Jaco withdrew from the crowd, glanced around the intersection as if searching for something, spotted his target, and headed straight toward Ji Chenjiao and Ling Lie.

There were plenty of small plastic stools outside the braised chicken shop. He grabbed one and sat down next to Ji Chenjiao as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Officer Ji, is Kang Wanbin’s case really connected to his hometown?”

Ji Chenjiao remained expressionless. “Why do you say that?”

“Tch, the case hasn’t been cracked yet, has it? Otherwise, the police would’ve issued an official report by now.” Jaco acted like he was well-versed in such procedures. “The fact that you came all the way here means there wasn’t much left to dig up in the city. But when someone gets killed, there’s always a reason. If you’ve ruled out everything else, then the answer must be here.”

Ji Chenjiao stared at Jaco for a while, then said slowly, “Hmm, thanks for the inspiration.”

“Huh?” Jaco blinked.

Ji Chenjiao pulled out his phone, opened a video, and skipped to the end. He turned the screen toward Jaco. It was the very first video Jaco had posted after arriving in Tongqie County.
“You said Kang Wanbin carried the mark of his hometown.”

Jaco chuckled. “We in the media have to imagine all kinds of things. After all, imagination isn’t illegal. But we’re not responsible for verifying anything. You flatter me, Officer Ji.”

Ji Chenjiao put away his phone. “So what did you actually find after you got here?”

Jaco’s team was sitting at another table, each having ordered a portion of braised chicken while they waited for the food. Jaco said, “Everything I found is in the videos. Honestly, I had no idea Tongqie County was known for its seafood until I chatted with some people at the market.”

“So Kang Wanbin’s death is indeed connected to crayfish?” Ji Chenjiao asked. It sounded like a question, but the implication was more like a statement.

Jaco froze for a moment. “I don’t know about that. But I did hear that back in the day, the most popular things around here were loaches, eels, and yellow catfish—small fish like that. Crayfish only became trendy in recent years.”

They chatted for a while longer. Ji Chenjiao felt that behind Jaco’s smooth talk was something being deliberately concealed. It seemed like Jaco was trying to drop hints, but for some reason, didn’t want the police to grasp the whole truth.

Was it the media’s obsession with exclusives?

Ling Lie was nearly done eating when Ji Chenjiao suddenly said, “The night of the banquet—you saw something, didn’t you?”

Again, it sounded like a question, but in truth, it was a statement. Jaco had just received his braised chicken; his chopsticks paused mid-air.
“Officer Ji, you’re not suspecting me of being involved in the case, are you?”

“Not really,” Ji Chenjiao replied. “I just think you know things you shouldn’t.”

“Oh? Like what exactly?”

Ji Chenjiao observed him for a while but didn’t answer. Ling Lie put down his chopsticks and happily gulped down most of a bottle of Beibingyang soda.
“Captain Ji, I’m done eating!”

Ji Chenjiao nodded, got up to pay the bill, and returned to find Ling Lie saying to Jaco, “Hey man, you’d make a great informant. Want to work for Captain Ji? Free meals included!”

Ji Chenjiao: “…”

Jaco seriously considered it. “Mr. Ling, you should actually come work for us. You’ve got the looks for the camera. We could take turns appearing in the videos.”

What, stealing each other’s people now? Ji Chenjiao grabbed Ling Lie by the collar and hauled him off the stool. Ling Lie grinned and spread his hands at Jaco.
“Later, brother.”

As they left the braised chicken shop, Ji Chenjiao said, “You call everyone ‘brother,’ huh?”

Ling Lie chuckled. “Just trying to get close to him.”

“And what did you get out of it?”

“His company’s salary structure, bonuses, and year-end dividends.”

“…”

“Hahahaha!”

Back in the car, Ji Chenjiao’s expression turned serious. “Based on the precinct’s investigation and after questioning Kang Wanbin’s father and brother, I traced the clue to Tongqie’s seafood market. But even if I hadn’t gone to the prison and hadn’t seen Jaco’s videos, I would’ve ended up in Tongqie anyway.”

Ling Lie said, “So you think he’s feeding the police clues on purpose?”

“Not the first time.” Ji Chenjiao recalled, “The day of the incident at Fengyi Villa, he showed me footage from the banquet—including Long Shasha, Luo Wanwan, Jiang Meng, Yao Jue. At that time, none of them were even suspects.”

“A seer? A werewolf?” Ling Lie joked. “He stabbed the victim and then foresaw the future?”

Ji Chenjiao frowned. If Jaco was the killer who murdered Kang Wanbin, why would he be so eager to hand over clues the moment I arrived at the villa? Why is he still following the case so closely, practically pushing us to investigate Tongqie’s seafood trade?

“It doesn’t add up. Why would he draw attention to himself like that?” Ling Lie added. “Maybe he saw something that night—or guessed someone’s involvement—but for some reason can’t say it outright, so he’s dropping hints bit by bit?”

That might be the closest guess to the truth. Ji Chenjiao thought of one video where Jaco said the killer might not be from Jiangbin’s Dream. Why would he make such a claim? Because he knew who the real culprit was?

Either way, Jaco’s connection to the case ran deeper than expected. Ji Chenjiao called Shen Qi and explained the situation, asking him to run a thorough background check on Jaco.

“Got it, bro!” Shen Qi’s excited voice echoed through the car via Bluetooth. “Brother Lie is with you, right? I miss him! Brother Lie, let’s drive together next time!”

“….” Ji Chenjiao hung up.

After dark, Tongqie County became even quieter, with hardly any nightlife. Ji Chenjiao found a half-decent hotel, wanting to take a shower, but the bathroom water stayed cold no matter how long he ran it.

“I’ll get someone to fix it,” Ling Lie said as he headed downstairs.

Ji Chenjiao waited for fifteen minutes with no sign of him returning. He guessed Ling Lie was probably up to something again, so he wrapped up and went out to fetch him. Halfway down the stairs, at the second-floor landing, he heard his voice before seeing him—

“Perfect season for catching wild loaches, right? Brother Liu, bring me three jin tomorrow!”

Ji Chenjiao hurried down to find Ling Lie lounging casually at the front desk, chatting happily with the hotel owner.

“Good taste! This is the fattest season for wild loaches, but they’re hard to catch, so they’re pricey. You sure you want them?”

“Definitely! Oh—Captain Ji’s here!” Ling Lie smacked his own head. “Brother Liu, I forgot—the hot water in our room’s not working. Can you check?”

“Sure, sure. Xiao Li, Room 3-10’s got no hot water—go fix it!” After giving the order, the owner went back to describing how loaches were cooked locally.

Ling Lie listened with great interest, jotting down notes from the front desk’s paper. “Great—can I borrow your kitchen to try cooking tomorrow?”

“Of course!”

The hot water got fixed, and after saying goodbye to the owner, Ling Lie followed Ji Chenjiao back upstairs. Ji Chenjiao, having overheard the whole chat, realized Ling Lie wasn’t really after loaches—he was fishing for info about Tongqie’s old seafood business scene.

As Ji Chenjiao showered, Ling Lie leaned against the wall by the broken bathroom door, which couldn’t shut or lock, letting every sound pass through.

Boss Liu had been born and raised in Tongqie, living in the shadow of the Kang family. According to him, Tongqie once had three big seafood markets. They lived off the river—different fish for each season. But Tongqie also had many small ponds, and when spring and summer came, loaches and eels sold like crazy.

Boss Liu was under twenty back then, around Kang Wanbin’s age, helping his family sell loaches. It was hard-earned money—digging at night, rushing to the market before dawn, slicing each loach cleanly—any mistake in knife work meant no sales.

Too many sellers crowded the market; if you moved slow, customers left for faster stalls. Boss Liu practiced day and night, cutting his hands countless times.

He hated the Kang family most. The markets had formed naturally, but the Kangs fenced them off, hung up signs, and claimed the markets as their own. Anyone wanting a stall had to pay protection fees.

The Kangs controlled the prices. Whatever they said, that was the price. Boss Liu’s elder brother once tried to rebel, secretly selling in the alleys—until the Kangs caught him and beat him half to death.

When the crackdown on gangs came, Boss Liu was the first to report them, eagerly helping the police.

Before the Kang family’s fall, many couldn’t bear it and left Tongqie. But Boss Liu stayed. He wanted to see them collapse with his own eyes. He kept at it for over a decade.

“I need to sleep early tonight,” Ling Lie yawned, grabbing his clothes and slipping into the bathroom before Ji Chenjiao finished. “I’m going loach hunting tomorrow morning.”

Ji Chenjiao raised an eyebrow. “I’ll check out the morning market.”

Before six the next day, Ji Chenjiao woke to find the bed beside him empty. He propped up his head and muttered lazily, “Really went loach hunting, huh?”

Small-town mornings were slower than the city—even the sun seemed in no hurry to rise. Ji Chenjiao strolled toward the central market—Ling Lie had asked around yesterday; it was the biggest in Tongqie.

Though the glory days of seafood trade were gone and outside vendors no longer came to buy, locals still loved their fish and shrimp.

Even before entering, Ji Chenjiao caught the thick smell of fish. He didn’t like it, but went in anyway. The ground was wet; live fish flopped in basins. Most stalls sold eels and loaches. The loaches all looked the same, yet some cost triple the price of others.

“These are wild loaches—just caught—super fresh!” the vendor shouted.

So there were wild and farmed loaches; the farmed ones were cheap. Ji Chenjiao moved on, spotting a crowd at one stall. Above it hung a cardboard sign: Loach Queen.

Even media hype had reached Tongqie. Ji Chenjiao peeked in. A woman in her thirties, wearing rain boots and a leather apron, sat on a low stool in front of a long, wet, bloody wooden board. She deftly grabbed a loach, slammed it onto the board to stun it, nailed its head, and sliced it open—guts spilled out instantly. The whole process took thirty seconds.

Someone commented, “She’s fast, alright!”

Just as Ji Chenjiao was about to leave, he overheard someone else say, “She? You’ve never seen Sister Xu handle loaches.”

Ji Chenjiao turned around. The speaker was an elderly man with graying hair. His words sparked knowing responses from the other older shoppers.

“I bought loaches from Sister Xu—cleanest cuts ever. Never mixed in outside loaches pretending to be local.”

“Yeah, after hers, you don’t want anyone else’s.”

“Could barely buy any—sold out the moment she showed up!”

“Did you hear she came back once? I really miss her loaches.”

“Who knows? I haven’t seen her since.”

While Ji Chenjiao listened to the market gossip, Boss Liu was telling Ling Lie about the same woman.

“Kid, with your skills, you could’ve kept up with Sister Xu back in the day—even if you couldn’t beat me!”

Ling Lie stood in the mud, where he could almost grab a loach just by reaching down. Straightening up, he tossed the loach into the basket. “Sister Xu?”

“Ah, she was the star around here. What a pity… she just vanished all of a sudden.”

Carrying the basket, Ling Lie said, “Brother Liu, you must be joking. Isn’t catching loaches something only men do?”

“Heh, making a living doesn’t care about gender. You city folks have delicate women, but here in the countryside, which woman doesn’t work like a man?”

At the mention of Xu Damei, Brother Liu couldn’t stop talking.

Xu Damei was very beautiful—a local orphan. Many young men in the county had pursued her, but none succeeded. Even the Kang family had set their sights on her, but she never married anyone.

One year, her belly suddenly grew big, and she gave birth to a boy. The whole county was shocked. Back then, having a child out of wedlock was a huge scandal. The neighborhood committee, the Women’s Federation—everyone got involved. But no matter what they said, she refused to reveal who the child’s father was.

Everyone speculated that it had to be someone from the Kang family who did it.

But Xu Damei was strong. The rumors and insults didn’t break her. She worked from dawn till dusk—selling river fish and crabs in autumn and winter, selling loaches and eels in spring and summer. She was a small woman, slender and delicate, but unusually quick and nimble. She could catch more loaches than most men.

What amazed people even more was her knife skills. While others could gut and clean one loach or eel, she could handle three in the same time.

Gossip and ridicule faded in the face of her strength. The first to reach out and help were the county’s women. They would go out of their way to buy loaches from her stall and secretly slip extra money into her basket when she wasn’t looking. Later, everyone realized that Xu Damei’s loaches really were the best—her business grew better and better, and people gradually let go of their prejudice against her having a child out of wedlock.

Just as her life seemed to be improving, Xu Damei suddenly disappeared—along with her little son.

At first, people thought she had gone to the city to restock goods—during the slow winter season, she would sometimes bring back clothes that women liked to buy.

But as days passed with no word from her, everyone realized something was wrong.

She was an orphan with no family waiting for her return. Neighbors and customers all reported her missing, but in those days, the local police station couldn’t find where she had gone.

Back then, Tongjia County was still under the Kang family’s control. People whispered in private, convinced that Xu Damei had been killed by the Kangs—or that her little boy had either been murdered by them or secretly locked away and raised—because in everyone’s mind, her body had surely been violated by the Kang family, and her son bore their blood.

Even when the Kang family was completely rooted out, everyone still remembered Xu Damei—especially Brother Liu. He admitted without shame that he had once liked Xu Damei. According to him, which young man in the county hadn’t liked her back then?

They all thought the police would uncover the truth about Xu Damei when they brought down the Kang family. But to everyone’s surprise, despite the Kang family’s countless crimes being exposed and punished, Xu Damei’s case was not among them. No one from the Kang family admitted to harming Xu Damei, and the police found no trace of her son in any Kang property.

It was as if her fate and disappearance had nothing to do with the Kang family at all.

But Brother Liu didn’t believe it. Many people in the county didn’t believe it either. They had grown too used to the Kang family’s cruelty and evil deeds. If it wasn’t the Kangs who harmed Xu Damei—then who else could it have been?

Brother Liu became more and more agitated as he spoke. By now, he and Ling Lie had reached the market. Although Brother Liu ran a guesthouse, with few outsiders visiting Tongjia County, he also came to the market to sell loaches during the season.

Ling Lie received three jin of loaches, but Brother Liu refused to take his money. “You caught these yourself. Why should I charge you?”

Brother Liu glanced toward the “Loach Queen” stall and clicked his tongue. “That girl’s a college student who came back to start a business—a social media influencer, clever enough. But compared to Xu Damei, she’s not quite there!”

Ling Lie walked over to the “Loach Queen” stall, where he met up with Ji Chenjiao. They exchanged what they had learned—surprisingly, both their leads had pointed back to Xu Damei.

And the disappearance of Xu Damei and her little son was an unresolved mystery in Tongjia County—one that everyone believed was linked to the Kang family.

Ji Chenjiao said, “I’m going to the county police station.”

Ling Lie shook the loaches in his hand. “Then I’ll go cook loaches. Any flavor you want?”

Ji Chenjiao rarely ate such things. Zhou Yun didn’t know how to cook them, and he certainly didn’t, so he couldn’t think of any flavor. “Whatever you want.”

Ling Lie grinned knowingly. “Mm-hmm. ‘Whatever you cook, Lie, I always find delicious!’”

Ji Chenjiao: “…”

Ling Lie squeezed through the bustling market, bought a small bag of pickled ginger and chili peppers, and returned to the “Loach Queen” stall—only to run into Jaco. The streamer was filming the “Queen” gutting loaches. Ling Lie watched for a while, hearing him repeatedly mention “Queen” as he interviewed some elderly locals. They, like Brother Liu, couldn’t stop talking about Xu Damei—for their generation, she was the real “Loach Queen.”

Ling Lie blinked, eyes locking on Jaco.

Through Jaco’s camera, the vanished Xu Damei was officially re-entering the public eye.

At Tongjia County Public Security Bureau, the bureau chief personally received Ji Chenjiao. When asked about Xu Damei, the chief could only shake his head. He pulled out the old investigation records, along with part of the files from the crime-purging operation. “Xu Damei’s real name was Xu Yinyue. I investigated her case myself—but we couldn’t find a single clue. Everyone says it was the Kang family, but as someone directly involved in the investigation, I can tell you—the Kang family committed many monstrous crimes, but as for harming Xu Yinyue—there’s no evidence.”

Ji Chenjiao flipped through the files—and suddenly his gaze sharpened. He had spotted a familiar name—one that had no business appearing in this case.

Ji Nocheng—Ji Chenjiao’s adoptive father.