Chapter 599 - 499: I’ve Seen Him

Chapter 599: Chapter 499: I’ve Seen Him

To the east of Shitang Mountain, there is a waterway that extends from Li Lake.

It runs south, covering the entire Fangquan Street area for over ten kilometers.

After the major development of the New District, a massive wetland park was built along this waterway.

It’s completely free to the public. Along both sides of the Wetland Park are many high-end residential complexes, making it the area with the highest property values in Nanjiang.

The Li Lake Garden complex, where Wang Liang lives, is located nearby.

From the entrance of his residential community, it’s just across the street to one section of the Wetland Park.

With its lush trees, beautiful scenery, and fitness trails, residents from the neighborhood often come here for walks and relaxation.

In one of the parking lots, Ding Yuwei rolled down her car window, and Er Long zipped precisely into the car.

Ding Yuwei removed its helmet while simultaneously picking up a mealworm to feed it.

Then, she clipped a fully charged helmet onto it and sent it back out.

Nearby, Shen Xin stood with his arms crossed, watching the live feed that Er Long was transmitting.

This was the city proper, so the signal was strong, the transmission was live, and the picture was very clear.

Er Long could be seen gliding lightly over the treetops before finally landing on a tall dawn redwood, looking down on the fitness trail below.

This section of the trail wound along the edge of the water. It was 8:40 in the morning, and quite a few people were still jogging and exercising on the path.

Wang Liang was among them.

He wore a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, his phone tucked into an armband as he jogged by slowly.

Wang Liang had been released on the morning of the 20th.

Today was the morning of the 23rd.

The crime occurred in the early morning of the 18th, making it exactly five days ago.

In the passenger seat, Zhao Tianxing was eating a steamed bun, his hair a mess. He mumbled, "When is this going to end? I’m really starting to think this guy is clean."

Before Shen Xin could respond, Yang Zeran shoved a cup of soy milk at him to shut him up, then turned around and said, "Shen Xin, we’ve basically hit a dead end on all other leads. Wang Liang is all we have left."

"Do you think it’s possible he’s not showing any unusual behavior because he believes he’s completely gotten away with it?"

In the back seat, Shen Xin was stroking Sergeant, who was cradled in his arms. Tian Qiao lay at his feet as he stared intently at Wang Liang on the screen.

"I don’t know," Shen Xin sighed, his voice lacking energy.

At this point, it wasn’t just physical exhaustion; it was mental, too.

Of course, everyone else felt the same.

Five days had completely drained them.

Worst of all, every line of inquiry had led to a dead end, yielding nothing.

The canvassing turned up nothing.

The check on vehicles leaving the garage revealed no issues.

The perimeter surveillance footage showed nothing either.

After thoroughly investigating Li Siyu’s social circle, they kept coming back to Wang Liang as the prime suspect.

Besides him, no one else had a motive.

And as the investigation deepened, Wang Liang’s motive only grew stronger.

The investigation revealed that Wang Liang was not only Li Siyu’s lover, but he had also been involved with a female streamer before her.

Back in 2016, a streamer at his company named Su Jinyan had gotten involved with him.

His wife, He Meiqin, had gone to his company to cause a scene back then.

Their relationship must have fallen apart around that time.

He Meiqin explained that after that incident, Wang Liang had gotten on his knees and sworn he would never do it again. For the sake of their child, she had forgiven him.

But they had lived in separate rooms ever since.

But as it turned out, once a cheater, always a cheater.

Afterward, He Meiqin discovered on multiple occasions that Wang Liang was involved with other women.

After the New Year this year, He Meiqin had already consulted a divorce lawyer and was planning to file.

Therefore, to protect his assets, Wang Liang had more than enough motive to kill Li Siyu.

Unfortunately, they still hadn’t found any crucial evidence against Wang Liang.

The move to release him hadn’t played out so well.

After his release on the morning of the 20th, Wang Liang had been under constant surveillance.

The surveillance detail consisted of three teams in total.

Shen Xin’s was the mobile unit, responsible for round-the-clock tracking.

Another team was at Li Lake Garden, and a third was stationed near Wang Liang’s company.

Shen Xin was leading the operation.

The bird, the cat, the dog—all of them were deployed, enough to maintain twenty-four-hour surveillance on Wang Liang.

But since his return, the guy hadn’t made a single unusual move.

He only went to his company once and didn’t stay long.

His company had been closed for two days but was now back to normal, with the general manager handling daily operations.

Meanwhile, Wang Liang holed up at home, rarely went out, and barely contacted friends or family.

He’d even become disciplined, starting to go for morning jogs.

He also frequented the gym in the community clubhouse.

They intercepted his phone and internet data streams, but there was nothing unusual—just normal web browsing.

Right after his release, he did search "what happens after the police release you."

He didn’t search for things like "how to perfectly destroy evidence" or "how to stage a perfect murder scene."

They’d gone through his trash and everything, but still found nothing.

When he occasionally went out to meet friends, they tailed and monitored him, but again, nothing.

Zhao Tianxing’s comment about the guy being clean... after three days of this, even Shen Xin was starting to feel the same way.

"Don’t overthink it. It’s only been three days. Let’s wait and see. You don’t really want this to be a burglary-turned-homicide, do you?" Shen Xin added.

Right now, there were only two possibilities left.

One was Wang Liang; the other was a burglary that escalated into murder.

The kind committed by a transient criminal who accidentally killed someone and immediately fled Nanjiang.

If that were the case, it would most likely become a cold case.

A flip through the municipal bureau’s cold case files would show that many of them were similar situations.

Yang Zeran sighed in frustration, slumped back into his seat, and tried to catch up on some sleep.

Since Wang Liang wasn’t working, he had plenty of time. He ran straight until nine o’clock before ambling back.

Er Long didn’t hesitate and quickly followed.

It skimmed low over the treetops, silently tailing Wang Liang as he moved through the park’s paths.

During the pursuit, the camera feed suddenly shook.

It paused for about a second before immediately righting itself and locking back onto Wang Liang.

The whole thing was so fast—it just looked like a quick turn of the head—that Shen Xin didn’t pay it much mind.

Just then, Wang Liang, on screen, stopped at a kiosk in the park.

He ordered a cup of instant coffee and sat down on a nearby bench to browse his phone.

It wasn’t surprising; he’d probably just be browsing his phone at home anyway, so it made no difference where he did it.

Er Long landed on a nearby branch and continued its watch.

But not long after it landed, it abruptly turned its head again.

It paused for a second or two, then quickly snapped its head back.

At first, Shen Xin didn’t notice.

It was a bird, not an unfeeling machine. It was perfectly normal for its attention to be caught by something, prompting a glance.

But after a moment’s thought, just in case, Shen Xin rewound the video and took a closer look.

He scanned through it twice but didn’t spot anything unusual.

Just as he was about to close the replay, Shen Xin suddenly froze.

He rewound again, continuing to watch the footage of Er Long’s second head turn.

For a second and a half, the camera was pointed behind Wang Liang, in the direction he had come from.

On the path where Wang Liang had been walking, there were other people in the frame.

Shen Xin’s gaze fell on one of them.

It was a man, fairly tall by the looks of him, wearing a loose-fitting gray short-sleeved shirt and black track pants.

He had short hair and was wearing a pair of rather large sunglasses. He held a leash attached to a dog; it looked like he was taking it for a walk.

Wearing sunglasses wasn’t strange in itself.

It was late August, and the sun was scorching as soon as it rose, so some people preferred to wear them.

Shen Xin rewound to Er Long’s first head turn.

This time the movement was shorter, just a fleeting glimpse. In the bottom right corner of the video, a figure flashed past.

It was blurry, impossible to make out clearly.

But this person was also walking a dog, and as the camera swept by, he could see it was the same golden retriever the man in sunglasses was walking.

Shen Xin looked back at the live feed but didn’t see the man in sunglasses in the frame.

Based on the video, this person had been on the same path as Wang Liang.

But the path was there for anyone to use; walking in the same direction by coincidence was perfectly normal.

There was nothing inherently suspicious about the man.

Still, after thinking it over, just to be safe, Shen Xin picked up the communicator to ask Er Long about it.

It was a bird, after all. He could ask it directly.

"Er Long, there was a man walking a dog. Where is he?"

On the screen, Er Long seemed to have heard him.

Beside him, Ding Yuwei, who hadn’t gone back to sleep, quickly asked what was going on.

"I don’t know," Shen Xin said, shaking his head.

Er Long quickly scanned its surroundings, then took flight. After circling once, its gaze locked onto the man in sunglasses.

He had apparently walked over to a different path and wasn’t deliberately approaching Wang Liang.

’Looks like it was just a coincidence after all.’

Er Long landed on a treetop, watching the man.

In the video feed, the man was walking the golden retriever, strolling leisurely.

But soon, Shen Xin noticed a few strange things.

It was the golden retriever.

Well, "strange" wasn’t exactly the right word. It was more of a subtle feeling that something was off.

First, the man was holding the leash with too much slack.

A golden retriever is a large dog, after all.

Second, people always say golden retrievers are gentle, but in reality, their abandonment rate is quite high.

That’s because they’re overly friendly, acting more affectionate with strangers than their own owners, and are prone to pulling on the leash or jumping on people.

They’re strong, and most people can’t hold them back when they bolt.

In this day and age, a dog injuring someone is no small matter, so most golden retriever owners don’t give them too much leash, ensuring the dog doesn’t get out of their control.

There was one more thing. Shen Xin had a nagging feeling that the man’s dog-walking pattern was wrong.

Or rather, his attention wasn’t on the dog.

Dogs will stop to sniff around and pee.

Take himself, for example. When he walked Tian Kui, the moment the dog stopped and postured to do its business, Shen Xin would automatically stop walking. It had become pure instinct.

But Shen Xin noticed that when this golden retriever went up to a tree and even lifted its leg, the man didn’t stop, simply continuing to walk and pull the leash.

The golden retriever was tugged along, gave up, and continued to follow.

At the same time, the man wasn’t browsing his phone, so it wasn’t as if he was too distracted to notice the dog’s behavior.

Of course, if one had to find a reasonable explanation, it was possible.

For instance, maybe his wife usually walked the dog, and the man rarely did.

Or perhaps they had just bought the dog and weren’t familiar with it yet.

But again, just in case, Shen Xin decided to look into it. He released his backup, Four Seasons, while simultaneously calling Er Long back.

When Er Long returned, Shen Xin pointed to the man in the video and asked why it had turned to look at him.

He didn’t even need to listen to its thoughts. Er Long’s speech was becoming more and more fluent, its vocabulary growing. It said, "Seen before."

Shen Xin froze.

’Seen before?’

’When?’

"Er Long, when did you see him?" Shen Xin pressed.

Er Long articulated clearly, "Yesterday."

It could now understand the concept of "today" and "yesterday."

Shen Xin was surprised again. He asked when it had seen him yesterday and if the person had been walking a dog then too.

Wang Liang had also gone for a run yesterday. If the man in sunglasses walked his dog here every day, it would be normal for Er Long to have seen him.

Shen Xin knew that birds had a keen sense of smell, too. It had probably recognized the same scent and confirmed it had seen him yesterday.

"Don’t know."

"No."

Er Long’s answers were concise.

It had a basic concept of time but couldn’t describe it accurately.

So the answers meant it didn’t know when it had seen him, and that yesterday, he didn’t have a dog.

Yang Zeran was startled awake. He poked his head forward and asked who the man was and what was happening.

Just then, Shen Xin noticed on Four Seasons’ feed that the man in sunglasses had presumably circled around and was now passing the kiosk.

The man in sunglasses stared straight ahead, his attention not on Wang Liang.

Wang Liang was absorbed in his phone and didn’t notice the man either.

The two passed each other without a glance.

But Shen Xin felt more and more certain that something was strange about this man.

’He couldn’t possibly be... tailing Wang Liang, could he?’

After weighing his options, Shen Xin tapped Ding Yuwei on the shoulder, ready to go and check the man out.