Zhou Jin drove to Guhua Prison on the northern edge of the city.

She tracked down a fellow inmate who had served time alongside Jiang Cheng and maintained a fairly close relationship with him — a man named Geng Yang.

She waited in an empty room, and before long, a prison guard brought Geng Yang in.

Geng Yang saw a woman sitting on a long bench, a grey-blue jacket draped over her arm, her legs slender and long beneath her dress trousers, her high heels tracing a beautiful curve along her ankles — altogether a pleasing sight.

He let out a low whistle.

The prison guard smacked the back of his head. “Behave yourself.”

Geng Yang sat down, pushed up the thick glasses on his nose, gave the woman a thorough once-over, then said: “This isn’t an interrogation, is it?”

They weren’t in an interrogation room, and the person who had come was no stern, imposing officer.

Zhou Jin reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She looked at him and asked, “Want one?”

Geng Yang’s eyes lit up. He reached out to take it and said, “Thanks.”

Zhou Jin lit his cigarette for him and said, “The reason I’ve come to see you today is that I’d like to learn a bit about Jiang Cheng. I hear you two were quite close?”

Geng Yang paused, then said, “Let me ask something first — if I tell the truth and cooperate with the investigation, will it genuinely reduce my sentence?”

“That depends on whether what you say turns out to be useful,” Zhou Jin said.

Geng Yang chuckled. “Useful or not, having a beautiful woman to chat with — I’ll naturally tell you everything I know.”

Zhou Jin smiled with her lips but not her eyes. She pulled a stack of photographs from her bag and said, “You claim you know Jiang Cheng. There are seven photos here. Can you correctly identify which one is him?”

Geng Yang nodded and, without a moment’s hesitation, pointed to one of them. “This one. I could never mistake him — we lived together back then.”

Zhou Jin said, “Tell me — when did you first meet Jiang Cheng? How did you come to know him?”

Geng Yang cast his mind back. “I forget the exact date, but it was when he’d just arrived at the prison. We were in the same cell. At first, he wouldn’t talk to anyone, so naturally I wasn’t close with him either. But in a place like this, secrets never stay hidden. On his very first day, everyone already knew he’d been a police officer. The funniest thing was, during his first outdoor activity period, he ran straight into a convict — one he’d personally arrested back when he was still on the force…”

The cat had fallen into the rats’ den. Geng Yang recalled that absurd scene, and for a moment he couldn’t hold back — he bowed his head and laughed to himself in stifled bursts.

Zhou Jin said, “There’s nothing funny about it. Keep talking.”

Seeing the woman’s expression turn unfriendly, Geng Yang didn’t dare crack any more jokes. He cleared his throat and said: “The people in prison — which one of them doesn’t hate cops? And he was the new arrival on top of that. The moment he set foot inside, the cell boss brought men around to beat him every day…”

At those words, Zhou Jin’s breath caught for a moment. She slowly curled her fingers into a fist.

Geng Yang noticed her expression shift again and hurried to explain: “Officer, please don’t glare at me — before I was locked up I worked in financial management, embezzlement of public funds is what got me here. I’m a cultured man, you understand? I never took part in any of the beatings. I even got hit myself once at the beginning. As long as no one’s beaten to death, the prison guards basically turn a blind eye to this sort of thing — every place has its own rules.”

“Keep going.”

“Jiang Cheng was quite spineless at first. When people beat him, he wouldn’t fight back. We used to laugh at him behind his back, saying he was the type who could only swagger around in an official’s uniform. That group saw that Jiang Cheng took the beatings without a word and never reported them — figured he had no backbone — so they targeted him every single day.

Actually, if he’d just swallowed his pride and admitted defeat, the whole thing would have blown over quickly. I quietly advised him several times to keep his head down for the time being, but this man had a truly stubborn temperament — a head of iron. He’d get beaten that badly and still wouldn’t make a sound or beg for mercy.

You could say a person shouldn’t push things to the point of total destruction — once or twice you tolerate it, maybe, but who keeps tolerating forever? Even a cornered dog will leap over a wall, let alone a man.

About a month later, Jiang Cheng’s family came to visit him. After he came back, his whole demeanour fell apart — he lay buried under his blanket and wouldn’t acknowledge anyone…”

That day, Geng Yang had sensed something was wrong with Jiang Cheng and guessed his family had run into trouble.

This sort of thing was common inside. There you’d be, serving your sentence peacefully, reflecting on your wrongs and planning a fresh start after your release — and then word comes from outside that your mother has died, or your wife is cheating and wants a divorce. Nothing but upheaval.

Geng Yang had felt sorry for Jiang Cheng at the time, so he placed a few pain pills he’d obtained from the infirmary on his pillow.

Not long after, the cell boss came back with his men and told Jiang Cheng to take off his shoes for him.

Jiang Cheng was lying down asleep and didn’t move. The cell boss went over and drove a kick into his back.

Geng Yang quickly stepped in front of the cell boss and tried to mediate: “He’s had bad news from home — let him sleep a while. Whatever you need done, I’ll do it for him.”

The cell boss shoved Geng Yang aside and, standing over Jiang Cheng, let loose a string of abuse: “What’s happened — did your father die, or your mother? Or is your wife in bed with another man?”

Those words left his mouth, and two or three seconds passed. Then Jiang Cheng braced himself up on his elbows and climbed up off the ground.

He had a close-cropped buzz cut at the time and didn’t look as handsome as he does now — his brows and eyes were sharp as a hawk’s — and his entire bearing had shifted. He stared coldly and asked, “Who did you say?”

The cell boss saw him suddenly turn defiant and flew into a rage. He bent down and slapped Jiang Cheng across the face. “I’m talking about you, boy…”

In almost the blink of an eye, Jiang Cheng seized his wrist and wrenched it downward. The cell boss slammed to the ground with a crash, face-first — his nose erupting with blood in an instant.

That move — no one had ever seen anything like it. Everyone present froze.

Jiang Cheng pinned the cell boss down and delivered a ferocious pounding to his face — heavy, vicious blows, punctuating each strike with the same furious demand: “Who did you say? Who did you say?”

The cell boss’s face was covered in blood; he could barely draw breath. Then Jiang Cheng reached out and closed his hand around his throat, and the savagery and ferocity in his eyes flared up almost like a flame, surging in an instant.

Geng Yang seemed to shudder just recalling the scene. He smoothed the goosebumps on his arm and marvelled aloud: “Honestly, if the prison guards hadn’t arrived when they did, I think Jiang Cheng could very well have strangled him to death. There’s something unsettling about that man — nothing like a former police officer at all.”

Zhou Jin pressed further: “And after that?”

“After that, it all settled down.” Geng Yang shrugged. “Convicts are people too — and people fear death. The fierce fear the ferocious, the ferocious fear the one who doesn’t care about dying. Jiang Cheng was exactly that kind. After that one incident, everyone in the prison knew he could fight and that he wasn’t to be provoked.

Nobody dared go near him anymore, but nobody bothered with him either. That went on for the better part of a year. Inside the prison, only a handful of the white-collar criminals spent any real time with him — and I was one of them.”

He hadn’t finished with what came next, but Geng Yang’s eyebrows arched upward and a smug expression crossed his face as he crossed his legs with a self-satisfied air and took a deep drag on his cigarette stub.

His tone turned breezy and a little arrogant: “Come to think of it, Jiang Cheng actually owes me a ‘teacher.’ In our free time I told him I’d been sent here for cooking the books. A few days later he slipped me half a pack of cigarettes and asked me to teach him how to do the accounts.”

The prison guard behind them couldn’t help himself: “Oh? And you’re proud of that?”

Geng Yang immediately backed down, chuckling: “Oh, not at all — during my time serving my sentence I have developed a profound recognition of my mistakes, seriously reflected on my criminal culpability, and deeply regret how my momentary greed caused enormous economic losses to the people and to the nation…”

“That’s enough.” Zhou Jin cut him off with impatience and asked: “Did Jiang Cheng ever mention to you who he was particularly close to in his daily life? The name He Wen — are you familiar with it?”

“I know it.” Geng Yang nodded and answered the question earnestly. “Young Master He! That kid used to throw his weight around inside because his older brother, who ran a company on the outside, was pulling strings for him. He was insufferably arrogant in there. Later on, someone with a personal grudge came for him. Who knows how they managed to smuggle in a blade that long—”

Geng Yang raised his hand and indicated the length.

“They grabbed He Wen by the collar and drove it straight into his stomach. If Jiang Cheng hadn’t saved him, He Wen would have been dead long ago. Jiang Cheng took a knife for him at the time — in the side — and nearly lost his own life as well.”

Zhou Jin’s knuckles went white as she gripped her hands together. A long moment passed before she could let out a slow breath.

Geng Yang was entirely oblivious and carried on: “He Wen was enormously grateful — a life-saving debt, after all! From that point on, the two of them were as close as brothers sharing one pair of trousers. Once that business was over, the other convicts inside also changed how they saw Jiang Cheng — they felt he was a man of real loyalty.

And besides, he’d been a police officer — he had connections, he could arrange to have all sorts of useful things brought in from outside — so in the end, a great many people ended up following his lead…”

He paused for a moment, then couldn’t resist adding: “I wasn’t one of his followers, mind you. We were friends on equal footing. Because I taught him bookkeeping, he always treated me with great respect.”

Zhou Jin was silent for a long while, her head bowed in thought, before she asked: “Just now — where did you say he was injured?”

Geng Yang said, “On his back. That wound must have been seven or eight inches long.”

Zhou Jin asked him to keep recalling, to see if he could remember anyone else in the prison whom Jiang Cheng had been close to.

She also asked a few questions about He Wen. The staff at Guhua Prison informed her that He Wen had passed away three years ago — stomach cancer.

She figured He Wen was probably unconnected to the plans that came later. If Jiang Cheng had been undercover, he would have been using He Wen merely as a stepping stone, with the real target being He Wen’s older brother, He Wu.

Zhou Jin was still turning this over in her mind when a ringtone cut through her thoughts. The call was from Yu Dan.

Her voice carried a note of urgency: “Zhou Jin, come to the Major Crimes Unit. Jiang Cheng has gone completely out of control — he’s demanding to see you, and he’s already attacked two of the officers assigned to take his statement!”

Zhou Jin’s brow furrowed sharply. “What did you say? Isn’t he still in the hospital?”

Yu Dan explained: “He woke up. When they tried to take his statement, he refused to cooperate at all, and went ahead and confessed outright that he personally killed Director Yao and Meng Junfeng. So they transferred him to the Major Crimes Unit to continue the interrogation.”

Zhou Jin felt a wave of panic rise through her. “Try to hold things off for me — I’m on my way back right now.”

She couldn’t afford to waste a single moment. She drove at a breakneck speed all the way back and arrived at the Major Crimes Unit in what felt like a flash.

She hadn’t even reached the interrogation room when the sound of a furious, thunderous roar carried out from inside — reverberating through the corridor.

“Who the hell do you think you are, interrogating me like I’m a criminal? Want to use your hands? Fine — come on then!!”

“……”

“Get out! Get out!”

“……”

“Bring Zhou Jin here to see me! Until I see her, I won’t say a single word!”