Chapter 2

Qi Fei was stubborn: "Heh, he's lied to us many times about the location of the body; there's no guarantee we won't come up empty-handed this time."

Zhong Kui suddenly placed her hand on his shoulder, stood on tiptoe, and leaned into his ear: "The reason you couldn't get it out of him is because you're missing a bowl of Meng Po Soup." The air she exhaled carried an indescribable sweet fragrance that brushed against Qi Fei's ear, making it itch and causing his heart to race.

Zhong Kui raised her hand and, as if by magic, produced a business card, stuffed it into Qi Fei's hand, and continued: "My address is on it, remember to come find me."

Under the gaze of everyone, Qi Fei felt he was being teased. A twenty-seven-year-old man turned as red as a boiled lobster. He feigned composure and scoffed: "Hmph, do fortune tellers print business cards now too?"

Zhong Kui pursed her lips and smiled: "I don't give this card to just anyone, handsome."

As if to mock Qi Fei, she casually picked up an anti-fraud manual from the display rack, waved it in mid-air, and swaggered away.

Watching Zhong Kui's graceful retreating figure, Wu Shanqiu turned to Qi Fei with a cheeky grin: "Brother Fei, is she flirting with you?"

"Don't mess around, hurry up and arrange to dig up the body!" Qi Fei said irritably, tossing the business card onto the table in the observation room.

Under an old persimmon tree, the base of a wall built with earthen bricks was dug open.

Zhu Qi, wearing shackles, watched as the four wine jars buried for thirteen years were dug out.

When the wine jars were opened, that intense aroma of wine assaulted everyone's senses.

Qi Fei knew clearly that what was soaking in this wine was Chen Xiaojing's dismembered body, but the scent of that aged yellow rice wine made his body instinctively intoxicated.

At that moment, his mind went blank. In the cold wind of early autumn, he only felt his stomach churning—he was disgusted by his own physiological reaction to the wine's aroma.

Only now did Qi Fei find the answer to why Zhu Qi vomited in the interrogation room. The meat soup Zhong Kui made with yellow rice wine had undoubtedly struck the most terrifying memory deep within Zhu Qi's heart, causing his psychological defenses to collapse completely.

But how did she know?

The lights in the interrogation room came on again.

Qi Fei looked at Zhu Qi, who seemed to have lost his soul, and said in a deep voice: "Tell me, why did you kill Chen Xiaojing?"

Zhu Qi, contrary to his past "old hand" demeanor, admitted eagerly: "Because she kept urging me to pay back the money. I didn't have it, so I thought I'd kill her to end it once and for all. At that time, my investment failed and I was in debt. I met Chen Xiaojing while running away from creditors. I often went to eat at the small restaurant where she worked as a waitress, and we got to know each other. I used the excuse of going into business together to get her to give me the money voluntarily." Zhu Qi specifically emphasized the word "voluntarily."

"Our investigation found that Chen Xiaojing transferred over a hundred thousand yuan to you over time. Her family wasn't wealthy, and this was not a small sum," Qi Fei said. "You've been scamming people everywhere all these years; she wasn't your first target, nor your last. Why target her specifically?"

When asked this question, Zhu Qi suddenly fell silent.

"We already know that you later developed a romantic relationship. You have a wife and children here, so did you kill her because of debt or an emotional dispute?"

"I, I don't know. She pushed me too hard, so I thought, if she disappeared, I could have an easier time..."

"Then tell us the process of the murder, dismemberment, and concealment of the body."

"Actually, it's very simple... I told her I planned to go back to my hometown with her to get married and asked her to come back with me to meet my parents first. I invited her to meet at the apartment I bought in Nancheng. We drank quite a bit of wine. I saw her pass out drunk on the bed, so I used a pillow to cover her head. At first, she was twisting and moving, but then she stopped."

"Why dismember the body?"

"Because it was hard to move..." Zhu Qi's reason was simple and cruel.

"Why soak the body parts in yellow rice wine?"

"I heard that dead bodies have a strong odor... I was afraid of being discovered. I knew there were several jars of 'Nu Er Hong' buried in my second uncle's old house, but my cousin had died young and my second uncle's whole family had moved away. At that moment, a flash of inspiration hit me, and I wanted to hide Chen Xiaojing there."

Qi Fei sneered upon hearing this: "Hmph, you're quite creative."

Zhu Qi suddenly asked: "Who was that woman?"

Qi Fei knew he was asking about that "spirit medium" and asked back: "What did she say in your ear?"

Upon hearing this, Zhu Qi's face turned pale again, and he stammered: "She said the wine was too fragrant and she wanted to take me to drink it with her..." When he said this, Zhu Qi suddenly looked at Qi Fei very seriously. "She is Chen Xiaojing. The way she braided her hair, and the song she was humming, Chen Xiaojing was just like that..."

Qi Fei and Wu Shanqiu looked at each other, naturally unable to believe Zhu Qi's mystical talk.

After the interrogation ended, Wu Shanqiu handed Qi Fei a cup of hot tea: "Brother Fei, you look like you're not in a good state. You don't actually believe Zhu Qi's ghostly nonsense, do you?"

Qi Fei drank a sip of tea absentmindedly, but was scalded and quickly spat it out: "Wasn't this Zhong Kui invited by Chen Xiaojing's family? She must have learned about Chen Xiaojing's habitual actions beforehand; there's nothing strange about that."

"But I can't figure out how she knew about the yellow rice wine. If she hadn't mentioned the wine to Zhu Qi, Zhu Qi wouldn't have confessed so easily... Hey, I asked around, this Zhong Kui lives on a mountain more than ten kilometers away from the town, living in seclusion, but it's said she can communicate with the dead. Everyone in town who has gone to see her says she's especially accurate," Wu Shanqiu said seriously.

"Tch, if she were really that accurate, she could have just asked the dead Chen Xiaojing where she was herself, instead of putting on such a show to scare Zhu Qi?" Qi Fei remained disdainful. "This woman is either a blind cat hitting a dead mouse, or she knows something about Zhu Qi's case. I have to find out. Shanqiu, go check Zhong Kui's address!"

"You got it!" Wu Shanqiu typed away on the keyboard, and after a while, she murmured: "Strange, I can't find any information on this person."

"Hmm? No household registration information?"

"From the registered information, there's no one named Zhong Kui in Sanwu Town. Let me try checking the floating population information at the station."

"No need, I know where she lives." Qi Fei slapped his forehead, remembering the business card he had tossed aside without even looking at. He immediately got up and returned to the observation room to rummage through things. Fortunately, after a few days, the business card was still in the corner of the table and hadn't been lost.

However, when he picked up the business card Zhong Kui had given him, he couldn't help but feel disappointed. Other than Zhong Kui's name, there was no address or phone number, only two lines of scrambled numbers.

Returning to the office, Qi Fei threw the business card on the table, laughing in spite of himself: "As expected of a fortune teller, playing the mystery card to the extreme!"