[Cloud City · East District · He Jinsong's Residence]
Yin Wuwang took an entirely natural half-step forward, positioning Xie Qingyan partially behind him, then slammed his fist against the door.
Not knocking. Slamming. Three times—heavy and fast, carrying an unmistakable force that brooked no argument.
The door rattled with each impact.
Xie Qingyan stood at his side and slightly behind, watching that broad back. His tone was calm: "You're pounding on the door."
"This sovereign is knocking."
"Major Crimes Unit detectives don't knock with that much force."
Yin Wuwang withdrew his fist and rolled his wrist. "This sovereign thinks this amount of force is just right."
The door opened.
The man who answered was around thirty-five, wearing a faded gray T-shirt, shorts, and slippers. His hair looked like he'd just woken up and hadn't bothered to comb it. His face carried the irritation of someone whose sleep had been disturbed.
Yin Wuwang completed his first round of observation in 0.3 seconds.
The build was thinner than it had appeared in the surveillance footage—probably a camera angle issue. Deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, hard jawline. Several faint old scars on the backs of his hands, rough knuckles. These weren't the hands of someone who sat in an office long-term; these were hands that had done manual labor and thrown punches.
But what caught Yin Wuwang's attention most was his eyes.
Not fierce. Not evasive. Just the weariness of someone who'd seen too much trouble, mixed with a bit of can't-be-bothered irritation.
Those words Little Deer Assistant had squeezed out before cutting off last night still lingered in his mind—"half-developed suspect, behavioral logic incomplete." Yin Wuwang studied He Jinsong's face, trying to find traces of that "incompleteness" beneath the layer of weariness.
He couldn't find any. At least, nothing visible on the surface. His features, expression, posture—every aspect seemed like a real, living mortal.
But there was a saying in the cultivation world: the more flawless something appears, the more careful you should be.
He Jinsong looked at Yin Wuwang, then at Xie Qingyan.
"Who are you?"
Yin Wuwang pulled out his credentials and flashed them in front of He Jinsong. "Cloud City Public Security Bureau, Major Crimes Unit. Jiang Ye. This is forensic pathologist Shen Han. We're here to ask you some questions."
He Jinsong's expression didn't change much. No panic, no shrinking back—just a slight furrow of his brow.
"About Chen Wan?"
Yin Wuwang raised an eyebrow. He hadn't mentioned Chen Wan's name.
"How did you know we're here about Chen Wan?"
He Jinsong leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "Everyone in East District knows Night Wanderer had a murder. I used to be Chen Wan's partner at that bar. You'd come knocking sooner or later."
Yin Wuwang and Xie Qingyan exchanged a glance.
That glance didn't contain the question "is he the killer"—they'd already ruled that out last night. This glance asked something else: just how incomplete was a character the author had written halfway and then abandoned?
"Mind if we come in and sit?" Yin Wuwang asked.
He Jinsong shrugged and stepped aside to let them through.
He Jinsong's place was a modest two-bedroom apartment, better than Chen Wan's but not by much. The living room was cluttered with several cardboard boxes. A half-eaten takeout container sat on the coffee table. The TV was on but muted.
Yin Wuwang sat on the couch, surveying the room. A copy of a business license hung on the wall—for an auto repair shop. Leaning against the shoe cabinet beneath the coffee table were a wrench and several iron pipes, probably brought home from the shop.
Xie Qingyan didn't sit. He stood at the edge of the living room, leaning against the doorframe leading to the kitchen, maintaining an angle that let him observe both He Jinsong and the entire room simultaneously.
A sword cultivator's habit. Even in an environment without danger, he wouldn't give his back to an unfamiliar space.
He Jinsong grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened it, and took a swig himself. He didn't offer them any.
"Go ahead and ask." He dropped into the chair across from Yin Wuwang.
Yin Wuwang fixed his gaze on He Jinsong's face. "What was your relationship with Chen Wan?"
"Former business partner." He Jinsong answered crisply. "Opened Night Wanderer together six years ago. I put up the money; he put in the work."
"And then?"
"Then?" He Jinsong gave a cold laugh. "Then his mother ran up gambling debts, and he mortgaged the whole bar to Dragon Brother to pay them off. The five hundred thousand I'd invested went down the drain."
"So you had a falling out."
"'Falling out' is putting it nicely." He Jinsong set the beer can on the armrest, fingers unconsciously squeezing the metal until it made soft crinkling sounds of deformation. "We had a shouting match right outside the bar, almost came to blows. Later I went to a lawyer. Lawyer said the share transfer was legally fucking valid. Nothing I could do but eat the loss."
Yin Wuwang noted the phrase "almost came to blows."
There was anger in his tone, but it was old anger, dull—like a rusty knife. Not fresh hatred.
"On the night of the incident, you went to Night Wanderer." Yin Wuwang cut straight to the point. "Surveillance captured you entering the back alley at 10:28, having a two-minute conversation with Chen Wan outside the employee passage, then leaving."
He Jinsong's movements paused for a second.
Just one second. Then he continued drinking his beer as if that pause had never happened.
"Yeah. I went."
"What for?"
"Money." He Jinsong's tone carried undisguised bitterness. "My repair shop had some issues last month. Needed working capital. Chen Wan owed me five hundred thousand. I wanted to talk to him, see if he could pay back part of it first."
"What did he say?"
"He said he didn't have any money." He Jinsong set the beer can on the coffee table—a little forcefully. The metal bottom hitting the glass surface made a particularly crisp sound in the quiet living room. "Said he was still paying off his own debts and couldn't come up with anything. Told me to wait a while longer."
"Did you believe him?"
"I believed him." The corner of He Jinsong's mouth twisted—not quite a smile, more like a self-deprecating twitch. "One look at his face and you could tell he wasn't having an easy time. No matter how much I hated him, I couldn't squeeze oil from someone worse off than me."
Yin Wuwang leaned back on the couch, tilting his head slightly.
Throughout this statement, He Jinsong's speech rhythm was steady, with no pauses that were too long or too short. His expression and body language were also consistent—irritated, resigned, a bit self-mocking.
He was telling the truth.
At least, regarding "going to find Chen Wan for money," he wasn't lying.
But Yin Wuwang didn't relax. He mentally cross-referenced He Jinsong's statement with the surveillance footage—the timing matched, the behavioral patterns matched, the emotional reactions matched.
Too perfectly matched. Matched like he was reading from a prepared script.
Just as expected—when asked about things in the script, his performance is flawless. The question is, what about things outside the script?
[End of V2_Chapter 26]
Next: A convenience store receipt, a question about the repair shop, and a character who suddenly... buffers.