Chapter 49: The Rabbit Saw It All!
It was a corpse that had completely decomposed into bone—its skull nowhere to be found, only the torso and limbs remaining.
Half of the skeleton was exposed to the open air. Judging by the surrounding soil, it was likely that a stretch of continuous rain had washed the earth away and revealed what had been buried beneath.
The moment they saw the remains, Hong Xingwang and the other officers—along with the school administrators—went deathly pale.
The reporters who had just been leaving caught sight of yet another story and immediately rushed back, cameras clicking nonstop as they recorded the scene.
The sound of the cameras snapped everyone back to reality. Hong Xingwang, looking like his head was about to split, began directing his subordinates to cordon off the entire area.
As for Lin Jiangye—the one who’d discovered the body—he was already preparing to bring the dog and the rabbit back to the car.
“Wait! Mr. Lin, you’re just leaving it at that?” Hong Xingwang blurted out, shocked, and grabbed his arm.
Lin Jiangye looked genuinely confused. “Then what? Investigating is your job as police, not mine.”
He glanced at the bones on the ground. From the coloration, the victim had clearly been buried here for a long time; after prolonged decomposition, the remains had naturally turned into whitened bone.
Meaning: this was not a recent case.
His role, at most, was helping the police find more “witnesses” so they could locate the killer faster and close cases quicker.
Lin Jiangye didn’t think he’d be of much use in this one—so he’d rather go home and rest.
But Hong Xingwang didn’t see it that way.
“No, no, no—don’t say that! It might not be like that! Just stay for now. If we end up not needing your help later, I’ll treat you to a meal and then personally send you back!” Lin Jiangye was right here. If he left and they needed him later, Hong Xingwang would have to file an official request with Wen’an District to borrow him.
Under Hong Xingwang’s relentless pleading, Lin Jiangye was forced to remain.
Once the skeleton was fully excavated, the forensic examiner quickly determined the victim’s sex and estimated age.
“Female. Between fifteen and eighteen. She endured extremely brutal abuse before death—there are multiple marks left on the bones. The cut surface of the cervical vertebra is clean and flat. The killer likely severed the head in a single strike. The killer’s strength was considerable—probably a robust adult male. The exact cause of death can’t be confirmed yet; I’ll need to bring the remains back for a thorough examination.”
During excavation, the police also unearthed a metal box.
Lin Jiangye was standing beside Hong Xingwang, so when an officer passed over the ID, he saw it clearly.
“Gu Tingxue. Based on her student number, she was a second-year student here five years ago.”
What they’d found was the victim’s student ID, carefully stored inside a metal box.
Along with the ID, the box contained two sets of clothing—one school uniform, and one white dress stained with blood.
Clearly, these items had been placed there by the killer and buried together with the body.
Disgust flashed across Lin Jiangye’s face. He couldn’t understand why the killer would do this.
If the killer wanted the body found quickly, why bury it? But if the killer wanted it hidden, why place identifying documents together with it? What exactly was the killer trying to achieve?
Everyone else was equally baffled. Was the killer “helping” the police identify the victim? Or trying to leave “keepsakes” for the family to suffer over? Either way, it was revolting.
The school leadership was completely stunned. They never imagined a corpse would be dug up on campus—let alone one of their own students.
Their school’s reputation was finished.
The police ignored the administrators. After pulling Gu Tingxue’s records, they finally understood why the name sounded faintly familiar: the victim was the missing girl from the “summer vacation student disappearance case” five years ago.
“Summer vacation? Th-then it has nothing to do with our school!” the principal blurted out, trying to distance himself immediately.
Hong Xingwang and Lin Jiangye stared at him coldly until sweat beaded on his forehead. Only then did Hong Xingwang speak:
“If Gu Tingxue was killed outside, then why are her remains here? Have you thought about that?”
The principal shook his head blankly.
Then an investigator calmly laid out an analysis:
“The killer may very well be someone from the school. They could have exploited the fact that the campus is empty during summer break—killed her here, then buried her in the soil.
And because the destination was the school, a student wouldn’t be on high alert. Students naturally feel safer coming back to campus.”
“Of course, there’s a second possibility,” Lin Jiangye added, lifting a finger. “The killer may have a twisted attachment to the school. They killed her elsewhere, then brought the body back to bury on campus.
In the first scenario, the school is the primary crime scene. In the second, it’s just the burial site—and we’d still need to locate the true primary scene.”
“But… even if it was someone from the school, why bury her here?” a school administrator asked weakly. “Does the killer have some grudge against the school?”
Lin Jiangye let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “What—so it doesn’t matter if a student dies, as long as they don’t die on campus?”
Even if Lin Jiangye didn’t personally know the victim, he still wouldn’t say something that cold.
The administrator instantly realized he’d misspoken and shut up—too late. Everyone had heard him, including a media outlet nearby.
The principal and directors all felt their vision go black. If that line got out, the school wouldn’t just be “embarrassed”—they’d be destroyed.
Even if they tried to perform grief and sympathy, no one bought it.
Two incidents in one day—one “resolved” cleanly, but a body on school grounds was an explosive shock.
So the school immediately sent all students home: a three-day—no, two-day—break.
“Yesss!”
When Lin Jiangye went to the car to retrieve his crew, he heard students cheering excitedly nearby.
But the next second, the homework assigned by teachers turned those cheers into wails.
Either way, it was still a break. Many students had witnessed the girl rushing to the rooftop; for some already overwhelmed seniors, it could be a huge psychological shock.
So for the third-year students, teachers assigned no homework and no review packets—just told them to go home and talk to their parents properly.
Lin Jiangye returned to the scene with two cats, one dog, two crows, and one rabbit. Seeing him covered in fur from head to toe, the administrators’ faces twitched.
They knew he had a special ability, but showing up like this… didn’t look like assisting an investigation.
It looked like a picnic.
Still, these animals were genuinely helpful.
After first locating the bones, the German shepherd also found a bow-shaped hair clip buried in the soil nearby.
Just as everyone wondered whether the clip belonged to the victim, the rabbit in Lin Jiangye’s arms suddenly spoke up:
“I recognize that!”
“Huh? You know it?” Lin Jiangye stared at the big white rabbit in surprise.
The rabbit nodded and recalled something from years ago:
“Back then, I was still a little bunny. Two humans came to tease me. The male even used that clip and stuck it on my ear—it really hurt! So I bit him.”
After Lin Jiangye translated, someone asked, “Were the two of them a couple?”
Hong Xingwang held up Gu Tingxue’s photo to the rabbit. “Among the two humans, was she one of them?”
Lin Jiangye lowered his gaze. The photo had likely been pulled from school records—she looked a bit stiff, but even so, you could tell she had been a pretty girl.
The rabbit tilted its head, thinking hard, then said:
“Looks like her… but she was much prettier than this. And she was really nice to Bunny. After she gave me the clip, I never saw her again.”
That matched Gu Tingxue’s case.
“The question now is—who was the boy with the victim? Was he the killer?” If he appeared with her in front of the rabbit, was he a classmate? A student from another class?
Lin Jiangye thought for a moment, then returned to the body and examined the cut on the vertebra more closely. Suddenly he said,
“Maybe the killer is a middle-aged man.”
Silence fell across the entire scene.
The school leadership was the first to protest. “That’s impossible!”
A middle-aged man who could freely enter and exit the school—then that would mean a teacher. If a teacher murdered a student, the school wouldn’t just lose face—it would shut down.
Hiring a murderer to teach children—who could trust such a school?
But Lin Jiangye wasn’t saying it to take revenge on the administrators.
“First—whether she died outside or inside, the two of them still came back onto campus, right? Even during summer break, there should’ve been security on duty, yes?
So how did they get past the guard and enter the school?
If the killer was a teacher, that becomes very easy.”
“They could’ve climbed the wall!” the administrators insisted.
But when Lin Jiangye handed them a piece of information, they went silent.
Modern school walls are topped with spikes specifically to prevent outsiders from climbing in—or students from climbing out.
And the walls were over two meters high, with smooth surfaces. Even athletic students would struggle to scale them bare-handed.
“Didn’t your school advertise ‘closed-campus management’ back then?” Hong Xingwang said. “That’s why you built the walls so high.”
The administrators looked like their souls had left their bodies.
Hong Xingwang turned to Lin Jiangye. “Besides the entry issue, you’ve got other reasons for your theory, don’t you?”
Lin Jiangye pointed at the victim’s bones and explained:
“The victim was slender. Even if the killer could climb the wall, she couldn’t. So they must have entered through the main gate.
And look at the cut on the cervical vertebra. A man’s physical peak is generally around thirty to forty. Around thirty-two, the body’s functions are near their strongest. For a man in that range, beheading a teenage girl with a single strike… isn’t particularly difficult.”
Unless he was exceptionally frail, of course.
His logic was clean, his words precise, his tone calm.
But it was exactly that calmness that made the officers’ skin crawl.
What kind of person knew this much—and spoke of bones as if they were ordinary?
“What… what were you before?” Hong Xingwang asked, his gaze complicated.
After the serial murder case ended, he had investigated Lin Jiangye’s background.
The earlier part—growing up an orphan—looked normal.
But after the college entrance exam, nothing made sense.
First: how did an orphan get money to study abroad? Who took him abroad? A foster parent? Someone from the orphanage? None of it appeared.
Second: the country listed for his “study abroad” was tiny—so tiny that there was almost no reliable information online, like the entire nation was sealed off.
Most people study abroad in major countries. Why pick a place with barely any trace?
Hong Xingwang had even wondered whether Lin Jiangye’s bizarre ability had been triggered by some overseas lab experiment.
After all, Lin Jiangye didn’t have that ability in middle or high school. But after he went “abroad,” he returned with both a supernatural skill and a massive inheritance.
It was suspicious no matter how you looked at it.
At first, Hong Xingwang had suspected he might be some kind of foreign agent—but Lin Jiangye’s later actions and his personality didn’t fit.
He’d been back for months, and he didn’t even try to hide his abnormality—almost as if he were openly saying, “Yeah, I’m unusual. Prove it.”
Would an agent behave like that?
Lin Jiangye fell silent at the question.
A long moment passed. Hong Xingwang waited, but got no answer. A hint of disappointment flashed through him, yet he didn’t push further.
Lin Jiangye wasn’t unable to answer—he simply didn’t know how.
Sometimes, the more you say, the more wrong you become. One lie needs ten more to patch the holes.
The other officers considered his reasoning. It made sense—but until hard evidence emerged, they couldn’t rule out other possibilities.
By dusk, Lin Jiangye and the animals were taken to the Gao City police bureau. Along with them, everyone connected to the missing-girl case from five years ago was also brought in.
Including Gu Tingxue’s parents.
For five years, they hadn’t found their daughter. Deep down, they’d long prepared themselves for the possibility that she was dead—but there were still times they clung to hope.
Maybe she’d just been abducted. Maybe she was still alive somewhere.
But now, staring at the ID and the belongings laid out by the police, their last shred of hope snapped. The couple clung to each other and wept until they nearly fainted.
When they finally calmed down, they forced themselves to answer questions about the disappearance, detail by detail.
Five years had passed, but the events of that day were carved into their minds.
“That noon, not long after lunch, Tingxue said she’d arranged to go out with classmates. We figured she’d been under pressure lately, so… fine, let her go. We didn’t stop her. We even gave her two hundred yuan so she could enjoy herself.”
Every time they remembered it, regret gnawed at them.
If only they’d refused. If only they’d asked who she was meeting and confirmed it with a call—maybe she wouldn’t have vanished.
Around six in the evening, they called to ask if she was coming home for dinner. But the phone wouldn’t go through.
That was when panic truly began.
“We called several of her friends, but they all said Tingxue hadn’t made plans with them. In the end, I had no choice but to call the homeroom teacher and ask him to check with the class. But in the end… no one had been with her.”
That was the moment the world collapsed.
After that, they went to the police station and were told Gu Tingxue was already sixteen—legally capable—so they could only open a case after she’d been missing for twenty-four hours.
Still, seeing how desperate they were, the station would send a few officers to help search.
They were deeply grateful.
But even after the missing-person threshold was met, and a case was opened, and the search expanded—no one found her.
“I worked this case too,” Hong Xingwang said. “Back then, Shang Fuyan and I checked surveillance from nearby shops. We noticed Gu Tingxue had been acting furtive from the start—she kept looking back, like she was afraid someone was following her.”
Hearing that Shang Fuyan had been involved, Lin Jiangye’s expression gradually tightened.
He had firsthand experience with how sharp that man’s observation was. If anything was off, Shang Fuyan would have noticed.
But even Shang Fuyan hadn’t found an opening—meaning Gu Tingxue’s disappearance may have been a carefully prepared murder from the start.
Five years ago, nearly every officer in the area had mobilized, and still they couldn’t find her. Over time, it became a cold case.
No one expected that five years later, a failed suicide attempt by another student would drag this old disappearance back into the light.
No—this was no longer a disappearance.
It was a murder.
After learning the timeline, Lin Jiangye asked the rabbit. The big white rabbit happened to have arrived at the school five years ago.
Back then, the newly built “pet courtyard” was extremely popular—children flocked to see the animals every day.
And the white rabbit was especially beloved by girls.
“When Bunny saw them, the school had no other humans around. It was very, very quiet,” Lin Jiangye translated, and his suspicion of the man who gave the hair clip only deepened.
If there were no other humans at school, then it must have been after most people had left—likely sometime in the evening.
[Back then the moon was so, so full. Bunny was about to go to sleep when they came over. The little human was smiling really happily, holding the male’s hand. They spoke very quietly—Bunny couldn’t hear clearly. And even if Bunny had heard, Bunny probably would’ve forgotten by now.]
After that, the male took out the hair clip. The little human was thrilled and asked him to put it on her.
“Then how did the clip end up on your head?” Lin Jiangye asked, puzzled.
The white rabbit thumped its hind legs hard on the tabletop several times, making the surface go bang bang: [That male was so annoying! Bunny doesn’t know what they said, but suddenly he took the clip off and jammed it onto Bunny’s ear—roughly, too. It hurt, so Bunny bit him really hard. When he reached out like he was going to hit Bunny, Bunny ran away fast.]
Based on that, Lin Jiangye raised a question: “Did they argue?”
The rabbit tilted its head, confused: [What’s ‘argue’?]
“Like when we were saving the little human you like—when I was arguing with that child’s parents. The tone gets sharp, emotions rise, and both sides look angry. That’s arguing.”
The rabbit scratched its ear, hesitating: [Maybe…? Bunny doesn’t remember clearly. But that male really was unhappy—he suddenly became really, really fierce!]
If he suddenly turned vicious, that meant something had gone wrong between them.
With everyone watching, Lin Jiangye asked the question everyone cared about most:
“Do you remember anything distinctive about that male?”
This time, the rabbit took the longest to think.
For a rabbit, recalling details from five years ago was extremely difficult—especially “distinctive traits,” which required precision memory.
No one rushed it. They waited patiently for the rabbit’s answer.
They strongly suspected that the male who gave the hair clip was the one who killed Gu Tingxue.
From the rabbit’s wording alone, it was clear: the person beside Gu Tingxue was not her peer. Otherwise, the rabbit would have called him a “little one,” not “a male.”
Lin Jiangye had explained before: juveniles, sub-adults, and adults all give off different scents.
For small animals, recognizing those scents is instinct.
A male who was close to Gu Tingxue—and older—made it highly likely that the hair-clip giver and the murderer were the same person.
As for why the hair clip wasn’t stored in the metal box… no one knew.
After a long while, the rabbit finally spoke:
[Actually… Bunny isn’t that sure anymore…]
Seeing its hesitation, Lin Jiangye pulled it into his arms and soothed it gently.
“It’s okay even if you remember wrong. We’ll verify carefully during the investigation. Right now, we just need you to point us—the stupid humans—toward the right direction.”
Hong Xingwang’s mouth twitched hard. Lin Jiangye insulting himself while “comforting the kid” was one thing—dragging all of them into it too was another.
But when Lin Jiangye glanced his way, Hong Xingwang instantly swallowed his annoyance.
Right, right, right—they were the foolish humans, and Bunny was their guiding beacon, blah blah blah.
Reassured, the white rabbit relaxed visibly.
[Bunny only remembers this now—he wore two frames over his eyes.]
It even gestured in the air.
From that motion, what it meant was obvious:
The man wore glasses.
Then the rabbit described the man’s build. When they left, the rabbit clearly saw the girl only came up to the man’s shoulder.
“Based on the measurements, Gu Tingxue was likely around 162 cm back then. That would put the man at over 180 cm.” Hong Xingwang had barely finished when he noticed the victim’s parents’ expressions shift oddly.
He snapped his gaze to them. “You’ve thought of someone?”
The couple’s faces held suspicion—mixed with fear and a stunned disbelief.
They exchanged a look, then, under the stares of the officers, spoke slowly:
“This… what the rabbit described… it reminds us of someone…”
Around thirty. Over 180 cm. Glasses. And able to enter and leave the school without raising suspicion—an image like that instantly pulled one figure into their minds.
“Who?” Hong Xingwang’s voice turned urgent.
“Her homeroom teacher… but—but he looks very refined. He doesn’t seem like someone who’d do this. And—and he had a family! He was married!” Even as they named their suspect, they reflexively tried to defend him.
It wasn’t that they liked the teacher.
They simply couldn’t accept the idea that the person who murdered their child might have been her homeroom teacher.
After Gu Tingxue disappeared, they had even begged this man for help. Later, he had patiently accompanied them as they searched places she might have gone.
If the killer really was him…
Then that desperate phone call they made back then—was it, to him, the world’s biggest joke?
Unexpectedly, neither Hong Xingwang nor Lin Jiangye looked particularly shocked.
“You’re not surprised?” The couple felt like they were being torn apart, drowning in grief.
Hong Xingwang rubbed his brow and let out a long sigh.
“When you’ve been police long enough, you’ve seen every kind of monster.”
As for Lin Jiangye—he had truly seen monsters.
A ten-year-old girl who looked cute as candy could have an ability like water manipulation—and that “water” included blood. People who died by her hands were countless.
A refined, elegant young man could possess flesh-devouring powers, growing stronger by consuming other beings.
And an old man who looked like a gust of wind could knock him over might be a “lord” in the abyss, with every creature in his territory as a slave.
So Lin Jiangye never judged by appearances.
Refined? So what?
There was a saying: a scoundrel in scholarly robes.
Seeing the couple on the verge of fainting again, Hong Xingwang patted their shoulders.
“Don’t blame yourselves yet. We still haven’t confirmed it’s him.”
What if it wasn’t?
But the elderly couple couldn’t hear him anymore. Their guilt was about to swallow them whole.
After that, the rabbit added a few more details, but they were too vague to identify anyone.
By the time the rabbit finished, the profiler had already produced a composite sketch.
The victim’s parents saw it—and collapsed on the spot.
It looked exactly like the homeroom teacher.
When they woke up, they grabbed Hong Xingwang’s arm, sobbing hysterically.
“It’s him, it’s him! It’s him!”
That beast in human clothing—the homeroom teacher—killed their precious daughter!
“And after Tingxue went missing, that animal still had the nerve to come comfort us!” Gu Tingxue’s mother cried until her voice broke. Anyone watching would feel their chest tighten.
Hong Xingwang and the others were busy stabilizing the family.
Meanwhile, Lin Jiangye stood up with the rabbit in his arms and quietly left.
By the time Hong Xingwang realized, Lin Jiangye was already gone.
He rushed outside—sure enough, the car was gone too.
He was about to pull out his phone and demand an explanation, when he noticed the time: already 8 p.m.
And Gao City was at least 100+ kilometers from Yue City. Even driving, Lin Jiangye would need one to two hours to get home. If Hong Xingwang held him back any longer, Lin Jiangye would have to spend the night here.
Hong Xingwang’s old face flushed red. He hurriedly went to pester Shang Fuyan—submitting a request to borrow Wen’an’s “consultant.” Then he told someone to prepare a gift for Lin Jiangye to receive the next day.
“He helped us this much. We’ve got to give him something, right? Cash is awkward on our side. So… local specialties, snacks, whatever.”
It was, frankly, a perfect idea—right on Lin Jiangye’s weak spot.
When Lin Jiangye returned the next day to help, the sight of a pile of regional treats made the normally blank-faced young man slowly lift the corner of his mouth into a satisfied smile.
He hadn’t wanted to come today.
But that man, Shang Fuyan, had asked him.
“Just… have some compassion for the dead underage kid, okay? Once you’re done, I’ll take you to eat authentic local Gao City food.”
With Shang Fuyan’s “bait,” plus the rabbit and the German shepherd being curious about what happened next, and now Hong Xingwang showing such good manners…
Lin Jiangye’s mood instantly improved.
To Hong Xingwang, though, Lin Jiangye seemed surprisingly easy to appease.
The day’s task was to find the victim’s skull and any further evidence pointing to the killer.
Even if they had a prime suspect, without solid proof they couldn’t arrest him.
And because so much time had passed, any surveillance footage was long gone.
They then located the security guard who’d been stationed at the school five years ago. He admitted teachers had indeed entered and left the campus back then—but since there wasn’t just one, he couldn’t say whether Gu Tingxue’s homeroom teacher had appeared that day.
“Hey, it’s been five years! Who’d remember all that?” The guard hadn’t expected the missing girl from back then to have been dead in the school’s little hillside woods this whole time.
Thinking about it made him feel cursed with bad luck. He was sure the school would fire him.
An investigator shot him a cold look, said nothing, and walked away.
After they’d gone a bit farther, the investigator scoffed.
“A rabbit can remember something from five years ago, but a human can’t?”
His partner elbowed him hard, signaling him to stop talking.
But he still clicked his tongue, and they continued toward the next relevant person’s address.
Back at the burial-site woods, Lin Jiangye couldn’t help wondering:
Why was a body from five years ago only being discovered now?
Judging by the police’s excavation depth, the remains had been less than a meter down. That wasn’t deep enough to fully contain the stench of decomposition.
Hong Xingwang thought for a moment.
“Recently, Gao City had a 4.5-magnitude earthquake. The tremors could even be felt in Yue City. You weren’t in Yue City then, so you wouldn’t know.”
Besides this quake, there had been multiple smaller quakes over the past five years—too minor to cause panic, but still present.
Maybe those repeated tremors gradually shifted the buried remains upward.
Normally, bodies are buried about two meters deep; thick soil blocks the smell.
If the killer had simply dug deeper back then—and given how remote this spot was—any faint odor would likely have been carried away quickly by wind.
“Earthquakes plus heavy rain… maybe all of it together is what brought her back into the light.” The more Hong Xingwang spoke, the worse he felt. He couldn’t help lighting a cigarette.
Lin Jiangye smelled it and quietly moved upwind to avoid secondhand smoke.
He sent the smaller ones out to spread and search for anything unusual, while he himself crouched by the pit where the body had been found.
Lin Jiangye considered something:
If the killer dug a deep pit to block the smell, how did he climb back out? Did he have an accomplice?
But that thought lasted less than a second before Lin Jiangye discarded it.
This case wasn’t like Taibai Mountain.
Over there, the pit was ice—slick and sheer. Even with a rope, climbing out would be difficult.
Here, it was ordinary soil. If the killer anchored one end of a rope to a tree and tied the other to his waist—even if he dug a pit three or four meters deep, climbing out wouldn’t be impossible…
Wait.
A thought struck Lin Jiangye. He flipped open the file on the homeroom teacher again.
In just one night, the suspect’s profile was already on the police desk.
The file said: after Gu Tingxue disappeared, the teacher stayed one more year, then resigned and moved to teach in another city.
But that wasn’t the key point.
Lin Jiangye flipped two more pages and found what he wanted:
The man did have a rock-climbing hobby.
“Just as expected…” Lin Jiangye studied the teacher’s photo. He looked gentle and elegant—yet clearly athletic underneath.
A man like that could indeed attract teenage girls. (For plot needs; this doesn’t mean all girls like that type.)
Lin Jiangye stared at the pit.
Then, without hesitation, he jumped down into it—scaring the nearby officers out of their skins.
“Hand me a shovel.”
They didn’t understand why, but remembering Hong Xingwang’s instructions, an officer obediently passed one down.
Lin Jiangye didn’t dig deeper.
He dug outward from the pit as the center, widening the perimeter.
If there had been other physical evidence down there, it might have been shaken upward by earthquakes—just like that bow-shaped hair clip that hadn’t been placed inside the metal box.
There might be more.
To hide a body for so many years, Lin Jiangye suspected the killer had dug a very, very deep pit—deep enough that he believed the corpse would never be found.
That would make the victim’s identifying items feel “safe” to toss in—like burial goods.
If so, there should be similar items nearby.
Of course, it was only a hypothesis. Lin Jiangye didn’t bother calling heavy machinery or more people to help.
An hour or two later, Lin Jiangye uncovered a small metal chain in the soil.
It wasn’t far from where the bones had been—likely placed nearby from the start.
He tossed it up, then kicked off the pit wall and sprang out like a nimble leopard.
An officer had just reached out to help, but Lin Jiangye was already up.
While they stood there wide-eyed and dazed, Lin Jiangye pointed at the chain and said:
“This… was probably something the victim gave the killer.”
Why?
Because the pendant was a round metal tag engraved with the initials of the victim and the homeroom teacher—plus a tiny heart in the middle.
The officers snapped into action, pulling out an evidence bag and sealing the chain.
Only after bagging it did they notice a faint reddish gleam on the chain—then again, maybe it was just their eyes.
At the same time, the German shepherd returned with a major update:
They’d found the missing skull.
They’d discussed the night before why the killer had decapitated the victim. Later they suspected the two had some kind of conflict that fueled intense hatred.
Not only was she decapitated after death; she’d been brutally tortured while alive.
And given how intimate the relationship seemed—far beyond normal teacher-student boundaries—they strongly suspected the two had once been lovers.
They didn’t say this in front of the parents, of course. If they had, the parents wouldn’t have fainted just once.
Lin Jiangye dusted off his hands and followed the German shepherd to where the skull was hidden:
A sewer.
The location was well-concealed, and the sewer lid was locked shut. The German shepherd hadn’t gone down to confirm—only reported that there was indeed a human head inside.
Lin Jiangye frowned. “If you didn’t go in, how do you know there’s a head?”
The German shepherd answered: [A sewer rat told us. The Tibetan Mastiff caught it.]
The instant those words left its mouth, everyone—animals and officers alike—watched Lin Jiangye’s face change dramatically.
He scooped up the tabby cat, rushed back to the car, and completely ignored the skull in the sewer.
The Tibetan Mastiff was still confused. It had barely let out a little “meow” when Lin Jiangye began wiping its paws with wet wipes—then alcohol wipes—then dry paper towels.
Three rounds.
Even then, Lin Jiangye still looked like he wanted to bathe the cat immediately.
The cat’s ears pinned back. It jumped off him and hid behind the German shepherd, trying to dodge its owner’s terrifying expression.
Waaah. It hadn’t done anything wrong. Why was its human angry?
Its paws smelled nasty—Kitty hated that too!
The German shepherd gave a soft woof and nudged Lin Jiangye’s hand. Lin Jiangye sighed and rubbed his temples.
“My fault. I didn’t explain it clearly.”
He picked up the cat—now curled into a little brown-black bagel—and explained helplessly:
“Sewer rats are dirty. They carry lots of germs. You can talk to them, but don’t touch them with your paws, okay?”
Cats lick their paws to clean parts they can’t reach. If a paw picks up germs, licking it could make them sick.
“Being sick feels awful. You get injections, blood draws, and bitter medicine.”
He patted the cat’s butt gently, then rubbed his cheek against it.
“Do you want that?”
Of course not.
The cat frantically shook its head. It didn’t want bitter medicine!
“So from now on, if it’s a sewer animal, or a dirty-looking animal, don’t touch it, okay? And if you accidentally do, tell me immediately.”
He tapped the cat’s nose again and repeated the warning.
The cat’s expression instantly turned smug again. [Kitty knows! Kitty’s not that dumb!]
When they walked outside, they usually didn’t lick their paws anyway. The German shepherd had said the outside ground was filthy—once home, humans had to wipe paws clean before licking!
“Aww, our Tibetan Mastiff is so good and so smart~” Lin Jiangye cuddled and kissed the cat for a long while.
Then Hong Xingwang arrived, face dark.
“The skull was found… and the victim’s face was destroyed while she was alive… How much hatred does that take?” Just thinking about that shattered head made his own head ache.
But the real headache came next.
The forensic report came back with a shocking piece of information.
“The victim was pregnant before she died.”
Author’s Note:
PS: This detail is for plot needs. It does not mean teenage girls will definitely like this type, nor does it imply they will definitely like teachers.
