Chapter 51 – Devil Exchange

Translator: Yuzu

Xiao Chen raised his head, did not say anything, and met her eyes with a calm expression.

The woman was not aggressive, and her expression could be regarded as friendly as she smiled. But in the next second, her eyes became sharp, instantly became fiery, and she stared at Xiao Chen’s eyes.

Neither of them spoke.

Under the dim light, their expressions were somewhat unreadable, with a bit of secrecy.

Finally, the woman was the first to break the strange silence and thoughtfully said to Xiao Chen. “Student Xiao Chen, are you sure you didn’t sleepwalk that day?”

Xiao Chen narrowed his eyes slightly at the words. The lenses blocked his expression, so the woman couldn’t see much of a change in his appearance. His voice carried a unique huskiness, “Why are you so suspicious of me?”

He paused, as if he had thought of something, and calmly analyzed, “As police officers, you should have known that analyzing the composition of a crime from a legal point of view, four basic conditions must be met at the same time: subject, object, subjective aspect, and objective aspect“.

Xiao Chen’s expression remained unchanged. His tone was light, and he presented the facts with a calm face. “The perpetrator sleepwalking belongs to the non-conscious state. The harmful acts that he commits will not be able to constitute a crime at all because he does not have the subjective conditions.”

Xiao Chen watched the woman’s every move and continued, “If Li Da was really killed by me while sleepwalking, don’t you also know that I am equally able to use the legal means to defend myself and even get off the hook.”

The woman’s fingers were clenched, and her expression was grave.

Because every word that Xiao Chen said was correct.

Xiao Chen looked at the woman and used his hand to slightly prop up his glasses. The lenses flashed a little because of the reflection. He calmly continued his statement, “I don’t deny that I sleepwalk and have a mental illness,” He raised his eyebrows up and stared at the woman’s expression with a deadly glare, “but”

“I do not believe that these can constitute grounds for you to doubt me.”

For a moment, the entire room fell into a deadlock again.

After Xiao Chen spoke, he held the pendant on his neck with his right hand and gently rubbed it, as if he was caressing some kind of treasure. He glanced at the watch on the woman’s wrist, withdrew his hand, and gently opened his lips with some certainty, “Officer, time is up, can I go now?”

They used psychological warfare to get at him, so these people left him alone in this closed interrogation room from the beginning. The closed environment, the oppressive lighting, the mirror in front of him with nowhere to hide were all to try to break down his psychological defenses, a common psychological tactic used by the police to interrogate criminals.

But.

Xiao Chen pursed the corners of his lips.

These things, to him, were nothing.

The woman’s face changed slightly when she heard Xiao Chen’s words, but before she could respond, a sudden rush of footsteps hurriedly approached outside the door.

“Puff!” Once again, the door was opened hastily – by a male police officer.

The woman turned back at the sound, and her face was ugly.

The male officer fixed himself in his place and glanced at Xiao Chen in the doorway. When he saw the latter’s probing gaze, he couldn’t help but tighten his grip.

His eyes moved, and his eyebrows went up, hinting at the woman with his eyes.

The woman immediately stood up and glanced at Xiao Chen before leaving, as if she had many complicated emotions. She had a heavy expression, but she didn’t say anything and quickly retreated from the room.

Xiao Chen sat in the room without much movement.

With his eyes downcast and bangs covering his eyes, he resembled a fragile porcelain doll with delicate features. The lights in the room shone on his face, giving him a sense of beauty that could not be explained.

Suddenly, Xiao Chen seemed to feel something, and his eyebrows jumped violently.

It was as if something like a soft tentacle started to slowly attach to his temple from the back of his head and parted the stray hair on his forehead. It even slipped past his glasses and touched the corner of his eye.

The movement of that unknown thing was very light. It was so light that it could almost be ignored, but in this weird, dull, and quiet room, the feeling would be infinitely magnified, making it impossible to ignore it.

Xiao Chen subconsciously clutched the pendant around his neck, which was his usual action when he wanted to gain psychological comfort.

At this moment, his five senses had been amplified to the extent that he could clearly hear his own breathing, not to mention that numbing touch.

Xiao Chen swallowed his saliva. There was a bit of panic and excitement. He couldn’t help but grit his teeth and curse a couple of times in his heart.

Damn it. It was this strange feeling again.

Before Xiao Chen could comfort himself that this was all just an illusion, his body became stiff in the next second.

“Don’t be afraid.” Someone attached to his ear and breathed. The fuzzy touch caused him to shiver.

Xiao Chen was a little panicked, and the placement of his legs were all a little confused. He began to frantically make mental notes to himself, and his entire body involuntarily attached itself to the table, supporting his head with his hands. His fingers squeezed into a fist, trying to ease himself out of this so-called hallucination.

But!

This hallucination was more real than any of the previous ones!

So real that he couldn’t even fool himself that it was an illusion!

Xiao Chen could even feel that there was another frequency of breathing in this room apart from himself. It was fast, like an athlete who couldn’t breathe properly after a run, not like a person’s normal breathing, but instead like it was because of tension.

Xiao Chen’s fingers were stiff as he listened to that person’s heartbeat.

What’s going on! It was too real!

That person’s cold hands touched his shoulders. Xiao Chen’s body became rigid at the moment of being touched. His breathing stalled, but those hands seemed to feel Xiao Chen’s discomfort and patted his back gently. However, his movements didn’t stop because of that, and he was still moving slowly. The movements were gentle, as if they were teasing.

Finally, not knowing how long it had been moving, those hands stopped!

Xiao Chen sucked in a breath of cold air at the moment he stopped.

That hand stopped at the position of his shoulder blade. Even the fingers were intentionally or unintentionally tracing the location of his tattoo.

His body’s sensitive points were different from those of other people. This tattoo was one of his sensitive points; that’s why he reacted so badly when Zhou Ming touched him there.

It was as if someone let out a soft laugh in the silent room, and this laugh carried an inexplicable lingering feeling.

Xiao Chen paused when he heard this laugh. His expression instantly became somewhat dumbfounded; even his body unconsciously relaxed after hearing the laughter. Like a reflex arc, the body has muscle memory. He would relax and even open his heart because of this familiar laugh, even though his brain still resisted the situation.

Just as Xiao Chen was stunned, the door of the interrogation room opened once again.

Xiao Chen looked over in a trance. The fascinating fluttering around him dissipated as if what had just happened was just Xiao Chen’s imagination.

The woman stood at the door, her expression even more serious than when they first saw each other. She stood quietly at the door, like an iceberg, “Student Xiao Chen, you can leave now!”

Xiao Chen slowly stood up and quickly returned to his senses. He patted his clothes, and in the next second, clutched the pendant around his neck. He met the woman’s searching eyes as he walked to the door. The woman looked thoughtfully at the pendant around Xiao Chen’s neck, but her demeanor was no longer as cold as it was when she was interrogating him just now.

After delivering Xiao Chen to the entrance of the police station herself, the woman nodded at Xiao Chen. She moved her chin slightly in the direction of the outside, indicating that he could leave.

Xiao Chen looked at her back and scanned her up and down, not in a hurry to leave.

This woman was not dressed like an ordinary policeman. From the way she had just interrogated him and how the other officers had treated her, he was almost certain.

She was a detective!

What else could it be that would make a detective rush to deal with it?

It was murder.

Xiao Chen narrowed his eyes, thinking of the male officer who had just called the woman out.

The general detective can handle several new cases simultaneously. There are usually only two kinds of things that can make him so eager to inform the woman.

Finding the key clue, the suspect, while the other kind was the emergence of a murder closely related to the following case.

So, was it possible that a murder had appeared that was linked to Li Da?

Wang Jingyi’s body was found in the swimming pool near the library. It had been a full thirty hours since her death, and…..

…her body was found to be completely devoid of blood and stiff. Her features even more so because she had been in the water for too long. Her nose had bled profusely, and her body had become very rigid.

The swimming pool where Wang Jingyi was found has long been abandoned for several years. The water in the pool was yellow wastewater. The location was nearby the library, where very few people would pass by.

Who would have thought that a murder could happen just inside the school campus where people were dead for a day and a night, and the body was only discovered because it floated up.

This was no longer just a simple case. The school’s security facilities, monitoring equipment, the management of dormitory bed-checking situations… all have a large number of hidden threats.

The school, which was already in a frenzy because of Li Da’s matter, became even more anxious and started to deal with the emergency PR.

The students were even more terrified. The entire school was in a tacit depression, fearing that the next disaster would be their own, and they started to be cautious.

Xiao Chen returned to the school and learned the news of Wang Jingyi’s death almost immediately.

When Xiao Chen returned, Zhou Ming was playing a game in his dorm room with his legs crossed and a lollipop in his mouth. He only looked up and called out to him politely when Xiao Chen entered the door, seemingly not even half curious about where he had gone last night.

Xiao Chen’s keen sense of Zhou Ming’s whole person was very tense. Although every move was no different from usual, Xiao Chen was gifted in observing people, not to mention that he and Zhou Ming were in the same dorm room and had a good relationship.

Xiao Chen squinted his eyes and took a look around to see the changes inside the dorm room.

Zhou Ming’s trash can was not full. The trash inside was still yesterday’s trash, not in line with Zhou Ming’s Garbage King style. Not only that, Xiao Chen could almost see at a glance that Zhou Ming’s blanket was still folded as it was yesterday morning. Even the part of the sheet that was protruding due to the laying out was without any difference.

Xiao Chen was almost sure that Zhou Ming hadn’t slept in his dorm room last night, either.

Probably because Xiao Chen’s expression was too serious, Zhou Ming felt uncomfortable being stared at. He raised his head, laughed dryly twice, and took the initiative to speak, “Why didn’t you come back to the dorm yesterday?”

Xiao Chen lowered his head. His sharp observation ability allowed him to notice things that ordinary people wouldn’t notice. His EQ and personality dictated that he wouldn’t actively embarrass others and make himself look bad. Still, he was also an extremely sensitive person.

Xiao Chen sat on his chair, “Something happened that needed to be dealt with.” He didn’t want to say that he had gone to the police station, so he wouldn’t ask back at Zhou Ming why he hadn’t gone back to his dorm room yesterday as well.

Zhou Ming nodded his head sensibly and no longer spoke.

Xiao Chen restrained his eyes and opened his own drawer, and when he got a good look at what was inside, his eyebrows jumped sharply.

There were a bunch of red roses in his drawer.

Xiao Chen’s hand trembled a little as he held the red rose in his hand. His movements were light, as if he was worried about damaging its delicate flower.

He looked back at Zhou Ming, who was still immersed in his own world and turned around. He exhaled deeply, seemingly a little unsettled.

This rose was still fresh. There were water droplets on the top of the branches. The broken branches were still green, and they hadn’t turned yellow. There was even a faint fragrance. Xiao Chen used his hand to squeeze the petals; they were still hard.

He was utterly certain that this bouquet of flowers had not been placed here for too long.

Xiao Chen’s eyes were sharp, and he noticed that there was a card in the drawer. He reached out and gently picked it up, and when he could see the words on it clearly, he couldn’t help but freeze.

‘There may be five thousand flowers exactly like you in the world, but only you are my unique rose.’ — ‘The Little Prince.’

Who the hell is it?

Xiao Chen was horrified and had a series of questions in his mind.

–

Wang Yeze began to recall the key characters in his head, trying to find clues.

In this movie, there were a total of eight actors, three girls and five boys.

Li Da, Zhou Ming, Xiao Chen, Wang Yeze, Yang Sun, Wang Jingyi, Luo Xiaoxiao, and Jiang Ling.

Excluding himself, there were still seven people left. Excluding the boys, there were only three left. Now that Wang Jingyi was dead, that left only Luo Xiaoxiao and Jiang Ling as his target mission.

As long as he killed these two, his mission would be complete!

Thinking of this, Wang Yeze hooked the corners of his mouth. Not knowing what little plan he had in mind, he narrowed his eyes, looking like he was bound to win.