CH 120

Lin Chen had never met Xu Ran. He’d only seen her in a photo on Wang Chao’s laptop. However, compared to a prostitute or a wandering warbler, her identity was first and foremost a girl.

No matter how society changed, since she was a girl, she should be loved, and not mercilessly trampled on again and again.

Lin Chen was worried as he looked at Xing Conglian. He didn’t know what to say. He felt powerless thinking about how he could intervene in Li Jingtian’s machinations towards the girl.

However, Xing Conglian was tenacious and different from ordinary people. He looked back at him and then shouted to the teenager next to him without hesitation, “Wang Chao?”

“Checking records.” The teenager began tapping the keyboard again as he replied anxiously. “Captain, I can’t shoulder the burden of the police force alone. What did Deputy Captain Chen say?”

Earlier, on their way to the hospital, Xing Conglian had asked his men to check on Xu Ran’s whereabouts. Perhaps there was news now.

As Wang Chao was speaking, Xing Conglian was already on the phone. It connected quickly. When the person on the other end heard him inquire about “Xu Ran”, they seemed surprised.

“Didn’t Wang Chao tell you to investigate?” Xing Conglian raised his voice. After he finished speaking, he put the phone on speaker.

“Captain, you asked me to check too many things. I didn’t know if it was that urgent. We really haven’t found where Xu Ran is, but she did take a train this morning at 6. The train arrived at Hongjing Station at 7:03. The train number is G137. We haven’t found any other news yet. Do you want to send someone to the train station to check the network?”

“Okay, I see. Continue.” Xing Conglian hung up.

“Oh god, I’m really starting to doubt myself, Captain. Why is she in Hongjing? How could she be in Hongjing?” Wang Chao was becoming more anxious as he talked. He even started to doubt his previous deduction. “If she arrived at 7:03, she had plenty of time to commit the crime at Ansheng International Mall. There’s no issue with the timeline.”

Indeed, they had just deduced that the throat-slitting case had been arranged and manipulated by Li Jingtian from the start. He did all this to gain social attention and then pin all the blame on Xu Ran. But then another incredible thing happened. Xu Ran had come to Hongjing from Fengchun. She had arrived early enough that she had plenty of time to commit the crime.

“Alright, think less and work more.” Xing Conglian knocked on the teenager’s forehead, waking the young man out of his stupor. “Do you think a woman who has the ability to plan all this is an idiot? If she was going to kill someone, why would she take the high-speed train? Isn’t she afraid the police will find out?”

Xing Conglian was right. For a murderer to commit such a crime across cities, it was extremely stupid to take a high-speed train that made it easy to leave evidence of travel. Whether it was a long-distance bus or a small taxi, it was far easier to hide their whereabouts than a high-speed train. However, if Li Jingtian wanted to turn Xu Ran into the assailant, he could naturally arrange for her to come to Hongjing. But it was abnormal that she did come.

Lin Chen’s bad premonition in his heart became stronger. Although they believed Xu Ran was innocent, all the clues indicated she was in Hongjing. The photograph of the assailant during the assault looked similar to her, and she had sufficient motives to commit the crime, so how could they prove that it wasn’t her?

Lin Chen suddenly realized why Li Jingtian was so confident in his smile.

“Captain, you have a point. I think this must all be Li Jingtian’s conspiracy.” Wang Chao became energetic again. “But A’Chen’s right. We have to quickly find Xu Ran.”

“Do you have any thoughts?” Xing Conglian asked.

“I found her cell phone number.” Wang Chao pressed the enter key, and a Fengchun number appeared on the screen. Xing Conglian glanced at the number and quickly dialed it.

After a long time of waiting, the phone didn’t connect.

The “no answer” tone was mechanical and cold, and the blank time after the phone hung up was hopelessly long.

Xu Ran didn’t answer her phone, which gave them a bad feeling.

“Maybe she didn’t hear it, or it could be on silent. By the way…” The teenager suddenly thought of something. “If someone comes to a city that they’re unfamiliar with, they very likely will turn on the GPS navigation. I’ll try it.”

After speaking, he began to get busy in front of the laptop again; the clacking sounds of the keyboard seemed to bring some hope.

But the more Wang Chao searched, the more his brows furrowed. He kept operating the touchpad with one hand while checking records with the other. However, his series of searches didn’t help. “Xu Ran didn’t turn on the GPS. I’ll try her bank card or something. Maybe she bought something using her card…”

The teenager’s voice was becoming weaker. They all knew that it was unlikely that Xu Ran would leave any traces.

At this moment, another scream erupted on Wang Chao’s laptop. It was the alarm tone he had set before. The system would automatically alert if any information about Li Jingtian went viral.

Wang Chao switched back to the previous information statistics page as if he had seen a ghost, and looked at the new cloud clusters emerging on the data map, then he quickly clicked on the root directory.

The same thing happened a second time.

It was still a Weibo post made by Li Jingtian’s fans. The main content of the post was still a photo, and the protagonist of the photo happened to be Xu Ran again.

Through coincidence, or rather, because all this had been so coincidental, there were traces full of artificial arrangements.

Xu Ran was dressed in red and was standing on a sidewalk at the fork in the road as a vehicle passed by her. Her face was blank, as if she was unaware of what was going on.

“This intersection is too familiar, right, Captain? We seem to have passed by it just now?” Wang Chao asked as he looked at the photograph.

Before his voice fell, Xing Conglian had already turned around and opened the door of the ward. “Let’s go.”

They quickly went out and followed Xing Conglian through the white aisles and into the quiet elevator. When they were about to reach the parking space, Xing Conglian quickened his pace.

There were reporters who hadn’t left yet, squatting around. Seeing the trio, twice as many people swarmed them as before.

Microphones and recorders flood their vision.

“Captain Xing, I heard that there were traces of the suspect found near the hospital. Did you go to arrest the suspect?”

“Captain Xing, Captain Xing… The internet is now saying that the Hongjing police are relying on netizens to solve the case. Do you have any comments on this?”

Xing Conglian opened the car door with a cold face. He first protected them as they entered the back seat; then, he sat in the front seat and slammed the door without saying a single word to the reporters.

He quickly started the engine and, for the first time, took out the police light from the glove box and installed it.

As the siren sounded, the reporters were all left in shock.

Xing Conglian lowered the window of the car and shouted, “Hurry up and get out of the way.”

His aura was too impressive, and his arrogant words and tough posture were directly captured by the reporters’ cameras.

After the flash of light, the reporters backed away with joyful smiles on their faces, as if they had received their headlines for the day. Looking at those excited smiles, Lin Chen seemed to be able to guess what they were: “The captain of the Hongjing police force was unable to investigate the case and angrily scolded reporters”.

But now they had no time to care about this.

The Jeep drove out of the gate of the hospital. After Wang Chao got in the car, before he could put down his backpack, he was searching frantically for those Weibo posts.

Human flesh was one of the most reliable and terrifying ways of transmitting information in the world.

Many of Li Jingtian’s fans were originally near the hospital. Now that they had learned the news, many started providing various information based on the location of the photo, and some even took the initiative to look for Xu Ran.

What Xing Conglian had said earlier had come true again. Vigilantes were the most troublesome type for the police.

@EatDrinkSleep: [I was just on Dongzheng Road and saw that woman! Come on, everyone!]

The location of the Weibo post was at the intersection of Dongzheng Road and 4th West Road.

Wang Chao turned on the navigation, glanced at the real-time road condition, and said, “Captain, she turned on West Fourth Road. If you continue forward, there’s going to be a traffic jam. Go around North Heping Road.”

Xing Conglian turned the car and drove sharply away in the direction Wang Chao pointed out.

“Adjust the real-time surveillance camera and find her.”

“It’s already adjusted, but, Captain, you have to hurry. There are some fans of Li Jingtian nearby, and they already went over.” Looking at the frantically lit dots on the array, Wang Chao was simply overwhelmed. “A’Chen, take the tablet out of my backpack and monitor the real-time progress on Weibo,” the teenager quickly urged.

Lin Chen nodded and took out the tablet. He kept refreshing the latest posts, and all kinds of dirty words were refreshed before his eyes.

@EatDrinkSleep: [Fuck, hurry up and catch that idiot.]

@TomatoRiceNoodlesIsTiansFavoite: [Forwarding this post. 1,000 yuan from Alipay for each person. Whoever catches that chicken and takes a photo for me will get it!]

@BeefWithEggplantSauce: [I was at the entrance to a shop on West Fourth Road and saw the chicken. Please help me!!!]

“West Fourth Road, McDonald’s.” Lin Chen patted the teenager on the shoulder and reminded him.

Wang Chao nodded and began to pull up the surveillance. He dragged and dropped the timeline. Several teenage girls appeared on the dark-toned surveillance screen. They were wearing red clothes with the rose logo of the Li Jingtian fan club on their chests. They were stretching their fingers and necks, as if they were pointing at someone across the road.

“Across the street,” Lin Chen said.

Wang Chao quickly turned the screen around. Finally, they saw a figure in a red dress.

The woman across the road seemed to realize that someone was shouting at her. She looked around in panic, and after being momentarily stunned, she began to run.

At this time, they had already driven onto West Fourth Road. Wang Chao hurriedly said, “Captain, there’s a red light at the intersection and a parking space 30 meters in front of you. Stop the car. It’ll be faster if we run on foot.”

Lin Chen nodded. Xing Conglian glanced at him and then slammed on the brakes.

Lin Chen opened the car door and quickly rushed out. West Fourth Road was a commercial district in a prosperous area. With a few girls chasing, it caused some commotion.

Because Xu Ran was wearing a red dress and black high heels, she couldn’t run fast at all. Realizing that someone was chasing behind her, she stumbled forward in fear, and even pushed over two newsstands on the side of the road.

Lin Chen increased his speed and rushed forward. The wind was whistling past his ears, with sounds from people and traffic accompanying it. The violent movement was making his mind go blank.

“Stop!”

“The one in the red dress.”

“Everyone help catch the bad guy!”

The teenage girls’ cold voices poured into Lin Chen’s ears.

He suddenly looked up and saw the woman being chased at the front running faster. Her black hair was scattered, and her skirt was flying. Many pedestrians finally reacted. Some realized that she might be a bad person so they stopped in their tracks and surrounded Xu Ran.

When Xu Ran saw this, she became even more flustered. She looked around, but there was no place for her to escape.

Lin Chen ran with all his strength. He passed by Li Jingtian’s fans, who were still chasing, and the next moment, as soon as he caught up with Xu Ran, everything slowed down.

He saw that Xu Ran was looking at him with horrified despair before she rushed into the oncoming traffic without hesitation.

The woman was like a bird that generously went to her death. She first cut off a bus, then jumped over the guardrail. The traffic lights in front of her had just changed, causing a large number of vehicles to accelerate forward. The sharp sound of a horn echoed so loudly that it made his eardrum hurt.

As if frightened by it, Xu Ran looked at the oncoming truck in a daze, which then crashed straight into her.

It was like a scene from a poor-quality horror movie. On the dark background, a woman dressed in red floated into the sky, like a flower being blown up and down by the wind, before landing heavily. The truck had no time to brake and rolled over her body.

Crack.

Lin Chen seemed to hear the sound of something breaking. Although the scene in front of him was changing, all he could see was blackness. However, it wasn’t because he had fainted, but because a pair of hands had covered his eyes.

“Don’t look.” Xing Conglian’s solemn voice sounded in his ears.