Chapter 311: Art Academy

Everyone turned their heads following the voice, only to see a young man with a ramen-head perm standing behind them, wearing a loose linen shirt and carrying a crossbody bag. His eyes, half-covered by curly hair, looked at these strangers with unease and vigilance.

The landlord was the first to recognize him: "Aren't you Xingzhou's friend from the city? Why did you come today?"

The young man weakly showed the key in his hand: "The lease for this house shouldn't be up yet, right? Landlord, why did you bring people to see the house?"

"They aren't here to see the house, they are..." The landlord was about to explain, but Qi Fei walked up to the young man and showed his ID: "Qi Fei from the Criminal Police Brigade of the Nancheng Police Station, we are here to investigate the case of Wu Xingzhou's death."

"Wh, what?" The young man seemed not to have heard clearly for a moment.

Qi Fei had to repeat it again.

The young man was stunned for a moment, saw Wu Chongyue behind Qi Fei, and suddenly realized: "You don't want Wu Xingzhou to stay with us, but you don't have to play such a clumsy trick, right?" His tone rose sharply, and then he took out his mobile phone and dialed Wu Xingzhou's number. Unsurprisingly, the voice of "cannot be connected" came from the other end of the phone. He became worried and questioned the few people: "What did you do to Wu Xingzhou? This is a society ruled by law; you can't mess around. I want to call the police!"

This was the first person Qi Fei had met since arriving in Sanwu Town who truly cared about Wu Xingzhou.

He took out the investigation report he was carrying and handed it to the young man: "You can call the police to check our identities. We aren't acting. It's very regrettable, but Wu Xingzhou is really dead."

The young man flipped through the report with suspicion, muttering to himself: "This is impossible, impossible..."

Qi Fei knew that from this young man, he could know the other side of Wu Xingzhou. He sent away the people from Sanwu Town, leaving only him. The door of the rental house was locked from the inside by Qi Fei.

The noon sun shone in through the wooden lattice glass. The young man came back to his senses from the shock, saw the unfinished oil painting of Wu Xingzhou, and suddenly burst into tears out of grief.

Qi Fei waited quietly for him to calm down before starting to ask questions: "You haven't told me your name yet, and what is your relationship with Wu Xingzhou?"

"My name is Xu Ziheng, and I am Wu Xingzhou's university classmate. We are both from the Nancheng Art Academy. We will graduate with our master's degrees next year and need to do our graduation design. The school's venue is limited, so Wu Xingzhou helped everyone find this place. He is such a talented and good person, how could he..." Xu Ziheng said, choking up.

Wu Shanqiu couldn't help but exclaim: "Wu Xingzhou is actually from the Nancheng Art Academy? This school is not easy to get into; my cousin has been taking the exam for two years and still can't get in."

"Yes, and Wu Xingzhou majored in the school's strongest oil painting department. If nothing goes wrong, he will become a world-class painter. Heavens, no wonder he hasn't spoken in the group for this period of time. If everyone knows this bad news..." Xu Ziheng held his head and lamented, "It's truly heaven being jealous of talent..." After the exclamation, he realized and looked at the three people in front of him. "Does that investigation report mean Wu Xingzhou was murdered? This..."

"We are just suspicious; there is no conclusive evidence yet," Qi Fei responded.

Xu Ziheng bit his lip and suddenly clenched his fists, saying: "It must be his family members. They think Wu Xingzhou is not doing his proper job and is embarrassing them. I know!"

"Hmm, do you understand Wu Xingzhou's relationship with his family?"

Xu Ziheng shook his head: "He rarely mentioned things about his family. At first, we only knew his family background was very good. He was always very generous at school. We often had to pay for materials and tools ourselves, which was a significant expense. Wu Xingzhou always took the initiative to lend money to classmates in difficulty. He said it was lending money, but he never mentioned the matter of paying it back. Everyone knew he didn't intend to ask for this money back; he said lending was just to maintain their self-esteem."

Qi Fei saw him speaking with genuine feelings and saw a clue: "He also lent you money, right?"

Xu Ziheng nodded: "Yes, I'm ashamed to say, we didn't do anything for him, and didn't even know he had passed away. I'm really sorry to him. Because of this, classmates including me couldn't understand why his family treated him like this. We encountered his parents coming to the academy to find the teacher several times, wanting Wu Xingzhou to drop out. His family wasn't unable to afford this major; they said he was the eldest grandson of their entire family and had to study management, finance, and these proper majors. It really shocked our teachers. This meant our major wasn't proper, right?

Later we found out that he had secretly applied for the Nancheng Art Academy behind his family's back, which led to conflicts with his family.

But Wu Xingzhou was a guy who was soft on the outside but hard on the inside. Don't look at him as gentle usually; once he made up his mind, no matter how much others opposed it, there was no way.

No matter how much his parents made a scene, he still got recommended for a master's degree with excellent grades. Sigh, we thought that once he achieved success, he should be able to gain understanding from his family. We were really too naive."

"Listening to what you say, it's just that his parents opposed him doing oil painting; it wouldn't go as far as you said, wanting to kill him, right?" Qi Fei intentionally spoke for the Wu Chongyue couple.

"I heard it with my own ears from his father. He helped everyone rent this place, right? His dad found out and came to the door to ask him to cancel the lease. Wu Xingzhou didn't agree, and his dad slapped him, saying the Wu family didn't have an eldest grandson like him, and that if it weren't illegal, he would have killed him long ago. I was shocked when I heard it at the time. How could these words come out of a father's mouth? We used to envy Wu Xingzhou for having money at home, but after that time, I only felt he was too pitiful. I really can't understand, Wu Xingzhou is such a handsome person, and so talented, what kind of parents would not like him?" Xu Ziheng recalled with lingering fear, "You didn't see the expression on his dad's face when he reached out to hit him. I have reason to believe that what he said at that moment was true. That fierce look was truly hoping that Wu Xingzhou would disappear from this world."

"Then what about at school? As far as you know, has anyone had a conflict with him?" Qi Fei continued to ask.

"There certainly wasn't any conflict. Wu Xingzhou never made enemies with anyone. However, perhaps some people were dissatisfied with him, and that wasn't because Wu Xingzhou did anything wrong, but because he was too perfect and excellent, and some people were jealous." Xu Ziheng said.

"Can you tell me specifically who?"

"Then you can't tell him that I said it. This person is also using this place; he can be considered our friend, at least Wu Xingzhou treated him as a friend, but he didn't say less bad things about Wu Xingzhou behind his back..." Xu Ziheng said, his gaze falling on an oil painting in the corner. ===== CHAPTER 312 =====