The answer Su Heting received was a busy tone. He called again, saying, "Alright, it seems not then. Or did you ever have any brothers?"

The answer for Su Heting was still a busy tone. He persevered and called again, speaking rapidly the moment the other side picked up: "Okay he's a neurotic who's nothing to do with you he's just sick although his brain works quite well what game are you guys planning to play can you tell me in detail I won't participate I'm just curious."

Yan Junxun ignored him, instead looking back at the wrecked private car. The plush toy with its tilted head was still sitting inside, as if it had been abandoned in this thicket of steel. An innocent person had been dragged into a lunatic's game, becoming a pile of flesh and blood in the manipulator's pocket.

The other party wanted to tell Yan Junxun that this was how the game had to be played.

This lunatic felt familiar to Yan Junxun; that subtle sense of familiarity was like looking in a mirror. He didn't want to talk about it with anyone. He felt he had met this lunatic before. Yan Junxun didn't believe a single word the lunatic said.

This person was deliberately provoking him, trying to infuriate Yan Junxun. 'His train of thought—' Yan Junxun thought, standing amidst the shattered glass, 'this lunatic's train of thought runs just as fast.' Su Heting's intuition wasn't wrong. This person understood the system; he understood Yan Junxun's way of calculating. However, he was too impatient. Whether it was The Clown or this recording, he was practically dying to wear his understanding of Yan Junxun on his face.

I know what will make you angry, so get angry already. Fly into a rage, become hysterical! Pick up your steel pipe again, just as I expect, and smash your self-confidence to pieces. Descend into madness before destruction; it's much more interesting than a direct death.

Yan Junxun shoved the steel pipe back under the seat. He liked to put things back in their original places, down to the last detail. He sat back in the car, turned on the air conditioning, and gestured with his eyes for Shi Shanyan to get in.

"My big brother is calling me." Shi Shanyan gave up on the idea of having a smoke. Because of the Restraint Lock, he could only put one hand in his pocket. He looked down, lightly kicking away the glass shards at his feet, and said to Su Heting with a smile, "Look how great he is. His control over his emotions is top-notch, like pre-entered data. When it's time to have an outburst, he has an outburst. After the outburst, he returns to calm." When he looked up, his eyes were hit by the sunlight, but he didn't flinch, only squinting slightly. "He's ten thousand times cuter than your loud and flustered self... But I'd rather he get angry at me than waste his emotions on a sewer rat."

"I bet he didn't even notice you. In his eyes, you're just an alarm, ready to flash a red warning light at him at any moment." Su Heting and Shi Shanyan weren't the same brand of pervert, but he understood Shi Shanyan's interests well. "I even suspect Fu Chenghui did it on purpose. He's using Yan Junxun to bait you, to make you behave and stop acting like a lion, flaunting your power from the peak."

"I'm quite satisfied with that," Shi Shanyan's voice gradually deepened, "as long as no one interferes."

......

The tips of Yan Junxun's hair were a little sweaty, which made his eyes look even brighter and more watery when he looked at Shi Shanyan. His whole person was like a white cherry just soaked in cool water, its thin skin glistening and translucent; a single pinch would leave a mark. His body was a bit delicate, not very tolerant of sudden changes in temperature. Even slightly intense sunlight would make him sweat.

Yan Junxun's body was more honest than Yan Junxun himself. In Shi Shanyan's eyes, it looked pitiful, carrying a soul like a spiky ball, almost to the point of being crushed by it.

Outside the car, Shi Shanyan hung up on Su Heting. He got in and asked while fastening his seatbelt, "Where to next?"

Yan Junxun didn't answer immediately. He turned his head back to look ahead and, after a long moment, said, "I want the Communicator."

Shi Shanyan handed it over, but didn't let go when Yan Junxun took it. Shi Shanyan's fingertips were almost touching Yan Junxun's, but that wasn't his fault; he was just passing the item over normally, casually.

Yan Junxun's fingers didn't flinch away, which made Shi Shanyan feel good, but he had to suppress the urge to press his advantage, lest he grab Yan Junxun's wrist the next second.

"My apologies," Shi Shanyan looked at Yan Junxun, his fingers loosening slightly. "Do you want to call Jiang Lian?"

"Jiang Lian knows the details of the case." Yan Junxun took the Communicator. Shi Shanyan's warmth still lingered on it, which made Yan Junxun feel a little uncomfortable, but he didn't show it.

This lunatic, Yan Junxun decided to call him that. This lunatic used Huo Qingjun as an opening gambit. He wanted to tell Yan Junxun that he had the power to manipulate black and white. He designated the victim and also designated the killer, as if playing with string puppets, messing up other people's lives without any sense of guilt. Yan Junxun finally understood where the persistent sense of dissonance in this case came from. It made the killer so obvious precisely to let Yan Junxun "see" everything clearly.

"Let me think," Yan Junxun tossed the Communicator aside and looked at Shi Shanyan. "Let me think about what you've said around me. You understood his motive, and you discovered very early on that a lunatic was involved in this case," he stared at Shi Shanyan, emphasizing his words, "right?"

"Then you'd better think hard," Shi Shanyan picked up the water bottle beside him and asked naturally, "Can I drink this?"

How innocently he asked, as if he were a well-mannered, polite big brother.

"Don't ask me," Yan Junxun stripped away his disguise. "You never intended to put it back where it was."

Shi Shanyan twisted open the cap. In the second before he drank, his gaze brushed over Yan Junxun's lips. It was only for a second, but it was enough. He said happily, "You really know me."

Shi Shanyan's Adam's apple bobbed under Yan Junxun's gaze. The sound of him swallowing wasn't loud, but Yan Junxun heard it very clearly. He didn't mean to overthink it, but the sound was right by his ear, and the feeling was like—

Shi Shanyan's voice was very sexy.

"Loves being in the news, loves being targeted," Yan Junxun averted his gaze. Even though his expression was blank, there was still a hint of panic in his manner. "You were talking about the lunatic back then."

"Not really," Shi Shanyan said, squeezing the water bottle and thinking for a moment. "When I use 'I' as the subject, I'm confessing about myself. Do you really think he likes being in the news?"

The truck at the other end of the tunnel started to move, its horn growing louder as it approached. Yan Junxun had to duck down, burying his face in his arms against the steering wheel.

'Be quiet.'

'The lunatic doesn't like being in the news,' Yan Junxun thought. 'Right, he doesn't like it. So far, he prefers manipulating others. Standing behind the scenes gives him a greater sense of accomplishment.'

"A woman who has experienced long-term sexual and psychological abuse," Shi Shanyan's speech was slow, his words entering along the curve of Yan Junxun's ear, his enunciation almost gentle, "would need extraordinary courage to fight back. Who guided her to do such a thing? You like to mull over the details. Why not peel them back now, in the way you're good at, and think about this killer?"

"The lunatic designed the murder," Yan Junxun was very clear. "He pushed the killer to act."

"Of course, this lunatic, hmm—" Shi Shanyan's brows furrowed slightly, as if the mere mention of the other party was enough to annoy him. "This rat likes to scurry around on the internet. That's where all his abilities lie."

"To guide the killer, he would need time," Yan Junxun turned his head to the side, not caring if pressing his face against the steering wheel would leave a red mark, and said to Shi Shanyan, "He had to make the killer become abnormal first."

The killer's abnormality ran through the entire case.

"Let's make a hypothesis. If the killer killed her abusive husband..."

"Here, when it's just the two of us," Shi Shanyan stressed his words, "you don't need to make hypotheses. Don't let Artemis and Jiang Lian influence you. You're a genius."

The chaotic information in Yan Junxun's mind quieted down. He was like someone sitting on shards of glass, playing with a puzzle. He sorted through the pieces, trying to see more clearly.

The killer killed her abusive husband.

She had been beaten so many times. Perhaps she had tried to run away, but was dragged back by her hair. She had suffered this for a long time, so long that it began before the war. What was Yan Junxun doing before the war? He'd forgotten. It wasn't important; his memories weren't worth mentioning. In short, the killer had endured for a long time. Her only option was to endure, because no one gave her a second path.

"She's not..." Yan Junxun couldn't find the right word to describe the killer. "She's full of pity for things weaker than herself. To her, this is her only remaining dignity. She's very good to children."

That's why she insisted on returning to Li Jianhua's home to feed those goldfish. She was afraid they would starve.

"But the child is gone," Yan Junxun's gaze gradually hardened. "She suffered a great shock."

Her husband was neither a good husband nor a good father. Look at what she's doing. She poured her guilt over her child into Li Jianhua's system, where she forcefully played the role of a parent.

"The child was a trigger. They must have argued over it," Yan Junxun wanted to smoke again; he didn't want to think about those images himself. "Then she killed her husband. That was the beginning."

That's right, this was the beginning. It was the beginning for the killer, and the beginning for the lunatic.

The lunatic didn't care about these people's tragic lives. He picked and chose them, putting nooses around their necks like rag dolls and sticking them onto his own creation. But the killer's suffering should have ended after killing her husband. The lunatic, however, had to make this suffering continue. His game had just begun.

'What the fuck did this scum do?'

"He had to give the killer some hints," Shi Shanyan tapped his own head from a distance. "To make the killer realize she wasn't normal. This method is a lot like the surveillance techniques we often use. If you don't want to be discovered by the target, you give them a signal to make them fall into self-doubt. When they can't find anything, they'll start to think the problem is with themselves."

"He continued to provoke the killer," Yan Junxun saw the Communicator lying to the side, "using the safest method."

......

Chen Xiulian couldn't remember when He Zhiguo had appeared. She was indeed a bit forgetful. Anyway, He Zhiguo's voice was always there, sometimes like a mosquito's buzz, sometimes like a car's horn. The day she killed He Zhiguo was a long time ago. He Zhiguo was lying in bed.

'Oh.' Chen Xiulian remembered. 'He Zhiguo was paralyzed then.'

'The son-of-a-bitch bastard was paralyzed.'

'Is my daughter getting out of class soon?'

Chen Xiulian asked him this while bringing him a meal, and his expression was as if he'd seen a ghost. Chen Xiulian was very dejected; she just wanted to pick up Qinqin from class. She fed He Zhiguo, and He Zhiguo called her a lunatic.

'I'm not crazy.'

Chen Xiulian looked at He Zhiguo in the black and white photo and repeated softly, "I'm not crazy. I know what I'm doing. You're the one who doesn't understand. You don't understand anything."

'Right, how could a beast understand? His head is full of nothing but attack signals.'

'People are really strange,' Chen Xiulian was always puzzled. 'Why does everyone walk on two legs, yet there are always some who are different? It's as if they don't belong to this group, surviving on violence, motivated by tearing apart and destroying life.'

'Can't you fucking see it's already bloody there?'

"Fuck you..." He Zhiguo was cursing in Chen Xiulian's ear again.

'You can't see.'

Chen Xiulian held up the photo and tore it to pieces, watching He Zhiguo's face split apart. She kept the eyes from He Zhiguo's photo and pasted them onto the basement wall.

'You watch closely.'

Chen Xiulian turned on the light, in a very good mood.

"This is how you died."