Chapter 147: The Sacrifice

Chen Shan looked at Zhong Kui, realizing that she was the mastermind behind his discovery. He gritted his teeth and asked: "How did you find me?"

"It's simple." Zhong Kui held up the Hongde Culture contract she had taken from Qi Fei at some point.

"Both you and Huang Daqiu have fingerprint fragmentation syndrome. This fingerprint is crucial. However, everyone's attention was focused on the main text of the contract, forgetting that this fingerprint was left on the procurement list.

Hongde Culture is a planning company; they don't necessarily have these goods on the list themselves.

I've been to your home. Wealth-attracting toads—having one is fine, but you have so many. Not to mention the Six Yin Copper Mirror, a feng shui ornament that clearly shouldn't be kept at home. These items are part of an industry chain, and each shop has its own characteristics. The items in your house come from the same channel as the goods at Hongde Culture. Don't tell me you bought them from them." Zhong Kui gave Chen Shan an inappropriately sweet smile, as if this were a very happy matter.

Chen Shan responded to Zhong Kui in silence, his eyes drifting to the floor, avoiding her clear, bottomless, and sharp gaze.

Zhong Kui didn't care about his reaction at all and continued to break down his psychological defenses: "But the most interesting part isn't that. The high-end residential complex you live in uses fingerprint locks as the basic configuration. Your home goes against the grain and has been changed to ordinary mechanical keys. If I remember correctly, you don't use fingerprint unlocking for your phone either. Of course, these are all trivial matters, until our Officer Qi cleverly discovered the abnormality in Huang Daqiu's fingerprints.

So, many things from the day I went to Nancheng Xiangxie became traceable. But most importantly, once I saw your fake happiness—it might fool ordinary people, but it's a bit difficult to fool me. You were clearly panicked to death inside, yet you insisted on acting relaxed and happy, which made me wonder, what on earth were you doing it for? Haha, surely not to make us happy, right?"

At first, I didn't understand. Whether it was Huang Daqiu or Ying Shuigen, so many people wanted them dead, yet you seemed to have no motive to kill them. Until I saw the jade ring in the toad's mouth in the study—it was covered in patina, so it must have been worn by someone for many years. But the size of this bracelet is for a woman. You're a bachelor, so where did you get it? It's such a coincidence that among our victims, there was only one woman. So, I checked her wrist, and sure enough, there were pressure marks from long-term wear, but her bracelet, hmm~ was missing.

Plus your intense reaction that day, the bloody smell of the jujube wood beads couldn't fool my nose..." Zhong Kui said, suddenly leaning close to Chen Shan. A sweet scent, hiding murderous intent, rushed toward him. "I can clearly distinguish between human blood and fishy smells." As she spoke, she grinned, revealing teeth as white as pearls, looking like a vampire.

Chen Shan hung his head in despair: "I don't want to die..." he muttered, with the desperation of someone trapped in a swamp uttering their final words.

The LED tube at the top of the interrogation room buzzed, casting a spiderweb-like shadow on Chen Shan's lowered forehead. The one-way glass reflected his silhouette curled up in the iron chair, the sound of his wrists hitting the metal armrests particularly clear in the confined space. The interrogation table in front of Qi Fei gleamed with a cold light. A stack of case files pressed down on the feng shui ornaments seized from Chen Shan's home, the edges of Huang Daqiu's fingerprint identification report curling slightly like a dead centipede.

The cold air suddenly sprayed from the air conditioning vent, raising the hair on the back of his neck, making him hallucinate that Zhong Kui's lingering sweet scent was still in his nasal cavity—that smell now mixed with the rusty, fishy odor of the stainless steel table legs, like a slippery snake crawling into his stomach. The sound of the DNA test bag's seal being slowly torn open by Qi Fei overlapped, making his temples throb.

Qi Fei flicked the DNA report on the stainless steel table with his finger. The metal edge reflected Chen Shan's twisted face. Qi Fei looked up at him and said: "When I first knocked on your door, your pupils were already dilated—not from confusion, but because you heard the death knell ringing in your skull, right?" His gaze swept over the shackles on the other's wrists; the string of jujube wood beads stained with blood was still worn on his hand.

Chen Shan's wrist bones hit the iron chair armrest with a dull thud: "If you had been three minutes later in revealing the blood test blunder... I might not have confessed." He pulled out a smile uglier than crying, his nails digging deep into his bleeding palms. "Either way, I'm going to the frying pan. If I confess a few days early, I can at least watch a few more instances of karma in this world."

"She Xiaohui was your true prey." Qi Fei suddenly threw the Hongde Culture contract onto the table. The incomplete fingerprint on the procurement list looked like a snake skin under the strong light. "Killing Ying Shuigen was just cleaning up trash, and you killed the wrong person?"

"Trash?" Chen Shan arched his back like a venomous snake whose seven inches had been stepped on, the veins on his neck bulging like intertwined bronze snake patterns. "They played me for a fool!" His bloodshot eyes almost burst into flames. "I can see Ying Shuigen rubbing She Xiaohui's pregnant belly amidst the incense smoke of Jiangting Island even when I close my eyes. That pair of bastards built a golden dream for me, and in the dream, I personally offered the pregnant woman to the altar..."

Chen Shan's knuckles suddenly gripped the iron chair armrest, the veins winding like snakes on the rusty metal surface: "That gold-plated charlatan..." He stared at the distorted reflection on the one-way glass, as if he saw the bronze snake-headed incense burner at the Jiangting Island pier spitting out blue smoke again. "When She Xiaohui dragged me through the thirty-three layers of cinnabar talisman curtains, Ying Shuigen was coiled on the sandalwood lotus seat, counting money with a live snake wrapped around his wrist."

"The walls were covered with photos of him and high-ranking officials." He swallowed the bitter, fishy memories. "Chairman Wang of the Provincial Chamber of Commerce holding a consecrated golden toad, President Li of the real estate company kneeling to receive a town-house copper mirror... Every photo had the shooting date branded in the bottom right corner, more real than my bank statements." The interrogation room light suddenly burst with an electrical sound, exploding the candlelight of the dojo from that year in his murky pupils.

"He said this was the rule for the Snake Immortal's wedding." Chen Shan suddenly laughed neurotically, the shackles on his wrists clashing with a dull thud. "As long as I left the pregnant She Xiaohui on the island as a hostage, the business could be revived. And the result?" He leaned forward sharply, his nose almost touching the DNA report. "I really did offer the fattest sacrifice to the evil god!"

"Later, I watched my son leave school like a rat in a sewer, and I could smell She Xiaohui's newly bought Dior perfume from three streets away." Chen Shan suddenly sneered, staring at his needle-pricked arms. "Damn it, I don't know which lunatic played a trick on me, saying I had leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. That's when I realized, the hostage, the whole thing, was just a trap set by those two bastards." ===== CHAPTER 148 =====