Jiang Lian left the house and was stopped by Yan Junxun. He thought Yan Junxun was going to talk about Shi Shanyan, so he turned back with a grave expression. But Yan Junxun just looked at him and tossed over the car keys he had left behind.

"SN..." Jiang Lian caught the keys, trying to change how he addressed him. "Shi Shanyan might need..."

"You tell Fu Chenghui," Yan Junxun's face was exposed to the sunlight, revealing an inhumanly pale complexion. He said seriously, "This is the only time."

Jiang Lian made an "understood" gesture and lowered his voice. "Do you know why he didn't run last night? Fu Yun only told me as he was leaving that Black Panther had implanted a location-tracking chip inside him."

"Oh," Yan Junxun felt like the ice water he'd just drunk was useless. "Fu Chenghui is the one who sells the chips."

"I won't be removing his Restraint Lock for now," Jiang Lian said, walking around to the side of the car and shouting to Yan Junxun, "Call the Communicator if anything comes up."

Yan Junxun nodded and noticed that Shi Shanyan was watching him through the glass. He didn't like being stared at; it always made him feel uncomfortable, especially when stared at by someone like Shi Shanyan.

As Jiang Lian drove slowly out of the narrow road, he suddenly smelled smoke. He looked at the rearview mirror in alarm and saw Shi Shanyan leaning against the backrest, a cigarette of unknown origin between his lips.

"It's been a while," Shi Shanyan's gaze slid over. "You don't mind, do you?"

The smell of smoke gradually filled the car, casually plucking at Jiang Lian's tense nerves. Jiang Lian averted his gaze and said, "I understand. I like to smoke when I'm on a difficult case, too."

"I see Yan Junxun isn't officially on the force," Shi Shanyan chuckled. "How do you get him to solve cases?"

Jiang Lian turned the steering wheel, hesitating for a few seconds between answering and not answering, then said, "He's brilliant. He thinks differently from others."

"The cases Yan Junxun assists you with are all serial murder cases," Shi Shanyan said, flicking his ash into the tin ashtray Jiang Lian had prepared. "He's quite good at empathizing with psychopaths."

It was now one o'clock in the afternoon. Heat waves washed over the car windows. Jiang Lian wanted to speak but didn't know what to say. A car in the next lane was honking, and along with the rhythmic ticking of seconds inside the car, it made Jiang Lian feel like he was on pins and needles.

"Junxun has a unique intuition. He can filter out distracting elements when working on a case," Jiang Lian said, trying to keep his expression normal. "I think it's due to his sharpness, as well as his unusual upbringing."

"A Panda mother?"

"Yes," Jiang Lian's thumb rubbed the steering wheel. "He... was raised by a family system. Panda is just one part of it; there was also a teacher named 'Artemis.' Panda was responsible for Junxun's daily life, while Artemis tutored him in his studies. Junxun once said that whenever he starts to think, he remembers the blackboard from when Artemis taught him to read. That's the source of his ability to focus." Jiang Lian glanced quickly at Shi Shanyan. "According to the system's classification, Panda plays the role of the father."

Shi Shanyan's expression became intriguing.

"...By the way," Jiang Lian asked apprehensively, "where did you get your lighter?"

"This?" Shi Shanyan held up the lighter and tossed it nonchalantly into the ashtray. "A gift from Fu Yun."

Yan Junxun returned to the house. Panda was in the kitchen, dishing out food. Its tail poked out from behind the curtain, and its two chubby legs could be seen bustling about. Yan Junxun wasn't in a hurry to look at the files. He bent down and straightened the crooked coffee table.

Shi Shanyan had bumped it crooked.

Although Shi Shanyan did have very long legs, Yan Junxun's intuition told him it was intentional. The act was like a silent declaration that he had been here—he had been here, he had entered Yan Junxun's territory, and he had even left his mark.

Panda came out carrying a tray and said to Yan Junxun, "The war on the Southern Front is over, but the beef here is still so expensive. I'll have to really think about next week's menu."

Yan Junxun ate his meal amidst Panda's nagging.

"That Mr. Shi today was so handsome, and very polite too. Is he Jiang Lian's new colleague? Doesn't seem like it. He looks more like Jiang Lian's superior." Panda said alertly, "Mr. Yan, please eat the potatoes too. You'll get constipated if you only eat meat."

Yan Junxun speared a piece of potato, stuffed it in his mouth, and gave a perfunctory "Mhm, mhm."

"His sense of smell is too good," Panda continued discussing Shi Shanyan. "He could even tell you'd just had milk."

"He's also very smart," Yan Junxun recalled last night. "Like a criminal."

Panda chuckled. "You rarely compliment others on being smart."

"He deceived my eyes," Yan Junxun said after two bites of rice. "I thought he wanted to run."

Shi Shanyan's attitude toward Fu Yun had seemed like he wanted to terminate the handover, and what he said to Yan Junxun had also made Yan Junxun hesitate. But in reality, he couldn't run and had no intention of running. From the very beginning, he had been toying with everyone by exploiting the information asymmetry between himself and the Docking Area. It wasn't until after the lights went out that Yan Junxun realized the trick with the lighter.

Shi Shanyan's performance was too natural from start to finish. He had presented his own vulnerability to Yan Junxun, only to have Yan Junxun unwittingly hand it right back. Such a detestable desire for control. Yan Junxun observed him, and he was also observing Yan Junxun.

"If this were a test," Yan Junxun sighed, placing his empty bowl back on the tray, "I would definitely fail."

"Don't be discouraged," Panda comforted him. "We have to look at things from a dialectical perspective. All in all, there were some gains."

"What gains?"

"A friend," Panda said, spreading its paws. "A handsome friend."

"Ah," Yan Junxun got even angrier. "I'm so happy."

The sun was strong the next day. Yan Junxun parked his car at the entrance of the Supervisory Bureau. Before he could even pull out the key, he heard someone knocking on his car window. Yan Junxun rolled down the window and came face to face with a pair of sunglasses.

Shi Shanyan had not only changed into a new shirt but also gotten a haircut. If it weren't for the Restraint Lock he was still wearing, anyone would have mistaken him for an elite from the Supervisory Bureau. He slid his sunglasses down slightly, his expression unreadable, and said, "You're not very punctual."

Yan Junxun turned his head and replied, "These are my work hours."

When Shi Shanyan got in the car, the Little Orange Dragon clasped its front paws together nervously and said to him, "Welcome, Mr. Shi. Do you have any requirements for the seat?"

"A little narrow," Shi Shanyan said, adjusting his posture. "There, that's better. Thank you."

"The in-car system will navigate for you," the Little Orange Dragon asked tentatively. "Would Mr. Yan like some soothing music?"

Yan Junxun nodded, slammed on the gas, and let Shi Shanyan experience the car's lightning speed.

Yan Junxun parked the car by a utility pole in an alley at the corner of the Huihe Residential Community. When he got out, he saw the pole was covered with messy advertisements and a few wanted posters with faces that were hard to make out.

Shi Shanyan placed his sunglasses on the Little Orange Dragon's head and closed the car door, looking around.

This was an old part of the city. The buildings on all sides looked like stoves smeared with charcoal ash, with paint peeling from every corner. All the residents hung their underwear on their own simple little balconies. The windows of the lower-floor residents were sealed with iron mesh, so they could only shove their drying poles out through the gaps, brazenly occupying the walking space. The ventilation in this area was also poor. The hot weather boiled the smells of sweat and sewage to a fever pitch, stewing people as if in a pressure cooker.

Yan Junxun was already sweating not long after getting out of the car. He carried a bottle of ice water he'd prepared in the car and walked into the residential community, looking for the building number.

"Go left," Shi Shanyan tilted his head. "Building Four is this way."

The old building's corridor was filthy, its walls long since turned into a graffiti board. As Shi Shanyan went upstairs, he didn't forget to appreciate the art. Several exaggerated human figures were stretched into bows, and the exposed lines of women's bodies were covered with all sorts of handprints, while their faces, as if in a prank, were drawn with thick beards.

The first victim, Liu Xincheng, lived on the third floor. The walls on this floor not only had graffiti but also some scrawled messages.

RAPE!

Well done.

FUCK!

The word "FUCK" was written very large, circled emphatically, and painted a conspicuous red.

Liu Xincheng was 48 years old this year. Ten years ago, he had been the head of the senior finance department at the Docking Area's Hongxing Steel Plant. He was later sued for sexually assaulting an intern at the same company, sentenced to four years, and ordered to pay the victim seven hundred thousand in compensation. After his release four years later, he divorced his wife and moved to the Huihe Residential Community to live alone, where he worked the night shift for the mahjong parlor at the community entrance.

On the night of March 6th, Liu Xincheng didn't show up for work at the mahjong parlor. The owner assumed he'd gone drinking again. When he tried to contact him with the Communicator the next day, no one answered. The owner's first reaction was that he'd skipped out on rent, so he immediately contacted his mahjong buddies in the area to round him up. In the end, they didn't catch the man, but they did find Liu Xincheng's body parts in a drainage ditch.

Yan Junxun used the key Jiang Lian had given him to open the door to Liu Xincheng's home. The stuffy heat inside immediately billowed out. Yan Junxun raised a hand to fan the air slightly but didn't cover his nose and mouth.

The space inside was very cramped. The living room was also the bedroom. Liu Xincheng had used a few plastic panels as a partition, behind which was the bathroom. The windows were closed, and the curtains were drawn. The room was stuffy, but surprisingly, it didn't have much of a lived-in smell.

Yan Junxun pushed aside the seal in front of the kitchen. He saw that the only bowls and plates in the kitchen were stuffed into a doorless cabinet, and the stove was covered with three months' worth of accumulated dust.

Shi Shanyan didn't touch anything, just glanced under the table where there was a trash can without a plastic bag liner.

Yan Junxun suddenly asked, "Do you smell anything?"

Shi Shanyan replied casually, "Nothing but dust."

But Yan Junxun felt a strong sense of dissonance in the room. He moved away from the kitchen and approached the plastic partition. The wall behind the partition was covered with pages from pornographic magazines. Liu Xincheng had cut the heads off all the nude photos and replaced them with the coarse, black-and-white headshots of his sexual assault victim from the newspaper reports.

The gaudy, hot pink partition had been used for a long time. Its edges were worn to a brownish-yellow, and the lower half was filthy.

Yan Junxun took two steps back.

Liu Xincheng had very poor bathroom habits; he also liked to stand here and masturbate. His urine had splattered all over the plastic partition. Over time, it would not only create a foul stench but also turn the urine and semen stains into stubborn, old grime.

He had such slovenly living habits, yet the room was very clean.

Shi Shanyan stood in front of the curtains, trying to peek through a gap to see the opposite building, only to find that the window was covered with black-and-white photos that Liu Xincheng had taken.

"Hmm—" Shi Shanyan leaned back slightly, as if struck by the photos. He raised an eyebrow and said, "So he was a bastard who held a grudge about his sentence."