Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“About that corpse just now-huh?”

“Right, I understand. Yes, sir.”

After hanging up the phone, the young police officer’s expression instantly became very grim.

I leaned toward the front seat and asked, “Officer, is the head back?”

“Just stay put and keep quiet!”

Sun Liang suddenly glared at me with wide eyes and snapped. He then pursed his lips and fell silent. Wen Yan and I looked at each other, neither of us knowing what had happened.

Brother Chen’s lips curled into a smirk. “Sun Liang, that’s more like it. There’s no need to be polite to a murderer like this.”

The police took us to the station and locked us in the detention room.

A detention room is a specific type of holding cell in a police station where suspects can be held for twenty-four hours, or up to forty-eight hours at most. If compulsory measures are to be taken after the detention period, the suspect is transferred to a detention center.

The detention room was a small space of about four square meters. The side facing the corridor consisted of iron bars. Inside, there was a squat toilet with a waist-high wall built next to it for privacy, but otherwise, the room was empty.

After locking me up, the police called Wen Yan to the interrogation room next door for questioning.

A while later, Wen Yan returned, looking completely despondent.

The detention rooms were separated by gender, and Wen Yan was locked in the cell directly across from mine. I hurriedly waved my hands through the iron bars.

“Where’s your uncle?”

Wen Yan’s face was deathly pale. “My uncle is dead.”

“The police suspect I’m the murderer! Boohoo-”

Wen Yan sat on the floor and began to wail.

As it turned out, as soon as it passed six o’clock, a massive amount of blood had suddenly sprayed from the neck of the corpse. The police had checked the hotel’s surveillance footage. The recordings in the hallway showed Wen Yan leaving the room with a bag on his back before I entered.

From the moment I went in until the police arrived at the door, I hadn’t left the room. Since the corpse’s head was missing from the room, Wen Yan became the prime suspect for murdering the victim and disposing of the head.

Sure enough, after the police finished their interrogation and realized I was just a tourist from out of town with no connection to Wen Yan and no prior contact with him, they quickly decided to let me go. After I finished my phone call with Jiang Haoyan, I looked at Wen Yan wailing on the floor and felt a twinge of pity.

“Officer, if I can find the victim’s head, would that prove Wen Yan’s innocence?”

Wen Yan stopped crying immediately. He gripped the iron bars with both hands, his face full of hope. “Sob… Qiao Moyu, you’re such a good person.”

“Hmm?” Sun Liang’s doll-like eyes widened as he glared at me. “That would only prove you’re accomplices, which makes you a suspect too!”

He finished speaking and stared at me suspiciously. “Do you really know where the head is?”

Me: “…”

“Are you kidding? I don’t even know him! Officer, he’s definitely the killer. Once you clear my name, I’ll come back and present you with a commemorative silk banner.”

I had some sympathy, but not much. I still had business to attend to and couldn’t afford to waste time.

I was just about to leave when Sun Liang refused to let it go. “I think you two look like you know each other. Someone, take her back and lock her up. I’ll re-interrogate her later.”

A minute later, I was squatting behind the iron bars, staring blankly at Wen Yan.

Wen Yan’s lips curled into a tearful smile. “Qiao Moyu, thank you for staying to keep me company. Otherwise, I’d be really scared staying here alone.”

Wen Yan told me that his master had a rival-an old woman named Aunt Huang. She was also a Jiangtou Sorcerer.

Aunt Huang was from the Miao borderlands. When she was young, she followed her husband to Southeast Asia and stayed in Thailand for a long time before returning to the country. She was already skilled in the arts of sorcery and Gu-poison, and after learning Jiangtou Sorcery in Thailand, she became very formidable.

“That old hag will do any disgusting thing as long as she’s paid. My master was definitely harmed by her!”