“I’ve got it.” Yan Qing suddenly sat up in bed, her clear eyes shining with excitement. “There’s another possibility — yes, another possibility. How did I not think of this sooner?”

Before anyone in the room could react, she had already swiftly pulled the needle from her hand. Her slender fingers grabbed hold of Shi Ting’s sleeve. “Director Shi, quickly — we need to go back to the bureau.”

Shi Ting looked at her in bewilderment. “Back to the bureau?”

“Yes, right now. I think — I’ve found the cause of death for Leng Yu and the others.” Her face was flushed with excitement, her bright eyes carrying a trace of urgency and resolve.

“Miss, you’re still sick,” Murong said in a panic. “The doctor said you need to stay under observation. Going out now will only make things worse.”

“It has to be now. We have to go back immediately.” Yan Qing’s grip on Shi Ting’s sleeve tightened.

Shi Ting studied her for a moment in silence. Perhaps moved by her stubborn determination, or perhaps because he understood her desperate need to find the killer quickly — even knowing it wasn’t the right thing to do, he still gave a single nod. “All right.”

In the car on the way back to the Military Police Bureau, Yan Qing remained in a state of high excitement. It wasn’t until Shi Ting’s voice broke through that she gave a soft acknowledgment and turned to look at him.

“While you were unconscious, you were having a nightmare the entire time,” Shi Ting said, his voice low and resonant in the confined space of the car, like a plucked string.

Yan Qing suddenly remembered — she had indeed dreamed, a dream of dying in that other life, of a scalpel tracing lines across her body, the sound of splitting flesh and skin impossibly clear.

“Was I?” Yan Qing smiled stiffly. “I didn’t say anything in my sleep, did I?”

Her eyes met his, and she found herself looking into something like a dark, still pool — this man’s eyes were like a vortex, possessing a force that could pull a person in, and a depth that seemed to have no bottom.

At this moment, his gaze was calm, as though a pool of clear water lay within. “No. You just looked quite tense. I guessed you must have been having a nightmare.”

Yan Qing smiled and turned away.

In the angle she could no longer see, a shadow of deep, unreadable thought settled into Shi Ting’s eyes.

In her dream, she had been calling out, again and again: “Shen Liang, Shen Liang.”

He was certain Shen Liang was a man. And strangely — it bothered him. He even felt a sudden urge to look into it.

But the feeling didn’t last long. The gates of the Military Police Bureau had come into view just ahead — a dim, amber corridor lantern hung above the entrance, its light made dull and pale by the headlights of the approaching car.

Only two officers were on duty at the bureau at this hour, along with a single gate guard. A light burned in the first-floor office; every other floor and room was wrapped in darkness.

The motor in the autopsy room was still running, filling the silence with a low, droning hum. Without the lights on, that sound, combined with the grim, cold air of the room, would have sent a chill down the spine of even the most fearless person.

Yan Qing had long since grown accustomed to such surroundings. She urged Shi Ting to push her quickly to the front of the autopsy table.

Shi Ting switched on the lights and retrieved the bodies of Leng Yu, Fan Dongping, and Luo Baomei from the row of cold storage units along the wall.

The bodies were frozen and would need to thaw before any further examination could be performed. Without any advanced thawing equipment available in this era, Yan Qing could only resort to the old-fashioned method of using boiled water to speed up the process.

She and Shi Ting worked at it for more than two hours before Leng Yu’s body finally softened enough to work with. By then, both of them were soaked in sweat, yet the light in their eyes showed not the faintest trace of exhaustion.

Shi Ting was accustomed to this kind of life. But seeing Yan Qing match him in maintaining peak focus and alertness, he couldn’t help but begin to wonder about her true origins.

Was she really the Yan Family’s Sixth Miss?

—