In the interrogation room, Han Shi felt as if he had died once.
The man before him had once been his idol, someone he had desperately wanted to replace. Time had passed, and he had gradually forgotten just how formidable this person had once been.
It was only at this moment that he understood that his carefully prepared interrogation script was, in the eyes of the other man, a confession riddled with flaws. Not only had his past been unraveled, but the amount of money extorted had also been deduced.
Han Shi looked up weakly at Ping An.
Was this still human? After all these years of preparation, he had been defeated in just a few words. No, he was not resigned. He still had a trump card. He would bring him down!
"Ping An, don't be so smug. Did you forget? I was prepared to go to jail, but your disciple, your precious, idiotic disciple, is about to become a murderer!" Han Shi said resentfully to Ping An, "Even if she killed someone while hallucinating, she still killed someone. Her hands are dirty, do you know that? Her life is ruined!"
"Hahahahahaha, hahahaha," Ping An suddenly burst into laughter, an excessive, almost bent-over laugh, his hands gripping the edge of the table.
"Hong Fu Road, Lane Three, House Twenty-Seven!" Ping An, stifling his laughter, said to Han Shi with a murderous glint in his eyes, "Is the security guard who stole Zhang Si's identity named Yao Wei?"
Han Shi felt as if he had been struck by lightning. He stared at the person before him in disbelief. How could this be possible? Even Wang Sanfa didn't know, so how could he know so clearly?
In the adjacent room, as soon as Ping An uttered the name Yao Wei, Xiang Wanfeng immediately dispatched Qiao Yidan to apprehend him. No one doubted whether Ping An was lying to scare Han Shi, because at this moment, Han Shi's expression had already proven his defeat. "How, how could you possibly know?" Han Shi asked, his hands trembling.
"Well, I didn't know. My mind wasn't on this these past few days," Ping An said. "The person who gave me this information is my disciple. That's right, the one you treated like a pig and toyed with, a natural detective with a 'memory palace,' Su Tang. The one you underestimated."
Time rewinded to before the interrogation.
After Han Shi was taken away, Su Tang called out to Ping An.
"Master, I've found some information, I hope it can help you," Su Tang said somewhat shyly.
"You? You were treated like a pig and toyed with, even going to jail, and you can still find something out?" Ping An asked.
"Master, don't hit someone when they're down. This time I fell for a honey trap. It's all your fault. You never let me interact with handsome guys more, or I wouldn't have been so easily fooled," Su Tang said nonchalantly.
"I'll beat you to death!" Ping An glanced at his watch and patiently said, "Speak, you have three minutes."
"That security guard, I don't know if he's the murderer, but I do know his name and home address. Do you want it?" Su Tang playfully stuck out her tongue, her face expressing, "Quick, praise me."
"How did you know?" Ping An asked incredulously.
"You've been so busy these past few days that you haven't noticed the uncles are missing every day?" Su Tang said. "Alright, it's actually super simple, let me tell you."
It turned out that after Su Tang was arrested, she wasn't completely helpless, waiting for her master to rescue her. After overcoming the initial difficult period, she began to try to reconstruct the events of that night and, through her analysis of the security guard, obtained some clues.
"Master, you know I have a 'memory palace.' I haven't used it much these past few years, it's almost going out of business," Su Tang said. After that scoundrel left, I watched the security guard go into the building with food and drinks, and then when he escaped, I was somehow drawn to him."
In Su Tang's "memory palace," how did she immediately realize the security guard was carrying food and drinks? Why wasn't it something else? With this question, she began to recall—the security guard should have been chewing peanuts, because judging by the tension and release of his facial muscles, only peanuts could be chewed in such a manner. The most conspicuous item he carried was a white plastic bag, with some characters printed on it. Of the legible characters, only two were clear: one was "Fu" (富) and the other was "Shi" (市). This type of bag is usually a promotional bag from a supermarket, so the "Shi" should be "supermarket." And in Hechuan City, there is only one supermarket with the character "Fu"—Fuqiang Supermarket.
In the security guard's other hand, he held an ordinary black plastic bag. The bag was not large, but what would be carried in a black plastic bag? Ah, the bag from "Fuqiang Supermarket" contained something with sharp edges, likely a bottle of liquor. For drinking with liquor, there must be snacks. But ordinary snacks are usually in transparent plastic bags, right? Unless, unless in the district where pork is not openly consumed, some Han people specifically use small black bags to pack marinated pork heads, thus showing respect. "I used the opportunity of Gao Da delivering food to have him use his phone to check the map and find a place that fit the description—Hong Fu Road," Su Tang said. "But Hong Fu Road is a very long road, so to shorten the distance, I had to 'meditate' further."
After recalling the bags in the security guard's hands, Su Tang also remembered the ordinary green-soled slippers the security guard was wearing. The slippers themselves were nothing special, but on the left slipper, there was a piece of white tape with a number written on it: 34.
"Master, although my mind wasn't clear during the hallucination, my senses were still active, so I concluded that the rat squeaking I heard that night was real," Su Tang said. "And coincidentally, Shi Han knew I was afraid of rats at the time. He must have used this to scare me."
Su Tang clearly remembered that it wasn't one or two rats squeaking that night, but a dozen or so. Even in cities with rat infestations, it's rare to hear so many rats squeaking together, unless someone is deliberately raising rats. But who would raise rats for fun? So, when Su Tang found a "pet store" on Hong Fu Road from the map, her heart leaped with joy.
It turned out that although the slippers were ordinary, Su Tang knew that this type of slipper came from the hospital. While patients in the hospital brought their own slippers, some departments, like hemodialysis, provided slippers, and some long-term patients would take the slippers with them when they occupied a bed.
"There happens to be a Class A hospital on Hong Fu Road that provides dialysis. And to make dialysis convenient, this security guard should rent a place near the hospital, or live nearby. So I arranged for Da Shu and the others to thoroughly search Hong Fu Road, with a focus on the area around the 'pet store,' and also checked the hospital. The user of these slippers turned out to be Yao Wei, and his home address is right next to the 'pet store'," Su Tang said. "Lao Yuan even chatted with that security guard and guessed that he had recently received a large sum of money. And the security guard's uniform was also drying in his yard."
On the day of the interrogation, Da Shu left someone to keep an eye on Yao Wei, and then had Gao Da report the intelligence to Su Tang. Su Tang was about to find someone to inform Ping An when she saw Han Shi being brought in.
"In your eyes, Su Tang is a naive and sweet girl, right?" Ping An said with some relief after explaining everything. "It's this naive and sweet girl who personally directed an arrest operation two years ago. A scene like that, such experience, you, Han Shi, would never know. Do you think you can be a detective with just a little bit of cleverness? You're not worthy. You're miles behind Su Tang. At the very least, this time, that girl can clear her name even without my help. And you, you can only watch from prison as she inherits my mantle and becomes the best detective in this city."
"You're still biased, you are biased. If I had stayed with you, I could have achieved this. Han Shi said with some unwillingness, "You gave him your resources, you gave him your influence. Do you know that she, a girl under eighteen, can command the most formidable underworld figures in this city? Why?"
"Alright, I've talked enough tonight. That money, it should be in Wang Sanfa's office, right? It's a pity that for this money, you didn't hesitate to fall into the trap of the law," Ping An said. "When Yao Wei arrives, Su Tang will naturally be released. Oh, and the construction site situation was actually very simple. Wang Sanfa actually revealed it. I checked the files and found that the real Zhang Si had a near-drowning incident and developed a mental illness after being rescued. He couldn't move when he saw water in a vortex. Wang Sanfa used this to set up a phone playing images of flowing water at the scene. Zhang Si was stimulated by this, couldn't move, and was finally bludgeoned to death by Wang Sanfa."
After saying this, Ping An said with some dejection: "After Wang Sanfa died, I checked his belongings and found that the plug of his phone charger was missing. And at the construction site, there was a plug inserted into the socket. I checked the phone and found a video of flowing water. After verifying Zhang Si's condition, I naturally understood what happened that night." "I guess you had already planned to use Zhang Si's identity to scheme something, didn't you?" Ping An said. "Zhang Si lived a life of poverty, and only his identity was somewhat valuable. Yao Wei suffered from kidney disease and was rejected by most places. You, always running around in society, introduced them to each other, allowing Yao Wei, who looked very much like Zhang Si, to get a job using Zhang Si's healthy identity and successfully enter Ma Delu's company."
"After A Jiao died, you saw your father growing increasingly despondent, with no will to live. You feigned giving up on the matter and decided to live a good life, but you hinted that you were still resentful. So, you and your father concocted a plan to frame Su Tang and kill Ma Delu, a scheme that killed two birds with one stone," Ping An said. "Yao Wei's family was dirt poor. You made him kill someone using Zhang Si's identity and frame Su Tang. Even if Su Tang was innocent after the incident, Zhang Si would take the blame. At the same time, you promised that Zhang Si would be killed at the same time, making it a cold case that the police couldn't solve, and it would be left unresolved. Finally, your cheap father voluntarily took on the heavy task of killing Zhang Si, and a bloody conspiracy began. Afterward, Yao Wei, who received 500,000, lived a life of worry-free sustenance with his own identity. You took the money extorted over the years to live a rich life. And when you were caught, you probably thought that with just your affairs, even if everything was exposed, it would be at most fifteen years."