Wang Wei hadn't expected this turn of events either. She froze for a moment, then abruptly raised her gun, aiming it straight at Fang Yuan's head.
“In that case, please come with us to the Inspectorate.”
Fang Yuan glanced between her and Lin Xu standing behind her, then placed Meng Ying's corpse on the ground and raised both arms.
“So did you find the killer? I saw her run off. You must have caught her, right?”
Wang Wei kept her gun raised as she took the handcuffs handed to her by Lin Xu. “Say whatever you have to say at the Inspectorate. If you are innocent, the Inspectorate will prove your innocence.”
Fang Yuan obediently held out both hands, looking down as Wang Wei cuffed her wrists.
Click—
The handcuffs clicked tightly into place. Fang Yuan flexed her wrists slightly and pointed a finger at Meng Ying on the ground.
“Then remember to give her a proper burial. Before she died, she asked me to find her a good spot to be buried. She preferred burial over cremation.”
“The one who killed her was her companion, that Candidate of the God of Illusory Dreams. You must remember her, Inspector.”
As she spoke, she sighed, looking quite helpless.
“To encounter something like this right when I get home... such bad luck.”
Wang Wei's grip on her gun loosened slightly. She cast a subtle look at Lin Xu, putting her gun away only after seeing Lin Xu give a slight nod.
Lin Xu stepped past Fang Yuan into the house and unzipped the waterproof bag wrapping Meng Ying.
She raised her gaze, locking precisely onto the shovel standing prominently inside the room.
Fang Yuan was already squatting on the ground, chewing on a blade of grass she had plucked from somewhere. Noticing Lin Xu's gaze, she bit down on the grass in her mouth and pointed toward the shovel.
“Well, as soon as I came back, I noticed the shovel the Inspector lady bought for me was gone, and there were fighting noises coming from inside the house, so I climbed in through the kitchen window.”
“When I got inside, Meng Ying was already lying on the floor with the shovel stuck in her head, and the other woman was running away.”
“So you didn't catch her? That's terrible. You probably won't be able to catch her now.”
Saying this, she spat out the blade of grass.
“I know you won't believe just my side of the story. It's just a shame that my place is in a remote area without surveillance cameras, or else I could prove my innocence.”
Wang Wei was clearly still somewhat suspicious. Frowning slightly, she went to inspect the window outside the kitchen and found actual traces of someone pulling aside the ivy to climb in from the outside.
“Why would they fight? Weren't they together?”
“And why did you come home so late? What's with the wound on your arm? Also, since the shovel was the murder weapon, why did you wash it off?”
Fang Yuan stood up from the ground, a movement that startled Wang Wei into reaching for the gun at her waist.
“As for why they fought, it's naturally because they never got along in the first place.”
“They probably agreed to come kill me, but the other one turned on her, killed Meng Ying, and set me up.”
“Look, she's still wearing an earpiece in her ear. She was probably on a phone call with her right before she died, never expecting her accomplice to launch a sneak attack. The other party was even the one who hung up the call.”
Anyway, at the moment she killed Meng Ying, she wouldn't have had time to hang up the phone.
“As for why I came home so late, can't I go for a walk after eating a savory crepe? I missed my grandma.”
“The wound was left by Meng Ying. When I saw her, she wasn't completely dead yet, and she thought I was her good companion coming back to finish her off.”
“I was originally going to use that shovel to dig a pit for Grandma's things. Was I supposed to dig dirt with a shovel covered in blood and brain matter?”
As Fang Yuan spoke, she turned her head to look at the light turned on in the neighboring house, letting out a long sigh.
“They even knocked over my grandma's urn...”
Before her words could finish falling, a woman wearing a reddish-brown plaid shirt threw on a jacket and trotted over to her doorway with quick, short steps.
“Oh my goodness, what is going on here? This is truly terrifying!”
She saw Fang Yuan, with silver handcuffs on her wrists, her head drooping, looking immensely aggrieved. The grief from her own daughter's death years ago welled up inside her at this moment, and she couldn't help but pat Fang Yuan's hands with heartache.
“Oh my, Fang Yuan, your hands are freezing cold!”
“Sigh, your grandma passed away so suddenly, before she could even learn the good news of you becoming a God Candidate... Sigh...”
Lin Xu signaled to Wang Wei with a look.
“Hello, excuse me, were you inside your house all night?”
The woman in the reddish-brown plaid shirt pulled Fang Yuan toward her and answered earnestly, “I've been here the whole time! There were occasional noises coming from the girl's house. At first, I thought she was throwing a temper tantrum because she was upset about her grandma's death.”
“But the lights in her house were never turned on, though there were always faint noises, sometimes like someone kicking the bed. I'm old, so I couldn't hear it very clearly.”
“Then suddenly, there was a loud crashing sound of something hitting the floor in that room.”
“I peeked through the window and saw the girl just coming back. She heard the noise inside too and climbed through that kitchen window.”
As the woman spoke, seeing Fang Yuan hanging her head looking aggrieved as if she were about to cry, her heart softened immediately.
“Oh my, only now do I know that was the sound of your grandma's urn being smashed onto the floor. Oh dear, what an awful tragedy...”
Before Wang Wei could ask further, Fang Yuan took the initiative to hold the woman's hands and spoke up.
“Auntie, did you see a woman leave from this street?”
The woman's brows furrowed. After thinking back for a moment, she clapped her hands. “Ah! Yes! There was! She walked away right down this street!”
As she spoke, her memory became clearer. “Ah, right! It was shortly after the girl went inside. That woman came out from opposite the girl's house and left in a hurry!”
Fang Yuan's voice sounded suppressed with a tremor, sounding extremely aggrieved: “Auntie... I didn't kill anyone... When I went inside, she only had one breath left... She even slashed at me with a dagger...”
Upon hearing this, the woman directly shielded Fang Yuan behind her.
“Inspectors, let me tell you, this girl would absolutely never do such a thing! She lives right next door to me and has always been so obedient to her grandma—so filial! She definitely wouldn't kill anyone!”
Four people were present.
Two of them believed she hadn't killed anyone.
Fang Yuan tilted her face up, blinking at Wang Wei and Lin Xu. “Aren't you going to unlock my handcuffs?”
Wang Wei, whose conviction had already been somewhat shaken upon hearing the woman's testimony, suddenly felt her mind clear up completely in an instant.
That's right, she didn't kill anyone at all. Why cuff her?
With an apologetic look, Wang Wei unlocked Fang Yuan's handcuffs. “I'm sorry. I jumped to conclusions.”
Fang Yuan stretched her wrists, smiled, and pointed at Meng Ying's body.
“You can check her phone. There will definitely be a call log between her and the killer on it.”
Rate on N.U.
