Disbelief spread plainly across Zhou Jin’s face. Hadn’t Qi Yan been shot and killed by the police long ago?

Jiang Hansheng understood her confusion. Even he himself could not yet untangle the full truth of it.

He had killed Qi Yan with his own hands. Because of the hypnosis, the moment he had pulled the trigger was preserved in his memory with unusual clarity.

At the time, he had lost all sense of how many times night had given way to day and day back to night.

It had been like fighting a war without end. Qi Yan had exhausted every method available to him to stimulate his pain, and when the agony had mounted to the point of being unbearable, Qi Yan had — with a show of “generosity” — administered another dose of the drug, slowly easing the suffering from his body.

The drug itself was not the most frightening thing. What was frightening was this: after each time his pain was deliberately provoked and then relieved, Jiang Hansheng began to crave it — to wait for it, to long for the moment the injection would come. That psychological dependency was far, far harder to break than any physical addiction.

On the final day, Jiang Hansheng had opened his eyes from unconsciousness, jolted awake by the dense, relentless gunfire outside the warehouse.

His awareness crawled back to him slowly. And with it came the sensation in every part of his body — fine and piercing, like a thousand needles pressing into his skin all at once.

It was genuinely agonizing.

Jiang Hansheng swallowed against his dry throat. Cold sweat traced down his pale cheeks, one drop at a time.

Roughly half a minute passed before the capacity for coherent thought returned to him.

Gunfire — there was gunfire outside. If there was gunfire, had Yao Weihai already tracked him down and brought backup?

He lifted his head with great effort and surveyed his surroundings. The warehouse was quiet, not a person in sight.

Only the couple was still there. The man was already dead, his body releasing a creeping, putrid stench. Flies buzzed and swarmed, crawling over the grayish-blue stillness of his rigid face.

The woman was still alive, huddled in a corner with her knees pulled to her chest, her whole body trembling without stop.

Jiang Hansheng endured the acute pain and dragged his chair toward the girl. The moment he drew close, she suddenly raised her head. From somewhere, she had found a handgun. She gripped it with both shaking hands, pointing it straight at him, and screamed with a wildness that had long since broken past reason: “Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you—!”

She had stolen the gun — taken it from the man named Feng He while he was assaulting her.

“It’s me. It’s me.” Jiang Hansheng’s voice was severely hoarse. He forced each word out as clearly as he could. “Listen to me, please — help me untie the ropes, and then find somewhere to hide—”

The gun in her hands trembled, still aimed at him.

Jiang Hansheng held her gaze steadily and made his promise in a quiet voice: “Trust me. I will get you out of here. I promise.”

“…”

She stared at him for more than ten seconds, then seemed to come to herself all at once. She struggled to her feet and moved to work at his ropes.

The more urgent her need, the less her fingers would cooperate.

She broke into desperate sobs. “I can’t undo it! I can’t get it undone!”

“Don’t panic.” Jiang Hansheng held his consciousness together and worked to calm her. “Take your time. Slowly.”

The pressure at his wrists eased. Jiang Hansheng could finally move his hands.

The girl’s nerves were wound to their absolute limit, her every sense amplified beyond measure. She heard the footsteps — growing closer — and said through her tears, “Do you hear that? They’re coming back. They’re right outside—”

Jiang Hansheng had no time to think. He poured every last fragment of his strength into standing upright, seized the girl’s hand, and ran with her to a utility room at the far end of the warehouse.

He pushed her inside, pressed a finger to his lips, and said in a low voice, “Stay hidden. Not a sound, no matter what.”

He moved to pull the door shut. When only the thinnest gap remained, the girl shot out her hand and grabbed the door — and through the crack, pressed her gun into his.

Jiang Hansheng looked down and met a pair of eyes, dark as ink. She said nothing. But in her gaze he saw the wordless plea she could not speak aloud.

Jiang Hansheng said, “We’re going to be alright.”

The door closed tightly. Jiang Hansheng gripped the gun and was making for the warehouse exit when footsteps sounded on the staircase.

He turned. He raised the weapon and trained it on the figure descending toward him.

It was Qi Yan.

The staircase had long since rusted through with age — little more than an iron frame remained — and each step made it creak and groan underfoot.

Qi Yan raised both hands and walked toward Jiang Hansheng at an unhurried pace. “Mr. Jiang.”

Jiang Hansheng’s ears were ringing. The hand holding the gun trembled. Two or three seconds passed. Then he said, “Qi Yan. You’ve lost.”

“Have I?”

Jiang Hansheng’s tone was measured, but absolute: “I will see to it that you rot in that prison cell until you die there.”

Qi Yan smiled. “I wonder, has Mr. Jiang ever heard this saying — death is the true beginning, for it brings rebirth. So you see, I am not afraid to die.”

“…”

“Though losing to you specifically does leave me somewhat unsatisfied.” Qi Yan’s smile held, and his voice filled with deliberate provocation. “As long as I draw breath, I will find a way to ensure you never know peace again. Do you believe me? Your family. Your friends. Oh — and the girl in the pocket watch…”

Jiang Hansheng began to tremble beyond his ability to suppress. He clenched his jaw, gripped his gun hand at the wrist with his other hand, and in that instant a thought surfaced in his mind — one that had never been there before.

Pull the trigger. Kill him. End this now.

At that exact moment, Yao Weihai burst in with his team. Over a dozen guns snapped simultaneously onto Qi Yan.

But none of them fired — because Qi Yan had his hands raised. He had already surrendered.

Yao Weihai shouted from behind him: “Jiang Hansheng — don’t shoot!”

Jiang Hansheng snapped back into himself. After a brief pause, he slowly turned to look at Yao Weihai, confirming again and again that it was truly him — and the terrible impulse that had flared to life a moment ago began, gradually, to waver and recede.

Yao Weihai walked toward him.

A short distance away, Qi Yan laughed softly and picked up his earlier train of thought without missing a beat: “She must look beautiful in a red dress.”

…

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang—!

The recoil had left his arm numb. The cold, slick feel of the handgun against his palm remained, to this day, perfectly clear.

Then, suddenly, his right hand was taken.

“Hansheng?” Zhou Jin was watching him, her eyes sharp and searching. “Are you alright?”

Several seconds passed. Jiang Hansheng returned from wherever he had been. As if trying to anchor himself entirely in the present, he turned his hand and held hers in return.

He managed a faint smile. “I drifted off for a moment.”

Zhou Jin asked, “If what you’re saying is right — that Qi Yan didn’t die — then who was it the police killed that day?”

Jiang Hansheng shook his head. “I don’t know yet.”

“Death is the true beginning, for it brings rebirth.”

He had never examined those words closely before. Turning them over now, he thought there might be more in them than he had realized.

When the gun had been pointed at him, “Qi Yan” had still dared to provoke — was it because he was certain Jiang Hansheng wouldn’t fire? Or had he been deliberately seeking death?

If it had been deliberate, what was the purpose? An unwillingness to go to prison? Or—

A fifth person?

Had he been protecting a fifth person?

Jiang Hansheng — as well as the girl who had survived — had both testified to the police that there were four individuals in the warehouse in total, which matched exactly the number the police had shot and killed.

Because of that accounting, the police had withdrawn their full cordon and search forces, giving a fifth person the opening to slip away undetected.

And that person was the real Qi Yan.

The true perpetrator of the Huaiguang serial murder case. The architect and driving force behind the “8·17” gun-theft operation.

Now, the Jingang Port net-closing operation launched to crack the “8·17” case had ended in catastrophic failure.

That left one remaining path back to the truth: to return to the source and reopen the investigation into the Huaiguang serial murder case.

Jiang Hansheng had not let go of Zhou Jin’s hand this entire time. He said, “I want to go to Huaisha.”

Zhou Jin asked, “You want to re-examine the Huaisha serial murder case?”

Jiang Hansheng nodded.

Zhou Jin asked, “Has Teacher Wang not made any headway there?”

Jiang Hansheng said, “The investigation has been stalled repeatedly for certain specific reasons. It hasn’t gone smoothly.”

Wang Pengzhe was the director of the Provincial Bureau’s Criminal Research Division — someone the entire law enforcement community held in high regard. Zhou Jin was genuinely curious. “What reasons?”

Jiang Hansheng smiled ruefully. “When we get to Huaisha, you’ll understand. Zhou Jin — if it’s possible, I’d like you to be by my side.”

Zhou Jin answered without a moment’s pause: “Of course.”

“…”

Jiang Hansheng had not expected her to agree so readily.

Zhou Jin said, “Qi Yan had the nerve to ask you to send me his regards — that’s a plain and open threat, using your safety against me. It’s far too dangerous for you to go alone. I’ll go ask my master to approve the assignment right now.”

Jiang Hansheng paused for a moment, then a warmth came into his smile. “Then I’ll be in Officer Zhou’s capable hands. Please make sure you stay by my side at every moment.”

The smile touched the corner of his lips, but Zhou Jin was entirely serious. She stepped forward and reached around to give him a gentle pat on the back.

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”