Chapter 128: Wild Rose

Wu Chun stared blankly at the pendant in Zhong Kui's hand, lost in deep memory. His index finger unconsciously traced the arc of a steering wheel turning on the interrogation table, and the silver pendant in Zhong Kui's hand reflected tiny specks of light in his pupils: "When President Huang enlarged the photo at the time, the phone screen reflected off the car window..." His Adam's apple went still for two seconds as if stuck, "just like the reflection angle of this pendant. That day, President Huang and I were both in good spirits; he even chatted with me a bit more, saying he'd booked a sea-view room in Greece, and even joked about asking if I wanted to bring a beauty along. I was embarrassed and said I planned to go back to my hometown to see my wife and children in the next few days. Hmm..."

Speaking of this, Wu Chun frowned slightly, "Ding..." he mimicked the sound of a phone message arriving, "Ding..."

His distracted appearance was as if he were possessed, recorded one by one by the interrogation room's surveillance.

Wu Chun muttered and repeated, his hands hovering in mid-air as if still gripping an invisible steering wheel, talking to himself, "Our conversation was interrupted by a message on President Huang's phone. He suddenly stopped talking. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw President Huang's face turn gloomy, as if he had received something extraordinary. He zoomed in and looked at it again and again. His two fingers pinched and spread on the screen seven times."

Wu Chun suddenly raised both hands to simulate the zooming motion, and the light in the interrogation room seemed to flicker because of his action, "I caught a glimpse of his pupils in the rearview mirror... bulging like a frog whose throat had been bitten by a venomous snake."

Zhong Kui's silver pendant suddenly stopped spinning, carving a cold arc in the air: "A physiological compensatory response triggered by cognitive dissonance. When a human suddenly receives information that subverts their self-cognition, the pupils will undergo three cycles of contraction and dilation..."

Wu Chun's index finger suddenly scraped a sharp screeching sound against the interrogation table, and as the reflection from Zhong Kui's pendant slid off his pupils, it was as if some invisible tether had been pulled away. His back slammed into the plastic chair, shaking it so hard the chair legs left four parallel white marks on the floor. Startled as if waking from a dream, he looked at everyone in front of him: "How could I remember so many things? I clearly never paid attention to these details."

Zhong Kui put away the pendant: "The hippocampus folds can store 86 billion synaptic connections; it's just that ordinary people need resonance at a specific frequency to decompress memory fragments."

"Huang Daqiu's phone is missing," Qi Fei said immediately, the vibration of the air conditioning vent sounding just like the biting wind of Jiangting Island.

In the autopsy room, Xiao Tao opened the tool kit alone, performing the final preparations for the deceased. The cold instruments made sounds like cracking ice in the quiet room. The autopsy task was already complete, and the bodies from which life had been suddenly snatched were about to return to dust and earth after completing their final plea for justice.

The exhaust fan hummed at a constant frequency, and Xiao Tao's latex gloves made a sound like crushing snow against the needle holder. When the suture thread penetrated the seventh intercostal space, the cold light of the shadowless lamp suddenly refracted an abnormal reflection on the deceased's lower abdomen—it was a five-centimeter-long old scar. The needle holder in his hand paused for half a second, the stainless steel surface reflecting Xiao Tao's slightly furrowed brow. The suture needle in his hand switched to a horizontal piercing mode, the thread end wandering along the contour of the scar. It seemed Huang Daqiu's body could not be released today.

"I really want to know who that person who matched with Huang Daqiu is," Xiao Tao handed the new autopsy report to Qi Fei.

"Old Huang's remains have quite a lot of information, huh? Any new discoveries?" Qi Fei took the latest report curiously, flicking his finger against the DNA sequence map on the report's cover page; the sound of the paper trembling mixed with the low-frequency vibration of the centrifuge.

"While suturing, I discovered he had undergone a microscopic vasectomy on his abdomen; the vas deferens had been removed. This is an old scar." Xiao Tao placed the tissue section under a multi-head microscope, the cold light source projecting a grid of collagen fibers onto the slide: "The central area of the scar has a Type I collagen content of 92.7%, showing a significant difference from the Type III collagen-dominated structure of a new scar." His tweezers lightly tapped the polarized light micrograph displayed on the electronic screen: "Through the annual ring-like distribution of collagen cross-linked crystals, each dense band represents a remodeling cycle of about 5.3 years." He tapped the chromatography analysis interface: "Combined with the Z-shaped suture trajectory unique to 1978 microsurgical vasectomy, the time window of the wound is locked in a range of 30 years, plus or minus one year. The previously discovered DNA sample is Huang Daqiu's son, which means this person was born when he was very young."

"30 years? Huang Daqiu is only 48 this year, doesn't that mean this son was born before he was 18? Looks like I need to check when he had the surgery," Qi Fei said, the pale light of the forensic room casting deep shadows on his brow ridge.

Unlike the low-key simplicity of the Qi Dongjun family, Huang Daqiu lived in the most luxurious flat in Nancheng's emerging district. Standing on the 18th floor, one could overlook the most prosperous area of the city. When the Italian gray marble-clad elevator door opened in front of Qi Fei, the smart butler system was still looping missed call notifications. In the four-hundred-square-meter space, a Bohemian crystal chandelier cast diamond-dust-like light spots in the living room, and under an entire wall decorated with crocodile skin, a million-dollar antique clock ticked tediously.

Standing in front of the 18th-floor panoramic floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city neon, the gold foil threads in the bulletproof glass interlayer wound like blood vessels under the moonlight. Unopened caviar was lined up on the open kitchen counter; Qi Fei picked it up and looked, it had long passed its expiration date. This fully equipped kitchen had never been used. In Huang Daqiu's bedroom, an oversized television cycled through intimate photos of Huang Daqiu with different female companions every few seconds, but there wasn't a single family photo.

This tycoon, who was infinitely glamorous on the outside, was left with nothing but this brand-new house and the emptiness of a life of debauchery after his death.

With the help of the butler, they found the old medical records Huang Daqiu had stored. A businessman's good habit is that no matter how rough he may seem, he will carefully store any receipts that should be saved.

In the drawer under the desk, on the yellowed surgical form, the three characters "Huang Daqiu" in the patient signature column were blurred with a patch of blue-black ink, as if the fountain pen tip had lingered there for a full minute.

Wu Shanqiu's gaze shifted from the surgical form to the photo of Huang Daqiu with the female model and said: "This Huang Daqiu is such a playboy, yet he sows seeds everywhere without bearing fruit. No wonder he never acknowledged those illegitimate children; it turns out he knew he couldn't reproduce at all."

Zhong Kui's fingertips brushed the withered rose in the glass vase and said: "When biological instincts are thwarted, some groups will reconstruct their social gender identity through high-frequency sexual relationships. His chaotic private life precisely exposes his pathological compensation mechanism for his own defects. Wild roses that cannot bear fruit must always bloom more ostentatiously than the flowers in an orchard."