Chapter 137
Chapter 137
Jiang Yinsheng spoke with certainty. Even the voice in her heart was certain as it said:
If it’s you, I’m willing to keep on waiting.
“What if you find that this person isn’t worth waiting for?”
Depending on the situation, there wouldn’t even be a need to wait for some people, Jun Zishu thought. If someone gave their love to the wrong person, it wouldn’t matter even if they waited until the end of time. Nothing would change. Probably.
“That won’t happen. I believe in myself. I also believe in…”
Her.
“What?” Jun Zishu asked, failing to hear the end of Jiang Yinsheng’s sentence.
“How come you are suddenly asking about this matter, Officer? Could it be that you’ve taken a liking to someone?” Jiang Yinsheng changed the topic and smiled at Jun Zishu. Although she behaved calmly on the surface, she was, in fact, nervous to the extreme inside.
“I’m just having a tough time understanding some things.”
“Such as?”
A human and a ghost strolled through the quiet night. When Jun Zishu sat back into her car, she signaled to her colleagues in the shadows to continue with their duty before driving back home.
“I used to think that emotions were the most useless things in this world. They are a burden and can affect one’s reasoning.”
“Why would you…think that?”
“Probably because I’ve never seen the light.”
Jun Zishu had never received proper affection from childhood to adolescence.
She wasn’t a likable person; she knew that much.
She would always do everything perfectly and maintain her rationality.
She was like a butler working in a medieval castle, always wearing a stern face and carrying around a tragic absurdity.
She was like a puppet in a black-and-white film, cold and monotonous.
Jun Zishu also felt like her existence was similar to the seemingly perfect supporting characters, a.k.a. cannon fodder for the protagonist, described in novels. Though, she died before she could be subjected to any face-slapping.
Jun Zishu didn’t wish to be liked, probably because she feared that others would dislike her once they realized her bland essence.
The car moved at a constant speed, and lights and shadows were cast onto Jun Zishu’s face in rapid intervals.
Jiang Yinsheng had never felt the loneliness emanating from Jun Zishu’s body as clearly as she did now. It felt as if Jun Zishu was disassociated from the world, and never had she experienced any affection before.
“Did you manage to see it afterward?”
“I did, but then I realized that I might not be suitable to have it.”
“Why?” Jiang Yinsheng eagerly asked. She wanted to know who that “light” referred to very much. She wanted to know the story between Jun Zishu and this person. Yet, even though she had all kinds of questions she wanted to ask, she could only bury them deep within her heart since her current self lacked the means and qualifications to ask these questions. Moreover, she was more interested in the conclusion Jun Zishu reached.
“Because it was too beautiful, and I’m not good enough for it,” Jun Zishu said in a faint voice and ended her words with a soft and sad sigh.
The more the other party treated her passionately, the viler she found herself to be.
She felt guilty in part because of her mission and her selfishness.
She had tried to love, sincerely and completely, the mission targets she had seduced. Unfortunately, her heart lacked the warmth necessary to do so. During those times, she had even hoped that she could avoid coming into contact with the strange emotion known as love.
She didn’t deserve it.
She lacked the self-esteem to love someone.
In the eyes of others, it was true that she had a lot of things that others couldn’t ever obtain. However, she felt that she would always be at the bottom of the pile when it came to emotions.
Jun Zishu would sometimes wonder if she had already lost the ability to love people.
Yet, amidst those times, she could also feel a sense of vividness coming from some people. She could feel her silent heart beating again. Although the throbs appeared briefly and faintly, there was no question that they existed.
“How can you not be good enough? In my opinion, you are excellent,” Jiang Yinsheng said in affirmation, her eyes looking straight at Jun Zishu.
“You won’t necessarily think that once you get to know me.”
“You can’t just look at things from your own point of view, Miss Officer. Everyone has different opinions on matters. For example, in my heart, you are the best person in the world. I do not care about others, nor do I want to care about others. I just know that I want to look at you always. You might think that you aren’t good enough, but you are already perfect in my eyes,” Jiang Yinsheng said passionately. “As you said before, emotions are the antithesis of rationality, so you shouldn’t consider them objectively.”
When I first laid eyes on you, my heart had already started behaving strangely.
“Isn’t that because I am the only person in your world right now?”
“That’s not true. I might not remember about my past, but I’m not stupid. Life isn’t as cheesy as it is portrayed in TV shows. You can’t just replace the person you love just because you’ve suffered memory loss. After all, this place can’t lie,” Jiang Yinsheng said, a sweet smile appearing on her face as she pointed at her heart.
The moment I laid eyes on you, my heart started beating desperately. It is constantly telling me: Look, this person here is the one you love.
“Do you understand those matters now after listening to my explanation, Miss Officer?” Jiang Yinsheng asked with a smile.
In response, Jun Zishu tapped the steering wheel with her fingers and nodded. However, she then shook her head and said, “I think I only half-understood it.”
“Let nature take its course, then. If you meet your light again one day and I am still by your side at that time, let me know. As your friend, I have to judge if that person is worthy of your love.”
Jiang Yinsheng still thought she had hidden feelings well, but she failed to realize that she had slipped up more than once, and her words were riddled with holes.
“There’s no such person,” Jun Zishu said as she rubbed Jiang Yinsheng’s light and fluffy hair.
Jiang Yinsheng’s expression remained unchanged, nobody but herself knowing whether she felt happy or saddened by Jun Zishu’s words.
…
After parking the car, Jun Zishu turned off the engine and unlocked the doors. Then, she pulled out the key and made her way back home with Jiang Yinsheng walking by her side.
The automatic lights in the hallway lit up one after another as Jun Zishu walked into the building. After arriving on her floor and opening her front door, Jun Zishu stepped aside to let Jiang Yinsheng enter the house first.
“Tell me about that person’s house.”
“Okay. His home is quite large. I looked at every corner of the place, checking the living room, side halls, and rooms on all three floors. However, he should be living alone since apart from his bedroom and his study, the other rooms in the house are relatively empty. Some of them don’t even have a single piece of furniture.”
“What about the kitchen? Did you have a look at it?”
“I did since you specifically told me to check it out before. His kitchen is exceptionally large, and it is filled with various advanced equipment. He also has a very modern and expensive-looking kitchen hood and countertop, and everything in his kitchen is placed neatly.”
“Did you see anything out of the ordinary?” Jun Zishu asked.
Jiang Yinsheng shook her head, which was within Jun Zishu’s expectations. After all, if Jiang Yinsheng had made any noteworthy discoveries, she would’ve brought it up as soon as she left the house.
Jun Zishu wasn’t sure if Yu Hang would use his house as his first crime scene. Some criminals would do so while some wouldn’t.
Typically, criminals would only commit murder in their own homes if they were confident in the privacy and protection of their homes. They would also make sure that everything was within their control, and they also had to make sure that they absolutely wouldn’t have any feelings of guilt or insecurity when committing the crime at home. Most importantly, their homes needed to afford them the convenience to carry out their crimes.
Jun Zishu felt that it was unlikely for Yu Hang to commit his atrocious acts in his two places of residence.
The apartment unit in Anhe District went without saying. The residential block had six floors and many residents. Committing murder there would be an extreme inconvenience.
As for the house near the restaurant, while it was a stand-alone house, many other houses were nearby. There were also plenty of surveillance cameras in the area.
Thus, Yu Hang must still have another residence or hideout that they hadn’t discovered.
Jun Zishu fell into deep thought as she sat on the living room sofa, the living room lights highlighting her beautiful face and slightly tight jawline. When Jiang Yinsheng saw this sight, her heart inadvertently skipped a beat.
Jiang Yinsheng felt that anything and everything this person did was wonderful.
…
Many officers in the police station did not return home tonight. Instead, they worked overtime as they investigated Yu Hang.
Sometime in the evening, Jun Zishu received an account ID, a screenshot, and a voice message from her team’s technical staff member.
Yu Hang was a relatively famous food blogger on the internet. When Jun Zishu clicked into his Weibo account, she found many videos and pictures of food and recipes. He also shared his experiences and photos of landscapes. Of course, those photos were also paired with words that indicated their owner was in the midst of a food journey.
“Chief, I flipped through a lot of his stuff and found that this guy is a real foodie. He has tried everything from high-class foreign cuisine to pancakes, fruits, and stinky tofu. Other than food, he rarely posts about anything else. Not only did I not find any vital clues, but I even got hungry after looking at all his posts.”
Jun Zishu browsed through the links and screenshots. A few minutes later, she received a few more pictures and a voice message:
“There’s something strange about these pictures. If this guy really is the killer, he must be incredibly sick in the head.”
The first screenshot was of a post published near the end of October, the second was made at the beginning of November, and the third was made in the middle of November.
[I tried something new. It tastes good.]
[Some of the flavors aren’t as wonderful. Thankfully, it has a long storage life, so I can take my time savoring it.]
[How should I deal with useless ingredients?]
If one looked at them intuitively, one wouldn’t find anything strange with these posts. After all, Yu Hang’s previous posts were mostly related to food. If one wasn’t in the know, one would think that he was simply testing a new ingredient. However, the problem was the time these three posts were made matched perfectly with the time of the first victim’s disappearance and death.
If one put the image of a human in place of that “ingredient,” those three posts would be utterly repulsive.
A moment later, the technical member sent two more screenshots. One contained a line of text, and the other contained a photo.
[It’s time to try a new preparation method.]
The photo was a picture of the finished product. The dish was a piece of meat fried until golden brown and topped with sauce. The plating was done beautifully, and the dish looked delectable at a glance.
However, the premise was that it wasn’t human flesh.
Jun Zishu felt her dinner coming up her throat when she saw the picture.
If Yu Hang’s motive for killing people was simply to enjoy different types of food, there was definitely something wrong with his mind. Perhaps he had already become a madman through and through.
Jun Zishu gazed at her phone’s screen until it went from bright to dim before eventually darkening completely.
She needed evidence. Evidence that could prove that this person was the murderer.