Chapter 191: The Ever-changing Autumn

Translator: Atlas Studios  Editor: Atlas Studios

Huang He was equivalent to Tang Yuanchu’s teacher. When he was a new detective, Huang He was the one who showed him the ropes. He had been following Huang He to understand more about being a detective and learnt a great deal of knowledge that books would be unable to teach him and from there, he had become a real detective.

At that time, Huang He was the Tang Yuanchu’s example and goal.

Huang He had clear thinking, was upright, courageous and fearless—That was Tang Yuanchu’s impression of Huang He.

But this pale, dull-looking eyed fellow who looked as though drained of his spirits that he looked depressed. He was no longer the teacher whom he admired.

Hearing Tang Yuanchu’s voice which almost broke down, Xiang Wan felt somewhat down as well.

In contrast, Bai Muchuan and Huang He appeared to be very cool.

Huang He looked up and smiled at Tang Yuanchu. “I’m not dead, why are you behaving in such a mournful manner?”

Tang Yuanchu was even more grieved when he heard that. “Brother Huang, why have you become like this? Did some b*st*rd in there mess around with you? Tell me, I’ll look them up…”

If he had not received some “special treatment”, why would he become like this? That was what Tang Yuanchu thought.

But Huang He only let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. “There isn’t.”

“Really?”

“Why should I lie to you?” Huang He looked up at him. “Do you think your Brother Huang is someone who could be easily messed around with?”

If no one messed around with him, that could only mean he was the one who did that to himself.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Tang Yuanchu asked.

“… It’s nothing. It’s my own problem.” Huang He did not seem to want to talk about it.

Tang Yuanchu tried to search for a valid reason but still couldn’t not figure it out why in such a short period of time, he had lost so much weight and become like this?

“You’re no longer dashing!”

“You sound as though there was a time when I’m dashing!”

Huang He laughed and brushed the topic aside. “You should be happy for me. I’m getting out again.”

Just that word “again” brought about endless bitterness.

Huang He did not work for Zhou Dequan for long. As Zhou Dequan was still wary of him, Huang He was only responsible for those legal businesses and affairs. The results of the investigation showed that he was not involved in any of the illegal activities. Therefore, it had been ascertained that he could not have been directly or indirectly involved in any shady or illegal activities.

“The release papers came just now, I’ll be released in a while. I’m acquitted.”

He gave a faint smile and suddenly gazed at the silent Bai Muchuan.

“Captain Bai, thank you.” Huang He looked serious as he said that.

After a brief pause, he let out a bitter chuckle. “If it’s not for you, I might be the same as the rest of them where I need to stay in here for at least three to five years…”

Xiang Wan was surprised.

Bai Muchuan had never showed much concern over Huang He’s matters. But deep down inside, he was quietly trying his best to help Huang He out and did not give up on him?

This man had refused to say anything, but he was absolutely loyal to his friends and attached great importance to justice…

“That’s because you’re innocent,” said an indifferent Bai Muchuan. “We will not accuse a good man. Neither will we let a bad person off.”

That sounded quite official as well as a courtesy way of replying.

“Yes, I know.” Huang He laughed, but he looked brooding between his brows as well. “Well, I still want to thank you—for your help. I’ll give you a treat when I get out of here.”

“It’s alright, you don’t need to.” Bai Muchuan furrowed his brows slightly. “What are you going to do going ahead?”

Huang He did not say a word. After a while, he suddenly heaved a sigh.

“I’ll take one step at a time. Just get out of here first.”

As he said so, he looked at Xiang Wan. “I didn’t expect that the second time I get out of here, you two will come and receive me again…”

History was as though repeating itself.

It was just that this time, the people who came to fetch him had changed. Fang Yuanyuan was not there.

There wouldn’t be anyone who would yell and cry out his name and rush to embrace him, as well as scold him and kick a fuss over him.

Xiang Wan gave a pleasant smile. “We should.”

Huang He smiled too. He did not ask about Fang Yuanyuan, and Xiang Wan did not talk about her, either.

Both of them had tacitly avoided the topic.

“We’ll get going then.”

“See you outside.”

“Kudos to freedom.”

“…”

Xiang Wan’s heart felt heavy upon seeing Huang He like this. She did not feel good but at the same time, she felt relieved for him.

Fortunately, Fang Yuanyuan did not see him at this state. Otherwise, she couldn’t imagine how upset Yuanyuan would be—even though Yuanyuan had been calm and behaved as usual without having her to worry. However, Xiang Wan understood Yuanyuan.

If Fang Yuanyuan had created a scene, kicked up a fuss, and cried her heart out, it would mean that she was not in extreme emotional pain.

When she was suffering from extreme emotional pain, she would be quiet and silent like what she was doing now—she was actually in despair.

…

Zhou Dequan’s body had been sent to the funeral parlor.

When Bai Muchuan got to know of this, he almost burst out in anger.

This was because a medical examiner had conducted autopsy and concluded the cause of death to be suicide. This case was basically clear and the sending of the corpse to the funeral parlor had been executed according to protocol.

Bai Muchuan immediately called up the funeral parlor to stop with the cremation. Then he sent Cheng Zheng and his forensics team to retrieve the corpse from the funeral parlor.

In actual fact, such an action could easily offend the other team which had settled the case last night.

But whether it was Bai Muchuan or Cheng Zheng, they were not those who would bother with offending others—they were only concerned if they should do something or not…

Cheng Zheng went there speedily. The funeral parlor had not cremated the body and the reason was that Zhou Dequan’s family were not there to sign the papers.

Currently, Zhou Dequan’s son and daughter had just received news of his death and were on their way back from abroad. His wife, Ma Suying, was still in the hospital receiving treatment, and therefore unable to come over.

As the funeral parlor did not have the approval of the family members, they did not dare to cremate the body.

After Cheng Zheng conducted the autopsy, his conclusion was no different from the previous one as well—Zhou Dequan did commit suicide.

He had used his teeth to tear his prison clothes in pieces and tie them to form a long rope where he hung himself to death by the metal window.

In actual fact, it was difficult to want to commit suicide in a place like the detention center—it could be said that wanting to die was worse than wanting to live.

In order to prevent the prisoners from committing suicide to escape from their criminal responsibility, the detention center had extremely strict supervision on this matter. There was no metal or sharp objects, and the prison cells had surveillance cameras installed. Their movements could not escape the eyes of the prison wardens.

But when Zhou Dequan hanged himself last night, the prison guard on duty was actually taking a nap and coincidentally let him succeed in hanging himself.

Of course, this prison guard would definitely receive the rightful punishment for negligence in his work.

But when a person died, things would not be the same anymore.

…

When they got back to the office, Cheng Zheng dragged Bai Muchuan to the Forensics Lab to give a detailed description of Zhou Dequan’s death.

Besides his assistant, Mei Xin, who did the autopsy with him, no one else participated.

When it was noon, the two of them came down from the lab to the canteen, walking and talking while doing so.

Xiang Wan was sitting in a corner near the windows. She looked at them from afar and suddenly, there was a feeling… as though she had fallen out of love.

After lunch, before they could take a breather, Bai Muchuan immediately called for a meeting. At the meeting, it was confirmed that the murderer behind Mao Guigui’s death was, indeed, Zhao Dequan.

The murderer had committed suicide.

However, the motive of killing Mao Guigui as well as the whereabouts of her body were not stated in Zhou Dequan’s suicide note, leaving some doubts in the case.

Bai Muchuan gave a detailed account of the situation to the team.

After that, he eyeballed everyone. “Now, everyone is free to discuss and talk about their own views.”

The majority of them raised their questions revolving around those points that Bai Muchuan had mentioned.

They talked about the relationship between Jia An and Zhou Dequan. Zhou Dequan had made use of Jia An to abduct Mao Guigui and then he killed her. Zhou Dequan let Jia An be the scapegoat for him. Nonetheless, as Mao Guigui happened to be Ye Lun’s fan, Jia An’s case was also linked with the previous cases relating to Xie Wanwan, Kong Qingping, and the like.

From the perspective of Zhou Dequan’s background and social status, he was indeed qualified to be the mastermind of a series of cases.

But what about his motive?

The absence of a criminal motive was not a mandatory condition to kill someone, but certainly, it gave off a feeling as though one was looking at a flower in a foggy day.

“I have a question, too.” Xiang Wan suddenly spoke in a louder tone which attracted the attention of everyone in the meeting room.

She sat on her chair and looked toward Bai Muchuan as well as everyone in the meeting room. “Everyone, when Zhou Dequan killed Mao Guigui, the time and the plot is quite a match to my novel, ‘Murder The Dream Guy’. Due to this fact, I discontinued my novel. With regards to this point, Captain Bai and Detective Tang know about it. The problem now is—why is this murder case so similar to the one I wrote?”

Could it be that Zhou Dequan was also a reader of “Murder The Dream Guy”?

Her novel was categorized under female romance fiction. Would someone like him go read, and even replicate her murder cases?

This just did not make sense.

With regards to this aspect, Xiang Wan was perplexed.

Nobody could answer her question.

…

In the afternoon, the team was busy with their investigations.

All the crimes that Zhou Dequan had committed, as well as the collusion between him and officials, businessmen were all under simultaneous investigations.

Bai Muchuan was really busy as Xiang Wan did not see him for the entire afternoon after the meeting.

When it was time to knock off from work, he sent a message to Xiang Wan. “Send me a message when you get home.”

She knew he was busy. “You don’t need to worry about me,” she replied, “I’m not a kid…”

“In my eyes, you are a kid!”

“…”

“You’re not allowed to go back home by yourself—if you ran out of options, you’re allowed to ride in Cheng Zheng’s car.”

“…”

Wow! What was that?

Did he think that he was definitely winning so he despised his potential rival?

Or was he too worried about her safety to care about that?

Xiang Wan did not know if she should be angry or amused by his words.

When she left the office, she ran into Cheng Zheng coincidentally, and he offered to drive her back. Due to safety reasons, she accepted his offer graciously.

When she reached home, Fang Yuanyuan was not back yet.

Xiang Wan changed to her slippers and threw her bag on the bed. The next moment, she called Bai Muchuan to “report” her whereabouts.

But she did not expect Bai Muchuan to deliver a piece of shocking news.

He had gotten an answer to her question at the meeting earlier.

The team did a recovery to Zhou Dequan’s mobile phone and found out that Zhou Dequan did quite a number of searches using Baidu to look for Xiang Wan’s book—Murder The Dream Guy. Afterward, he deleted his browsing history.

Xiang Wan did not know if she should be happy or angry to know about this.

“Are you kidding me? Zhou Dequan read my book?”

Bai Muchuan asked in a laughing tone, “Is it so weird to have male fans?”

“… It’s weird.”

“I’m your fan, too. But you didn’t act like this then?”

“It’s not strange to have male fans, but a male fan who commits murder—that’s strange…”

“I don’t kill people.”

“Eh?!”

Bai Muchuan’s tease out of goodwill eased Xiang Wan from feeling as nervous.

She also asked Bai Muchuan about the investigation progress before making a weak remark. “If we’ve already confirmed that Zhou Dequan is the murderer and he killed Mao Guigui because of reading my book… as the murderer’s dead, does that mean…”

She paused as she felt her heart starting to race all of a sudden.

Bai Muchuan asked, “What?”

Xiang Wan tittered as she said, “Does that mean I can continue writing my ‘Murder The Dream Guy’?”

Bai Muchuan laughed as he shook his head. “I think you can go ahead to do so, Miss Author.”

“…”

With this piece of good news, Xiang Wan’s nerves were as though had become lively and active.

“Alright then, I’ll update tomorrow and I’m going to write my latest chapter tonight. After stopping for so many days, I feel like a newbie again…”

…

After hanging up the call, Xiang Wan switched on her laptop, preparing to start working on her story.

It’s been a while, “Murder The Dream Guy”! Xiang Wan’s heart was filled with gratitude.

When it was half past seven in the evening, Fang Yuanyuan reached home. She gave a cheer when she heard about the wonderful piece of news. She was in such good spirits that she went to the kitchen to make dinner to reward her author, Xiang Wan….

“I know I’m too good, right?! I’m this century’s best editor that an author could have!”

“Hm!” Xiang Wan did not even look back but chortled at Yuanyuan’s remarks. “Everything is fine except the cooking.”

“D*rn! You should shut up when you have something to eat!”

Xiang Wan was feeling especially thrilled when she was writing her story.

Fang Yuanyuan was also elated as that meant she need not be carrying the burden of the discontinuation.

The two of them enjoyed a lighthearted dinner together.

Nevertheless, Xiang Wan’s cheerful mood only lasted for a few hours when she received a disturbing piece of news.

“Ma Suying is dead.”

She’s dead?!

Bai Muchuan was the one who sent the message.

A simple message of a few words threw Xiang Wan’s heart into the abyss.

“For example, I’m your crazy fan. In order to chase you for updates, I started to lose my mind. I’ll kill a person when you stop writing for one day and so on?”

The mysterious comment of the ID showed up in her mind like a magic spell.

She looked at the time reflexively, which was located at the bottom right corner of the laptop screen—it was exactly midnight.

Holding the mobile phone, her hand was trembling slightly when she typed a reply and sent it. “Bai Muchuan, when did it happen?”

Bai Muchuan did not reply to her message immediately.

Two minutes later, he directly called her up.

“i just received the news and I’m on my way to the hospital now…”

Another person died.

It was Ma Suying, whom she had met before.

The woman who was independent and self-reliant but committed bribes and crimes for the sake of her loved one. After doing all these things, in the end, she got betrayed by her loved one.

The autumn this year was full of ups and downs! The news were more shocking than the other!

Xiang Wan found it hard to believe. She asked softly, rubbing her forehead as if it was aching, “How did she die?”

Bai Muchuan seemed to be walking as his voice quivered slightly. “She jumped down! We don’t know about the specifics. The hospital only gave a simple account of the matter.”

After a brief pause, Bai Muchuan said, “I’ve asked Cheng Zheng to come along. Do you want to come? If so, let him bring you over.”

“It’s alright!” Xiang Wan looked at the time on the screen and rejected the offer, which was unlike of her. “I need to write my latest chapter. I’m suddenly a little worried about not updating my novel now…”

…

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