“Are you from Tonghe?” Ji Chenjiao asked in a dialect-inflected tone.

Tang Xiaofei’s ex-wife paused for a moment, then softened her attitude. “I’m from Luzhang County, Tonghe City. What about you?”

When Ji Chenjiao underwent specialized criminal investigation training, he had learned how to quickly master a local dialect. It was a necessary skill for certain missions—when arriving at a place, if you couldn’t immediately blend in, the operation might not go smoothly. Learning the dialect was a way to integrate.

He had stayed in Luzhang County for two days and had picked up the dialect quite well.

“Yeah, I got into university and came to Xiarong. How about you?” Ji Chenjiao chatted with Tang Xiaofei’s ex-wife.

She sighed deeply. “Me? I was tricked here by that deadbeat!”

“How so?”

“Tang Xiaofei lied to me, said he had a house in Xiarong and wanted to register our marriage. Xiarong is more developed than our little county; I didn’t want to stay there my whole life, so I came with him. But it turned out he had nothing! That house—most of the money actually came from my family!”

Ji Chenjiao asked, “Did you two meet in Luzhang County?”

She recounted her marriage to that “deadbeat” husband—

More than ten years ago, she was 28 and still unmarried. That age was considered old in their small county, and her family constantly pressured her to find a match. But her family wasn’t wealthy; the men she could meet were of similar modest backgrounds.

Later, she met Tang Xiaofei, who came to Luzhang County for work. At the time, he was handsome and funny, just a construction worker, but in conversation, he seemed ambitious and thoughtful about the future.

With her family pushing her, she started seeing him as a boyfriend.

At first, she wasn’t in a hurry to get a marriage certificate, but after a few months, a big incident happened in Luzhang County—the Wang Shun family’s fire.

Suddenly, several construction sites were suspended, and Tang Xiaofei lost his job.

The fire was seen as a bad omen locally, and the construction crew wanted to leave. Tang Xiaofei asked if she would go with him to Xiarong City.

She agreed.

The first few years of marriage were alright. They both worked, carefully managing their money together.

When it was time to buy a house, they looked at other places but couldn’t afford anything, so they bought the house they had been renting.

In Xiarong, it was common to rent and then buy eventually, since renters were generally not wealthy but wanted their own home.

Good times didn’t last long. After their child started primary school, she found Tang Xiaofei becoming worse—staying up all night playing cards, and even buying cheap women on the side.

She was angry and disgusted. Beyond betrayal, she feared catching diseases.

So they divorced, and she took the child and moved out. Without the burden of a man, she started selling braised snacks at a stall and lived better than before.

Ji Chenjiao asked, “Did Tang Xiaofei’s crew work for Wang Shun?”

The ex-wife tensed, “Maybe… is this related to the fire?”

Ji Chenjiao continued, “Huang Xuntong also worked for Wang Shun. Did you all come to Xiarong together from Luzhang County?”

She shook her head. “That reminds me of something strange. Tang Xiaofei mentioned Huang Xuntong, said they bullied him, and even bragged to me about it. When we moved here, I heard there was someone upstairs named Huang Xuntong and asked Tang Xiaofei about him. I thought since we live in the same building, maybe it was fate? But Tang Xiaofei got angry and told me not to talk to Huang Xuntong.”

Ji Chenjiao asked, “Did you see Huang Xuntong in Luzhang County?”

“Only from afar. I heard his name several times.”

“Do you know where the others from Tang Xiaofei’s team went?”

“I know. They said they all came to Xiarong to find work, most stayed here at first, some moved away, some are still around.”

Ji Chenjiao asked immediately, “Who?”

Tang Xiaofei’s ex-wife gave five names: Zhu Ming, Kuang Feng, Gan Pengfei, Li Binbin, and Cao Kexiong.

She recalled these people were close to Tang Xiaofei in Luzhang County, all working on the same construction site, and she had eaten with some of them.

When they left Luzhang County, Tang Xiaofei left last. She asked why he didn’t go with the others, since they were all going to Xiarong City anyway. Tang Xiaofei sweet-talked her, saying the others were all lonely old bachelors, unlike him—he had to take care of his wife.

They all gathered at Xiayang Road, but only Tang Xiaofei and Huang Xuntong lived in the same building. City life was busier than the small county; Tang Xiaofei no longer drank and played cards with the brothers as before, and with a family, they gradually drifted apart.

But what puzzled her was that Tang Xiaofei still had contact with Zhu Ming and the others; they greeted each other when meeting, called her “sister-in-law,” and even sent money when her child was born.

But Huang Xuntong was invisible to them. If she hadn’t known from Luzhang County about Huang Xuntong’s existence in the crew, she wouldn’t have known he was once their teammate.

Later, after the autopsy, it was confirmed Tang Xiaofei died the night of April 10 to early April 11. He had drunk before death; the cause was mechanical asphyxiation from strangulation. Two people’s DNA were found under his fingernails—one his own, the other unmatched in the system.

Ji Chenjiao immediately arranged to verify the status of Zhu Ming and the others.

During the last investigation involving Huang Xuntong (Liu Yixiang), the police had contacted Tang Xiaofei, Gan Pengfei, and Li Binbin. They lived on Xiayi Lane No. 1 and Xie’er Lane No. 4, respectively, and like Tang Xiaofei and Huang Xuntong (Liu Yixiang), after several years in Xiarong, they had saved enough to turn their rented places into owned homes.

The inquiry showed nothing abnormal. They were all outsiders from different places and not the focus of early investigation.

However, Zhu Ming, Kuang Feng, and Cao Kexiong had already moved from Xiayang Road, and Tang Xiaofei’s ex-wife didn’t know their current contacts.

When police returned to Gan Pengfei’s home, no one answered after repeated knocking. Ji Chenjiao checked the records—Gan Pengfei was unmarried, living only with his elderly mother who had Alzheimer’s and was sent to a nursing home early that year.

For residents of Xiayang Road, that was a heavy expense, so Gan Pengfei worked harder and also took night shifts at construction sites. The investigation was nearly done before the team met him.

It was afternoon; Gan Pengfei not being home was normal, but Ji Chenjiao suddenly felt uneasy. Maybe Gan Pengfei was not working at all!

After tracing Huang Xuntong and Liu Yixiang in Luzhang County, Ji Chenjiao once thought Liu Yixiang had lured Huang Xuntong to his home, burned him to death, then assumed Huang Xuntong’s identity to survive.

But Ling Lie’s question matched his doubts—given their brotherly closeness, Liu Yixiang wouldn’t have done something so cruel.

The most likely scenario was that Liu Yixiang thought Huang Xuntong was already dead.

Then why did Liu Yixiang think Huang Xuntong was dead? How did Huang Xuntong die? And if Liu Yixiang stole Huang Xuntong’s identity, why did he dare to live among Huang Xuntong’s coworkers for over a decade without being exposed?

Now that Tang Xiaofei was dead, all questions found a logical explanation!

Those who killed Huang Xuntong were more than just Liu Yixiang. When Huang Xuntong was brought before them, he was already a “corpse.”

Huang Xuntong had long been ostracized in the crew. On the night of the Wang Shun family fire, something irreversible also happened in the crew—whether as a joke or intentionally, the workers “killed” Huang Xuntong.

The extra corpse had to disappear; the criminals needed new identities.

Both sides agreed: the real Huang Xuntong died in the fire but became Liu Yixiang, and Liu Yixiang became Huang Xuntong with the workers’ deliberate cover-up.

So, the person avenging Huang Xuntong wasn’t just targeting Liu Yixiang but also Huang’s old coworkers!

Remaining questions: How did Liu Yixiang connect with Huang Xuntong’s coworkers? And if it was revenge, why didn’t the killers of Liu Yixiang and Tang Xiaofei seem to be the same person?

Gan Pengfei was still unreachable. Ji Chenjiao applied for a search warrant, and Liang Wenxuan rushed to Gan Pengfei’s daytime workplace—a warehouse for e-commerce.

When told they were looking for Gan Pengfei, the manager immediately complained that Gan Pengfei hadn’t shown up for two days without leave, didn’t answer calls, and would be fired if he didn’t come soon.

Liang Wenxuan called Ji Chenjiao: “If it’s revenge, and Gan Pengfei’s been missing for two days, he’s probably already…”

The locksmith team arrived and opened Gan Pengfei’s home door. A rancid smell hit them. The filthy toilet, greasy stove, and scattered dirty clothes revealed the messy reality of a middle-aged man living alone.

Ji Chenjiao recalled Tang Xiaofei’s ex-wife had said Gan Pengfei was the worst among their group, even worse off than Huang Xuntong and Tang Xiaofei. He was ugly, no woman would marry him. Unable to find a wife, his personality became more strange and gloomy. Tang Xiaofei had even spoken disdainfully of Gan Pengfei behind his back.

The two-bedroom apartment had one room filled with clutter since the elderly mother moved to the nursing home. Ji Chenjiao glanced around, then his eyes stopped on a bundle of hemp ropes inside a backpack.

The backpack lay on the bed, now only wooden boards left, and the overturned furniture was all covered in dust. The room clearly hadn’t been entered or cleaned for a long time.

But the backpack showed signs of having been rummaged through, and footprints remained on the bed boards.

Gan Pengfei had recently stepped on the bed and searched inside the backpack.

Ji Chenjiao stared at the ropes and footprints, recalling the scene photos that Xi Wan had sent him in the morning. The footprints from the bridge matched exactly what he saw here. The hemp ropes left matched the thickness of the ligature marks on Tang Xiaofei’s neck!

Confusion rose again.

Based on earlier guesses, someone was avenging Huang Xuntong. Gan Pengfei’s disappearance suggested he, like Tang Xiaofei, was probably killed. But was Tang Xiaofei strangled by Gan Pengfei?

Why would Gan Pengfei do such a thing?