"Yuan Hang, the suspect's phone chat logs you wanted have been recovered! I've put them on the table, grab them yourself. I'm getting off work!"

"Alright!" Yuan Hang shouted while eating from a bowl of roasted meat rice. "I'll look at it later. Take care, Brother Zheng!"

After receiving the evidence from Ye Tongsheng's report, the police immediately retrieved Gao Qihui's communication records, web browsing history, and bank statements. They discovered three large income transactions from suspicious out-of-town accounts in the first half of the year, which were highly linked to underground banks. After analysis, the police determined that Gao Qihui was a major suspect and took compulsory measures against him, searching all his electronic devices.

Gao Qihui was now being held at the case handling center. He knew when to fold and had already spilled the beans about reselling information like beans from a bamboo tube. Based on past cases, the amount involved was enough to earn him several years in prison. But he vehemently denied any connection to Ye Tongsheng's death, insisting he had not murdered Ye Tongsheng.

Something was stuck in Yuan Hang's gut, a feeling he couldn't quite place. He couldn't say if it was a detective's intuition, or perhaps it was because Shen Zhengning had been so uncannily accurate the last few times, causing him to trust the man's reasoning too much. In any case, no matter how he looked at it or thought about it, he felt there was definitely something fishy about Gao Qihui.

Yuan Hang shoved the disposable food container, along with the chopsticks and napkin, into the takeout bag. He opened the window, letting the cold night wind thoroughly cleanse the entire office. He carried the bag downstairs to throw out the trash, took a detour to the technical investigation office to pick up the report, and casually flipped it open in the still brightly lit corridor at eight in the evening.

"Huh?"

Yuan Hang still remembered that when he went to Juquan Technology to question Gao Qihui, Gao Qihui had used his own phone to show him Ye Tongsheng's social media feed. When he tapped to exit, it automatically returned to the chat interface between Gao Qihui and Ye Tongsheng. Their conversation had ended on the afternoon of September 25th, and it was about work. But now, in the chat log he was holding, there were two extra messages.

One was sent at 6:42 PM, from Ye Tongsheng to Gao Qihui: "Wishing you and your family a happy Mid-Autumn Festival. When you have time, I'd like to talk to you in detail." The other was a WeChat call from Gao Qihui to Ye Tongsheng at 9:14 PM.

These two entries had been deliberately deleted by Gao Qihui!

Yuan Hang immediately rushed into the office and shivered as the bone-chilling cross-draft hit him. He frantically pulled out the case file to check Gao Qihui's movements on September 25th, which they had verified after the fact: Gao Qihui had been at home all morning. At 3 PM, he drove to the company to handle work. He left the company at around 6:10 PM, took a friend's car to a hotel ten kilometers away for dinner, and left the hotel at 9:30 PM. His friend drove him back to the company, where he got into his own car and drove home, arriving around 10:30 PM. He did not go out again after that.

Ye Tongsheng's last social media post was at 10:43 PM. A bold conjecture instantly surfaced in Yuan Hang's mind: between 9:30 PM and 10:30 PM, was it possible for Gao Qihui to have met Ye Tongsheng and killed him? And then used a scheduled post feature to create an alibi for himself, staging the scene as a suicide?

No, he immediately refuted his own idea. Ye Tongsheng's time of death was around 11:00 PM, roughly the same time as the social media post was published. Gao Qihui was already home by 10:30 PM. If he were the killer, it was impossible that he would just leave without confirming the victim was dead. And if he didn't know Ye Tongsheng's specific time of death, he couldn't have timed the suspected suicide note post to be published right before Ye Tongsheng's death.

So, did Ye Tongsheng commit suicide?

Since he had arranged to talk with Gao Qihui another day, it was unlikely he would choose to end his own life before getting a result. Unless... that phone call from Gao Qihui was the culprit that pushed him to his death.

Gao Qihui had been detained for a day and a night. The immense psychological pressure from his crime being exposed had made his already unremarkable appearance even more haggard and greasy. Yuan Hang sat down opposite him, holding a thermal mug and a folder. The movement startled Gao Qihui, who raised his eyelids and quickly glanced up at him from under his brow. The look, in current slang, was very "shifty," as if he were sizing him up, completely contrary to the spirit of the "leniency for those who confess, severity for those who resist" slogan behind him.

"Regarding Ye Tongsheng's report about you leaking and selling user information, is there anything else you have to confess?"

"Officer, I've already confessed and accepted punishment. I even voluntarily provided information about the middleman who connected me. I've said everything I know and can say. There's really nothing left to confess."

The sincere expression he forced onto his puffy, round face moved no one. On the contrary, although he spoke of repentance and confession, everyone could see the abacus beads flying wildly in his mind—it's not a serious economic crime anyway, as long as my attitude is good, the sentence won't be heavy anyway, and if I actively reform inside, I might get a sentence reduction anyway...

He must have been just as calculating when he was weighing and selling other people's privacy.

At this moment, Yuan Hang's downturned eyes looked exceptionally lazy and arrogant. He wasn't buying any of it. He impatiently tapped the table with the hard cover of the folder. "Is there a single true word coming out of your mouth? Think carefully before you speak again."

Gao Qihui cried foul, "I really don't know what you want to hear. How about you give me a hint, Officer?"

Yuan Hang shot him a glance filled with implicit condemnation and casually pulled out a sheet of A4 paper. "Before you were arrested, did you know that Ye Tongsheng had evidence of your illegal crimes?"

Gao Qihui clearly choked for a moment before answering vaguely, "I had... some inkling, I guess."

"Are you a fortune teller now?" Yuan Hang scolded impatiently. "Yes or no! Answer truthfully, when did you find out, and how?"

Gao Qihui hemmed and hawed for a long time before stammering, "At the end of August this year, I accidentally discovered that Ye Tongsheng was frequently accessing the system operation logs outside of work hours and had tried to perform recovery operations multiple times. He also went to find two engineers who had already left the company, so I knew he must have noticed something. But he never showed it. Instead, he asked me for annual leave. So I could only pretend not to know and approved his leave. But not long after he came back, he committed suicide."

"Are the two engineers you mentioned Shao Jixing and Xu Zhen? Did they tip you off?"

Gao Qihui subconsciously nodded, then halfway through, remembered he wasn't at the company and said aloud, "Yes."

Before Yuan Hang could press further, he voluntarily added, "The two of them actually vaguely knew something, but they didn't want to cause trouble, so they voluntarily resigned and left. I didn't make things difficult for them. We're all just trying to make a living in society, right? It's better to part on good terms. You never know when you might need a favor..."

Yuan Hang made no comment on his grand theory and continued to ask, "Weren't you afraid, having your weakness held in someone else's hands? Did you ever approach Ye Tongsheng to talk about this, or pressure him, openly or covertly, to give up this idea?"

Gao Qihui was so nervous he swallowed hard. "I..."

He secretly glanced up at the folder in Yuan Hang's hand. "I did intend to... I wanted to talk to him, to get him to keep his mouth shut like the other two. At worst, I'd just pay him off. Who would say no to money? But I never in a million years would have thought he'd suddenly commit suicide..."

Yuan Hang's dark eyes stared at him quietly for a moment, then the corner of his mouth suddenly curled into a half-smile. "Gao Qihui, you're a smart man. Even now, you're still testing our police's investigative capabilities, aren't you? That's quite a ways off from your so-called 'truthful confession'."

Gao Qihui put on a timely look of confusion. Yuan Hang glanced down at the folder and suddenly asked, "Around ten o'clock on the night of September 25th, what did you and Ye Tongsheng talk about?"

The sudden reveal of the dagger caught him completely off guard. Gao Qihui visibly jerked back as if he'd been lashed across the spine with a sparking high-voltage wire. Cold sweat immediately beaded on his forehead. "I... I... I really didn't say anything! I don't know why he killed himself!"

Yuan Hang didn't respond, just gestured for him to continue.

"He sent me a WeChat message after six, saying he wanted to talk to me. I only saw it after I left the hotel from dinner. I had a feeling right then that he was definitely talking about the information leak. I called him back and told him to come to my office tomorrow to talk, that there was still room for discussion. If he reported me, he wouldn't be able to stay at the company either, so he might as well take the money, keep his mouth shut, and leave.

"He asked me how much I was planning to offer. I told him he could think it over carefully, go back and weigh the pros and cons, and not rush into a decision. He could give me an answer tomorrow after he'd thought it through." As Gao Qihui spoke, he grew agitated, even starting to defend himself. "That wasn't unreasonable, was it? Officer, my attitude was sincere enough! He said he'd think about it and then hung up. How was I supposed to know he'd turn around and jump in the river? Did I force him to die? He's the one trying to kill me, isn't he?!"

A small flame seemed to be steadily and evenly scorching his reason. Yuan Hang's question had deliberately been vague about the form and time of the "conversation," trying to trick Gao Qihui into revealing if he had actually met Ye Tongsheng that night. But Gao Qihui had blurted out details about Ye Tongsheng's WeChat message and their conversation via WeChat call—the very content he had deliberately deleted, with not a single extra piece of information. Could it be that on the night of September 25th, he really hadn't seen Ye Tongsheng?

"Officer, if you were me, with someone holding something over your head, and they call you one night only to jump in a river and kill themselves the next day, wouldn't you be scared?" Gao Qihui was on the verge of tears. "I deleted the chat history, I concealed evidence, that was wrong of me. But I was forced into it. If someone found out about all this, wouldn't I be treated as a murderer? And to take a step back, why would I kill him? I was willing to pay to make it go away. What good would his death do me?"

Although he had deliberately concealed things earlier, this motive was indeed logical and reasonable. Yuan Hang couldn't find a flaw in it for the moment.

Could it be that regarding Ye Tongsheng's death, Gao Qihui was truly innocent?

The interrogation ended. Outside the interrogation room, Division Captain Qin Dongming and Deputy Captain Dai Lin, who had been listening to the entire process, both stood up. Yuan Hang, walking out with a folder under his arm, happened to come face-to-face with them. He quickly lowered his head and greeted them, "Captain Qin, Captain Dai."

"Mm," Qin Dongming nodded and gestured for him to come over. He asked thoughtfully, "The Juquan Technology company information leak case is more or less wrapped up at this point. The problem now is Ye Tongsheng's case. Captain Dai said you suspected a connection between the two cases from the beginning. That was a very accurate intuition. But based on Gao Qihui's reaction just now, and the new evidence discovered, it's still not enough to overturn the conclusion of suicide. Even Ye Tongsheng's family hasn't raised any objections, yet you seem to insist that Ye Tongsheng did not commit suicide. I'm very curious as to why."

Yuan Hang hesitated for a few seconds, mentally weighing his words before saying with great caution, "Captain Qin, it's not that I think Ye Tongsheng would never commit suicide. I just feel that the previous investigation into this case was too superficial. We can't completely rule out the possibility of homicide. Our conclusion may have been premature."

Qin Dongming: "Elaborate."

Yuan Hang said, "We previously believed that Ye Tongsheng chose to end his life due to family conflicts and depression, but that seems a bit presumptuous now. It's not to say his depression had no effect on him, but judging from the initiative and sense of justice he displayed, he might have been even stronger than an average mentally healthy person. Ye Tongsheng entrusted the code to a colleague in advance. Doesn't this behavior imply that he judged himself to be in a rather dangerous situation, and that once discovered by Gao Qihui, he would face threats to his personal safety?"

"Gao Qihui is definitely not as honest and harmless as he appears. During the interrogation, he was still repeatedly mulling over how much information we had, weighing how much to say to his best advantage. He guessed that the police had recovered his WeChat chat history, so he readily admitted he knew Ye Tongsheng had leverage on him. But the content of the call couldn't be recovered, leaving it all up to his own fabrication. So he described himself as being perfectly reasonable and congenial, yet he never mentioned the details of Ye Tongsheng's reaction."

"That also proves that Gao Qihui is someone who cares deeply about risks and benefits. For him, even if the matter was exposed, the worst outcome would only be a few years in prison. Would he kill someone over that?" Dai Lin took over the conversation, giving him a meaningful look. "Besides, that colleague of Ye Tongsheng's, I remember he was the one who first cracked the code? Have some of his views influenced your judgment?"

Yuan Hang became a little anxious. "Captain Dai, I..."

Dai Lin decisively raised a hand, cutting off his defense. "You're the lead on this case. How it turns out is up to you. I'm just reminding you to distinguish between primary and secondary matters. You can listen to others' opinions, but you must grasp the overall direction. Following clues to get to the bottom of things is one thing, but you can't let yourself be led by the nose."

"I agree with Captain Dai," Qin Dongming said, patting his shoulder. "Yuan Hang, your career won't be just this one case. You won't have someone delivering clues to you every single time. If solving cases were that easy, we could just sit around and read the suggestion box every day, couldn't we? 'To forge iron, one must be strong.' You youngsters don't like hearing this old saying, but it's the truth."