Yan Qing turned her wheelchair and gave him a small smile. “I’ve interrupted your work.”

“Not at all.” Shi Ting rose. “Come in. It was nothing important.”

Yan Qing glanced at his right leg, which was visibly stiff. “If you’re injured, why haven’t you gone to the hospital?”

“It’s a minor wound. It’s not getting in the way.”

“I once knew someone who cut their hand cooking and thought nothing of it.” She paused. “Guess what happened?”

“What happened?” Shi Ting asked.

“The infection spread badly. In the end, they amputated the hand.” Yan Qing said it lightly, but the pressure behind the words was unmistakable. “I brought medicine. I’m going to dress the wound now.”

Shi Ting looked at her quietly for a moment, then said with resignation, “It seems the bandage is going on regardless.”

Yan Qing smiled. Clearly, this was not a matter open for negotiation.

“Very well.” He bent and rolled up his trouser leg, and as the fabric rose, a length of roughly wrapped gauze came into view. Dry blood had crusted across the surface. The careless, makeshift dressing said everything about how little attention he had paid to it.

Yan Qing picked up the scissors from her kit and cut the gauze cleanly away. The wound had already bonded with the fabric. Pulling it free by force would tear skin and flesh along with it.

“It’s alright,” Shi Ting said. “Go ahead and take it off.”

Yan Qing frowned. “Do you not feel pain?”

“A little pain like this is nothing.”

Yan Qing looked up and gave him a sharp look. “A man who doesn’t value his own life — it’d serve you right to be in agony.”

He had just been scolded, and yet Shi Ting felt something warm bloom in his chest. His gaze softened before he could stop it.

Yan Qing ignored this infuriating stubborn man and slowly soaked the blood-dried gauze free with iodine, then peeled it away.

“You always have a way,” Shi Ting said from above, his voice genuinely pleased.

She still didn’t respond, because the raw wound before her made her feel both aching and angry at once.

Last night, he had carried her on his back through the floodwater and the mud, and hadn’t cared in the least that he’d scraped his leg. To say she wasn’t moved would be a lie.

“I need to trim away the damaged tissue around the wound. It will hurt a bit.” Yan Qing sighed. “Would you like something to bite down on?”

“No need,” Shi Ting said. “Go ahead.”

She knew only that he had studied abroad. What he had lived through before that, she had no idea.

While she worked on the wound, he didn’t flinch — bearing it with the kind of unhurried ease one might bring to sipping tea. She found herself quietly impressed.

He had almost certainly lived through things few people knew about. Nothing else could have forged this steadiness, this capacity to endure and hold firm.

He was only twenty-two — younger than she had been in that other world.

And most twenty-two-year-old men she had known there were still pampered children at home.

“Done.” Yan Qing tied off the bandage. “Come back tomorrow for a change of dressing. Don’t let the wound get wet, and avoid spicy food.”

The mention of food made her remember the food box at her side. She gestured toward it. “I made you some noodles.”

“You made them yourself?”

“Yes.” Yan Qing lifted the lid. “The ingredients are simple, but I promise it’s a flavor you’ve never tasted.”

“Noodles, as it happens, are my favorite.”

“Really?”

Shi Ting gave a quiet sound of agreement. “When I was studying abroad, the one thing I missed most was noodles from home.”

He watched as Yan Qing poured the broth over the noodles, then arranged the garnishes on top — a mix of meat and vegetables, the colors vivid and bright, and altogether very pleasing to look at.

He found himself genuinely curious. “Does this dish have a name?”

“It’s called satay noodles.”

“Satay noodles?” Shi Ting said. “Another thing you learned from a book?”

He had traveled widely, but this was his first encounter with this particular noodle dish.

“Why not taste it first.” Yan Qing passed him both chopsticks and a spoon. “Have the noodles first, then the broth.”

Shi Ting settled onto the sofa, rolled up his sleeves, and prepared to eat in earnest.

The noodles had a firm, springy chew. The broth was thick and full-bodied — savory, fragrant, and spiced just right. A remarkable dish.

He finished every last noodle and drank the broth down to nothing, and the effort had left a faint sheen of sweat at his brow.

Yan Qing drew a handkerchief from her pocket and held it out. “Here.”

Shi Ting looked at the small white silk square — embroidered faintly with bamboo leaves — and then at the slender, fair hand offering it to him. The same hand that could make the dead speak, and that could also produce a bowl of noodles this good.

“For me?” His tone seemed to be making certain.

Yan Qing nodded. “To wipe the sweat.”

Shi Ting took it, but rather than use it and risk dirtying it, he set it aside with care.

To Yan Qing, offering a handkerchief was as ordinary as offering a paper napkin. She thought nothing of it — unaware that in this era, a woman’s silk handkerchief was a deeply personal object, and to give one to a man carried the weight of a token of affection.

After the meal, Yan Qing asked, “How is the Liu Qi case progressing?”

“I was just heading to the autopsy room. Come with me.” Shi Ting stood and began to tidy up the dishes.

When he noticed Yan Qing’s wheelchair, he saw it was not the one that had been destroyed — this one was somewhat roughly made, and looked well-worn with age.

“What happened to your wheelchair?”

“Father sent someone to have it repaired, but it was smashed beyond recognition. This is an old one I used before — just making do for now.” Yan Qing gave a self-deprecating little smile. “It all serves the same purpose in the end.”

At that, Shi Ting’s brow drew together slightly, though he said nothing more. He took hold of the handles and pushed her toward the autopsy room.

They had barely stepped inside when E’Yuan came out carrying an autopsy report. Spotting Shi Ting, he said immediately, “Director, perfect timing — I was just on my way to bring you this. And Mentor, you’re here too! Are you feeling better?”

“I’m fine now.” Yan Qing smiled. “Finished the autopsy?”

“All done.” E’Yuan looked positively confident this time. “Mentor, just as you instructed, I carefully examined the deceased’s head. I shaved the hair and lifted the scalp — and sure enough, found a hematoma in the extradural space of the left temporal region. The hematoma resulted from trauma to the middle meningeal artery and was the primary cause of death.”

He handed the report to Shi Ting, who passed it directly to Yan Qing.

After reading through two pages, she gave a nod of approval. “Go on.”

E’Yuan continued, “After the hematoma formed, the deceased only felt a headache — he didn’t die immediately. Later he got into a quarrel with Di Huai, who struck him with a wooden rod. But that wasn’t the direct cause of death. What killed him was the expanding hematoma compressing brain tissue, causing cerebral dysfunction. Di Huai is not the killer. The killer is someone else.”

Yan Qing glanced over at Shi Ting with a quiet smile. “Dr. E can truly stand on his own now.”

“Only thanks to Mentor’s guidance,” E’Yuan said, a little sheepishly. “Otherwise the autopsy wouldn’t have gone half so smoothly. We know the cause of death was a blow to the head, but there’s still no reliable evidence pointing to the killer.”

“There may be.” The calm in Yan Qing’s eyes had a way of putting people at ease. E’Yuan had the sense that as long as she was present, no evidence left by the dead would be overlooked, no matter how well hidden.

“Bring me the deceased’s hair.” Yan Qing found two tools from habit.

“I already examined it.” E’Yuan said so, but obediently brought over an evidence bag containing a dark clump of hair.

Liu Qi’s hair was on the longer side — he clearly hadn’t washed it in about a week, and the smell was distinctly stale.

In Yan Qing’s presence, however, such things might as well not exist.

“Mentor, there’s one thing I still haven’t understood.” E’Yuan said. “The weapons used to strike Liu Qi’s head and back both appear to be rod-shaped objects — both showed parallel hemorrhagic contusion bands.”

Yan Qing held a pair of tweezers in her left hand and a magnifying glass in her right, searching through the hair as she answered E’Yuan’s question.

“In my view, the two injuries were not caused by the same weapon. The hollow contusion pattern on the deceased’s back is quite pronounced and matches the width and shape of the wooden rod Di Huai described. But on the photographs you took of the deceased’s head, while a bordered contusion band is also present, it is narrower, more defined, and the damage is more severe. That points to a metal rod as the striking implement.”

“A metal rod?” Shi Ting’s brow furrowed as he turned the thought over. He had seen many kinds of rods over the years — most made of ordinary wood or bamboo. What kind of metal rod would someone have on hand?

“Found it.” Yan Qing’s eyes brightened. She lifted something from the tangle of hair with her tweezers — a tiny fragment, too small to make out with the naked eye, requiring the magnifying glass to see clearly.

“This is…?” Shi Ting leaned in to look. “A paint chip.”

“It appears to be a paint chip.” Yan Qing said. “Can you make out the color?”

“Dark green.” Shi Ting said with certainty.

E’Yuan frowned. “What does a paint chip prove? Liu Qi was filthy — hadn’t washed his hair in a week. Finding something like that in there seems perfectly normal.”

“It would be normal under normal circumstances. But ordinary things, when placed alongside an extraordinary event, stop being ordinary.” Yan Qing looked at Shi Ting. “A metal rod with a dark green painted surface — what could it be?”

Shi Ting ran through everything he had ever encountered that fit that description, and eliminated them one by one. None of them seemed connected to the deceased.

From outside the window came the sound of a horn, not sharp enough to cut through the noise of the busy street.

Shi Ting’s eyes lit up, and three words came out immediately: “A bicycle pump.”

“A bicycle pump — exactly.” Yan Qing lit up as well. “Bicycle pumps are metal, with a painted outer surface. The deceased was a driver — a bicycle pump would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to have. Finding one in his room would raise no suspicion at all.”

With this crucial piece of evidence in hand, Shi Ting immediately led his team to the Yan Mansion.

Since a death had occurred there, the row of modest rooms where the drivers lived had been sealed off by the Military Police Division, with an officer posted to keep watch day and night.

The officer snapped to attention when he saw Shi Ting. “Director.”

“Has anyone entered during the past two days?”

“No one, sir. A few curious onlookers, but that’s all.”

Shi Ting lifted the cordon tape and ducked inside.

Stepping into the room where Liu Qi had lived, Shi Ting immediately spotted the bicycle pump leaning against the wall beneath the window. It was larger in diameter than an ordinary pump, its surface painted dark green — though the paint had long since peeled and chipped from years of use.

Shi Ting estimated the pump’s width by eye. It matched the findings Yan Qing had derived from the body almost exactly. He had no doubt: this bicycle pump was the murder weapon.