“Captain Shi, that Zhang Zhetian has confessed.” Dapeng came rushing in with great excitement to deliver the news.

Hearing that Zhang Zhetian had confessed, the last line of psychological defense in Wang Feng crumbled completely. Unable to hold out any longer, he lowered his head in dejection.

Faced with ironclad evidence, Wang Feng made a full confession of his crimes.

The facts confirmed that Wang Feng and Zhang Zhetian’s method of committing the crime differed little from what Shi Ting had deduced.

“I got to know Fan Mingming through Liu Zimo.” Wang Feng kept his head down, no longer showing any of his earlier slipperiness. “Fan Mingming was raised by her maternal grandparents from a young age, and I was also brought up by my elders, so we had that common ground between us. We both felt we were people to be pitied — people who could offer each other warmth and trust.”

As he spoke, Wang Feng suddenly raised his head and bit his somewhat parched lips. “Could I have a glass of water?”

Old Fan had someone bring a glass of water and set it before him. Wang Feng took a sip before continuing: “Some time ago — I can’t remember exactly which day, it was a weekend — Liu Zimo brought Fan Mingming out to a bar. That evening, Fan Mingming cried to me, saying her mother had beaten her, all because her exam score had dropped five points from the previous time. Over those five points, her mother had become even more strict with her, having all sorts of study schedules drawn up for her. She said she often had to study until two or three in the morning, then get up at five, getting only a few hours of sleep each day.”

“I comforted her a little and also cursed out her parents — they only ever looked at grades. When the grades were good they showed off everywhere, but they never truly cared about her. She was losing hair badly, her hormones were out of balance. On the surface she looked like a high school student, but her body had long been worn far beyond its years. I said, ‘Your parents are barely human — they deserve to die.’ I was only trying to comfort her. I didn’t expect that one day she’d call me and ask over the phone whether I’d be interested in a job. I was short on money at the time, so I asked her what kind of job, and whether it was easy. She said it was very easy — do it right and earn a hundred thousand. I was overjoyed when I heard that, and she then told me: she wanted me to kill her parents. As long as they were dead, she’d pay me a hundred thousand.”

“And you dared to take that kind of money?” Old Fan shot him a sharp look.

“I did turn it down at first. But she wept and begged me, saying that if they didn’t die, she would. I thought it over through the night without coming to any conclusion, so the next day I went to talk it over with my good friend Zhang Zhetian. He agreed right away. So I contacted Fan Mingming again. She told us her parents came home very late, and that the complex had surveillance cameras everywhere with very tight management. The idea of hiding under the garbage truck was hers. She gave us the front door code and stayed in contact with us throughout. Once her parents were back home, she notified us.”

“Her parents didn’t notice you, did they?”

Wang Feng shook his head. “We used the code and got in without trouble. As soon as we entered, we saw her father standing in the living room talking on the phone — very agitated about something, I couldn’t tell what. I was a bit scared at that point, but Zhang Zhetian walked over. He patted her father on the shoulder. When her father turned around, Zhang Zhetian drove a knife into his chest. Her father cried out once. Her mother had just finished bathing; she heard the sound and walked out. I was standing right at the side of the doorway. Zhang Zhetian said, ‘Kill her now — what are you waiting for?’ My mind went blank, and I stabbed her.”

“And after that?”

“After that, the two of them collapsed and didn’t move. Zhang Zhetian pressed a hand to his nose — already gone. No breath.”

“And what was Fan Mingming doing at that point?”

“She didn’t come out. She stayed in her room. It wasn’t until she heard us say they were dead that she opened the door and came downstairs.” Wang Feng’s brow shifted slightly at the memory. “I thought she’d be frightened. Instead, she didn’t even blink. Not a trace of grief on her face. She very calmly told us the rest of the money would be transferred the next day. Then she went to the kitchen, picked up a cleaver, and right in front of us, she hacked at her parents’ bodies several times. She truly despised them to the core.”

Once Wang Feng and Zhang Zhetian had given their full account, Fan Mingming was also brought back to the precinct. She seemed to have known all along that this day would come. Her expression was entirely composed, looking nothing like a girl of seventeen.

She sat behind the interrogation table, her gaze somewhat vacant, refusing to answer any of Old Fan’s questions.

“This girl’s lips are remarkably tight,” Old Fan said at last, at a loss. “She won’t say a word to anything I ask. Looks like she’s prepared to stay silent to the very end.”

Dapeng said from the side: “Why not try switching interrogators? Get a woman in there — women tend to communicate better with each other.”

“Our whole criminal investigation unit is wall-to-wall men. Where are we going to find a woman?” Old Fan’s mouth twitched.

The imbalance between men and women had long been a persistent headache for them. Criminal investigation work was exhausting and dangerous; even the forensics team was on constant overtime and night shifts. It wasn’t that there had never been female colleagues — it was that none of them lasted long before the grueling conditions drove them away.

“Detective Fan, how have you forgotten we still have our ace?” Dapeng blinked. “The goddess from the forensics team — Instructor Yan.”

“Instructor Yan is not under our criminal investigation unit. Performing autopsies is her job; interrogating suspects is not.”

“I’ll go get her.” Before Dapeng had even finished speaking, Shi Ting was already on his feet and heading out the door.

Old Fan and Dapeng, two rough-and-tumble men, exchanged a glance. Dapeng said cheerfully: “See? Captain Shi is very supportive of our work.”

Old Fan: “……”

Something felt off, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.

Yan Qing heard Shi Ting’s request and came over to help without a moment’s hesitation.

But Fan Mingming remained utterly silent in the face of Yan Qing as well, as if a seal had been placed over her mouth.

Just as Fan Mingming seemed prepared to hold her silence all the way to the end, Yan Qing suddenly produced a photograph. She laid it in front of Fan Mingming. “Fan Mingming, look at this. What do you see?”

Fan Mingming glanced at it and her brow furrowed.

It showed a pair of human palms, both bearing the marks of sutures. Though the photograph captured only a close-up detail, she still recognized whose hands these were.

“These are your mother’s hands,” Yan Qing said. “When we performed the autopsy on her body, I found severe subcutaneous hemorrhaging in both palms. Do you know how that was caused?”

Fan Mingming wore an expression of incomprehension, tinged with a trace of disdain — as though she had not the slightest interest in knowing how such injuries could have formed.

“I’ll tell you.” Yan Qing fixed her gaze on the girl’s face — a face still young and soft, yet filled entirely with coldness.

“These are not defensive wounds. This injury was self-inflicted.” Yan Qing spoke each word with deliberate clarity, her voice steady and firm. “At that moment, Zhang Zhetian had already killed your father. Wang Feng was coming for your mother. Your mother’s first instinct was not to flee — it was to think of you, still upstairs. She wanted to run up and protect you. But Wang Feng followed right behind her, so she seized the iron railing of the staircase with both hands and used her body to block his path. She did not know that Wang Feng’s targets were only her and your father. She thought: even if she died, she could not let Wang Feng reach the second floor. She gripped that railing with every ounce of her strength and held her ground — even after Wang Feng stabbed her, she did not let go. It was that extreme force that caused such severe subcutaneous bleeding in her palms. Fan Mingming, you may hate her — but in the final moment of her life, she chose to protect you, not to abandon you.”

“That’s impossible.” The girl who had not spoken a single word suddenly cried out in agitation. “She only ever cared about grades. How could she possibly protect me?”

The tears came as she finished speaking.

Old Fan, watching from outside the glass partition, slapped his thigh in excitement. “Hey, Captain Shi — Instructor Yan’s got the touch. That Fan Mingming actually opened her mouth.”

Shi Ting watched Yan Qing through the glass, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

“As a forensic pathologist, I can tell you with complete professional certainty that my deduction is beyond doubt.” Yan Qing said earnestly: “And I believe, deep inside, you already know it’s true, don’t you?”

Fan Mingming kept shaking her head, tears flying in all directions with the motion.

After quite some time, her emotions settled slightly. Her red and swollen eyes stared straight down at the photograph.

“I hated them.” Fan Mingming bit her lip. “I was living perfectly well with my grandparents. They were the ones who insisted on bringing me back. If they felt my grandparents couldn’t raise me properly, then why did they abandon me right after I was born? They showed me no care, no love. Every single day, the first thing they said to me — the only thing — was: how did you do on your exams? How are your studies? When my grades were good, they didn’t respond the way other parents did — they didn’t tousle my hair, take me to an amusement park, or cook me a good meal with their own hands. They just gave me money. Money, they believed, was the greatest reward they could offer me. And whenever my grades dropped even slightly, they’d pour down a torrent of scolding and abuse. They called me useless; they said I was wasting food just by being alive. You wouldn’t believe it — for people of their education and standing, the way they cursed was worse than anyone.”

Fan Mingming broke off; tears streamed freely down her face again.

Yan Qing handed a tissue toward her. Fan Mingming stared for a moment before slowly reaching out to take it.

“I had been wanting them dead for a long time.” Fan Mingming sniffled. “I couldn’t bear a single day of that life. The thought of living forever under their shadow made it feel like I couldn’t breathe. The day I decided to find Wang Feng — it was because I saw my father with his arms around a woman. She was his student. I don’t know how they came to be entangled. And she wasn’t his only one, either. He had inappropriate relationships with multiple students. He was respected, his students were spread across the world — yet his soul was utterly filthy. Every day he used the same mouth that freely kissed other women to lecture and demean me. Did he have any right to?”

As she reached this point, Fan Mingming’s emotions surged, her face flushing red.

“And my mother — did she think I didn’t know she’d had a child with another man outside? Ha. They thought I knew nothing beyond my studies. They were wrong. I knew everything. Every shameful secret they had — I was fully aware of it.”

—