Chapter 126 - 114: Found Them! Identifying the Second Killer and the Victim

"Get your men."

"Investigate!"

...

...

Xu Huo was a master of time management.

If he could do two things in one second, he wouldn’t settle for just one.

To use the time he’d clawed back by pulling all-nighters and racing against the clock to chase the killer on just one thing was far too extravagant!

Of course, he wasn’t the only one who understood this. Everyone wanted to do multiple things at once...

But they didn’t have the brainpower for it.

The mental exhaustion was severe. Juggling two lines of inquiry, pulling all-nighters, weaving together clues from both tracks, integrating the case’s progress, mastering the leads, and taking countermeasures on specific points...

It was like cramming ten days of work into one!

Still, Xu Huo was holding up fairly well mentally.

At least enough to get him through today’s investigation.

"KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK~"

At 10:30 PM, the group got out of their police car, climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, and Xu Huo knocked on Sun Yang’s door.

"Coming, coming."

Sun Yang’s voice rang out, and a second later, the doorknob turned.

"CREAK~"

The door opened, revealing a face looking up at them.

"It’s you again. Are you their leader?"

Sun Yang welcomed them in. Seeing Xu Huo standing at the front, she raised an eyebrow.

"What are you saying? Show the officer some respect."

The old woman shifted slightly, then tapped forward tentatively with her cane.

The cane missed her. Sun Yang wheeled her chair over, and the cane landed on it with a sharp CLACK.

Sun Yang chuckled, not at all afraid it would hit her on the head.

Xu Huo stared at the two of them for a long moment before looking away.

"Actually, we came this time to ask Miss Sun some questions."

’Questions for Sun Yang?’

The old woman grew a little flustered. She spoke nervously.

"Officer, our little Yang has never done anything wrong."

"What could you possibly need to ask her? Why don’t you ask this old woman instead..."

Xu Huo reassured the old woman. "It’s nothing serious. We’ll be done in five minutes."

Hearing this, the old woman let out a small sigh of relief, but she was still a bit tense.

"Please relax, Miss Sun. We’re just going to ask about a few minor things."

Xu Huo smiled, his expression gentle.

"First, let’s get you hooked up to this equipment."

The lie detector, just by its appearance, looked like a radio, but what it could detect was far more impressive.

The device wasn’t perfectly accurate and couldn’t be relied upon for critical judgments, but it was more than enough for the current situation.

She felt his fingertips brush against her skin.

Sun Yang glanced at Xu Huo, her eyelashes fluttering slightly, but she didn’t stop him.

"Alright, first question. Do you know Shen Miao?"

After getting her set up, Xu Huo sat down in front of her. As he asked the question, he activated something in his mind.

’Joy Eye!’

"No, I don’t. My grandma was the one who told me about her."

Sun Yang wondered why he was asking a second time, but she answered as before.

Xu Huo paused. He looked at the lie detector, then at Li Jianye behind him, who shook his head.

His brow immediately furrowed.

"Are you attracted to girls?" he asked next.

"No."

Sun Yang was even more confused now. "Just because I’m paralyzed doesn’t mean my sexual orientation is messed up..."

"Do you know Cheng Yu?" Xu Huo asked.

"Which ’Cheng’?"

Sun Yang’s brow furrowed. This was getting weird; the questions were getting more and more off-topic.

"What’s your name?" Xu Huo asked.

"Sun Yang," Sun Yang replied.

"Can you recite your ID number...?" Xu Huo said.

"I haven’t memorized that one..." Sun Yang said, embarrassed.

’This trap question...’

’...she answered it without any issues, too.’

Xu Huo stared at the lie detector, reconsidered his own judgment, and his brows knitted together.

In this day and age, not many people actually memorized their ID numbers. After all, it wasn’t used often, so they couldn’t be bothered.

Even in his past life, before large-scale real-name registration for software became common, people didn’t bother memorizing it. They would just pull out their ID card to type it in when needed.

It was only because of a three-year-long ’flu’ that many people were forced to memorize their ID numbers.

"Alright, thank you for your trouble."

Xu Huo thought for a moment, then removed the sensors and stood up to leave.

"Oh, right. Officer, how old are you?" Sun Yang asked instinctively as she saw him about to go.

"That’s not important."

Xu Huo said nothing more and closed the door.

The officers didn’t exchange many words.

Once they were quickly downstairs and out of the building, they immediately began to discuss the interview.

"No issues. Still no issues!"

"All her answers were perfectly normal! Her blood pressure, heart rate, breathing, and pulse were all normal!"

Li Jianye said anxiously, his brows knitted together tightly.

"Her eyes, her movements, the small details, even her muscle twitches—all clean!"

Xu Huo nodded.

She wasn’t very old, so he had tried to test her with some romantic tension.

At eighteen or nineteen, in the prime of adolescence, his looks and demeanor had a lethal effect on girls her age.

With a slight provocation, their thinking would go off-kilter.

But a killer—a killer whose mind was consumed with how not to get caught... they wouldn’t pay attention to such things or dwell on romantic feelings.

And on top of that, she had even worked up the courage to ask his age at the last second!

"Even her personality. It doesn’t have the gloominess Shen Miao’s is supposed to have."

An officer said. Xu Huo nodded in agreement.

Whether Shen Miao was dead or alive, her personality wouldn’t have been a pleasant one.

But Sun Yang’s personality conflicted with this information. And it wasn’t an act; her sunny, positive attitude was genuine.

Take what just happened, for example.

A normal person would never have the courage to ask someone they like a question like that.

But despite her disability, she wasn’t overly insecure and dared to ask.

If not for the information matching the case details...

...the police would never have even looked at her!

"How strange. If it’s related to Shen Miao, but it’s not Sun Yang, then this person..."

"Who the hell is it!?"

Li Jianye racked his brains. He felt this case was the most absurd, mind-bending one he had ever encountered.

His entire brain was boiling, as if it had been thrown into a deep fryer!

"Let’s ask Captain Qian."

"The difficult part of his investigation was bypassing the dean of students to find the right trail, not the search itself."

"Maybe he has..."

Xu Huo was just about to speak when he pulled out his phone. A second later, it rang sharply.

"BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!"

The caller ID read: Captain Qian.

Xu Huo paused. The others instinctively leaned in closer.

He answered the call and put it on speaker.

The moment the call connected, the voice on the other end burst out.

"We found them!"

"Advisor Xu, we found them! We’ve locked onto them!"

"We found them! Following your theory, we used the new line of investigation to lock onto their file information, and they’re a perfect match for the case!!!"

A rushed, ecstatic shout blasted from the phone for all to hear.

’They... they found them?’

Xu Huo froze. A second later, everyone’s eyes lit up, their bodies trembling slightly with excitement.

They found them.

They finally found them!

The police had worked themselves to the bone. Eight victims, two full days of sleepless work, even eating on the go while thinking and investigating...

And they had finally found him!

"The killer or the victim?"

Xu Huo suppressed his excitement and asked in a low voice.

"Both, we’ve got both!"

"The person who killed the eight victims and the victim at the center of the private academy conflict—we’ve locked onto both of them!"

Qian Hua’s excited voice echoed in their ears.

Hearing this, Xu Huo, contrary to expectations, didn’t feel excited. Instead, the tightly wound string in his heart finally loosened.

’We were on the right track...’

’My line of investigation was correct!’

But immediately after, a wave of doubt began to brew and spread in his mind, making him frown.

At the first crime scene, there was the bizarre cleanup, the concealed scent, the burned tools, even anticipating the police dogs and escaping by jumping into a river to cover their tracks...

At the murder scene, there was the terrifyingly thorough cleanup, anticipating the police’s Luminol reagent and preemptively destroying the luminescent reaction, even thinking about the water usage, and using the luggage to plant a false lead for the police while dumping the body in the nearby septic tank...

And remember, all of this was done after killing three people and dismembering their bodies!

Their psychological resilience and intellect were simply unheard of...

An opponent with maxed-out anti-surveillance skills who could leave anyone stumped...

’Who the hell is it!?’

’What is their identity?’

At this thought, Xu Huo’s heart sank. He spoke in a low voice.

"The killer’s identity..."

"Who exactly are they!?"