Chapter 346: Love and Deprivation

"The murder weapon, the crucial murder weapon!" Qi Fei flipped through the contents of the file like a madman. He knew he had seen it, but he didn't know why he had ignored such important content.

His mind was filled with complex and intense emotions, like thick fog blocking his rational thinking.

Soon he knew the reason why he ignored this clue—the murder weapon was lying beside Zhong Huaiting, but only Zhong Huaiting's fingerprints were left on it.

"It's not that the murderer didn't leave fingerprints, it's that Zhong Huaiting wiped them off." Qi Fei knew that evidence wouldn't lie. Zhong Huaiting grabbed the knife. He didn't kill the other party but chose to wipe off the evidence. A murderer who killed his wife and children, and he still wanted to protect them with his life, then there was only one possibility—the murderer was his beloved.

"Zhong Huaiting had already snatched the knife, he could have killed Zhong Xiaoyu. He was still saving Zhong Xiaoyu. Was tying her up to prevent her from hurting herself?" Qi Fei only felt his voice was very distant. There were too many noises around, as if he were no longer himself. "Impossible, what is this for?"

"Only Zhong Xiaoyu knows what happened, but she created Zhong Kui." Liu Tong paced in the office with his hands behind his back. "She is different from ordinary people. We cannot judge the authenticity of her testimony. What she says is not necessarily the truth, but she will treat these words as the truth."

"Her book... that cult classic of psychology..." Qi Fei suddenly remembered what Jiang Tianyi had told him. "Zhong Xiaoyu believes that through certain methods, people can autonomously create other personalities. If her theory is true, she can completely practice this method on herself, disguising herself as a thorough victim. Then, Zhong Kui... she, she is also just a tool Zhong Xiaoyu used to evade responsibility." Having said this, his heart felt a sharp pain. This was heartache for Zhong Kui. He couldn't imagine, as arrogant as Zhong Kui was, if she knew the truth, how would she face all this?

"But, the motive? The motive for the crime?" Qi Fei only felt that everything exceeded his worldview. "Why did she kill her family so brutally? Xi He... all this happened after she met Xi He..."

That face extremely similar to his own floated in Qi Fei's mind. Xi He, like a huge black shadow, shrouded over the sky of Villa No. 3 in Yueya Mountain.

"No matter what the truth is, the recovered Zhong Xiaoyu firmly believes that Xi He is the real murderer who killed her whole family. Is our reasoning direction wrong, or is there another reason here?" Qi Fei couldn't help but flip to the photo taken by Shen Hongguan again. Zhong Xiaoyu looked at the camera covered in blood, as if telling something. What frustrated Qi Fei was that he couldn't read this look. He didn't know what this actually meant.

The door of Jiang Tianyi's psychological counseling room was knocked on again. This was the second consecutive day that an unscheduled visitor had come.

He put on his gold-rimmed glasses and got up to open the door.

Outside the door was Qi Fei, dusty and tired, with unmelted snowflakes on his shoulders.

"Dr. Jiang, I don't know who to look for, I can only come to you... I know you have signed a confidentiality agreement with our police station." Qi Fei's voice was choked with sobs.

"Come in quickly." Jiang Tianyi's voice was as warm as a stove fire on a snowy day. "What happened?"

"I don't know what the truth is anymore, I'm afraid of myself." Qi Fei muttered, not realizing that his way of speaking was quite similar to Luo Xiao's back then.

Jiang Tianyi certainly saw his abnormality, but as a psychologist, he didn't appear particularly panicked, but let Qi Fei sit on the sofa and poured a glass of hot water and handed it over: "It seems you have encountered something beyond your cognitive range. Sit down and talk slowly."

The heat of the water cup seeped into his palm, making Qi Fei's nerves relax a little: "It's Zhong Xiaoyu. Captain Liu showed me the complete file of the extermination case ten years ago. The situation might be different from what I, no, what we know."

Hearing that it was about Zhong Xiaoyu, Jiang Tianyi was particularly concerned: "Looking at you like this, the content of that file is unusual."

Qi Fei stopped talking, suddenly shook his head: "I think this is still Xi He's conspiracy. He must have rearranged the scene just to confuse the police and point the finger of suspicion at Zhong Xiaoyu."

Jiang Tianyi was confused by his incoherent words: "What? The police suspect Xiaoyu killed her own family?"

"There are many suspicious points at the scene that point to Zhong Xiaoyu. Even if she is not the mastermind, it is very likely that she participated in the entire crime process... No, Dr. Jiang, I can't believe all this." Qi Fei gripped the cup in his hand painfully.

Jiang Tianyi didn't say anything, picked up a plate of cookies on his desk, and handed them to Qi Fei: "Try a piece."

Qi Fei didn't understand Jiang Tianyi's intention, but still took a piece and put it in his mouth.

"What does it taste like?" Jiang Tianyi asked.

"Uh, not very sweet," Qi Fei replied.

"Anything else?"

"There's a bit of spice, is it cinnamon?"

"Hmm, your sense of taste is quite sensitive." Jiang Tianyi smiled slightly. "Do you feel better?"

Being said so by Jiang Tianyi, Qi Fei seemed to really relax a little more than before.

He couldn't help but take another look at the plain-looking cookies on the plate and asked curiously: "Do these cookies have the effect of soothing emotions?"

Jiang Tianyi smiled inscrutably: "You found the right person. Although I don't know what you saw, I agree with your suspicion. Xi He learned a lot of psychological techniques from Xiaoyu. I think this is one of the purposes of his approaching Xiaoyu. Unfortunately, Xiaoyu became the first experimental subject for him to practice what he learned."

"I know Xiaoyu very well. She loves her parents and younger siblings very much. She won't do anything to harm her family."

Qi Fei, hearing Jiang Tianyi say this, felt like a coaxed child and finally felt a little relieved.

When Qi Fei finished recounting the contents of the file and his reasoning in detail, Jiang Tianyi fell into a brief silence.

This silence made Qi Fei a little panicked: "Dr. Jiang, you know Zhong Xiaoyu best, tell me your opinion."

Jiang Tianyi's expression was solemn: "If you want me to give you advice from a psychological perspective, I can only say that the scene of Xiaoyu's whole family being killed is too similar to the scene where your mother was killed. Both were in the dining room, both were stabbed to death with knives. Xi He killed his own mother. I think, in his cognition, he cannot connect the deprivation of life with evil. A more serious situation is that he takes killing the other party as part of love..."

Heavy snow covered the footprints in the labyrinth in Nanling. Zhong Xiaoyu didn't know how long she had slept before waking up... ===== CHAPTER 347 =====