Two hours later, Zhou Jin and Jiang Hansheng arrived at a secluded underpass in the eastern suburbs.

The continuous rainy weather over the past month had swollen the river, its waters murmuring and rushing along.

Zhou Jin practically leaped out of the car, striding at a rapid pace under the police cordon tape and making straight for the crime scene.

Zhao Ping was already there, his arm in a sling, waving at Zhou Jin. “Senior Sister.” His gaze slid sideways to Jiang Hansheng behind her, and Zhao Ping stepped forward to shake his hand. “Professor Jiang, sorry for the trouble.”

Jiang Hansheng gave a calm nod and asked, “What’s the situation?”

Zhao Ping’s lips pressed downward, his face ashen as he explained, “A nearby resident found them while walking their dog — two bodies. The forensic examiner’s preliminary determination is that they were shot at close range and then bound together and dumped here.”

He paused, his voice heavy. “One victim’s identity has been confirmed. It’s Director Yao.”

A cold sweat broke out across Zhou Jin’s back. After a long moment, she asked, “And the other person?”

Zhao Ping shook his head. “Still unknown.”

As they spoke, the forensics team had already placed the bodies into body bags and lifted the stretchers.

As the team passed her, Zhou Jin said, “Wait.”

She stared at the body bags, her fingers slowly curling inward, her palms damp with sweat.

She walked over and slowly pulled down the zipper of the first bag. It was Yao Weihai. His eyes were half-open, pupils dilated, cheeks gaunt, his complexion pale and gray, his lips a faint shade of purple — he had died some time ago.

Zhou Jin was silent for a long, long moment, a terrible tightness blocking her throat. She straightened up and offered Yao Weihai a formal salute.

Then she opened the second body bag.

Inside was a man’s face — a very young face, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old, with bruising and dried blood across his brow bone and the corners of his mouth, unmistakable evidence that he had suffered a brutal beating before his death.

After a long pause, Zhou Jin drew a deep breath and said, “Thank you. We’ll confirm the second victim’s identity as soon as possible.”

This person was not Jiang Cheng.

In that moment, Zhou Jin did not even know whether she should feel relieved or sorrowful.

Jiang Hansheng stood not far behind Zhou Jin, watching the rigid line of her shoulders ease ever so slightly. He pressed his lips together, shifted his gaze away, and went to speak with the forensics team.

He noticed one of the forensic examiners produce a clear evidence bag and seal a handgun inside it.

Jiang Hansheng’s brow furrowed slightly. The style did not look like Yao Weihai’s service weapon. He ventured a guess: “The murder weapon?”

The forensic examiner, seeing it was Jiang Hansheng, let out a quiet sigh and shook his head. “We still need to run a ballistics comparison.”

Jiang Hansheng asked, “Where was the gunshot wound located?”

The examiner replied, “The back of the skull.”

Jiang Hansheng’s brow furrowed further. “I’ll need a detailed autopsy report. As quickly as possible.”

The examiner nodded. “The moment we have results, I’ll notify you immediately.”

Yao Weihai’s death had caught everyone completely off guard.

During the Jingang net-closing operation, the criminals had opened fire first on the encircling police. In the ensuing exchange, four officers had been wounded, and the operation group’s commander, Yao Weihai, had been shot in the leg and gone missing.

At the temporary command center, Tan Shiming had immediately ordered a rescue deployment. At the same time, he had been waiting in anxious tension for a call from the criminals — because by any conventional logic, taking Yao Weihai meant using him as a hostage to negotiate with the police.

Tan Shiming had clung to a thread of hope throughout. But Jiang Hansheng had told him: the window was forty-eight hours. If Yao Weihai could not be rescued in time, both he and the red-level informant known as “Hidden Edge” would most likely not survive.

No one had imagined the situation would deteriorate to this irreversible point.

Upon receiving the news, the municipal bureau and party committee immediately established an investigation panel. Commissioners were dispatched to hold all parties accountable, and every officer involved — including Tan Shiming — was subjected to inquiry and investigation.

Tan Shiming should have faced disciplinary action, but the order from above was that commanders could not be changed mid-battle. Per instructions, the case had to be solved within one month. Once everything concluded, disciplinary measures and commendations would both be assigned accordingly.

The political pressures were Tan Shiming’s to bear. Meanwhile, members of the Major Crimes Unit along with officers from multiple district stations fanned out to investigate the surrounding area of the crime scene.

The Autopsy Room.

Both Jiang Hansheng and Zhou Jin were present.

The forensic examiner walked them through the autopsy findings one by one: “Both bodies show cutaneous bruising, hematomas, and similar trauma — none of it fatal. Cause of death was a gunshot wound to the back of the skull. The bullet trajectory ran downward at approximately a forty-five-degree angle—”

Jiang Hansheng said, “This wasn’t a killing. It was an execution.”

Firing at close range into the back of a person’s head, downward at an angle — this method was less like a murder and more like a formal carrying-out of a sentence. Whoever did this had executed Yao Weihai.

The forensic examiner nodded in agreement. “Beyond that, we recovered a handgun from the crime scene. After comparative testing, the bullets extracted from the bodies were confirmed to have been fired from that weapon.”

Zhou Jin frowned. “They left the murder weapon at the scene?”

Was it a slip? Or a deliberate provocation?

The examiner continued, “More than that — we were able to lift a set of fingerprints from the gun.”

Zhou Jin’s eyes widened slightly. “Fingerprints?”

Not only Zhou Jin — even Jiang Hansheng looked momentarily surprised.

Zhou Jin pressed on: “Were you able to find a match in the fingerprint database?”

At that moment, someone knocked on the autopsy room door. It was Yu Dan.

She caught Zhou Jin’s eye through the glass panel and tilted her head to indicate a direction. “Team Leader Tan is looking for you.”

Out of habit, Zhou Jin glanced at Jiang Hansheng — as if saying a brief farewell, or perhaps seeking some quiet form of approval.

Jiang Hansheng met her gaze and smiled. “Go ahead. I’ll stay and ask a few more questions about the autopsy.”

“Alright.”

Arriving at Tan Shiming’s office, he looked up and waved at Zhou Jin to close the door.

Zhou Jin stood before Tan Shiming. Neither mentor nor student was in a light mood. The failed net-closing operation, Yao Weihai’s death, the unrelenting succession of incidents — each one pressed down on them with a suffocating weight.

Tan Shiming was silent for a long moment. Then, abruptly, he said, “Zhou Jin, you are my apprentice, and you are Old Zhou’s daughter — the one who raised you right. Zhou Chuan died in the gun-theft case. You’re the one who wants this solved most desperately.”

Zhou Jin listened to him lay out these words, as if he were building a case for something, or convincing himself of something. “What is it, Master?”

Tan Shiming said, “I suspect there’s a mole inside our department.”

Zhou Jin was startled. “Why?”

Tan Shiming’s tone was not entirely certain, but within the department, Zhou Jin was the only person he could trust absolutely and deploy freely.

He explained, “There’s no hard evidence yet. But in this net-closing operation, every move our police made seemed to fall exactly within the enemy’s calculations. We were completely on the defensive — entirely reactive.”

Zhou Jin fell into deep thought, a succession of faces passing through her mind, yet she could not bring herself to believe that any of them could be a mole.

“All right — I’ll think it over more. I’ll tell you when I need you. You and Professor Jiang stay alert and watch your own safety.”

“Understood.”

Tan Shiming set aside that line of conjecture and moved straight to business. “The reason I called you in is to tell you two things. First — the identity of the second victim has been confirmed.”

He produced a classified dossier and handed it to Zhou Jin.

She opened it to find, first, a one-inch photograph: a man in a police cap and uniform. That same man was now lying on the autopsy table, having given his life alongside Yao Weihai.

His name was Meng Junfeng. According to his file, at the time the “8·17” gun-theft case occurred, he had been a third-year student at the Southwest Police Academy. For his outstanding conduct, he had been recruited by Yao Weihai as an informant and brought into the investigative operation surrounding the “8·17” case.

Tan Shiming said, “Before the operation, Director Yao handed me a note containing a piece of transaction intelligence passed along by the undercover agent known as ‘Hidden Edge.’ We have good reason to believe that Hidden Edge was Meng Junfeng — that his undercover identity was exposed early on, after which the criminal organization turned him and used him to feed false intelligence to the police. That directly caused the failure of this net-closing operation.”

Zhou Jin stood frozen for some time, her internal doubts piling deeper and deeper.

Meng Junfeng was the undercover? He was Hidden Edge?

Then what was Jiang Cheng’s role in all of this?

“Master, there’s something I need to tell you — something significant. I wasn’t sure whether I should.”

Tan Shiming frowned. “At this point, what can’t be said?”

Zhou Jin hesitated a moment, then decided to tell Tan Shiming everything from that day. “When I found the enemy’s sniper in the control tower, he got away afterward. In my report, I said only that someone had come to assist his escape. What I didn’t say was — that person was…”

Tan Shiming fixed her with a searching, penetrating look.

Zhou Jin put her hands behind her back, gripped them together, and said, “It was Jiang Cheng.”

“Jiang Cheng?!”

Zhou Jin said, “He told me he knew that the group was responsible for my brother’s death. At the time, I thought he might be an undercover officer working for the police…”

She moistened her dry lips and continued, “If it’s possible — could you request the clearance to look up Jiang Cheng’s name in the classified files?”

Tan Shiming dropped the dossier folder onto the desk, leaned back in his chair, and said in a low, measured voice, “You may be disappointed. This is the second thing I wanted to tell you.”

His eyes dropped downward, directing her to open the folder on the desk.

As Zhou Jin opened it, she listened to Tan Shiming speak: “His name is not in the undercover files. But it is in the public security fingerprint database. The forensic examiner lifted a fingerprint from the handgun, and after comparison, it was confirmed to belong to Jiang Cheng.”