Chapter 217: The Beginning

The car sped down the highway.

"Why drive so fast? Slow down, we'll make it!" Old He, sitting in the passenger seat, instructed Officer Wu impatiently.

They were still half an hour from the airport, and Feng Zhi's flight wasn't due to depart for another two hours.

Feng Zhi was going abroad as an exchange student for a year.

Xu Ruyi was paying for it.

Naturally, she would be seeing him off. When Old He rushed to Guanlan Court, the security guard said she had left just twenty minutes ago and should be nearing the airport by now.

"Feng Zhi actually did so much to repay the Xu family's support," Officer Qian, riding shotgun, sighed. "Compared to Qin Guan, those three—Feng Zhi, Qi Donghao, Cui Yuan—ah, the difference between people really is too vast!"

Indeed, no one could have imagined those three young men had carried the entire burden.

To be precise, five people: those three, plus Gong Xiaoyu and Xu Ruyi.

The origin of everything lay after Mr. Xu's death.

Old He sat in the spacious back seat, piecing together the clues unearthed over these days—all seemingly insignificant at first glance.

Shortly after Mr. Xu's death, Feng Zhi had visited the area with classmates to attend a biotechnology company exhibition in a neighboring city. They stayed for three days. According to classmates, Feng Zhi claimed he had something to attend to and left around noon on the second day, only returning after 10 PM. They teased him, joking he must have gone to see an online crush.

That same afternoon, kindergarten surveillance showed Little Pear was picked up by Feng Xiangping.

That night at 12:50, the main gate surveillance at Guanlan Court captured Xu Ruyi's car driving into the complex.

Also on that day, both Qi Donghao and Cui Yuan were absent from their posts—Qi Donghao had just graduated and started a job; he had submitted his resignation the day before. Cui Yuan ran a coffee-bookshop with a friend; he had called his partner the night before to take leave.

Similarly "absent" was Gong Xiaoyu.

Old He found no record of her taking a flight or high-speed train to the neighboring city that day, but she did take a high-speed train back.

A late-night train.

Her husband said she had urgently gone to visit a high school classmate—Old He contacted this friend, who confirmed it. They were close high school friends, and Gong Xiaoyu spent the entire morning at her house.

But she wasn't there in the afternoon or evening. The friend had no idea where Gong Xiaoyu went, assuming she had taken an early train home.

In short, these individuals were all gathered in the same place—the neighboring city—at the same time.

Old He looked at the photo in his hand—an image of Feng Zhi captured in a hotel lobby. Old He had gone to the neighboring city himself and spent two days only to find this one piece.

Five people, gathered where? He had found nothing.

Perhaps, from the very moment they decided to meet, they had been extremely cautious, deliberately avoiding cameras and using disposable numbers to communicate—Qi Donghao's girlfriend was studying forensic science; maybe some counter-surveillance awareness came from her.

Regardless, that must have been the beginning of their plan.

Next, Qi Donghao and Cui Yuan were responsible for tailing Qin Guan—Qin Guan had said he felt followed for a long time.

What was the initial purpose of the surveillance?

Old He didn't know.

But he could piece together what happened next.

Qin Guan took Qi Min on a business trip. Qi Min slipped away midway to book a room at Lakeside Charm Hotel, waiting for Qin Guan to join her there after his training ended for their tryst.

She was actually setting a trap, hence planting "Zeng Demei" in advance.

Early the next morning, Gong Xiaoyu's mother, Cai Fengying, went to the hotel to apply for a cleaning job.

Cai Fengying placed a camera or listening device in the hotel room—at this point, Old He frowned, deep in thought. Xu Ruyi's initial target was likely just to obtain ironclad proof of Qin Guan and Qi Min's affair.

But things quickly spiraled out of control.

Qin Guan "strangled" Qi Min, stuffed her "corpse" into the suitcase, and took it to the third-floor terrace—elevator surveillance confirmed this.

However, as Qin Guan himself claimed, the suitcase he hid was discovered.

Qi Donghao and Cui Yuan found the suitcase—these two had never checked in. With Cai Fengying's cooperation, they managed to enter the third-floor terrace by swiping a room key card.

After a brief inspection, they quickly realized the suitcase didn't contain a person, and certainly not Qi Min.

So, they decided to play along. They pushed this decoy suitcase down the laundry chute from the third floor into the lake.

"Two spoiled rich kids. One thin, tall, fair-skinned, with shiny studs in his ear. The other shorter, darker. Both shirtless in swim trunks, laughing and fooling around without a care," Qin Guan had described.

The fact that even Qin Guan detected nothing showed how incredibly careful they were, masking their actions perfectly.

After disposing of the "suitcase containing Qi Min," they followed Qin Guan home, purchased an identical suitcase to scare him, lured out the blackmailing "Zeng Demei," tracked "Zeng Demei" to Qi Min, and extracted her plot against Qin Guan.

All of this they did to assist Xu Ruyi.

Simultaneously, Xu Ruyi secretly copied Qin Guan's car keys, took the black stockings from his car, and resorted to self-harm to conceal the fact that Qi Min had returned alive.

Qin Guan wasn't wrong.

But what was her purpose in plotting so meticulously? Was it really, as Qin Guan suggested, that she intended to kill Qi Min even then? Was she willing to go to any lengths to hide the fact Qi Min was alive, just to methodically place each piece on the board, waiting for the grand scheme to be complete, to nail Qin Guan shut?

Old He took a deep breath, adjusted his posture, and took a huge gulp of iced tea—this wasn't what he wanted to see.

But he couldn't rule out the possibility.

Because, after that, Cui Yuan wore Feng Zhi's jacket, deliberately flashing past surveillance cameras again and again.

He met Xu Ruyi at the aquarium. He tailed Qin Guan. He deliberately appeared near the Jiayuan Community—he left clues at the Xu residence specifically to lead Qin Guan to suspect Feng Zhi.

He was guiding everyone to suspect Feng Zhi, to investigate him repeatedly, only to hit the dead end of the "rock-solid alibi."

And what Xu Ruyi had been guiding everyone towards was the idea that Qi Min had never returned.

Unfortunately.

Old He's frown deepened—two days ago, during a carpet search, a new discovery was finally made. Surveillance from a mall three streets away from Xinhe Hotel had clearly captured Qi Min with short hair. Simultaneously, two taxi drivers contacted the police station to provide tips.

Their in-car cameras had also captured Qi Min.

Xu Ruyi's concealment had ultimately developed cracks.

And so had Qi Donghao and Cui Yuan.

Old He stared at another set of photos in his hand—surveillance from the breakfast market near the construction site Qin Guan mentioned had captured the two of them.

They had tailed Qin Guan that early morning too.

So, who really killed Qi Min? How did the suitcase containing Qi Min end up at the bottom of the lake at Lakeside Charm Hotel?

And why did the body's estimated time of death genuinely point to a month prior?