It was precisely because of this connection that, with the “8·17” investigation stalled and making no headway, the Provincial Bureau’s Criminal Research Division had decided to approach the matter through the Huaiguang serial murder case.

Jiang Hansheng said: “Even back during the Huaiguang case, Professor Wang had privately investigated a great many suspects based on his profiling report — but none of them held up under deeper scrutiny.”

Zhou Jin said: “Could the profile itself have been wrong?”

Jiang Hansheng’s brow lifted slightly. He glanced at Zhou Jin, mildly surprised that she had gone straight to questioning Wang Pengzhe’s professional judgment.

Meeting his gaze, Zhou Jin said quietly: “Did I get that wrong?”

Jiang Hansheng gave a faint smile. “No — you’re right. Professor Wang’s profile did contain certain errors.”

“He believed the killer was an adult male who had developed a hatred toward women after suffering severe emotional devastation—”

However, Jiang Hansheng did not agree with that conclusion.

After the Huaiguang serial murder case was reopened, Wang Pengzhe had worried that his original profiling framework might influence Jiang Hansheng’s thinking, so he had given him only the police case records.

Working from the evidence across all available materials, Jiang Hansheng had completed his first profiling report in short order.

The greatest point of divergence between the two profiles — Wang Pengzhe’s and Jiang Hansheng’s — lay in their assessment of the killer’s age.

“The killer was not an adult male. He was an adolescent.” Jiang Hansheng narrowed his eyes slightly, the outer corners appearing all the more refined for it.

“An adolescent?”

His voice was low and unhurried: “A crime scene saturated with ritualistic detail had very effectively obscured the most primitive motive behind the killings.”

She looked at Jiang Hansheng with surprise. In the curtain of rain, his brows and eyes appeared darker than ever — a sharp, faint gleam burning quietly at their depths.

For a moment, Zhou Jin’s attention drifted. It was as though a glimpse of what Jiang Hansheng must once have been — some trace of a brilliance from his past — had flashed briefly across those features. Even that single instant was enough to leave her breathless.

“…Zhou Jin?”

His arm had settled naturally around her waist. Slightly drunk as he was, when he looked at her, there was a warmth and ease in his expression that he couldn’t entirely conceal.

It didn’t come across as flippant. If anything, it was oddly endearing.

He asked: “Are you looking at me?”

A faint heat rose in Zhou Jin’s chest. She denied it. “…No.”

Jiang Hansheng’s lips curved. “You’re lying again.”

Zhou Jin saw that he had caught her and wasn’t going to let it go, so she simply turned brazen about it, asking: “And what if I was?”

Jiang Hansheng’s smile deepened. He pressed a kiss to Zhou Jin’s forehead.

“It would be nice if things could stay like this.”

His voice was very quiet — almost lost in the rainy night, barely audible.

Zhou Jin walked on with her head down. A puddle appeared in her path, and she made no attempt to avoid it, stepping squarely into it without ceremony.

In the brief silence that followed, she was able to turn the five Huaiguang murders over carefully in her mind.

If you stripped away the ritualistic trappings — that veneer of mystery — and classified these cases using the most common criminal typology, then they amounted to nothing more than a series of rape-murders, one after another.

Zhou Jin put the question back to him: “You mean the killer’s primary objective was rape?”

Jiang Hansheng gave a calm, steady nod. “Sexually motivated crime.”

Since the killer had been able to get the victims to willingly bring him home, he must have possessed some quality that drew women to him — something that allowed him to connect with them with ease.

For someone like that, there were only two circumstances under which sexual desire could go unsatisfied: either he had a sexual dysfunction, or he was a child.

The semen traces that forensic investigators had recovered from the female victims already ruled out the first possibility.

And sexually motivated crimes, as a category, were in any case predominantly committed by adolescents.

The inadequacy of sex education had left the killer without any proper guidance in forming his understanding of sexuality. What had shaped him had been nothing more than a child’s curiosity about the body — or pornographic material steeped in taboo and violence.

In his daily life, the female figure he encountered most consistently was not a lover, but a mother.

This was particularly true of single-parent households — where the absence of a father often blurred the boundary between “mother” and “woman” as distinct identities.

Furthermore, in the five Huaiguang murders, the ages of the victims showed an increasing trend, indicating that the killer had been drawn toward progressively more mature women.

On this basis, Jiang Hansheng had concluded in his profiling report that the killer was between thirteen and eighteen years of age, had grown up in a single-parent household, raised solely by his mother, and carried a severe Oedipus complex — having in all likelihood been subjected to abandonment, betrayal, or abuse at his mother’s hands. This had warped his character, leading to an intense and consuming hatred of women as a whole.

Jiang Hansheng said: “By the time the profile was completed, more than ten years had already passed since the original crimes. Even with a profile like that in hand, catching the killer in any short period of time would have been very difficult.”

Zhou Jin said: “But you found a lead — didn’t you?”

Jiang Hansheng smiled faintly. “Yes. The real killer wasn’t Chen Li. It was Qi Yan.”

Zhou Jin quietly committed the name Qi Yan to memory and continued: “How did you manage it?”

Jiang Hansheng answered: “Understanding Qi Yan’s psychological vulnerabilities told me how to provoke him. I set out some bait, and he took it.”

“What bait?”

“Me.”

Zhou Jin stilled.

Jiang Hansheng said: “He came in person. Invited me back to pay him a visit.”

It clearly wasn’t going to be a simple social call — Zhou Jin was no fool, and she understood exactly what he meant. Jiang Hansheng had deliberately provoked the killer, using himself as bait to draw him out into the open.

So Qi Yan had abducted him?

The moment that thought surfaced, Zhou Jin’s chest tightened. The hand holding Jiang Hansheng’s gripped a little harder.

She pressed on: “And then?”

“And then he was caught.” Jiang Hansheng paused briefly, then added with studied lightness: “All was well in the end. I had made prior arrangements with Chief Yao — his people arrived in good time.”

Zhou Jin instinctively felt it couldn’t have been that simple. She studied him with suspicion for a moment, then asked: “Really?”

Jiang Hansheng didn’t answer. He continued instead: “We also recovered some of the police firearms that had gone missing during ‘8·17.’ It was just that Qi Yan died…”

He pressed his lips together and came to a stop, his gaze settling on Zhou Jin’s face.

“We were never able to establish the full nature of his connection to the ‘8·17’ criminal network.” Jiang Hansheng drew her into a one-armed embrace and said quietly: “Zhou Jin — I’m sorry.”

Zhou Jin slid both hands up around his shoulders and held him tightly in return. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

Whether for professional reasons or personal ones, Jiang Hansheng had devoted no small amount of effort to the “8·17” case. Because of him, at the very least, Yao Weihai had been able to recover some of the stolen firearms.

Zhou Jin said: “Jiang Hansheng — thank you.”

Jiang Hansheng closed his eyes, his palm moving slowly against the back of her hair.

He knew, without needing to think about it, that her gratitude was not what he wanted to hear.

In the end, the conversation couldn’t go any further.

Zhou Jin wanted to ask Jiang Hansheng about more of the details, but he wouldn’t answer. His eyes had gone deep and still as a pool of water. He said vaguely: “I seem to have forgotten.”

Seeing just how drunk he was, Zhou Jin felt a twinge of regret for having tried to draw things out of him this way.

She said: “You can forget even that? Then what do you remember?”

Jiang Hansheng was quiet for a moment. His body drifted slowly closer.

She stood within the shadow of him, nearly pressed against Jiang Hansheng entirely. The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, the air between them perfectly, softly charged.

He tilted the umbrella to one side, shielding them from the wind and the rain. The scent of him — laced faintly with alcohol — drifted down over her like a tide, submerging her completely.

Zhou Jin was nearly forgetting what she had meant to ask. She reached up around his neck and tilted her head back, receiving his kiss.

It was a long while before he finally answered: “I remember Zhou Jin.”

“…”