Chapter 120 - 111: Looked Down Upon...

The old woman sighed, lost in her memories.

"Later, the government repossessed the house. No one has gone in since..."

’Suicide...’

’So she really did die!’

Xu Huo frowned, staring into her cataract-clouded eyes. After a moment of thought, he asked,

"Do you know why she committed suicide?"

"She was being bullied. A bunch of little bastards, ganging up on someone who was all alone and helpless..."

What the old woman said matched the police’s theory perfectly.

"No father, no mother. When she was bullied, she had no one to turn to. She grew more desperate by the day until, in the end... that’s what happened."

The old woman muttered, as if airing a grievance.

Xu Huo listened without saying a word.

Victims of bullying often suffer from some psychological trauma.

Depression, for instance, is a very common symptom.

If left untreated as the symptoms worsen, other psychiatric conditions can develop, such as social withdrawal, or simply a deepening depression that leads to suicide.

"How long have you lived here?"

Xu Huo asked, looking her over.

"I can’t remember. My son bought this house. Then he got sick and died, so I’ve lived here ever since. From the time I was young to middle-aged, and from middle age until now."

"What about your daughter?" Xu Huo steered the conversation, glancing at the young woman beside her.

"Daughter? I don’t have a daughter. Just the one son." The old woman shook her head.

"Then she is...?"

"She’s my cousin’s granddaughter. That side of the family passed away young."

The old woman shook her head and sighed.

"It happened over half a year ago. The family of three went out on a trip, but their car caught fire and was hit by another vehicle. She was left paralyzed."

"After that, I was the only relative she had left, so I took her in."

"But the girl has a great attitude. She doesn’t need much looking after."

’A great attitude?’

Xu Huo turned his head to look at the smiling woman.

Her smile wasn’t fake; it was clearly genuine. The tune she hummed was light and cheerful, too.

"What’s her name?"

"Sun Yang... Did Xiao Sun do something wrong?"

The old woman blurted out instinctively, then paused, a worried look on her face. She thought the police were after Sun Yang.

"No, we just need to ask Sun Yang a few questions."

Li Jianye shook his head, reassuring the old woman.

Xu Huo, meanwhile, got up and walked over to Sun Yang.

"Hm? Can I help you, officer?"

Sun Yang saw his shadow and turned her head. She blinked, and her cheerful, energetic demeanor made it hard to dislike her.

"It’s nothing... Does it get tiring, going out to buy groceries?"

Xu Huo glanced at her, suddenly changing the subject.

"Of course it gets tiring. This isn’t an electric wheelchair, you know."

Sun Yang shot him a scornful look, as if questioning his intelligence.

The corner of Xu Huo’s eye twitched.

"But it’s fine. Being a little tired is better than not being able to go anywhere at all. Besides, one day I’ll save up enough to buy an electric wheelchair."

"You don’t need to worry about me."

Sun Yang smiled, and dimples appeared on her cheeks.

Even the gruesome scars on her face seemed to soften a little, looking less startling.

"Save up? You’re able to save money?" Xu Huo asked.

"Of course. I may be disabled, Officer, but I still have to eat."

"My great-aunt doesn’t have a pension, and I can’t just be a freeloader and eat through all our savings, can I?"

Sun Yang said, sounding indignant.

"I can’t do physical labor, but I can hand out flyers."

"It doesn’t pay much, but at least I can save a little."

Xu Huo nodded. "That’s pretty impressive."

"Of course it is!"

"My parents are dead, but I’m not. I’m luckier than they were. Am I supposed to walk around with a long face, mourning for the rest of my life?"

"How much longer will I live? Fifty years? Sixty? I can’t just cry for the next sixty years, can I?"

Sun Yang stated matter-of-factly.

Fate hadn’t broken her. Her setbacks seemed to have left no psychological wounds.

"By the way, what was your relationship with the girl next door?"

Xu Huo suddenly changed tack.

"Did you know her?"

Without a moment’s thought, Sun Yang shook her head.

"I didn’t know her. Never even saw her. By the time I moved in, she had already been dead for a while. My great-aunt was the one who told me about it."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course."

Xu Huo stared at her for a long moment before finally looking away.

"Would you mind if the police left a couple of officers here?"

"Rest assured, they won’t interfere with your daily life."

"That’s fine... Can I order them around?"

A crafty glint appeared in Sun Yang’s eyes. ’Free labor!’ she thought.

"Of course."

Xu Huo smiled and walked over to Li Jianye.

He selected two officers and left a body camera behind before heading out.

CLICK!

The door closed.

The moment they stepped out of the building, Xu Huo spoke.

"Pull up Sun Yang’s file..."

Before he even had to ask, Li Jianye was at his side, reporting.

Li Jianye had already run a check as soon as he got her basic information.

"The files match. Both Sun Yang’s record and the record of the girl who committed suicide at the public school check out."

The records were a perfect match. Sun Yang’s family was the one in the report.

"Is it possible they switched identities?"

One of the officers spoke up, frowning.

"No, Sun Yang wasn’t lying."

Qian Hua shook his head. "I was watching her when Advisor Xu was questioning her. She showed no signs of lying."

"Her eyes, her micro-expressions, her body language... there was nothing suspicious at all when she said she didn’t know her."

If he was right, it meant she was telling the truth.

But that raised another question.

If she was telling the truth...

...then did that mean everything they had on Shen Miao was true, too?

At that thought, a heavy feeling settled over them.

Xu Huo took a deep breath.

"Let’s head back to the precinct!"

...

...

「The 28th, 7:00 PM, Zhaozhou Criminal Investigation Division.」

The office was filled with the sounds of a dozen heated discussions.

"Shen Miao has no living relatives that she was in contact with."

"She didn’t have a boyfriend, so it wasn’t a case of puppy love."

"Her parents had no background that would suggest counter-surveillance skills, and their deaths are all officially on record."

Xu Huo frowned.

The case had hit a complete dead end.

Every clue, every lead, had pointed in this direction, but Sun Yang had dispelled their suspicions, sealing off this entire line of investigation.

The girl was dead, her file recorded her cremation, and there were no inconsistencies.

Sun Yang’s file was also authentic.

"Could it be a secret admirer?"

Everyone was racking their brains, tearing their hair out, as they threw out another theory.

"That level of counter-surveillance knowledge isn’t something a kid that age would have."

"Besides, if someone was willing to kill for her a year and a half after her death... they would have shown up back when she was being bullied."

Li Jianye shot down the idea.

’So it wasn’t anyone like that.’

"But the two of them can’t be completely unrelated!"

Qian Hua’s expression soured.

"The killer obviously has some kind of special abilities!"

"Or even... a military veteran."

"That level of counter-surveillance expertise, that skill set, and that kind of ironclad mental fortitude... Forget a young person, most middle-aged people wouldn’t have that!"

’A soldier?’

That would be a problem.

First off, the search.

How many veterans were there? Thirty million, nationwide!

Even if you narrow that number down to a single county-level city, it’s still terrifyingly huge. Go ahead and try to investigate that. You’ll give up after a month.

Besides, an ordinary soldier wouldn’t have this kind of training...

"What about the second crime scene? How’s the background check on the four victims coming along?"

Xu Huo rubbed the spot between his eyebrows.

The case was growing more and more baffling, and they couldn’t see the path forward at all.

"We’ve been checking all afternoon, interviewing their classmates and teachers at the school."

"Out of the four, two are suspected of having bullied Shen Miao along with Cheng Yu."

"The other two were big-mouthed gossips. They were in Shen Miao’s class, and according to our investigation, they were the primary sources for a lot of the rumors about her."

"How many were involved in total?"

"We don’t know."

"You don’t know?"

Xu Huo’s brow furrowed. ’There’s no way a school only has seven bullies.’

’The killer won’t stop at just four, either!’

’He killed four because he was limited by time, not because he only had four targets...’

’If he’d had enough time...’

’...God knows how many would have died.’

Still, based on who the killer was targeting, these victims definitely weren’t innocent...

"Did you check on the dean of students?"

Xu Huo asked gravely.

At his words, Li Jianye paused, his expression growing grim.

"That’s what I was about to tell you."

"Based on reports from the team doing interviews this afternoon..."

"We have an eighth victim."

"The dean of students!"