Chapter 10: Don't Ask, Just Trust My Intuition

Page (1/3)

With Gao Tong’s case temporarily concluded, the new case brought Cen Lian back to the state he knew best.

He knew the answer; only the process of working it out was a little… abbreviated.

It was time to put his backward-reasoning skills to use again.

After familiarizing himself with the computer at his new workstation, which looked no more than five years old, Cen Lian searched for Yang Xu’s household registration information.

Before retiring, the killer had worked as an ideological and political education teacher in the junior high division of No. 5 Gaoyang Middle School in Kaiyuan Province, the neighboring province of Cloudridge. In his photograph, he looked respectable enough that anyone unaware of his crimes might even compliment him on his air of refinement.

But after learning what he had done, Cen Lian could describe him in only two words: old bastard.

Even so, judging from his past record, Yang Xu was truly not the sort of person one would expect to commit such acts.

Before retiring, he had even attained the rank of special-grade teacher. He could be called an educator whose pupils were scattered far and wide.

Cen Lian then pulled up the cases named after the other victims. He discovered that the four victims—two men and two women—had come from different provinces. Apart from their similar ages and the fact that they had all been sexually assaulted without any bodily fluids being left behind, the cases shared little in terms of time or location.

Even the causes of death differed.

Take the victim in Case 1022, Chu Yulin. According to the forensic autopsy report, the killer had restrained him before beating him to death with an irregular hard object, such as a stone.

The choice of weapon suggested that Yang Xu preferred to kill with convenient tools he could find at the scene.

Of the earlier victims, one had been strangled with half a length of electrical wire discarded in a wasteland, while another had been stabbed to death with a section of rebar found near a construction site.

The only time he had failed to kill, the victim had suffered a traumatic brain injury after being struck in the forehead by a broken ceramic vat at a scrap-recycling station. The man had survived, but was left permanently disabled. To this day, he had not recovered normal speech or cognitive function, leaving the police unable to obtain any useful clues from him.

After reviewing the cases, Cen Lian realized that obtaining conclusive evidence and bringing Yang Xu to justice would be extraordinarily difficult.

At least for now, their investigative direction was unlikely to yield much.

Yang Xu was not a native of Kang’an City. Every one of his previous crimes, including this latest one, had been committed across provincial borders.

Cen Lian organized the cases and set them aside. Tang Hua had obtained the surveillance footage retrieved by the other teams and was examining it in detail.

It was already deep into the night, far too late to go door to door through the factory dormitories.

Wang Yuanteng was also studying the surveillance footage. If they could find a single clear frontal image among the countless cameras, it would be an enormous help in solving the case.

Page (1/3)

Page (2/3)

Qi Yan, who had remained silent throughout the journey, suddenly raised his head.

“I saw him heading out of the industrial park.” Qi Yan marked a new point on the map posted on the office whiteboard. “He’s heading toward the downtown area!”

Seven or eight points had already been marked sparsely across the map, each representing a place where the man in black had appeared.

“This route doesn’t look like that of a worker who lives in one of the factory dormitories here year-round.” Cen Lian seized the opportunity to steer their thinking. “Look. The first place he appeared on camera was already in the center of the industrial park. The next several appearances were all near the crime scene. After leaving the vicinity of the crime scene, he kept moving toward the park’s exit, then disappeared between two surveillance cameras.”

“You’re saying he changed clothes both before entering the park and after leaving it.” Qi Yan frowned. “But none of the other cameras around the park caught anyone suspicious.”

Cen Lian was not entirely sure what they meant by “suspicious person.”

“When you conducted the initial screening, what age range did you assign to the killer?” he asked hesitantly.

“Eighteen to fifty-five,” Wang Yuanteng replied without hesitation.

Their exchange finally drew the attention of the other two teams.

Liang Xuan walked over to the whiteboard and studied it carefully, her brows furrowing.

“That age range is too narrow. Expand it downward to fourteen and upward to seventy.” She reached a decision quickly. “Rescreen everyone within that range.”

Qi Yan hesitated, then returned to the computer and reopened the surveillance footage.

Liang Xuan turned to Cen Lian.

“It seems to me that you have another line of thought.” Her tone was unusually certain.

Cen Lian suddenly felt as though she had seen straight through him. Liang Xuan was only a few years older than he was, but her sharp gaze reminded him intensely of his homeroom teacher in high school.

The kind of look that could tell at a glance exactly where he had hidden his phone.

Cen Lian spoke with perfect composure. “I just found several somewhat similar cases. I’m not sure whether they were committed by the same person.”

Liang Xuan’s stare grew even more intent.

Cen Lian remained expressionless. After all, no matter how sharp his high school teacher’s eyes had been, she had never successfully discovered where he had hidden his phone.

Liang Xuan read through the cases he had printed out, her expression gradually turning grave.

Page (2/3)

Page (3/3)

“Your screening criteria were murder cases involving sexual assault, with no bodily fluids left behind and signs of deliberate killing.” After examining the cases carefully, Liang Xuan said, “There isn’t enough basis to combine them yet, but this gives us a new direction to pursue. If these cases were committed by the same killer, then he definitely isn’t from Kang’an City.”

That meant their previous investigative direction had been somewhat misguided.

“I’m going to find Captain Tan.” Given the circumstances, Liang Xuan felt that continuing to investigate factory workers was no longer enough.

After Liang Xuan left, Tang Hua approached Cen Lian, puzzled.

“How did you find these cases?” As far as he knew, only a few hours had passed.

Cen Lian obviously could not tell him that he had searched directly using the victims’ names.

“I found them by instinct while searching for murder cases related to sexual assault.” Cen Lian wore an expression of complete innocence.

“I’ll believe that when pigs fly.” Tang Hua naturally did not believe him, but unable to think of any other explanation, he could only return to the surveillance footage.

After an entire night of overtime without any result, Cen Lian returned to the dormitory arranged for them by the sub-bureau sometime after midnight. The moment his head touched the bed, he lost consciousness.

Early the next morning, Tang Hua’s phone call woke him.

“Get up. We need to go out and continue the investigation.” Tang Hua’s voice on the other end was somewhat muffled; clearly, he had barely woken up himself.

Cen Lian rubbed his eyes as he got out of bed, his mind once again filled with the question of how to make the evidence point toward the killer, Yang Xu.

It was too difficult. None of the evidence they currently had was connected to him in the slightest.

After meeting up with Tang Hua and Wang Yuanteng, Cen Lian was surprised to discover that Qi Yan was absent.

“Don’t bother looking. It’s just the three of us.” Wang Yuanteng yawned. “Qi Yan and the others went to check the surveillance footage from the hotels around the industrial park.”

It seemed that his efforts the previous night had successfully pushed Captain Tan toward a new direction.

“Then let’s get going.” Cen Lian yawned as well. The cold wind of late October finally helped clear his head a little. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some new clue.”

Page (3/3)