What was an ordinary person's common reaction upon seeing a corpse? Not to even mention the fact that they would lose self-control and may end up pissing their pants in terror, seeing such a bloody scene would normally be accompanied by feelings of nausea, freneticism and fear; these representative emotions would more or less overwhelm any other expressions or sensations.

But once again, Fan Jialuo proved that he was not ordinary. He stared at each of the photos for a few seconds, with his red lips slightly hooked, and moved his sight onto the next in a very casual and gentle manner, as if he was simply appreciating a few paintings of landscapes.

When he looked at the dead body, with its pale face and twisted body, his breathing remained even, and there was not even a ripple in his deep eyes.

"I don't know." Fan Jialuo shook his head, then stretched out his long and thin fingertips, and arranged the four photos into a pile, slowly placing one on top of the other. The photo he left for last, the one he placed on top of the pile, was the photo depicting the scene of Gao Yize's tragic death, after he had fallen from the top of the building, and his fingertip stayed on Gao Yize's no longer recognizable face, with its the crushed skull and scattered brain matter.

Just where would an ordinary person be able find the courage to act in such a manner? If an ordinary person placed their fingertips on the face of a corpse, even if it was on top of just a photo, they would feel some discomfort-as if their fingers were being bitten and tainted with fear, after which they would, accordingly, flinch away in horror.

Zhuang Zhen almost felt as if he was being laughed at by Fan Jialuo. Only a cold-blooded and ruthless killer could have such a strong psychological quality. This case had nothing to do with him? Who did this person think he was trying to deceive?

"Don't you know all the death notices you have posted?" Zhuang Zhen poked at the table and aggressively continued, "Don't try to tell me that you don't know anything! You say you don't know where the death sketch came from; you don't know about why you posted those death notices about the second one, the third one, or the fourth one! You think you can deceive us?"

Fan Jialuo moved his unfathomable gaze away from the pile of photos and turned to look at Zhuang Zhen. The smile at the corner of his mouth curved upwards a bit more, clearly revealing an expression that said 'this scene is very interesting, I rather like it'.

Zhuang Zhen clenched his teeth and said in a cold tone, "Let me guess, you didn't personally participate in these murders, but have contact with the real murderer?"

Before Fan Jialuo could shake his head to deny this allegation, Zhuang Zhen quickly added, "You happened to somehow discover the murderer and uncovered his murderous plan, but just watched Gao Yize die because of the hatred you bear for him, since he was the one who destroyed you. So, instead of reporting the murderer, you actively participated in the murder of Gao Yize."

Zhuang Zhen continued, speaking in a very affirmative tone, "The murderer killed Gao Yize in the vanguard, and in return for killing him, you helped hide the murderer by attracting the public's attention from the rear, and thus obstructing the police's investigation, all so that your plan could be carried out smoothly. Your sketch and the death notices, including your alibi at the time of Gao Yize's death, were all prepared in advance. In this way, the real murderer, concealed under your smokescreen, could smoothly avoid arrest, and you were also able to retreat."

Fan Jialuo listened quietly, not interrupting or contradicting even a single word.

Zhuang Zhen continued to supplement details for the manner in which the crime was carried out and its aftermath- as if he had witnessed the entire process with his own eyes; this was another method of cross examination that he and Song Rui had discussed in advance.They had fabricated a plausible story, their version of events based entirely on speculation, and had tried to perfect various details that could tie it to the crime, in order lure Fan Jialuo into speaking.

As he listened to this story, Fan Jialuo would try his best to deny certain details or events, and Zhuang Zhen would interrupt or refute his denial over and over again, thus disturbing his thought process and stirring up his nerves as well. Fan Jialuo's mind would turn into a mess. And in the process of refuting their version of events, he would naturally end up offering details that could prove his innocence.

These details could be true and they could be false, but at the very least, they would help Song Rui and Zhuang Zhen with determining a benchmark, which they had failed to figure out through the previous methods of questioning.

Once they've determined a benchmark, in just a glance it would become clear whether Fan Jialuo was the murderer or not. No matter how many lies he told, as long as the police saw through him, he would have nowhere to escape.

But at present, although Zhuang Zhen seemed to perfectly balance the act of being both aggressive and eloquent, in fact, the more he spoke, the more he felt, in the depths of his heart, that he had no bottom line.

This impression only kept solidifying throughout his narration, for Fan Jialuo hadn't said a single word to retort, and just listened quietly with a peaceful expression on his face.

Whenever Zhuang Zhen paused during his narration of this story, Fan Jialuo would raise his jaw slightly in his direction, in a gesture of signalling for the other to continue. It seemed as if he was listening to a series of events that had happened to someone else, rather than severe accusations directed at his own self.

Liu Tao and the other people sitting in the observation room were in a state of panic. Song Rui, who had always been calm during such procedures, frowned tightly. There was nothing he could do.

Although they suspected that someone was using Fan Jialuo as a facade, even after conducting multiple background checks and detailed searches to determine his interpersonal relationships, there was simply nothing to be found. Otherwise, their investigation into this case would not have hit a dead end and remained at a standstill for so long.

He was obviously not the mentally-ill patient, suffering from multiple personality disorder, who easily lost control, as had been recorded in the data about him. On the contrary, his heart might be harder than steel and colder than a glacier. Wanting to pierce his psychological defense lines and discover the identity of the murderer behind the scenes was no less difficult than only holding a small hammer whilst trying to destroy a dam.

Zhuang Zhen accentuated his voice and emphasized slowly, word by word, "Do you think you can escape justice because you didn't directly take part in the murder? Wrong! Once we arrest the murderer, you'll be going to jail too!

"You should know that you've already become an accomplice to the crime by shielding the real criminal. You'll easily be sentenced to up to three years in prison! You used to be the Young Master of the Fan Family, the high-flying star idol of the entertainment circle, but later, you will become nothing but a prisoner, one who is scorned by everybody!

"If you confess now and disclose the murderer's identity, we can still appeal to the judge to ease your sentence. But if you persist and refuse to cooperate, your sentence will only be increased.

"When you're released from prison three years later, what will you be able to do? You can find a place to start afresh if you only lose your reputation, but if you have a criminal record, it will become a stain that you'll have to carry for the rest of your life! Just think about it!"

Zhuang Zhen leaned forward, supporting his body with both hands pressed against the table, applying as much force as possible, and locked Fan Jialuo firmly with his sharp gaze.

Fan Jialuo listened to this entire tirade with a lowered head and an expressionless face, while his fingertips randomly fiddled with the photos. He first shifted Gao Yize and Wang Wei's pictures to the right. Gao Yize's photo was placed on the top, and Wang Wei's below it, with the bottom left corner of both photos neatly aligned. Then, he shifted Zhao Kai and Mao Xiaoming's photos to the left, and flushed them underneath Wang Wei's photos, maintaining an empty space in between the photos of Zhao Kai and Wang Wei.

After arranging the photos in such a way, he shuffled all the photos and placed them again in the same manner and order, then repeated this process for a second and a third time... It could be seen that he had begun to feel bored now. Yes, it was not nervousness, panic, nor fear, but boredom-it was really boredom.

Faced with such a man, Zhuang Zhen could do nothing but grit his teeth. The self-control that he had always been extremely proud of showed faint signs of collapsing. He slapped the table hard and shouted in a cold voice, "What's the relationship between you and the murderer? How did you know about the murders before they were committed?

"We may be able to reduce the sentence you receive if you make it clear. If you don't cooperate, you can only wait to be put into a prison! I think the news of your imprisonment will definitely spread all over the Internet. Then you will only become more infamous, to the point that you'll have no place to hide!"

The last sentence seemed to have poked Fan Jialuo's nerve. He placed all the photos together with a flick of his fingers, then looked up at Zhuang Zhen. His face was very pale, his lips were as red as blood, but his most striking feature was still his eyes; black, a pure black, a deep black, a black which could almost enchant every soul that looked into it.

The lazy and careless smile retreated from his face, his body leaned forward slightly, and he approached Zhuang Zhen, whose posture was already angled towards him, until their breaths could intertwine. Then he spoke, enunciating each and every word, "You are asking me how I know? Well, I'll tell you, I saw it."

Zhuang Zhen, Luo Hong, Liu Tao, Song Rui and the others all held their breath upon the utterance of this single sentence. After countless confrontations, the opponent whom they had thought was the most difficult to break had actually chosen to confess under a frustrated tirade. Why? Which point touched on his psychological defense line?

Zhuang Zhen and Song Rui were deeply troubled by this issue, but they didn't have time to think at all, and could only strain their ears to listen to what Fan Jialuo would say next. Whether this serial murder case could be solved or not depended on the next few moments!

"How did you see it? Who is the murderer?" Zhuang Zhen unhesitatingly threw out some lead-in questions.

"I don't know who the murderer is." After gazing at Zhuang Zhen for two seconds, Fan Jialuo suddenly smiled again.

At this moment, Zhuang Zhen's nerves collapsed to the extreme. He initially thought that he could relax for a while when Fan Jialuo had started speaking, but his momentum was suddenly cut off by the 180 degree twist he was subjected to soon after. The blue tendons on the side of his neck pulsated rapidly. When he next spoke, his entire being appeared to have been ignited, seemingly able to spew out fire. "Fan Jialuo, are you playing with me?"

"What am I playing with you for? Is it fun to play with you?" Having said so, the arc at the corner of his mouth deepened, expressing that, yes, it really was fun to play with him.

At this critical point, when Zhuang Zhen was just about to explode, Fan Jialuo approached him a little more. The tip of his nose was just a hair's breadth away from the tip of the other person's nose, and he whispered, "Of course, I saw it with my eyes. But what I saw was just some fuzzy light and some fragments, it wasn't clear. So how can I tell you who the murderer is?

"I don't know if you have heard, but there exists a certain kind of person in this world, who, even without any substantial contact, and with just a flash of thought, can discern a lot. Such a person's eyes have the ability to penetrate through to the past, to clarify the present and to break the veil of the future.

"They can see what you see through your eyes, smell what you smell through your nose, taste what you taste through your tongue, and can even perceive what you think through your heart."

With the tip of his pink tongue outstretched, he gently licked his red lips. The originally dark pupils had become empty and now overflowed with mist, just like that of a devil.

His words were illogical and vague, and appeared to be completely incomprehensible to the people who listened to them. But there was no way for his audience to not see him, to not listen to him, and to not think about him as he spoke these words. Whenever he displayed the truest side of him, no one could resist being fascinated by him.

Zhuang Zhen was swayed by this man's breath. He found himself unable to move forward, and nor could he retreat. His entire body seemed to have become tightly bound in an invisible magnetic field, and could only stay stiffly in his seat.

His facial expression was still cold and hard, his eyes remained sharp and constantly alert, but an uncontrollable layer of thin yet dense goosebumps which had crept from his cheek to the neck had betrayed him by exposing his uncontrollable and turbulent mood.

Fan Jialuo approached him once again. When the tip of his nose was about to touch Zhuang Zhen's, he raised his head slightly, smiled and looked at his eyes as he continued, "As long as I wish for it, your perception is my perception, your thoughts are my thoughts, your past is my past, your present is my present, and your future can also be my future.

"You have six senses: the eyes, nose, tongue, ears, body and mind. I have eight. In addition to the six senses you have, I have two more, manas and alaya. You can only mobilize your body to understand the world, but I can mobilize all my senses, and even my consciousness, to explore the unknown. Everything in the world is my medium."

Fan Jialuo slowly moved back, and at the same time, the invisible magnetic field binding Zhuang Zhen disappeared. The sensation of becoming a prey, of being controlled by this magnetic field, was profound and mysterious, making all of Zhuang Zhen's hairs stand on end.

Fan Jialuo's red lips slightly opened, and he enunciated slowly, "People like me seem to be known to the outside world as- psychic."

...

Qiuxue: In which the interrogation is not very effective but we get another glimpse of just how impressive our Fan Jialuo is~! (Alternatively, in which we see a Fan Jialuo who has no business being as cute as he is when he smiles with unhidden meaning..!!)

Noks: And here we have it... FJL has enraptured his audience. And us. Thoroughly. (*'▽｀*)

Frozenmirage: Ahh... finally the long awaited sentence