Chapter 3: Cold Case

Yan Jingyao had barely stepped out of the terminal when she spotted the outrageously flashy welcome sign from far away.

It was covered in twinkling colored lights and cute, rounded lettering. If they weren’t standing by the VIP passage, passersby would probably assume they were fans waiting for some celebrity.

Yan Jingyao took a pair of sunglasses from her pocket and put them on, strutting forward haughtily. Then she saw Pei Jinxi and Chen Jin waving the sign like two children. “Yan Jingyao, over here!”

It was also cloudy in Licheng today, so the sunglasses somewhat obstructed her vision. She did her best not to take a wrong turn and walk into a wall. If she was going to show off, she had to see it through. “Ahem. Do you two want my autograph?”

“No. We just think it’s a miracle that you didn’t miss your flight.”

The two of them could finally lower the childish welcome sign. Chen Jin yanked Yan Jingyao’s sunglasses off. “All right, that’s enough showing off.”

Yan Jingyao was speechless. “Can’t you have a little sense of fun?”

“Wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day is your idea of fun?”

“Of course. These are X-ray sunglasses. You’re wearing a black bra today, aren’t you?”

She waggled her eyebrows at Chen Jin, who hurriedly put on the sunglasses and looked at Pei Jinxi. “Wow, polka-dot panties!”

“Who told you to look?!”

What kind of cutting-edge technology was this?! Pei Jinxi snatched the sunglasses from Chen Jin and put them on, staring excitedly at the two of them. “I can see yours too…”

“They obviously can’t see through anything!”

There was no X-ray function at all. They were merely an ordinary pair of sunglasses. Pei Jinxi took them off gloomily. “Did you two just guess what panties I’m wearing?”

Chen Jin scratched her hair and smiled deviously. “When I went to your house yesterday, I saw a pair of polka-dot panties beside your bed.”

Pei Jinxi: “…”

There was something seriously wrong with their heads! Reaching that conclusion, she suddenly stepped forward and tugged open Chen Jin’s collar. “Let me see if it really is black!”

“Don’t fucking stick your hand in there!”

“Let me see!”

“Stop grabbing my tits!”

The two of them actually started wrestling right there. Chen Jin clutched her clothes tightly while Pei Jinxi insistently tried to pull them open and investigate. Her lecherous hand grabbed the other woman’s breast. “Is it black lace?”

Yan Jingyao watched the spectacle with delight until they both turned toward her at the same time, identical sinister smiles spreading across their faces.

“D-Don’t come any closer!”

The great Attorney Yan’s beautiful face went pale Read on BaiLianTaleswith fright. She bolted down the deserted passage like a streak of lightning, with two shameless hooligans chasing after her!

The three of them raced one another from the VIP passage to the underground parking lot. There were no other cars in this designated parking area, so they charged down the slope without restraint.

Unable to stop in time, Yan Jingyao slammed against the door of a white Bentley Bentayga. Chen Jin and Pei Jinxi came rushing after her, piling on top of one another like a human pyramid and crushing her beneath them.

The three childish women were tangled together, with Attorney Yan’s face squashed and distorted against the window. Bracing herself against the car door, she gritted her teeth. “Get off me! I refuse to be taken from behind!”

Pei Jinxi: “…”

Chen Jin: “…”

…

At twelve thirty, at the same Licheng International Airport, Ji Lan stepped off a plane with her travel bag over her shoulder.

Her flight had actually been [unauthorized copy]the same one as Yan Jingyao’s. They had even spent two and a half hours together in the same first-class cabin.

Their seats were staggered, with Yan Jingyao seated diagonally in front of her to the right. Ji Lan hadn’t paid much attention to the woman, and the two had never even come face-to-face.

Before the plane took off, however, Ji Lan had instinctively surveyed her surroundings and noticed the woman diagonally ahead of her repeatedly tapping her fingers against the armrest.

The rhythm was quick. Perhaps she was anxious about something, Ji Lan naturally concluded. She then became immersed in her own thoughts and drifted off to sleep once the plane soared into the clouds.

When they disembarked, the two brushed past each other without either noticing the other.

After leaving the terminal, Ji Lan was in no hurry to go home. She found a McDonald’s in the arrivals-level food court and ordered a black tea and a hamburger for lunch.

She had temporarily left her car at the airport before her departure. After paying the parking fee, she took the receipt down to Basement Level Three to retrieve it.

Her car was a white Volkswagen. Ji Lan tossed her bag onto the passenger seat and sat blankly behind the wheel for quite some time before finally driving home.

As soon as she entered the house, she heard fluent, standard British English accompanied by explanations in Chinese. Her mother, Ji Wanyan, was recording an online lesson.

Ji Lan did not go in and disturb her. She quietly drank some water, took a shower, and went to have an afternoon nap.

Exhausted from the journey, she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. It wasn’t until six in the evening that Ji Wanyan entered her room and woke her for dinner.

The mother and daughter casually chatted about everyday matters. After dinner, Ji Lan took a laptop and a black notebook from her bag.

Back in her room, she switched on the desk lamp. Her brows knitted tightly as she stared distractedly at the child’s drawing pressed beneath the glass desktop.

It depicted a half-finished rabbit, colored red and neither properly round nor square. It consisted of nothing more than a child’s crude, immature lines, with no composition to speak of—merely a careless doodle.

Nearly thirty years had passed…

“Lanlan.” Ji Wanyan had appeared behind her at some point. She asked gently, “You didn’t find any clues this time either?”

“No.” Ji Lan sounded dejected. “The old police officer who handled the case said it absolutely couldn’t have been him. unauthorized copy They interrogated him thoroughly at the time.”

Opening the black notebook, she used a red pen to draw a cross through the heading at the top: “May 10, 1989—Hongbao Village Serial Rape-Murder Case.”

The preceding dozen or so pages recorded cases from 1986, 1987, 1988… The months varied, with four or five cases in some years and only one or two in others. They were all vicious serial murder cases solved by police in various regions at the time.

Each of those pages contained only a single heading and no clues. Ji Wanyan gently stroked her daughter’s hair, her heart aching for her.

“Mom.” It wasn’t the first time Ji Lan had felt discouraged. “If we keep failing to find her, could that girl possibly still be alive? Judging by her age, she should be almost forty now.”

So much time had passed. The once-vivid memories of the first case she had worked on with Ren Jingxi—the Houjia Village Serial Murder Case—had almost gathered dust. Only the old woman’s cloudy eyes remained as clear in her memory as ever.

The blind, white-haired old woman had tremblingly knelt before Ji Lan and her teacher. She brought her ten-year-old granddaughter with her and repeatedly kowtowed to them so hard that their foreheads became bloody and mangled. No one could stop them.

Her younger granddaughter had disappeared in April 1986, when she had just turned three. The only thing left outside the house was this half-finished drawing. Whether she was alive or dead remained unknown.

The county police had once assigned personnel to search and investigate, but [bailiantales.com]neither her body nor any trace of her alive was ever found. More than twenty years later, the old woman heard that people had once again come to the county to investigate cases. She waited stubbornly for several days, begging them to find some way to search for her granddaughter again.

Her situation was unbearably tragic. The old woman sobbed as though her heart were being torn apart, asking only for an answer, whether her granddaughter was dead or alive. That was also why Ji Lan had persisted for so long.

“Communication and transportation are completely different now. Many regions have been reviewing wrongful convictions and cold cases, while numerous organizations involved in human trafficking, prostitution, and organized crime have been dismantled. There have also been several population censuses over the years. But my teacher and I have asked around extensively, and none of the people we found matched her.”

Ji Lan flipped through the major cases she had listed, page by page, eventually stopping at the page for 1998. “Ten years. If we use ten years as the cutoff, criminal investigation techniques became increasingly advanced afterward, and surveillance systems gradually improved. If she doesn’t appear in any of the later cases, then…”

She couldn’t bear to finish. Ji Wanyan understood what she meant. After ten years, either the girl truly was still alive and had never been found, or another case remained concealed in the darkness, still undiscovered.

“Mom.” Ji Lan looked up at her, helplessness and confusion filling her eyes. “Do you think that child might have been buried somewhere no one ever discovered?”

Her grandmother had died without ever receiving an answer. Her sister still went to the police station every month to ask about her, still waiting for news…

“We’re still persevering too, aren’t we? The local police, you, and Ren Jingxi—everyone is still searching.”

Ji Wanyan comforted her. “As long as you continue searching, one day, no matter where she is, you’ll find her.”

“…Mmm.”

Feeling her mother’s warmth against her palm, Ji Lan gradually regained a measure of calm and reassurance. She was wondering when she might receive feedback regarding the next case when she suddenly heard Ji Wanyan say:

“Wait, 1997… Didn’t you record any cases from 1997? I remember there being one that year…”

“What case?”

Cases in which both the perpetrator and victim had been clearly identified were outside Ji Lan’s scope of consideration. She had consistently investigated serial murder cases in which some victims had remained unidentified at the time, since those might contain clues.

There had been several completely clear-cut murders in 1997, but she couldn’t recall any solved serial murder cases among them.

She looked at her mother in confusion. Ji Wanyan hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know the exact details. If even you don’t know about the case, then perhaps the records were sealed.”

“Sealed?” Everything suddenly became shrouded in mystery. Ji Lan pressed her, “Why were they sealed? Could it be…”

“I don’t know the specifics. It was most likely because of Yan Rui.” Ji Wanyan frowned and looked at her daughter, seeming reluctant to continue.

She deliberated for a long time. Only when it became clear that Ji Lan wouldn’t give up until she heard the answer did Ji Wanyan finally say, “Three years ago, I went to the mountain city to provide training for a company. I invited Yan Rui out for drinks, and after she got drunk, she told me something.”

“She only told me a little, but… um, Lanlan, have you ever heard of a woman named Fu Zhaoyu?”