Someone died at Aunt Xia's fruit shop.
They said it was a crime of passion.
Jing Ge had only come to buy a sugarcane. Unfortunately—or perhaps fatefully—she arrived at exactly the wrong moment and became the sole eyewitness.
She flipped through her phone contacts twice. Suppressing her trembling, Jing Ge dialed a number."Li Zhan, I—I killed someone… no, I mean, I saw—"
"You killed someone?" On the other end, his voice was arrogant and impatient. "What, you couldn't get my uncle, so now you don't want anyone else to live either?"
Jing Ge stammered, "N-no, it's not that, it's me—"
He had no patience to listen to her rambling. "If you really want to latch onto my uncle, shouldn't you be calling him instead?"
"..." Jing Ge froze, then asked instinctively, "What's my uncle's phone number?"
The line went dead silent.
After a moment, he seemed to let out a cold laugh. "That's what I thought. Jing Ge, give it up already. My uncle would rather look for a pig than look for you!"
He hung up.
Jing Ge looked up. The female police officer taking her statement stood beside her, patient and sympathetic.
"...He doesn't want me, it's not because I'm bad," Jing Ge tried to explain. "Maybe it's because he really likes pigs. I like pigs too—especially taro braised pork and preserved-vegetable braised pork."
The policewoman lifted a hand, wanting to pat her shoulder in comfort.
Startled out of reflex, Jing Ge dodged and murmured, "I haven't paid yet."
Twelve yuan. The price of one sugarcane.
"The owner's already gone," a middle-aged aunt from the crowd said helplessly. "What are you paying for?"
The policewoman needed to continue questioning her. "Is there anyone else you'd like us to contact to accompany you?"
The warm-hearted aunt suddenly chimed in, "Call her uncle. What was that thing just now? Not coming is one thing, but he even scolded her!"
Jing Ge snapped back to her senses and shook her head repeatedly. "I can manage on my own."
"Are you stupid?" the aunt blurted out. "If you really like your uncle, you should take this chance to get closer—"
Jing Ge's expression exploded. "No, no! My uncle has a very strong sense of order. Every day at eight-thirty he holds international meetings, nine o'clock he works out, ten o'clock he showers, ten-twenty he reads, eleven he sleeps. Whoever dares waste his time or mess up his schedule—he can turn them into a human cocoon without changing his expression—"
And right now, it was exactly eight-thirty.
No one wanted to provoke him.
Jing Ge was no exception.
Everyone present: "."
Thinking this through, Jing Ge's gaze gradually steadied. "I'm fine on my own. You can ask whatever you need."
"..." The policewoman cleared her throat lightly. "Name, age, are you in school or working?"
Jing Ge gave her name. "Twenty. Interning at a foreign trade company."
As for the motive behind the murder, Jing Ge didn't know. She'd had an argument with Li Zhan… or rather, she'd been unilaterally scolded. Li Zhan had mocked her for wanting to seduce his uncle, Li Mushí. She couldn't argue back. In a fit of anger, she'd bundled herself into her padded coat, grabbed her phone, and gone out.
By the time she reached this area, she wanted both roasted chestnuts and sugarcane. But chestnuts were twenty-five yuan per jin, while sugarcane was only twelve yuan a stalk.
She asked the shop owner to pick one for her, peel it, and chop it into small pieces.
The payment code was on the other side of the shop. When Jing Ge walked over to scan and pay, a sudden shriek erupted behind her. She turned around—only to see that the owner's head had already parted ways with her body.
Aside from the old Justice Bao dramas she watched as a child… and the tiger demon in Journey to the West whose head got carried off by a dog, Jing Ge had never seen anything where a head and body snapped apart so cleanly.
Her mind went blank on the spot.
Even the killer's appearance blurred into indistinct shapes.
And as usual, the surveillance cameras inside and outside the fruit shop were "broken."
"Alright," the policewoman noted it down. "May I ask who Li Zhan is? And Li Mushí—what is your relationship with them?"
Although she didn't understand why they were asking this, Jing Ge answered obediently. "Li Zhan and I have a childhood engagement. Li Mushí is his uncle."
The policewoman paused, mulling it over. "Li Mushí?"
The name sounded especially familiar.
As if she'd heard it on some financial news channel. The surname "Li" wasn't uncommon in Haishi, but it belonged to a very specific family.
The fruit shop sat at a four-way intersection. Passing vehicles stirred up the cold wind, and the smell of blood spread with it.
Only then did Jing Ge belatedly feel the urge to vomit.
So when a head fell, blood really did surge like floodgates opening—roaring like a stampede of ten thousand horses.
Before she could throw up, a black Rolls-Royce Ghost silently stopped outside the police cordon.
The unrelated onlookers had already been dispersed.
The policewoman's gaze sharpened as she looked toward the car.
Following her line of sight, Jing Ge—who had lost most of her capacity to think—turned as well.
The winter night was bleak. The camphor tree canopy blocked the streetlight, lending the darkness a veiled, hazy quality.
The rear window of the Ghost slid down. A man's strikingly defined face, mismatched with its icy chill, came into view. He cast her a calm glance."Who did you kill?"
His voice was like water flowing over a glacier.
Deep, steady, cold—and carrying a kind of power that made it feel as though, even if she really had killed someone, he could still settle it for her.
"..."
The warm-hearted aunt stared in awe for a moment and muttered, "This isn't that foul-mouthed brat from before, is it?"
With a face like that as capital, having a bit of a spoiled temper… seemed hardly surprising.
The moment his voice fell, Jing Ge suddenly reacted. The nerves that had been stretched taut by overwhelming terror finally collapsed at the sight of someone familiar. Her eyes reddened without warning."Uncle…"
Li Mushí's emotionless gaze silently swept over her.
Her clothes and pants were clean.
The exposed parts of her face and hands were clean.
Aside from fear and unease in her eyes, there were no signs of injury—or of having hurt anyone.
Only the edge of her shoes was stained a dark red.
Li Mushí understood instantly.
The driver opened the door for him.
Spotless thin-soled leather shoes touched the ground. His long legs followed as he stepped out. In the depths of winter, he wore only a crisp white shirt and black trousers, a metal-buckled leather belt outlining his lean, powerful waist.
Fully exposed to everyone's view, backlit by the surrounding glow, his presence pressed down with an overwhelming sense of lethal authority.
He glanced at Jing Ge, his voice still flat and unruffled. "Come here."
Jing Ge immediately ran behind him.
As if she had entered a safe house.
Only then did Li Mushí look at the policewoman. He nodded and said calmly, "Hello. I'm her guardian. If there's anything that requires cooperation, you can speak with me first."