CH 206

The ward arranged by Xing Conglian was on the top floor of Hongjing Hospital. Other than that, there was nothing special.

After completing the admission procedures, Lin Chen had some blood drawn from his arm. He followed Xing Conglian through the long ward while holding the cotton ball on the inside of his arm.

The rooms on both sides of the corridor were mostly single rooms, occupied by elderly people. Some of them sat upright on the sofa with serious expressions, as if they were educating their dejected subordinates on the opposite side. Others relied on a series of tubes and ventilators to sustain their lives, while experienced nurses dozed off by their bedsides.

This should be the special care ward of Hongjing Hospital, where retired officials of a certain rank or people with special relationships live. But Xing Conglian’s suggestion for him to stay here should have nothing to do with privilege. It seemed that Captain Xing thought that the single rooms here met his requirements.

Xing Conglian pushed open the door. The sky outside the window was already completely dark. The hospital gown that he had to change into was folded on the bed, and there were a bunch of sunflowers on the bedside table.

Lin Chen took a whiff of the smell of disinfectant in the ward and obediently sat on the bed. He pulled down the tabletop by the bed and patted the empty space next to him, indicating for Xing Conglian to sit opposite him.

In the quiet ward, where one could hear a pin drop. The two of them sat facing each other under the bright lights.

After sitting face-to-face for about two minutes, Xing Conglian couldn’t help but laugh. “Is Consultant Lin trying to talk to me and hold a family meeting?”

Lin Chen looked at the table and asked Xing Conglian, “Do you notice what’s missing here?”

Xing Conglian looked around and said, “Black-suited bodyguards and beautiful female caregivers?”

Lin Chen knocked on the empty table and said, “Captain Xing, we are facing a very serious situation now. It’s already 6:30 in the evening, and our dinner hasn’t arrived yet. After learning about your identity, I think we need to celebrate a bit.”

Xing Conglian breathed a sigh of relief, looking like he was afraid of being scared to death. Then he took out his phone and asked, “What do you want to eat?”

“KFC,” Lin Chen said.

Xing Conglian paused his action of dialing the phone. “Consultant Lin, let me give you a chance to correct your answer.”

“I want to eat KFC,” Lin Chen said.

“That’s a bit of a capricious request.” Xing Conglian raised an eyebrow. “Your wound hasn’t fully healed. Can you eat something so greasy?”

“After surviving in the wild rainforest, I need some modern industrial food to help adjust my body and mind.”

Xing Conglian looked at him very puzzled. “What did you say?”

“I just want to eat it. If I had a phone that I could use in China, I would have made an excuse to go to the bathroom and secretly called Wang Chao for delivery.”

Xing Conglian laughed out loud. “Why call Wang Chao? Can’t you just order from a delivery service directly?”

“A thousand-mile dike can be destroyed by an ant-hole*. No matter how big your family business is, you still have to save money. You use mobile coupons, member points, and even save on delivery fees when you buy on-site.” Lin Chen replied.

*(千里之堤毁于蚁穴) Proverb referring to even a small problem or seemingly insignificant issue can lead to catastrophic consequences if it is ignored or left unaddressed for a long time.

Xing Conglian stared at him for a while, then lowered his head and dialed Wang Chao’s phone. Before the call was connected, he nodded and said to him, “Makes sense.”

……

When the dynasty arrived, Lin Chen and Xing Conglian were leaning against the sickbed watching <Boonie Bears>.

A young man pushed the door open, half-wet, carrying a big bag of fried chicken and a few hard drives in plastic bags.

Seeing their cuddling state, Wang Chao was very dissatisfied and threw the KFC takeout and hard drives on the coffee table before sitting down.

As if not stimulated enough, Xing Conglian lifted the bed table, tapped the tabletop, and said to Wang Chao, “Hand it over. Do I have to go and get it myself?”

“Boss, you’re too much!” Wang Chao shouted. “Leaving me alone in the amusement park is one thing, but why are you watching cartoons on the sickbed?”

“Well done with the emphasis sentence, not bad,” Xing Conglian half-seriously commented.

Wang Chao was again upset, but he still picked up the takeaway bag and put it on the bed table.

After looking at them for a while, Wang Chao finally found an attack point and said to Xing Conglian, “Big Boss, what’s wrong with you? You’re sharing a bed with A’Chen Gege, who is sick!”

Lin Chen was opening the paper bag of the finger-licking original flavor chicken. He couldn’t help but lower his head and laugh when he heard this question.

Sure enough, Xing Conglian answered with a chicken wing in his mouth. “Oh, you still don’t know? A’Chen and I are in love…” He finished and pretended to glance at Wang Chao casually and said, “Sorry, I forgot. You’ve never been in love… tsk, tsk…”

Hearing this, the teenager was so angry that he couldn’t find any words to refute, so he could only grind his teeth.

Seeing this, Lin Chen picked up the remote control and ended Bald Victor’s pursuit of Briar*, then said to Wang Chao, “Come and sit down and eat. Watching cartoons is meant to relax.”

*Clarity: Characters from Boonie Bears.

Wang Chao was the type who was easily coaxed. Three seconds later, the teenager took off his shoes and squatted in front of them, happily munching on the chicken nuggets.

Lin Chen got off the bed, went to the bathroom, and brought a towel, throwing it on Wang Chao. “Dry off first. Be careful not to catch a cold.”

Wang Chao was moved. “A’Chen Gege, you’re a good person. There is genuine affection in the world.”

“How’s the surveillance?” Lin Chen sat back on the bed, tore off a piece of meat, and asked.

Wang Chao almost choked on a piece of chicken. He looked at the chicken in front of him, then at Lin Chen’s face, and almost cried, “Why am I so unlucky…”

Teasing Wang Chao was really fun. Lin Chen rubbed the young man’s wet head with a clean hand and said, “Talk while you eat. I didn’t tell you to put down the food.”

But Wang Chao stopped very seriously. “Let me report briefly. First, the surveillance quality of Hongjing’s Amusement Park is too poor—the old black and white type. When we zoom in on the monitor, it’s hard to see anything. Second, I have taken out the hard drive. We can connect it to the TV in the ward and watch it, but the video footage of the incident is still very poor after being processed.”

Xing Conglian spat out a bone next to him, feeling depressed that his entire plan was falling apart. He said to Wang Chao, “Excuse me, sir, who allowed you to use the TV in the ward?”

“Oh, then should I use my computer? I’m afraid it’s not convenient for A’Chen Gege to watch. Shall I go get it now?” Wang Chao asked.

Xing Conglian was furious. “Comrade Xiao Wang, this is a place for A’Chen Gege to recuperate. Don’t fall for his tricks and get misled easily.”

“Boss, you’re right. I almost fell for it,” Wang Chao realized and said firmly.

Anyway, the three of them were often easily separated into two alliances, so Lin Chen looked slightly helpless as he saw the two of them now united against him. “I really think that Tan Kang may have come to the amusement park to meet someone, so the video footage of the scene where he was stabbed is important.”

Wang Chao asked, “A’Chen, do you think the person Tan Kang wanted to meet will be near the scene?”

“Not necessarily nearby, but if there is such a person, when they find out the person they are waiting for hasn’t come for a long time and a homicide has occurred in the park, they will come take a look,” Lin Chen said.

“A’Chen, you’re right. I’ll adjust the video for you,” Wang Chao said.

Wang Chao rolled off the bed and started tinkering with the TV and computer cables. Soon, the screen turned blue, and then a high gray-scale scene appeared.

As Comrade Zhang Xiaolong said at the beginning, the video was very blurry. When zoomed in on the 27-inch LCD TV in the hospital, there were countless noises. From the black and white images, only a vague chaos at the scene could be seen.

However, the image quality had already been processed by Wang Chao, and two arrows with different colors appeared above Tan Kang and the murderer’s heads, barely indicating their positions.

Tan Kang walked across the bridge and passed by a man wearing a duck-billed cap and holding a balloon. The man only slightly raised his arm, and there was no abnormality visible at the time until Tan Kang leaned against the sign and lay down.

“Repeat from 3 minutes and 10 seconds to 3 minutes and 30 seconds a few times,” Lin Chen said to Wang Chao after watching for a while.

The scene began to repeat, from Tan Kang holding his chest to being bumped into by someone and finally falling down next to the sign…

By the end, Wang Chao couldn’t eat anything in front of him anymore.

“A’Chen Gege…” the young man called out softly.

“Stop,” Lin Chen suddenly said.

Wang Chao didn’t react in time and pressed the pause button a little late. On the screen, Tan Kang had already fallen to the ground.

“A little further back,” Lin Chen said.

The TV screen finally paused at the moment when Tan Kang was about to fall and was suspended in mid-air.

Lin Chen and Xing Conglian exchanged a glance, understanding each other’s thoughts.

“What’s wrong with this screen?” Wang Chao asked tentatively.

“Don’t you think Tan Kang’s posture on the ground is very twisted?” Xing Conglian said.

“Huh?”

Xing Conglian said, “The murderer used a weapon about 2.5 cm wide to stab Tan Kang’s heart. The internal pressure of the heart was extremely high. When he pulled out the blade, the blood gushed out instantly. The oxygen content in his brain would immediately decrease, and he would lose consciousness in a very short period of time. There was basically no possibility of survival… “

Lin Chen nodded, “In other words, he used his remaining willpower to maintain this very twisted angle before dying. Of course, you can also say that this is because his pain caused his body to twist, but I still think that the reason why he fell in this way is because he subconsciously and persistently looked at a certain place in the amusement park before he died.”

“The location of the person he was meeting?” Wang Chao suddenly realized. He quickly brought up the map of the amusement park, and, according to Tan Kang’s perspective when he fell, he could basically determine that he was looking at the west side of the park.

“Um…” Wang Chao marked out a rough, fan-shaped area on the map. “The carousel, European Castle, Candyland…” The teenager sighed deeply. “This area covers several thousand square meters.”

“Are there any other angles to the recording?” Lin Chen asked. “When he entered the unfamiliar area and had to choose a route, he might have first looked for the target’s location and then made a choice.”

Wang Chao adjusted as instructed, and sure enough, Tan Kang had also looked up in the same direction before that.

“This angle…”

“He should be looking at something high?” Xing Conglian murmured.

Lin Chen thought of the moment when he stood at the same angle and suddenly realized. “The European castle.”

Wang Chao’s eyes lit up. “So, if I check if there was any suspicious person lingering around the castle when the incident occurred, we can determine that Tan Kang came here to meet someone, and we can find that person?”

“If this suspicious person didn’t participate in any amusement activities when he arrived and left in a hurry, or even went to the scene of the crime, it would further explain the problem,” Lin Chen said.

“Yes sir*!” Wang Chao exclaimed excitedly.

*Said in English.

Xing Conglian clapped his hands and suddenly interrupted their conversation.

“Understand what you need to do and take your crispy chicken sandwich and leave,” he said to Wang Chao. “Remember to continue working overtime at home, not only to confirm the contact person but also to confirm the routes of both the killer and Tan Kang himself.”

Wang Chao rubbed his ears, stared blankly at the TV screen, then turned to look at the pouring rain outside the window. Finally, he asked Xing Conglian, “Boss, where should I go?”

“Aren’t you going home today?”

Wang Chao was very surprised. “Boss, is this what you call burning bridges after crossing the river*?”

*(过河拆桥) Idiom referring to being ungrateful or turning against someone who has helped you in the past. 

“Let me correct you, Comrade Xiao Wang. Asking you to go home is not called burning bridges, it’s called being merciful. After all, I still have the option of kicking you out of the door,” Xing Conglian said proudly.

“But no one has lived there for half a month!” Wang Chao looked horrified.

“It’s not like you don’t get paid every month, and you can live wherever you want if you think my house is dirty.”

“What about you?”

This question once again hit Xing Conglian right where it hurt.

Xing Conglian said proudly, “My boyfriend is in the hospital, and I have to stay with him.” Then, looking at Wang Chao vigilantly, he said, “Comrade Xiao Wang, I hope you’re not planning to stay here. You’re like a third wheel and an eyesore.”

Wang Chao stepped back and said to Xing Conglian, “Boss, did you leave your face on the plane? Should I go get it for you?”

“Whatever. As long as you leave the ward, you can do whatever you want.”

Wang Chao’s face was already red with anger. Seeing this, Lin Chen had to intervene and say, “This is really not good…”

Upon hearing this, Wang Chao looked up at Lin Chen with the innocent expression of a small pet, while Xing Conglian also turned his head.

Lin Chen said, “Find him a trustworthy housekeeping service to clean up the house so he can go back to live there.”

Xing Conglian laughed out loud and almost rolled on the bed. “Comrade Xiao Wang, I’ll arrange for the most capable auntie for you. You can go downstairs now, and I’ll call a taxi for you. Isn’t that thoughtful enough?”

Wang Chao was so angry that he stood up from the sofa and started packing his bag.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Chen looked at Xing Conglian and asked.

Xing Conglian smiled and said, “Nothing, nothing! I just really like your style as master of the house right now.”

Wang Chao was picking what food he wanted to eat from the KFC bag when he heard this. He glared at Xing Conglian, didn’t take the sandwich on the table, and walked out of the ward in anger.

“Goodbye!” the teenager stood in the doorway against the light and said angrily to them.