Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 197 The Murderer Tan Jia 16
In excessively quiet darkness, people's emotional reactions become particularly sensitive, especially when they know that someone is watching them from a corner.

Even the slightest sound can startle someone, and if the sound comes from different places intermittently, people are prone to paranoia and mental tension.

Spending too much time in such an environment would cause even criminals to have a mental breakdown.

But Tan Jia is not a criminal.

She stood up and stretched her legs, while continuing to chat unilaterally.

"I don't understand why you're targeting me. Aren't you supposed to be a righteous force that only targets bad guys? Squeezing every last bit of value out of them before using them to fill the hole. I've always helped the police, punishing the wicked and fighting evil, so I'm a good person, right? Logically, you shouldn't be targeting me. Or do you think that even the most sacred faith can't compare to family? Just because your father made a mistake doesn't mean no one is allowed to be punished?"

"Or perhaps you and your father have different understandings of the 'Army of Justice'? That makes sense. Your father is middle-aged now and not as immature as he used to be. He only takes photos secretly to gain leverage over others for his own benefit. But you are different. When you should have been dreaming of traveling the world with a sword, you were still disabled and sitting in a wheelchair. Even after you got a prosthetic leg and could walk, you were still very interested in this kind of thing."

"Isn't it exhilarating to be able to see people from all over the world and uncover all sorts of secrets through a computer? Especially those big shots you can never meet in person, yet you can easily observe their lives. When they're discussing important secrets with what they think is caution, don't you find yourself laughing in front of your computer?"

"With the secrets you've acquired, you can also use your excess compassion and kindness to punish evildoers and rise up as an urban hero. Although more people will die and more wrongful convictions will occur along the way, at least you'll punish those rich and powerful people, so that's doing a good deed, isn't it?"

"I feel like you're the kind of idiot who releases golden apple snails in the name of doing good."

She had been talking so much that her mouth was almost dry when another voice finally broke out in the room.

"Talking so much, don't you want to die sooner?"

It was a disguised mechanical voice, but you could almost hear the sinister look on the person's face as they spoke.

Tan Jia immediately turned her head in the direction of the sound. Although the room was dark, it did not prevent her from staring at the person behind the camera with her eyes open.

"You can actually talk? Is this how you repeatedly threatened the manager of the guesthouse? No wonder you're even more defiant after waking up from a nap."

No more sound came from the monitor; the other person's anger seemed to have subsided, and they didn't intend to communicate with her any further.

But what Tan Jia needed was for him to talk more.

"I'm curious, what exactly do you want? To get the police to do things for you, you must have some serious leverage over them, right? But why did you send someone to bring me here? Are you going to lock me up until the police have convicted me and then release me? Or are you planning to just kill me?"

"Is Wenwu's death related to some rich and powerful people? If you want to seek justice for him and make a big scene to punish the murderer, then you probably want me to die so that things will escalate and can no longer be covered up."

"If you want to help the murderer behind it all, then you should let me take the blame... or would it be better if I died? Suicide out of guilt is a good outcome."

"But it will be difficult to implement the plan later. The criminal investigation team and the investigation group will definitely continue to investigate. I estimate that they have already started to remove various surveillance cameras on a large scale and are also investigating your whereabouts. It involves the national security. Unless you can fly out of the country immediately, you will eventually be found."

The other party remained silent.

Was there something wrong with what she said that prevented her from provoking him?

Tan Jia's brain was working at a rapid pace, and her hands subconsciously wanted to knead the dough to help her think, but she only remembered that she had no dough to knead when her fingers touched together.

"You're not speaking because you scoff at what I'm saying? Do you have a safe way out? Let me think... about those people you have leverage over? But it's just a little leverage; in their value system, killing you is more cost-effective than being controlled by you, right?" "Still not speaking. That doesn't seem right. Are they in a cooperative relationship with you? But what's the point of cooperating with a delusional teenager who only knows how to secretly film people? If it's unnecessary, why would they cooperate with you?"

"Let me think about it again... People can cooperate either because they have a unified goal or because they belong to a community of shared interests. So even if there are mutual antagonisms, as long as they share the same goal and can help each other, they're in the same boat. But what common interests do you have, and what unified goal do you have?"

She slowed down her speech, and you could tell she was thinking and analyzing at the same time.

"A unified goal...the purpose of what you're doing..."

"You'd better think carefully about what your last words are before you die," the person behind the monitor finally spoke again, his voice vicious. "Why don't you have a dream right here and see if you dream about how you died?"

Tan Jia's face stiffened for a moment, as if she hadn't expected him to know the secret of her dream, let alone that he would actually kill her.

In another location, the person watching her through the computer screen finally smiled, leaned back in their chair, stared for a while longer, then switched to the surveillance footage to view the scene inside the police station.

With so many images to focus on, there are bound to be things he misses. So he didn't notice that Tan Jia, who was looking down in the dark room, had a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth.

The interruption was so timely; it seems this approach was correct.

What could be the common goal that Zhou Qi'an shares with those bigwigs?

Is it related to Wenwu's death?

Those who killed Wenwu were definitely trying to cover it up. If Zhou Qi'an's purpose was the same... In fact, among those who wanted to convict her, the most eager wasn't Zhou Qi'an, but rather her "superiors." Why were they so keen to make her take the blame?

An idea slowly took shape—

Wenwu's death was serious. The murderer and those who knew about it wanted to get rid of this hidden danger. She was the conspicuous scapegoat that Zhou Qi'an pushed out. With a ready-made scapegoat, those people were naturally determined to solidify her criminal reputation. Then they would use some montage techniques to whitewash it, and the deaths of Wenwu's father and son would be attributed to her. Naturally, no one would investigate the real murderer.

So it wasn't that Zhou Qi'an had leverage over those people to drive them to plot against her, but rather that Zhou Qi'an was using the deaths of Wen Jinbing and Xiao Qian to "make a scene," attracting more attention and making those people anxious to find a ready-made murderer to take the blame.

That's why she sometimes found Zhou Qi'an's way of doing things to be strange.

He always wanted to get rid of her.

Having figured out the whole thing, Tan Jia looked at the dark void and let out a deep breath.

I wonder what's going on outside. Did Lin Zhiyue go to find Captain Zheng and the others? Are they checking on Zhou Qi'an's whereabouts?
……

The sky slowly began to brighten.

It was an ordinary day, but what was unusual was that a scandal within the system suddenly broke out online.

A helpful citizen who assisted in the investigation multiple times was wrongly convicted of murder, forcibly taken away without investigation, and has been missing for three days with his fate unknown.

(End of this chapter)