513 Still Looking At Him With Appreciation 

Wei Muran frowned. Due to the nature of the place, the ground was wet and she could not see much.

The police arrived quickly. As it was a murder case, T City’s Criminal Investigation Division was dispatched.

Fortunately, Wei Muran habitually brought along her police ID badge. When T City’s policemen arrived, Wei Muran flashed her badge and relayed the general situation.

“A colleague I see,” said Sergeant Yang Shaoqun, smiling. His eyes then fell on Qi Youxuan. “And this is—”

“—He’s an expert consultant recruited by our Criminal Investigation Division. He recently helped solve the two serial killings in B City,” explained Wei Muran, lest the T City folks cast Qi Youxuan aside and prevented him from being involved.

It was evident that they knew of him and immediately became enthusiastic. “Mr. Qi! Your reputation precedes you!”

Qi Youxuan was courteous. He nodded calmly but did not say much.

Xiang Haorui then entered accompanied by a police officer.

“This is the person in charge of the resort,” said the policeman accompanying Xiang Haorui.

Xiang Haorui presented his business card.

“The corpse is in the pool. No one had moved it prior to your arrival,” said Wei Muran.

Yang Shaoqun nodded. “Please drain the water from the pool.”

Xiang Haorui called for the hot spring staff. The personnel from the Forensic Science Division then collected some of the hot spring water for testing. Wei Muran had earlier instructed the resort to stop pumping in fresh hot spring water. The remaining water was drained.

Slowly, the body at the bottom of the pool was revealed.

The corpse was weighed down with rocks, preventing it from floating even if putrefaction took place.

The police officers untied the rocks and carried out the body.

“The water temperature in the pool is a constant forty-one degrees celsius. Factoring in the effect of the temperature on the deceased, the time of death is approximately two to three o’clock. The victim was first suffocated, then dumped into the pool,” explained the forensic pathologist.

“Take the body back. Mr. Xiang, please check the resort’s customer register to find out the deceased’s identity,” said Yang Shaoqun.

Xiang Haorui complied and gave the instructions.

They then went to the salon where the eyewitnesses were gathered. Yang Shaoqun asked his colleagues to record their statements.

As Wei Muran was also an eyewitness, she was also questioned.

Wei Muran did not know much but conveyed all that she knew. As this was THE Qi Youxuan, Yang Shaoqun also wanted him to help with the investigation. Wei Muran could be said to have borrowed some of Qi Youxuan’s fame and was also asked to observe the case, even though she was from another precinct.

Wei Muran thought that Yang Shaoqun was doing a good job even though she had only been with the Criminal Investigation Division for a short time.

When they were still at the police academy, the academy would often invite alumni to share their experiences on the cases they encountered after entering the police force.

There were a few alumni that were close to them before they graduated. After the guest lectures, they would privately have meals with them.

There were fewer scruples during these private meals.

She had heard about xenophobia between police precincts. In fact, there were many major incidents that occur every year, but because they were not reported, nobody knew about them.

Often when assisting in cases of other cities, the local police force would not have a liking for outsiders. They were courteous on the surface, but when it came to actually working on the case, they would not allow one to intervene on grounds that they were only there to assist and did everything themselves. One would often return to their respective teams feeling depressed.

You obviously wanted to help, but they just would not involve you. You were treated as an outsider. It was a rather uncomfortable feeling.

Could it be by a rare chance that Yang Shaoqun did not harbor such feelings?

Although it was outside her jurisdiction, Yang Shaoqun had not excluded her from gaining an understanding of the case. Wei Muran also knew her boundaries. After all, this happened in T City. She was there just out of curiosity and also because she was an eyewitness. She wanted to know more but she would not intervene and join the investigation.

However, Wei Muran felt that the reason Yang Shaoqun did not blatantly draw a line with her was only because of Qi Youxuan.

She overheard an eyewitness. “We were in the hot spring pool. The pool wasn’t deep, merely reaching our shoulders when we were seated. When I stretched my legs, I felt some hard rocks. I frequent this hot spring quite often, so I knew that there shouldn’t be such things in the pool. As I was still figuring out if something was off, someone next to me bumped into another guest and apologized.”

“Who was it that bumped into it?” asked the police officer.

“Me…” a woman timidly raised her hand. She was shivering, obviously still terrified. She cried as soon as she raised her hand.

“What’s your name?” asked the officer called Zhang Shanfei.

“My… My name is Yang Yumin,” babbled the woman.

A female officer next to her saw the situation and said, “Please have a seat and tell us what happened.”

After helping Yang Yumin to her seat, she proactively introduced herself to Wei Muran and Qi Youxuan, “Hello, I’m Feng Songwei. I report to Sergeant Yang.”

Wei Muran greeted her politely. Qi Youxuan just nodded indifferently but that did not deter Feng Songwei from still looking at him with appreciation.

“Please tell us in detail about the situation at that time,” said Zhang Shanfei in a soft voice, afraid of upsetting her as he sat across from Yang Yumin.

Yang Yumin paused for a moment before she replied, “At the time, we were all in the hot spring pool. The hot spring water was a reddish-brown color and was opaque, we couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. When I stretched my legs, I felt that I bumped into someone. The pool was large and I also come here often. Even if everyone kept their legs outstretched, we still wouldn’t touch one another. I didn’t think much about it at the time; I just thought I bumped into someone and apologized but nobody replied. The other guests in the pool just looked at each other, not knowing who I was talking to. I didn’t think much about it… I accidentally bumped into someone so I withdrew my legs but others started to bump into it as well. I heard others apologizing. We felt something was amiss; no one was being bumped into but we kept bumping into someone.

As more guests entered the pool, we moved along the sides of the pool. Someone started moving to the middle of the pool and stepped on the corpse. Only then did we realize that there was a corpse at the bottom of the pool.”

Just as Yang Yumin finished, someone retched beside them. After some questioning, they found out that it was the person who sat on the corpse.

Previously, when Wei Muran and friends heard the screams as they entered, they saw a few people crying and scrambling to get out of the pool. Those were the guests that had sat and stepped on the corpse.

Due to the incident, the hot springs were closed to the public until further notice. As Wei Muran’s party of four were eyewitnesses to the case, they were informed not to leave for the time being.

They were supposed to be on vacation anyway and had intended to stay at the resort, so they had no comments on the matter.

Wei Muran and Qi Youxuan went to the police station together, but Wei Muran felt that her being there was just incidental. Before they left, Yang Shaoqun fervently requested Qi Youxuan if he could help with the investigations.

“I know that Mr. Qi is here on vacation. It’s very embarrassing to ask this of you, but I truly hope that Mr. Qi can lend a hand and we’ll solve the case as soon as possible,” persuaded Yang Shaoqun.

Qi Youxuan was unwilling. It was not that he had no sense of justice, but him joining the investigations would only result in the case being solved slightly earlier. If the police worked on it themselves, it was not impossible to solve. At the very worst, it would just take a little longer. Wei Muran only had four days of leave before she had to go back to B City. He wanted to make the most of these four days to improve his relationship with Wei Muran.

It was obvious that Yang Shaoqun had foresight. In only a short period of contact with them, he figured out that he should target Wei Muran. Wei Muran was eager to participate, so he proactively asked her if she wanted to go down to the station to help out. After all, she was also an eyewitness.

Wei Muran tugged at Qi Youxuan’s sleeves. Qi Youxuan saw that she was all too eager to go and could only agree.

Yang Shaoqun was delighted. Wei Muran was also elated and dragged Qi Youxuan to the police station.

“The deceased is Xiong Shishi. Female. Thirty-two years old. Married with no children. She worked in logistics at an import-export company in T City. Normal family background. Her mother has retired and her father is a civil servant. She isn’t rich but gets by. Just your regular citizen. Her husband is a quality inspector of a company in T City. The income isn’t much—about four thousand yuan a month. Neither of them are natives of T City. They rented a place in T City and also bought a seventy square meter house on loan. The house isn’t ready, so they were still living in the rented place. The rented place is a one-bedroom house with a monthly rent of two-thousand yuan and also the monthly loan repayment of three-thousand-five-hundred yuan. Their combined wages only add up to nine-thousand. Their monthly rent and loan repayments are more than five-thousand-five-hundred. The remaining three-thousand-five-hundred had to cover all other expenses, so they dared not spend as they please. Therefore, they had no plans to have children.”