Chapter 204 The Charming and Gentle Senior

Su Xiaonuan couldn't bear to look any longer and shifted her gaze to a cluster of nearly withered roses in the corner of the yard.

She recalled Qin Haochu's speech at the freshman welcome party in college, his demeanor so charming that it drew whispers from the younger female students; she remembered how he would always appear unintentionally around her and An Ran, his smile gentle, but his eyes always following An Ran; and finally, that document that revealed everything, full of calculation and obsession…

"Let's go," Su Xiaonuan said softly.

Lu Zheng nodded.

The atmosphere inside the car was somewhat somber after leaving the mental hospital.

Looking at the rapidly receding, withered scenery outside the window, Su Xiaonuan suddenly said, "Let's go see Grandpa An."

Grandpa An's ward is in the best private hospital in the city, in a quiet environment.

But even the best environment cannot stop the passage of life.

The ward was filled with an even stronger smell of medicine and a kind of decaying aura unique to the elderly.

Grandpa An lay on the hospital bed, tubes inserted into his body. He was so thin he was almost unrecognizable, with only the faint rise and fall of his chest proving that he was still alive.

An's parents stayed by the bedside, their eyes red and swollen, exhausted and sad.

The devastating news of An Ran's passing was undoubtedly the final blow to this frail old man.

Seeing Su Xiaonuan and Lu Zheng enter, Mother An forced a smile, nodded, and then lowered her head to moisten Grandpa An's lips.

Grandpa An seemed to sense something, his eyelids twitched, and he opened them with difficulty, just a crack.

His cloudy gaze lingered on Su Xiaonuan's face for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but he only uttered a few indistinct syllables.

Su Xiaonuan stepped forward, gently took the old man's withered hand, and whispered in his ear, "Grandpa An, it's me, Xiaonuan. I've come to see you. Anran... she passed away quickly, without suffering much. She must be in a good place now, watching over us. Please take good care of yourself and don't let her worry."

A single, cloudy tear slowly slid down the old man's cheek.

His fingers twitched very slightly, as if he wanted to clench his fist, but he no longer had the strength.

Su Xiaonuan finally couldn't hold back her tears, which rolled down her cheeks and dripped onto the clean white sheets.

She quickly wiped it off and placed a bunch of fresh daisies she had brought on the bedside table.

They didn't stay long. As they were leaving the ward, the doctor came over and whispered to Mr. and Mrs. An, "It'll only be a day or two. The family should be prepared."

In the corridor, Su Xiaonuan leaned against the cold wall, took a deep breath, and slowly exhaled.

Lu Zheng stood beside her without saying a word, but silently leaned his shoulder against hers.

“Sometimes I feel,” Su Xiaonuan said in a muffled voice, “that we’ve won a major battle and caught the worst people. But when we look back, so many people around us are still hurt. Some are hurt in their hearts, and some will never heal.”

Lu Zheng raised his hand, gently put his arm around her shoulder, and pulled her closer to him.

“That’s why we have to keep moving forward.” His voice was low and firm. “We need to arrest all those who should be arrested and do what needs to be done. We need to let the living live and heal in a cleaner and safer environment. That’s probably the most meaningful thing we can do.”

Su Xiaonuan nodded in his arms, smelling the clean soap scent and faint, reassuring tobacco aroma on him, feeling the surging sadness and helplessness being soothed little by little.

Life must go on, and evil never ceases.

After the municipal bureau resumed normal operations, the backlog of cases was put back on the agenda.

Lu Zheng unearthed the rape and murder case involving Liu, a resident of a neighborhood near Xiangshan, which had been temporarily shelved due to a series of unforeseen events.

This Liu was extremely cunning and had a strong sense of counter-surveillance. He remained tight-lipped during previous interrogations, insisting that his wife and best friend had run off with someone and that he knew nothing about it.

Without direct evidence, the case reached a stalemate.

But Lu Zheng did not give up. He retrieved all of Liu's communication records, spending records, and travel records for the past six months and analyzed them frame by frame.

Su Xiaonuan also came to help. Her keen attention to detail and the occasional vague guidance provided by the system gave Lu Zheng new ideas.

Finally, Lu Zheng discovered that about four months ago—about a week after his wife and best friend disappeared—Liu's itinerary was very strange one afternoon.

Instead of going to his usual card room or tavern, he drove alone to a desolate area far from the city center, near the border of a neighboring county.

The area is sparsely populated, with only some sand pits and abandoned makeshift sheds left over from sand mining.

What was he doing there?

Lu Zheng and Su Xiaonuan immediately drove there.

The desolate beach in autumn was bleak, the reeds were withered and yellow, and the north wind blew and howled.

Based on the approximate area vaguely located by Liu's dashcam, they began a thorough search.

The search process did not go smoothly.

The sand is soft, making it difficult to leave footprints, and litter is everywhere.

Just as Su Xiaonuan felt like she was about to be blown into a daze by the wind and began to doubt whether she had made a mistake, her toe kicked a hard object in the sand.

She crouched down and brushed the sand away.

It's a denture that's been burned, twisted, and deformed, leaving only half of it... Its structure is somewhat unusual, unlike ordinary dentures.

At the same time, Lu Zheng, who was not far away, also exclaimed softly. He found several oddly colored and hard "small stones" at the edge of a shallow sand pit.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out not to be a stone at all, but rather several small, incompletely burned bone fragments!

Judging from its size and shape, it looks very much like... the hand bones of an infant!

The two were shocked and immediately expanded the search area, calling for forensic and technical support from the department.

Subsequent explorations were conducted in harsh conditions.

Using specialized equipment, forensic personnel discovered more incompletely burned bone fragments, molten metal—suspected components of prostheses or special medical devices—and some remnants of synthetic fabrics that could not be completely burned at a deeper, cooler location at the bottom of the sandpit.

Most importantly, extremely small amounts of biological samples were extracted from that half of the specially structured denture.

After comparison with the database and identification by the family, it was confirmed that the dentures belonged to Lin Ling, the best friend of Liu's missing wife.

Lin Ling wears custom-made dentures due to an accident in her early years.

DNA testing revealed that the fragments of the infant's hand bones were related to Liu and Xu's biological samples, and were indeed their daughter, Lili!

Liu actually harmed her own child and tried to destroy the body along with the body!

A crucial link in the chain of evidence has been pinned.

Lu Zheng acted decisively, applied for a search warrant, and conducted another surprise search of Liu's residence.

This time, the search was more thorough.