The next morning, the police in the forensics department yawned and started their day's work. Suddenly, they could smell the scent of scallion pancakes. Chen Shi came in with two large bags and put them on the table. One bag was full of breakfast and the other was full of fruit. He smiled, "I'm sorry, I made you all work overtime till so late last night. This is a token of my appreciation.”

Peng Sijue said, "You came so early. You’re so energetic this early in the morning."

"I was afraid that after you’ve all eaten breakfast, my token of appreciation wouldn’t be able to be given out. How’s the results?"

"Very good. Straight to the point again."

"If you want to chat some more first, that’s fine. I’ll gladly keep you company."

"Who wants your company?! Here."

Peng Sijue handed over the report to him. After Chen Shi read it, a confused expression slowly appeared on his face, which was what Peng Sijue had expected.

"The time that the corpse was abandoned was 8:00 that night?"

"We did three sets of experiments. We tried to imitate the outdoor humidity and temperature, but this result..."

"If the time when the corpse was abandoned was 8:00, but the time of death was 9:00… If they threw away the corpse before killing her… That’s a contradiction.”

"I also realized that, so I carefully confirmed the test environment and data. There’s no error in that segment, unless there were any other variables that were not taken into account."

All the test data was clearly written down in the report. Chen Shi believed that in this aspect, Peng Sijue's brain was much more meticulous than his. He didn’t immediately reject this result but contemplated another possibility.

Did the killer use some trick to interfere with the judgment of the time of death?

The murderer was a thoughtful person who had escaped the net of justice for six years. He knew to survey the scene and set it up before throwing away the body. He had also found Cai Yating, who was secretly investigating. All of which showed that they were extremely careful.

While he was thinking, Chen Shi stepped out of the forensics department. Peng Sijue looked at his back figure, shook his head and smiled. This guy’s caught up in a case again.

There were no major clues presented in the morning's case discussion. Everyone just carried out the investigation tasks step by step. The vast majority of the officers didn’t have too much hope for solving the case. The repeated lack of progress in the past six years gave them an indescribable feeling of loss.

After the meeting, Lin Dongxue asked Chen Shi, "Great Detective Chen, where are you going today?"

"Is Yan Qilin's family still in Long'an?"

Lin Dongxue opened the notebook in her hand. "Her father died of myocardial infarction two years ago, but there are still some relatives."

Chen Shi thought about it for a while, "We can also visit the relatives, but they’re our lowest priority."

"Who are those that are the top priority to be visited?"

"I want to meet Zhang Jinlei's parents."

"Speaking of meeting his parents, I called the university that Zhang Jinlei had applied for this morning to ask and they didn't have a special enrollment candidate named Yan Qilin in that year. In fact, there weren’t any special enrollments at all."

"Your efficiency is really high!" Chen Shi nodded and praised. "The university won’t admit to these kinds of things. It’s not a glorious thing. Could it be..."

"What?"

"I have an acquaintance. He used to be called Wang xx. One day, he suddenly changed his name to Li xx. I thought that he had taken on a new father’s name. Later, I found out that he was attending university under someone else's name. Then he changed it back after he had found a job."

"In what year did that happen? The ID card's anti-counterfeiting encryption has been upgraded, so shouldn’t it be very hard to impersonate someone now?"

"That’s not necessarily the case. Even the most rigorous system has loopholes because the system itself is manned by people. There are some poor candidates who score well and get into a good school, but can’t afford to attend. They’ll sell their identities to the stupid sons of landlord families so they can attend university. This kind of thing still exists today."

"Hmm..." Lin Dongxue frowned. "But there is no way to investigate it! Besides, Yan Qilin didn't go to the university at all, and the file doesn't exist."

"Indeed there’s no way of finding out. We can only try using my eyes that can see through lies to get some information!" Chen Shi pointed to his own eyes.

At this time, Xu Xiaodong passed by, holding a folded brocade banner in his hands. Lin Dongxue stopped him, "Who sent it? Who is it for?"

"I don't know who put it by the door. Do you want it?" Xu Xiaodong unfolded it. Eight gold characters were stamped on the banner: "Good-for-nothing Bureaucracy"[1].

Lin Dongxue held her stomach and laughed. "That’s creative!"

Xu Xiaodong said, "I’m going to hand it over to Captain Lin and let him handle it."

Chen Shi said, "Could this have been sent by Yue Chao, who was released yesterday? You should give it directly to Old Peng, let him check the fingerprints and we’ll find out."

Lin Dongxue said, "This guy had the guts to scold us? It’s open slander."

Zhang Jinlei’s father was a bank manager. It didn’t take much effort to meet him. The three of them sat in the bank’s VIP room on opposite sides. Father Zhang politely said, “After so many years, you’re still investigating this case. It must have been hard work. As a citizen of Long'an, I have a sense of security with such a serious and responsible police force."

Chen Shi smiled, "Mr. Zhang, don't call us incompetent in a roundabout way. This case hasn't been solved in six years. We don’t know where the murderer is hiding and laughing at us!"

Father Zhang said, "No, I didn't mean that. I know this kind of case is really difficult to solve. If you need my help with anything, I’ll try my best to cooperate."

"Then we’ll get to the point. In fact, we came here today mainly to understand what the girl Yan Qilin was like. How much do you know about her? Why don’t you tell us?"

"Hmm..." Father Zhang took out a cigarette and tapped it on his cigarette case a few times. "Can I?"

"Please, go ahead."

He lit a cigarette and recalled for a moment, "I remember that the girl was from a single-parent family. Her father was previously a soldier, and his leg had been injured in an explosion. After he was discharged, he was self-employed for a few years. After her mother died, her father was unable to recover from the blow and spent his days drinking…”

The first sentence already revealed the worldlines embedded in his bones. He only talked about Yan Qilin's family background.

Chen Shi said, "We know all this. What I want to know is what the character of the girl was like. What did you think of her? And did anything happen while she was dating your son?"

"Uh, to be honest, when I found out that Jinlei was dating this girl, I was against it. We took great efforts to cultivate such an excellent son. It wasn’t to let him be together with a girl from that kind of family. This was equivalent to ruining most of his life’s possibilities in vain! I asked him at the time, if he could be happy in the future with that kind of girl. If they got married, did they want to support her grumpy and useless father? It’s difficult to obtain a positive outcome when the two of them aren’t well-matched with regards to socio-economic status. Because people who grow up in different environments have significantly different ways of thinking, views, and ideals. They’ll break up sooner or later..."

Hearing these words, Lin Dongxue furrowed her brows directly. Zhang Jinlei and his father were such a great contrast with each other. It was no wonder that Zhang Jinlei felt pressure from his family.

1. Made up of two Chinese proverbs, with each being 4 characters long. However, this is the meaning behind them.