What Bai Jin held was a clump of long black hair. At first glance, it looked like he was holding a head.
Shi Ting walked over and took it from him. “A wig?”
“That hair is quite long.” Bai Jin marveled. “So Jing Lan wore a wig in her daily life?”
Shi Ting gazed at the clump of hair, deep in thought.
After a moment, he placed the photograph of You Xiaozhen beside the photograph of Jing Lan. He covered Jing Lan’s large birthmark with his hand, then used a portion of the wig to replicate her hair. In the photo, Jing Lan’s hair fell to her waist, covering her forehead and the sides of her face — leaving only a palm-sized portion of her face exposed.
“Do you see it?” A puzzle that had been forming in Shi Ting’s mind gradually began to resolve itself.
Bai Jin looked carefully, then recoiled in shock. “These two people — they look alike.”
“Jing Lan and You Xiaozhen are biological sisters, so of course their features resemble one another — especially the eyes. I now understand why the victims didn’t resist. Why they submitted and went to their deaths willingly.”
Bai Jin’s eyes lit up, and he asked eagerly, “Why?”
“They didn’t fail to resist — they were frightened into a stupor. Their legs gave out. They simply had no capacity to fight back.”
After finding a set of keys, the two climbed back up the ladder. Bai Jin handed the evidence bags to two guards, then brushed the dust from his clothes.
Shi Ting flicked the grime from his own uniform. Yan Qing had already wheeled herself over — she said nothing, but her eyes were full of questions.
“We’ll talk in the car.” Shi Ting pushed her toward the exit.
The woman called after them urgently, “Is Little Jing coming back? Has she broken the law?”
Shi Ting paused his steps. His voice was deep and resonant. “She will not be coming back.”
At those words, Yan Qing’s heart gave a sharp jolt. The ending she had least wanted to see had arrived just as she feared.
The woman’s muttered words — “She still owes me rent” — faded gradually into the distance. The car windows shut out the noise of the world, and all was very quiet.
—
Yan Qing came to see Jing Lan in the Jinlin Guard’s detention room. She was still wearing her school uniform, and shackles were secured to her hands and feet.
As a suspect in a serious crime, Jing Lan was kept under one-on-one watch — even her meals and bathroom visits were supervised.
She looked visibly more haggard. When she saw Yan Qing seated across from her, she curved her lips into a smile. “Yan Qing, you’ve come to see me.”
Yan Qing’s expression was complex. She said nothing.
The Jinlin Guard’s interrogation of a suspect was not something an outsider like her had any right to attend. Fortunately, Shi Ting had said that with her present, Jing Lan would likely confess more quickly — and so she had been permitted to sit to one side and listen.
Shi Ting placed the stomach medicine and the photograph found at Jing Lan’s residence on the table in front of her. When Jing Lan’s eyes fell on the photograph, her expression shifted noticeably — a flash of venom appeared in her eyes.
“The batch numbers on this stomach medicine match those of the medicine that went missing from Qiao Guang’s home. How do you explain that?”
Jing Lan replied coolly, “I found them. I don’t know anyone called Qiao Guang.”
“On the day of Qiao Guang’s death, all the cooked food she consumed was purchased by you. The proprietor of the food stall and the guard assigned to watch Qiao Guang both identified you without hesitation after seeing your photograph.”
Jing Lan said nothing — she had every intention of staying silent to the end.
Faced with such a stubborn suspect, Shi Ting showed no impatience.
He leaned back in his chair, long, elegant fingers tapping lightly on the surface of the table. “Since you won’t speak, allow me to reconstruct the process by which you killed Leng Yu, Fan Dongping, and Luo Baimi — and then killed Qiao Guang, staging it as a suicide to clear yourself of suspicion.”
Those sharp eyes fixed themselves on Jing Lan without wavering. His lips, measured and deliberate, produced three syllables: “You — Xiao — Lan.”
At the sound of that name, Jing Lan’s body gave a visible flinch.
“One year ago, Qiao Guang tired of Leng Yu and Fan Dongping. Luo Baimi, seeking to protect herself, began procuring attractive young women for Qiao Guang’s amusement — and set her sights on You Xiaozhen. You Xiaozhen had a younger sister suffering from a chronic stomach ailment, and a bedridden father. Unable to cover her family’s expenses, the desperate You Xiaozhen agreed to Luo Baimi’s arrangement and accompanied Qiao Guang. But You Xiaozhen had a fierce and unyielding nature — she could not bring herself to submit, and she despised Qiao Guang’s advances. She even struck him. But Qiao Guang was never one to let a beautiful woman escape him. He colluded with Luo Baimi, Leng Yu, and Fan Dongping to torment and terrorize You Xiaozhen. Unable to endure the abuse and humiliation, You Xiaozhen ultimately hanged herself in Classroom 104.” Shi Ting’s penetrating gaze bore down on Jing Lan, every word landing like a blade. “You had unknowingly discovered You Xiaozhen’s secret, and from that moment, a seed of hatred took root in your heart. You worked tirelessly to gain admission to the nursing school, spent a long time covertly observing Luo Baimi and the others, devised a plan to kill them — and on the anniversary of You Xiaozhen’s death, you set your path of revenge in motion.”
Yan Qing noticed that Jing Lan’s hands had been trembling throughout. Each time Shi Ting spoke You Xiaozhen’s name, Jing Lan’s pale lips quivered uncontrollably, and her body grew taut as a bowstring stretched to its breaking point.
Seeing her emotions approaching the edge of collapse, Shi Ting knew it was time to pull the net closed.
“You Xiao Lan — if not for you, You Xiaozhen would not have taken her own life. She would never have suffered the way she did. A girl that lovely and good-hearted deserved so much more. Do you think killing Luo Baimi brought your sister back? It didn’t. It never will.”
“Stop!” Jing Lan suddenly screamed — for one instant she seemed unhinged, and then the former composure returned. She lurched to her feet, the shackles on her wrists clattering and jangling. With emotion overflowing, the large birthmark on her face seemed almost to pulse, giving her a frightening, savage look. “I know she can’t come back. But they deserved to die — every last one of them. I wanted them to suffer the same anguish as my sister. I wanted them to go to the grave and keep her company. What does it matter that she can’t come back? Everyone who destroyed her has died a terrible death. I’m satisfied. I’m satisfied. Ha — ha ha ha.”
Jing Lan’s laughter landed on Yan Qing’s chest like a great stone, leaving her breathless for a moment.
Almost on instinct, she called out, “Jing Lan.”
At the sound of her voice, Jing Lan’s unhinged expression deflated like a punctured balloon, contracting by degrees.
She collapsed back into her chair, wrapped her hands around her head, and buried her face against the table.
“You’ve won.” After a long moment, her voice rolled up from a raw throat — it sounded like self-mockery, like the surrender of everything.
She knew that everything Shi Ting had said was his deduction. But he had spoken with such certainty, as though he had witnessed it firsthand — and in particular, every time he had uttered You Xiaozhen’s name, it struck her like a heavy blow against the shell she had built around herself, until every last defense crumbled away.
Even if she had kept her mouth shut, she would have been no match for Shi Ting, who was adept at psychological warfare with criminals. He was still too inexperienced for him. He knew exactly where to strike her, and he had done so in a single, decisive blow.
“Yan Qing — having a friend like me must be a source of shame for you.” Jing Lan suddenly let out a quiet, bitter laugh. “Not only am I ugly, I’ve killed people. I’m not fit to be your friend.”
Yan Qing knew that at this moment, nothing she could say would make any difference. Silence was the only answer — and so she was silent.
Jing Lan buried her head deeper, and then began to weep without restraint. “I’ve failed my sister. I’ve failed her.”
Yan Qing placed a cup of warm water in front of Jing Lan. She regarded her with a complex look for a moment, then withdrew to her original position.
After a while, once Jing Lan’s emotions had eased somewhat, Shi Ting asked, “Tell us how you killed Leng Yu and the others.”
“Very well.” At this point, Jing Lan had nothing left to hide. She knew the crime she had committed carried the punishment of death by firing squad — whether she spoke little or much, she could not escape execution.
The hatred that had been festering and fermenting within her for so long had no outlet — like rotting food, relentlessly consumed by bacteria, until it putrefied and reeked, until even her soul had grown filthy with it.
“Commander Shi, you were quite right.” Jing Lan spoke with genuine admiration. “Your analysis of motive is very precise — as though you lived it yourself. But you are not me. You will never understand the suffering I endured. The sister who raised me from childhood vanished one day without a trace. My bedridden father and I went hungry for two days. When we truly could bear it no longer and the worry was unbearable, I — who almost never went outside — forced myself to bundle up and make my way to the school. It was only after asking around that I learned my sister had hanged herself two days earlier, and her body had been taken away by the Jinlin Guard. I didn’t dare go to identify her. I fled home in a panic. In my most desperate hour, I found a diary among her belongings — and only then did I understand what humiliation my sister had endured for me, for our family.”
Jing Lan’s expression twisted with grief as she spoke, and tears fell in a steady stream.
“What Qiao Guang and the others did was inhuman. You cannot imagine what they put my sister through. To coerce her, they forced her to swallow cotton — even tacks. After she swallowed the tacks, they kicked and stomped on her abdomen, trying to make the tacks puncture her intestines and stomach. Luo Baimi loved to strike people with a ruler — she slapped my sister across the face with it, knocking out three of her teeth, until blood ran from her mouth and her face swelled up like a steamed bun. They locked her in Qiao Guang’s home for three days and three nights. In the end, Qiao Guang violated her.” Jing Lan’s eyes blazed with a hatred that looked as though it could burn and consume everything in its path. “After returning home, she cooked a few good dishes for our father and me. When the meal was done, she gave me several bottles of stomach medicine and told me carefully how to take them. That night, I woke in the early hours and found her sitting at my bedside, watching me in silence. If I had been smarter, I might have seen the despair and reluctance in her eyes. But I was too foolish. I didn’t understand any of it. The next day, she went to school and never came back.”
Jing Lan covered her face and sobbed. “What she worried about most when she left was me. But she had no more courage to go on living. People said she was wearing red when she died — so that she could become a vengeful spirit after death and fulfill her wish.”
Yan Qing asked quietly, “So you were the one who started the rumor about Classroom 104 being haunted, and the ghost shadow people saw was your own doing — a trick to create an illusion.”
“Yes.” Jing Lan gave a cold laugh. “Since everyone already knew that a female student in red had hanged herself in Room 104, I used that to my advantage — to deceive and misdirect, and at the same time to terrorize Leng Yu and the others.”
“And how did you get Leng Yu, Fan Dongping, and Luo Baimi to go to Classroom 104? They couldn’t have gone there willingly just because you told them to.”
Jing Lan looked at Shi Ting, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “Commander Shi is so capable — why not take a guess?”
—