Lin Dongxue showed Ji Changxin's photo to her and asked, “Have you seen him before?”

Fan Lixue shook her head like a pellet drum[1].

“But the footage from the subway station shows that you both left the station one after the other on May 7th. And when the students died, he also appeared in the school. Do you want to say that this is just a coincidence?”

“Elder Sister, please. There are so many people in the school. I’m not the only one who gets off at Chenghai Road subway station. Han Jingming got off there that day as well!”

“We visited your mother in the morning, and she has confirmed that on May 7th, you went home late and didn't reach home until ten o'clock. Who were you with during that time?”

Fan Lixue looked panicked. She pursed her lips tightly. At that moment, her cell phone beeped. She glanced down, and Lin Dongxue vaguely saw the word “police” on her cell phone and asked, “Who sent the text message?”

Fan Lixue watched Lin Dongxue alertly, stepped backwards, and then ran away. Lin Dongxue and Xu Xiaodong quickly caught up.

When Fan Lixue ran near the school building, a woman with dishevelled hair jumped out from behind a tree, holding a glass beaker that contained a pungent liquid. The woman gritted her teeth and exclaimed, “Return my daughter’s life back to me!” Then she splashed the liquid towards Fan Lixue.

Fan Lixue jumped back in shock, screaming loudly. It was unsure whether she had any liquid splashed onto her but judging by the smell, it should have been sulfuric acid.

Lin Dongxue shouted, “Put down your weapon! We are the police!”

However, the woman was still shrieking madly, “My daughter is gone! I don't want to live anymore! I will fight with anyone who stops me!” The woman recklessly splashed the liquid around her everywhere. The school staff hurried over when they saw the situation, but nobody dared to step forward. She had splashed it all around, but rather than hurting anyone, she had instead burned her own hands. Fueled by adrenaline, she actually didn’t feel a thing.

Xu Xiaodong took off his jacket and then used an opening to hit the sulfuric acid beaker away from her hands. Then he put her hands behind her back and placed handcuffs on her.

The school staff also rushed up, and the woman screamed wildly, “Give me back my daughter! Give me back my daughter! Why are the police covering for the killer? It’s obvious that that little slut did it! Why aren’t you arresting her?!”

Xu Xiaodong instructed, “Hurry up and deal with the injuries on her hands! Can sulfuric acid be washed away with water?”

Lin Dongxue looked around, “Xiaodong, stay here. Fan Lixue ran away. I'll go after her!”

She rushed out of the school, looked around, but didn't see her. She went back to the school to look for her, but still couldn’t find her. Lin Dongxue was so anxious that she called the bureau and asked her colleagues in the information department to check who had sent the text message to Fan Lixue.

The information department told her that it was Ji Changxin.

Lin Dongxue said, “Can you locate Fan Lixue?”

“I'll try it and let you know if I can find anything.”

Xu Xiaodong had dealt with the injury on the woman's hand. Upon questioning, she turned out to be one of the parents of the girls who had committed suicide. Facing the police's appeasement, she became even more agitated and vowed to avenge her daughter.

Lin Dongxue warned, “You have tried to splash sulfuric acid on others and have already committed the crime of assault!”

The woman nearly sprang up and scolded, “You are the ones who forced me! Why didn't you catch the murderer? If you know that she did it, why don’t you arrest her? I get it now. The parents of that little slut are both civil servants, so she is superior, huh?!”

“The police need evidence to arrest people. Is using violence to curb violence really the solution to the problem?”

“Return my daughter to me! Return my daughter to me!” The woman wailed. “I’ve been raising her for over ten years! All of a sudden, she’s gone! Nobody wants to give me justice! Where is my justice? Where is it?!”

Xu Xiaodong whispered to Lin Dongxue, “This parent has gone crazy. We need to detain her and prevent her from hurting others again... I have contacted the local police station already.”

Lin Dongxue said helplessly, “This seems like the only thing we can do.”

The bureau called and told Lin Dongxue that Fan Lixue’s mobile phone signal had just appeared on Shengli East Street. Lin Dongxue remembered that Fan Lixue didn’t seem to live there. She hurried to the school office and borrowed the class register from the form teacher to confirm. Han Jingming's family lived on Shengli East Street.

Lin Dongxue said to Xu Xiaodong, “Fan Lixue went to Han Jingming. She is not going to put up an act anymore. She will probably carry out some extreme action! Let’s hurry to stop her!”

When the two arrived there hurriedly, they only found Han Jingming's crying and distressed parents. When Lin Dongxue asked, the parents scrambled with each other to say, “Our Jingming just got a call and went out without a word. I thought that she was going downstairs to buy something, but who would have thought that she still wouldn’t have come back after so long? Her phone has been turned off as well!” “Please hurry and bring her back to us! I'm so scared that our Jingming would end up like those other children!”

The two investigated the scene briefly. Han Jingming had gone out of her own volition. Just when Lin Dongxue was puzzling over this, Lin Qiupu called, and Lin Dongxue reported the situation to him. Lin Qiupu said, “Don’t blame yourself. Jingming might have been guided to go out if Ji Changxin had previously hypnotized her. We have just detained the three staff members from the store that he worked at, and confirmed that all three had been guided by a post-hypnotic suggestion. The so-called post-hypnotic suggestion involves burying a command in the brain, and a gesture, phrase, or a sign can trigger it.”

“If Ji Changxin had hypnotized Han Jingming previously, why didn't they kill her then?”

“I'm afraid that’s something that we can only find out once he’s arrested. There’s currently a warrant out for his arrest and I’ve mobilized all my forces to arrest him.”

“I’ll continue to look for these two girls, and if necessary, I will ask the police station in this district to aid us.”

“Okay! By the way, with regard to Ji Changxin's motive, according to what we found, he has a daughter around the same age as Fan Lixue. The daughter had also suffered bullying at school, but as he had already divorced his wife at the time, he couldn’t do anything. So we’re speculating that the motive for helping Fan Lixue is due to sympathy.”

“So that’s what this is about...” Lin Dongxue didn't expect this to be the reason. “Can we really convict him for murder using hypnosis?”

“Given the incident that happened today, the bureau chief has indicated that Ji Changxin is very dangerous. Be sure to arrest him first and whether he gets convicted will be something that can be looked into afterwards.”

“I will tell you if there’s any progress on our side.”

“Good!”

Throughout the day, the criminal police and the local police looked for Ji Changxin everywhere. Around 4PM, the police found the lost police car through a traffic probe, but Ji Changxin was no longer in it.

At six o'clock in the evening, Gu You's clinic was closed for the day. Gu You had left with another colleague. When she went back to the office to retrieve a document that she had forgotten, she suddenly found that her colleague had collapsed on the floor and that the back of his head was covered with blood.

Ji Changxin was wearing a dark coat, and holding an iron rod in his hand. His eyes and expression was like that of a crazed stray dog.

“Boss Gu, you didn't expect me to be here, did you?” Ji Changxin sneered.

Gu You glanced at the surveillance monitor in the upper right corner. There was no doubt that Ji Changxin had been recorded just now. “It seems that you don't intend to behave like a human being anymore,” she said.

Ji Changxin’s fury was instantly ignited by these words. He spat and roared, “Who was it? Who was the one who pushed me to this?! And who was the one who kept fanning the fire and making the police suspect me?!”

1. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/de/33/8a/de338a292339a96e77e9dbc53a8389fd.jpg