuan's hand shot toward the nearest switch. She worked it back and forth. Nothing. Again. The clicking filled the total dark, small and sharp and wrong.
Breaker?
She breathed through it, found her phone, turned on the light. The hallway sat in front of her, completely still. Dead quiet. She kept one hand on the wall and worked her way back toward the stairs.
The floor-to-ceiling window at the bottom of the staircase let in a pale wash of sky. Outside, the branches were moving hard in the wind, their shadows running across the walls like figures.
Her heartbeat was louder than it should have been. She didn't know where the main breaker was. She pulled up the security guard's number — and heard footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Behind her in the hall.
Heavy enough to be a man's.
Guan Xiaoyu's voice surfaced from somewhere in her memory: Killers often return to the scene.
Zhen Nuan's scalp went cold. She fixed her eyes on the front door, killed her phone screen, and ran.
The person behind her crossed the distance in one step. A hand closed around her shoulder.