Turbid Light
Ji Xiangyang's personal information is too difficult to collect. Bai Shuo searched the Internet and only found a few clues. An old newspaper that went bankrupt once reported on Ji Xiangyang as a child, and he was briefly popular.
The sender's name was Chen Fuzheng. According to reports, Ji Xiangyang's parents were both soldiers and died in a mission. As their only son, Ji Xiangyang should have been compensated and treated preferentially, but they got nothing. Ji Xiangyang was raised by his elderly grandparents.
As soon as the report came out, enthusiastic people started fighting for the child's rights and subsidies online, but the report was withdrawn within a few days. After a long time, no one would remember the child in a remote area anymore.
During the same period, Chen Fuzheng also published many articles, all of which reported on some sharp social phenomena. Among many articles, Chen An captured a key word: health products.
He remembered that a few months ago, he went to Fanquan Township and found traces of the sale of this kind of health products, so someone had already uncovered the truth about health products earlier.
"Like the previous reports, it was forcibly withdrawn within a few days. He then transitioned to being an entertainment reporter for a while before resigning from the newspaper and his whereabouts are unknown."
On the right hand side were some materials Bai Shuo had found from the old site of the newspaper. The damp, yellowed papers were densely covered with words. Chen An flipped through some of them casually and found that Chen Fuzheng's last report before leaving was not about his transformation as an entertainment reporter, but about missing persons.
The photo was blurry, but he could vaguely make out a police station. The headline read in large letters: [Searching for wife for months, reporting case to police in vain, only to be obstructed by police!] He wanted to turn the page over to continue reading, but discovered the back half of the page had been gnawed away by rats.
"Can this report be found?" Chen An asked.
Bai Shuo said in embarrassment: "Boss, these are the only remaining materials in the newspaper office."
"Leave me the contact information and address of the newspaper owner."
"By the way, you asked me to check Ji Xiangyang's interpersonal relationships, and I found a very important person."
Bai Shuo's eyes turned cautious. Chen An wrote down the address while asking, "Who?"
He showed Chen An the records he had made on the tablet. There was a name that appeared extremely frequently, with black words on a white background and a red pen circled around it.
Bai Shuo said that after Ji Xiangyang disappeared, his colleagues who had interned with him at the Qu'an Municipal Bureau all returned to their hometowns, and it is now difficult to find their whereabouts.
"Why don't we look for other clues? I think this might just be a coincidence." The tablet went dark in a few seconds, and Bai Shuo didn't even dare to look at his expression.
*
She didn't like this rooftop when she bought the house, and she still doesn't like it now. Sitting on the bench, she faces the Xu Building opposite. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and the sunrise light is blocked by the building. Fortunately, she can watch the sunset again.
The door to the top floor was always open. A familiar sound of footsteps came to his ears. Xun Muke turned around and smiled, "You're here."
Chen An unconsciously clenched the contents of the sealed bag and walked over to sit next to her. Xun Muke pushed another can of drink on the chair towards him. Seeing that he didn't move, she teased, "Are you wary of me so soon?"
Chen An held up the can, hooked the pull ring with his index finger, and with a puff, the soda gushed out. The moment it entered his throat, his guess was confirmed.
"Hey, why are you drinking by yourself? You haven't even toasted yet!" Xun Muke raised his hand but it fell into the air. After a moment, he said dejectedly, "Forget it, I'll drink it myself."
There was a long silence afterwards.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I killed him?" In the end, Xun Muke couldn't hold back anymore.
Chen An replied irrelevantly, "Your cufflinks."
The exquisite pure white gold cufflink in the evidence bag was lying neatly on the chair. Xun Muke picked it up, took a look at it, and put it back. "So it really was left there."
This cufflink is from a niche foreign designer, Flos, and it has an interesting name: Hold on to it.
When did he remember the owner of this cufflink? It was probably when Lu Yuyao passed by him carrying the evidence. His eyes remembered the cufflink before his brain did. The first time Xun Muke showed it off to him was at the celebration party for their first major case together. She happily rewarded herself with a cufflink.
"I knew I couldn't escape it, and when I discovered the cufflink was missing, I knew that day would come sooner than I thought."
The current situation is happening faster than she expected. She originally thought that she could at least hold on until Chen An reopened the Ji Xiangyang case, but in the end the truth still had to come out of her own mouth.
"He meant so much to you, don't you want to uncover the truth about his death yourself?"
This person is the wound that she cannot mention. Everyone is lying, and everyone says that time can heal it a little. But after so many years, this name is like a scabbed scar. It seems to have healed to outsiders, but only she knows that it has not healed at all and it bleeds when touched.
The slowly overflowing tears blurred his vision, and Xun Muke quickly wiped them away, "I'm sorry. I'm so... so heartbroken and relieved. I don't regret anything I've done. I even wonder if I should have done this earlier. If I had done it earlier... maybe I wouldn't have suffered for so many years."
*
The news of Ji Xiangyang's disappearance did not reach Xun Muke. A week ago, Ji Xiangyang only sent her a text message, saying that he had a mission to perform and could not contact her during this period, and would inform her after the mission was completed. However, there was no news from Ji Xiangyang for a year after that.
Xun Muke felt very strange. She took advantage of the holiday to come to Qu'an City, a place she was unfamiliar with, alone, but what she got was the news that Ji Xiangyang had disappeared long ago.
At that time, Liang Qiuchen was Ji Xiangyang's teacher. Xun Muke had contacted him several times, and he promised to inform her every time if there was any news. However, every call she made did not bring any news about Ji Xiangyang. Ji Xiangyang had disappeared.
His disappearance was the direct driving force behind Xun Muke's path to criminal investigation. She wanted to find Ji Xiangyang and find out the truth about his disappearance, so Xun Muke began to explore on her own.
In the first two years, she always believed that Ji Xiangyang was not dead and that he must be waiting for her somewhere. By chance, she came into contact with the earliest floating island.
Her family is her only advantage and also her only disadvantage. Xun Muke's birth must be envied by others. Her parents are in business and she has never lacked money since she was a child. As outstanding entrepreneurs at the time, in order to respond to national policies, her parents only gave birth to her. The only daughter will inherit all the family property in the future. After entering school, she will be taught by famous teachers. Although she does not want to study psychology, as long as she has this idea, she will be guided by the famous teachers.
But she never felt free. She couldn't make mistakes, couldn't be too out of the ordinary, had to maintain her dignity and elegance in front of others, and had to understand the difficulties her parents faced in starting their own business. For the sake of their business empire, she needed to make sacrifices at any time, just as she left her parents at a young age and returned to her hometown to accompany her grandparents whom she had only rarely seen.
Because of the business struggle at that time, her parents placed her in that bungalow. She was an outsider and could only lie on the windowsill and peek at the children playing downstairs. She could not fit in with them because playing in the mud and playing house were vulgar and indecent behaviors. She never thought these things were fun. Until Ji Xiangyang appeared on the road back home, everything became different.
She experienced the ordinary childhood of ordinary people and realized that what her parents said was not entirely true. Playing house, playing in the mud, and catching crabs are really fun.
Ji Xiangyang was there for every important moment of her life. He escorted her to and from school when she was a child, ran hundreds of kilometers to celebrate her birthday after high school, her coming-of-age ceremony, her graduation banquet, her university registration... He was never absent from so many things, but that summer he left and never came back.
The dark web was discovered before the floating island. Back then, it had no name, and regulations were lax, allowing anyone with enough money to spend money. Initially, she had no idea what this dark web was all about. It wasn't until someone uploaded a video of themselves having fun on the floating island that she finally found this wealthy carnival island.
Going to a completely unfamiliar place was too dangerous for a college student who had not yet entered society, so the plan to go to the island was temporarily shelved. Xun Muke could only stare at the dark web. After waiting for two years, she was finally fully prepared.
Xun Muke used a fake name and successfully got on the island. The carnival on the floating island lasted for three days. She searched the entire island but found no other clues, but... she found a person.
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