Chapter 355

Chapter 355

Both photographs had been printed from the police station’s household-registration records.

Neither had been retouched, and neither girl wore makeup.

As everyone knew, identification photos made everyone look terrible.

Yet both young women looked good even in these. They were clearly natural beauties.

Judging from the photographs, both had exceptional looks, each beautiful in her own way.

Their demeanors, however, were different.

Looking closely, the missing girl, Liang Yi, wore a guarded, stiff expression. Her eyes carried a distinct lack of confidence.

The underlying structure of her face was broad and solid, yet her cheeks were slightly sunken and her skin had a yellowish cast – signs of malnutrition.

An Yutong, who lived on the thirteenth floor, had bright, lively eyes and a full, rosy face. One glance told you she was confident and came from a well-off family.

Liang Yi, on the other hand, was a college student suffering from long-term malnutrition. No matter how poor a student was, it should not have reached the point where she couldn’t get enough to eat. If it had, her family wasn’t merely poor. They were destitute.

People liked to say students shouldn’t care too much about wealth. As long as they studied hard and endured temporary hardship, they could rise above everyone else in the future.

The truth was that extreme poverty bred insecurity and fragility. That was especially true at school. Once a person became poor enough, feeling inferior was inevitable.

Anning had the same insecurity.

When I first met her, back when she was still with Du Yuwei, she hadn’t acted that way.

After she came to our agency, however, the signs were always there. She spoke less and deliberately made herself quiet and reserved – in other words, introverted.

Why? Because her life before joining us had been miserable. She had even been evicted and had her luggage thrown out by her landlord because she couldn’t pay the rent.

For us, selling a single house meant a commission of several thousand, maybe even more than ten thousand yuan. We could make over ten thousand a month. That wasn’t an extraordinary income in today’s society, but to Anning, it was more money than she had once dared imagine.

That was the psychological impact of the wealth gap.

Her discomfort became especially obvious around Pan Xiaorou and Lin Yin.

They were wealthier than most people. The wider the difference in wealth, the greater the shock it caused her.

That was how Anning had seen at a glance that Liang Yi was poor and An Yutong was rich.

Boss Xu had said an apartment in this complex cost at least three or four million yuan.

An Yutong’s family was certainly wealthy.

“A poor student came all the way here to meet a rich one?”

I turned to Brother Liu. “An Yutong lives on thirteen, and Liang Yi got out of the elevator on thirteen. If she didn’t come to see An Yutong, what was she doing here? Did An Yutong claim she’d never met her?”

“She said she hadn’t,” Brother Liu answered with certainty. “The day Liang Yi vanished was a weekend, and An Yutong was home, but she told us she never saw Liang Yi. The two of them had never had any contact.”

Song Xiaotian couldn’t hold back. “Officer Liu, don’t you think An Yutong’s answer is insulting your intelligence? Nobody with a brain would believe Liang Yi’s disappearance had nothing to do with her.”

“Liang Yi was obviously there to see An Yutong. She stepped out of the elevator on the thirteenth floor, so she had to knock on a door. If she knocked, An Yutong had to answer. How can An Yutong possibly claim she never saw her?”
“And Liang Yi came here looking for her. That alone means they had some connection. Why would Liang Yi come to see her if they didn’t know each other? How could there possibly be no connection?”

Song Xiaotian was one step away from calling Brother Liu a useless idiot.

Brother Liu didn’t get angry. He calmly explained, “Brother, you used to be a cop too, so let me ask you this. You search every inch of An Yutong’s home and don’t find Liang Yi. The cameras don’t show An Yutong carrying out any suspicious container that could hold Liang Yi’s body. What do you do then?”

“Maybe she dismembered the body and flushed it down the drain? First, none of the drains were clogged. Second, we tested her home with luminol. There wasn’t a single cleaned bloodstain.”

“So what would you do? We can’t force a confession out of her. Her family’s apartment is worth over four million yuan. If we step out of line, they’ll file a complaint.”

“And An Yutong and Liang Yi genuinely had no contact. We investigated at the university. Everyone said the two had never interacted. We even checked both their social-media accounts.”

“The only tiny connection between them is that they’re both considered campus beauties. One is the rich campus beauty, and the other is the commoner’s campus beauty. But can you really call that a connection?”

Brother Liu’s answer was rigorous. The police had clearly conducted a meticulous investigation.

Song Xiaotian had nothing to say to that.

An Yutong was highly suspicious, but all the evidence indicated that she couldn’t have harmed Liang Yi. The two of them had never even interacted.

Most importantly, even if Liang Yi was dead, how could An Yutong have disposed of her body?

Could this really be supernatural? Had Liang Yi actually vanished into thin air…?

I asked Brother Liu whether An Yutong was home. He said it was only Wednesday, so she was at the university. She was a commuter and would return home after class, but she was devoted to her studies and usually stayed in the library until it closed.

Brother Liu had given us plenty of leads, so naturally, our next stop was the university.

To make the investigation easier, he called the university administrators and told them we were special consultants for the police.

The three of us left the complex and prepared to head straight to campus.

Before we could get in the car, a hearse from a funeral home drove past us.

We paid it no attention and immediately set out for the university.

About forty minutes later, we arrived at the campus gate.

The moment we got out of the car, another hearse passed right by us.

Song Xiaotian frowned. “Damn, what are the odds? That’s seriously unlucky.”

I stood frozen, watching the hearse recede into the distance. An inexplicably bad feeling rose inside me.

Song Xiaotian told me not to dwell on it. It was unlucky, nothing more.

But I didn’t agree.

Seventh Master had once taught me a way to judge whether an affair was auspicious or ominous without casting a hexagram.

“Seventh Master said that if you’re worrying about something and happen to see an ambulance or police car drive past, it’s a good omen. They’re rushing to save someone, which means help is coming. It represents a sign that the deadlock can be broken.”

Song Xiaotian paused and swallowed. “Then what about a hearse…?”

I stared at him blankly. “What do you think…?”

What did a hearse represent?

Death.

And it didn’t refer to the person we were worried about.

It referred to us.