Chapter 72: A Rap Sheet a Mile Long
According to the grey parrot, the Devon Rex lived in the villa directly across from Ms. Tan Xiangyu’s house.
With an exact address, it was easy for Lin Jiangye and the others to head there quickly.
On the way, Shang Fuyan contacted Captain Jiang from Chiyuan District. They weren’t entirely sure what had happened over there yet, but… whatever—get the people here first and sort it out later.
Captain Jiang arrived as soon as he got the call. “What exactly happened?”
Lin Jiangye pointed at the villa in front of them, then at the Devon Rex on his chest. “A kitten crossed districts to file a report.”
Captain Jiang’s eyelid twitched. He stared at the kitten—only a few months old—stunned. “From Chiyuan District to Wen’an District? That’s far. A kitten can run dozens of kilometers?”
At that moment, the grey parrot flew down from the car and landed on the villa gate. It puffed out its chest proudly. “Didn’t run! We took the bus!”
That only made Captain Jiang even more shocked.
Seeing her reaction, the parrot immediately launched into an excited, rapid-fire account of how it took a kitten on a public bus across two districts.
It turned out the parrot had long since learned Lin Jiangye’s address from the crows, then went next door to ask Ms. Tan how to take the bus there.
“My owner gave me money! I brought the money and left!”
They had a bit of trouble getting on at first, but later the passengers saw they weren’t noisy and didn’t pee or poop everywhere, so they let them stay.
Some people even leaned over to ask curiously where they were going.
Lin Jiangye hadn’t expected the grey parrot and Devon Rex to come by bus either. He looked at the parrot—who spoke startlingly smoothly—and once again marveled at how smart parrots could be.
Then Captain Jiang stepped up to knock and speak with the person inside.
The door opened quickly. A young, pretty woman answered. The moment she saw a group of people outside, she visibly tensed.
“Hello. I’m Jiang Heping from the Chiyuan District Criminal Investigation Unit. We received a report that there’s a thief in your home. Are you the owner of this property?”
Before the woman could respond, the Devon Rex started meowing urgently: “No, no! My owner is a man!”
Lin Jiangye translated. “It says its owner is a man.”
Jiang Heping’s gaze sharpened as she studied the woman.
The woman hadn’t expected Lin Jiangye to expose her immediately. She swallowed the “yes” she was about to say and slowly shook her head. “The owner is my boyfriend. I’m just staying here.”
Boyfriend…
“When did you start living here?” Jiang Heping pressed.
The woman shrank back slightly. Her lips moved, hesitating—she clearly didn’t want to answer.
But it didn’t matter. There were cats who could answer for her.
“Meow!”
“Devon says you moved in a week ago.”
The woman’s eyes went wide. She stared at Lin Jiangye in fear. “Y-you… how do you know that?”
She’d come at night, worn a hat and sunglasses, and hadn’t left since moving in. How could he possibly know it was a week ago?
Lin Jiangye didn’t answer. He lowered his head and asked Devon, “When did you realize there was a thief in the house?”
“Meow meow meow!” “The day before yesterday! I warned my owner and this human, but they wouldn’t listen! I… I could only come beg you.”
The moment “thief” came up, Devon got even more worked up.
The grey parrot chimed in too, indignant. “Exactly! We told them their house had a thief, and they still wouldn’t believe it!”
The woman seemed to catch the gist and hurried to explain, “It’s not that we didn’t believe it—we searched everywhere. There really wasn’t anyone!”
Then she stared at the officers again, disbelief all over her face. “Did the parrot… call the police?”
At first she’d been shocked the parrot could “translate” for a kitten. She hadn’t expected it to have leveled up to reporting crimes.
Right then, the kitten in Lin Jiangye’s arms jumped down and bolted inside.
“The thief is still here! I can smell a stranger!”
Once Devon ran in, Jiang Heping had to request entry.
But the woman wasn’t happy about it. “We haven’t done anything illegal. There really isn’t anyone inside!”
Jiang Heping frowned. She worried the “thief” might be a murderer or something. If they left and something happened later, it would be a disaster.
“How about this?” Jiang Heping said. “I’m a woman too. I’ll go in with him—” she meant Lin Jiangye “—and everyone else stays outside. We won’t search your home; we’ll just take a look. Okay?”
The woman still hesitated. This wasn’t even her place. If her boyfriend found out she’d let people in—
But the officers looked determined, and if she didn’t let them in, it felt like they’d keep pushing.
Two people only… should be fine. Besides, her boyfriend was off filming a variety show. He wouldn’t be back soon.
“Two people only. No more!”
Jiang Heping finally relaxed.
But Lin Jiangye wanted one more “slot.” “Can we bring it too?”
The woman was about to refuse—until she saw the young man tug a huge dog down from the car.
“A dog’s sense of smell is sharp,” Lin Jiangye said reasonably. “Devon says it can still smell a stranger. Why not let the dog help?”
He had a point. And the woman saw the dog looked clean; it probably wouldn’t dirty the floors.
“Fine. Come in.”
After Jiang Heping and Lin Jiangye went inside, Shang Fuyan let out a soft laugh.
The other Chiyuan officers glanced at him. “Captain Shang… was that a police dog just now?”
Only trained K9s could track suspects by scent.
But… that dog didn’t really look like a K9.
Shang Fuyan shook his head. “Of course it isn’t.”
Then, under their puzzled stares, he said slowly, “That wasn’t a dog. It was a wolf.”
A wolf tracking prey by scent was instinct. Who needed training?
“Wolf? A wolf?!” they yelped.
“Keep it down!” Yan Zhou immediately shushed them. “Don’t startle whoever’s inside!”
The Chiyuan detectives stared blankly. Don’t make a fuss? That was a wolf!
“Yeah, but it’s Lin Jiangye,” Yan Zhou said, lifting his chin. “With Lin Jiangye here, what are you worried about?”
If Lin Jiangye had been outside, he would’ve noticed Yan Zhou’s smug little expression looked exactly like Zang’ao when she was showing off.
Inside the villa, Lin Jiangye found Devon sitting in the living room looking utterly wilted. When it saw him, the kitten let out two miserable little cries.
“Human… Mimi can’t find where the thief is.”
Lin Jiangye scanned the place. Judging from the décor, he suspected the owner didn’t live here often.
“Go on,” Lin Jiangye said. “Find where the thief might be hiding.”
He loosened the leash and removed Yuheng’s muzzle, letting him move freely.
The moment Yuheng entered, he already felt something was off.
The second the restraints came off, he sprinted toward the strongest scent.
But the direction he chose was the staircase.
“Upstairs?” the woman blurted. “No way. We checked the second floor—there was nobody.”
Unexpectedly, Yuheng stopped at the foot of the stairs and didn’t move.
He looked at the second floor, then looked back down, as if weighing something.
Jiang Heping frowned. She turned to Lin Jiangye and saw him frowning too—like something tricky was happening.
Yuheng wasn’t just “locating” a hiding spot. He was detecting something strange both upstairs and downstairs—yet couldn’t tell which one belonged to the thief.
After a moment, Yuheng seemed to decide. He returned to the first floor and ran toward the kitchen area.
The three followed fast, arriving at a storage room beside the kitchen.
It was called storage, but it was clearly designed as a maid’s room—except the villa didn’t have a maid, so it became a junk room.
“We checked here too!” the woman said anxiously, her irritation rising as she looked at Lin Jiangye and Jiang Heping.
But then the “dog” charged in, pawed furiously at a pile of clutter, and—when the junk shifted—an hidden door appeared.
The door had been extremely well disguised, and with all the clutter piled up, neither the woman nor the owner had noticed an extra concealed entrance during their search.
The moment it appeared, Jiang Heping drew her gun and pulled the woman behind her.
“Awwooo!” “There’s a human inside!”
Yuheng’s nose had caught a strange scent through the crack—one that didn’t belong to the house.
Lin Jiangye pushed Yuheng outside first. If a fight broke out, he didn’t want the wolf to get hurt.
He stood to the side of the hidden door, picked up a nearby tool, and used it to pry the door open.
The person inside reacted instantly. As soon as the door cracked, a sharp knife stabbed out.
But it missed.
Jiang Heping seized the arm, yanked the attacker out, and jammed the gun muzzle at their forehead.
Only then did they realize the “thief” was a woman—young, too.
The girlfriend blurted, “Are you my brother’s stalker fan?”
She couldn’t think of any other explanation.
But the intruder sneered. “Stalker fan? Don’t insult me. Who’d want to be Liu Zhi’s fan?”
The girlfriend snapped back, pointing at her. “If you’re not a stalker fan, why are you hiding here?”
“Of course,” the woman said flatly, “to kill him.”
The bluntness stunned all three.
“I came here, I hid here, just to kill him. I just didn’t expect he’d bring a bedmate back with him. Tsk.”
Jiang Heping cuffed her and hauled her out of the junk room. “When did you come here?”
The intruder rolled her eyes, drained and lazy. “A week ago. Same time as her… no, half an hour earlier than her.”
Lin Jiangye asked, genuinely curious, “Liu Zhi owns this villa, right? You’ve been here a week—why didn’t you do it?”
The woman sounded even more exhausted. “Because there was still someone else here. If I really killed him, she’d become a suspect. Even if she didn’t do it, Liu Zhi’s brain-dead fans would absolutely tear her apart.”
Well damn. That was… oddly considerate.
The girlfriend finally processed what she’d heard and shouted angrily, “I’m not his bedmate! I’m his girlfriend!”
The intruder laughed coldly. “My sister said the same thing—got tricked into his bed. After the breakup she cried herself sick, and then… Liu Zhi filmed her nude and threatened to send it to her workplace.”
Even though it had been a long time, rage still flooded her voice.
Then she pointed at the girlfriend. “And you—do you know that when you’re asleep, your ‘good brother’ has been filming you too? Saving it for blackmail later.”
The girlfriend’s face turned white. She kept shaking her head, whispering no, impossible, while backing away in panic.
“And tell me,” the intruder demanded, “where is he right now? Why wasn’t he here last night?”
The girlfriend bit her lip and shut down, refusing to answer.
She tried stepping forward to pressure her, but Jiang Heping stopped her.
“Setting your attempted murder aside for now,” Jiang Heping said sharply, “you’ve already broken into someone else’s home. And you claim the owner filmed her—where’s your evidence?”
Following the intruder’s hints, Lin Jiangye opened a hidden compartment in the back of a cabinet and pulled out a camcorder.
“I’m not watching that…” Lin Jiangye suddenly felt extremely awkward. “You check it yourselves.”
A second later, the girlfriend let out a shrill scream—followed by violent cursing, all aimed at Liu Zhi.
Seeing her own photos, she felt like the sky had collapsed.
But Jiang Heping’s expression only grew heavier—because that camcorder didn’t just contain two women’s nude photos.
There were more than ten.
Some even belonged to minor internet celebrities and female stars.
“Where is Liu Zhi right now?” Jiang Heping turned to the girlfriend—who was collapsing.
But the girlfriend was too broken to answer. Her mind was nothing but the images on that screen.
“How could you… how could you do this? I liked you so much…”
Jiang Heping took a deep breath, ready to force her back to reality—
When a man’s voice cut in: “Instead of the photos… maybe check this first.”
Jiang Heping looked up—and her pupils shrank. She strode quickly toward Lin Jiangye.
Her breathing went tight as she stared at the bag of powder in his hand.
“Whatever’s in there,” Lin Jiangye said, shaking the bag, “you should test it.”
The bag was labeled as milk tea powder—but the smell coming off it was absolutely not milk tea.
While the three women were focused on the camcorder, Yuheng had quietly tugged on Lin Jiangye’s clothes, trying to lead him upstairs.
Lin Jiangye remembered how Yuheng hesitated at the stairs earlier. While the girlfriend was still reeling, he followed Yuheng to the second floor.
“There were more ‘milk tea’ packets up there,” Lin Jiangye explained. “Yuheng sensed a weird smell. I leaned in and realized it was wrong.”
He led Jiang Heping to a small tea table by the balcony and pulled several more “milk tea” bags from a hidden compartment beneath it.
If testing confirmed drugs, and each bag was about 50 grams, then this was roughly a kilogram.
“That’s it,” Jiang Heping muttered grimly. “He’s finished.”
Even if fans wanted to keep him on screens forever, the law wouldn’t allow it.
The other two women followed them upstairs. Seeing the strange “milk tea” on the floor, they immediately understood what it implied.
“H—holy crap…” the intruder muttered. “I knew he was toxic. Didn’t think he was literally toxic.”
Lin Jiangye nodded seriously. “Yeah. Like… actually toxic.”
Then, to the intruder, he added casually, “What a pity. If you had discovered this, you could’ve broken in, stolen stuff, and still walked free.”
Jiang Heping shot him a look. Don’t say that out loud.
Lin Jiangye grinned. He didn’t care. He’d given her the hint—whether she took it was her business.
Sure enough, the intruder’s eyes lit up.
“Alright,” Lin Jiangye said, turning back to the girlfriend. “Can we go find him now?”
After being hit with a full kilogram of drugs, the girlfriend had become eerily calm.
“Yeah.” She clenched her teeth. “He said he’s filming a variety show. I don’t know exactly where, but it’s on the coast in Qingze District.”
Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been secretly brought to Yue City.
“Qingze District coast?” Lin Jiangye relaxed immediately. “That’s easy. I’ll ask the seagulls. They’ll know.”
Yue City’s crows were his eyes. The coast’s seagulls were his eyes too.
Lin Jiangye’s breezy confidence gave Jiang Heping a surge of certainty.
She called Shang Fuyan right away. When more officers arrived and saw the twenty bags of “milk tea” on the floor, their eyes lit up too.
Third-Class Merit / Commendation Is Here!
They quickly brought the “milk tea powder” back for testing. Lin Jiangye, meanwhile, took Yuheng and headed straight for Qingze District. On the way, Shang Fuyan contacted Li Wei and filled him in.
Hearing that a male celebrity filming a variety show by the sea was suspected of using drugs and violating others’ privacy—and might even be involved in distributing obscene material—Li Wei first took a deep breath, then let out a low, amused chuckle.
“Advisor Lin is coming too, right? Then we’ll have to trouble him to help locate the guy… Wait—actually, I think I already know where they are.”
If a production crew was shooting a variety show, they would have to secure and use a specific location.
Even if it wasn’t technically under the police’s jurisdiction, they’d still heard bits and pieces.
“If I remember correctly, a dating reality show crew has been filming at Winter Sea Bay.”
At that, Lin Jiangye and Shang Fuyan exchanged a look. Lin Jiangye lifted his brows, disgust written all over his face—stringing along rich fans as bedmates while going on a dating show to flirt with other women… it was vile.
Okay, not just a little vile—extremely vile.
“A celebrity’s private life can be this messy?” Lin Jiangye muttered. “That’s just… filthy.”
Shang Fuyan gave a light cough. “Exactly. A man who doesn’t respect himself is like rotten cabbage—no one wants it, and in the end, people just step on it in disgust.”
Lin Jiangye nodded in full agreement. Someone that chaotic was bound to catch something sooner or later.
In the back seat, Yan Zhou watched Shang Fuyan thoughtfully. Given what he knew about Captain Shang, that line just now… wasn’t it loaded with other meaning?
Soon, they arrived at Winter Sea Bay.
This time, they didn’t even need the seagulls—now they knew exactly where the target was.
Out on the water, there was a small island of about five square kilometers. It had originally been privately owned, but not long ago it was redeveloped into an “internet-famous” tourist spot—perfect for a production team to use for exposure.
Right then, results also came back from the station:
“The milk tea powder contains [redacted] and [redacted]. It is confirmed to be drugs.”
Good. With the lab confirmation in hand, the next step was to bring him in and run a hair test.
