Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 243 Confess to Me 16
Zhang Qin lived in a very remote resettlement community. Her room was very small and bare, looking like a youth hostel.

The messy photos pasted on the wall above her bed were the most elaborate decorations in the entire house.

Tan Jia leaned closer to look; the photo was full of Zhou Wen'an and his group.

Scenes of Zhou Wen'an parking his car and talking to someone on the roadside, Yuan Hanyue eating and chatting with someone in a restaurant, and Zhou Qi being interviewed by a local TV station...

One can imagine how much hatred Zhang Qin must have felt for them, watching them live so carefree and happy from a corner every day for the past six months.

"Hmm?" Tan Jia's gaze stopped on two photos on the edge. He reached out, took them down, and looked closely. They were actually photos of the scene where Yuan Hanyue murdered Zhou Wen'an.

She flipped the two photos over to show Zheng Yan, and said solemnly, "Zhang Qin was definitely in the unfinished building that night. She took pictures of the crime scene."

This was an unexpected bonus. Zheng Yan took the photos and looked at them, saying, "They're really well-taken. The victim's face, the murderer's face, the murder weapon, and the murderer's actions in killing the victim—they've captured it all."

If its authenticity can be verified, this photo can serve as decisive evidence that Yuan Hanyue murdered Zhou Wen'an.

However, this shooting angle...

"Was Zhang Qin an NPC who provided companionship during the game?"

Tan Jia nodded: "It's possible. She mingled with those NPCs, finished the game with them, watched them leave, followed them, saw the body disposal site, and then retrieved the body. However, I remember that Zhang Qin wasn't on the employee list provided by the murder mystery game shop, and I didn't see anyone who looked like Zhang Qin in the surveillance footage either."

"Maybe it's because of this—" The investigator took two hoods out of the closet.

It was a flesh-colored, soft silicone lifelike headgear; one of them, when positioned correctly, clearly resembled a bar cleaning lady.

Tan Jia touched it through her gloves, somewhat surprised: "I thought this kind of scene only appeared in movies and TV dramas. No matter how realistic the wig is, you can still tell it's not human when you look closely, right?"

“If she only appeared at night, then it wouldn’t happen,” Zheng Yan also touched it. “But I remember that this cleaning lady had a family, four generations under one roof, more than a dozen people in her family, all of whom testified that she was at home during the time the body was dumped.”

The forensic investigator said, "That means she used the cleaning lady's face without her even knowing it."

"But if you wear a hood in a murder mystery game shop and spend almost twelve hours with a lot of NPCs and players, wouldn't it be easy for them to spot you?" Tan Jia wondered.

They searched again with suspicion, until the landlord was called in and, looking at Zhang Qin's release photo, said, "She doesn't look like this."

Doesn't she look like this? Could it be that Zhang Qin is so cautious that she wears a wig in her daily life?

Zheng Yan showed the headgear to the landlord, but the landlord shook his head and denied it.

Tan Jia frowned, thought for a moment, and then showed him the surveillance screenshots of the unfinished building.

Then the landlord pointed to the person in charge of the murder mystery game and said, "It's her, she's the one who rented the room a few months ago."

Tan Jia and Zheng Yan exchanged a surprised glance.

This person was the manager who had questioned them when they were in the unfinished building. He was yawning as he told them that Zhou Wen'an was helped out, that there was surveillance footage, and that he was just a shop assistant with no suspicious qualities.

It turns out that the mastermind behind the murder had already met with them.

Goosebumps ran down her skin. After her initial shock, Tan Jia looked at the two photos and said, "When we questioned her, her face didn't look like she was wearing a mask, although it was a little stiff... She had plastic surgery!"

Reaching this conclusion wasn't easy, but working backward from it, it's not surprising that Zhang Qin could go this far. She's all alone now, single-mindedly focused on revenge, and it seems understandable that she would do anything for it.

“She’s had plastic surgery. She won’t stop until she kills everyone she wants to kill.” Zheng Yan frowned again as he looked around the room.

"It's 10 p.m. and she still hasn't gone home. Where could she be? If Yuan Hanyue's mother was really taken away by her, where would she hide her? If Yuan Hanyue comes looking for her, but the two of them aren't here, where would they have gone?"

Besides this place, is there anywhere else Zhang Qin can go?
In a flash, the two of them thought of the same place.

"Lean Middle School."

If Zhang Qin knew that the police had already traced her back to her, she might have rushed to wrap things up. The final stage of her self-clarification might have been returning to where it all began, seeking a belated truth.

The last person to be addressed, who needs to be a "special guest" during her self-clarification segment, should be Yuan Hanyue, the eyewitness from the beginning.

Zheng Yan immediately strode out and called out, "Go to Lian Middle School and contact the nearest police station. The fire department and ambulances should be on standby!"

...

Lean Middle School.

The riots had been going on for a while.

When the criminal investigation team arrived, the teachers and students of the school were gathered under a dormitory building, looking up at the figures on the rooftop and whispering among themselves.

Apart from school leaders and police officers who had just arrived, who were trying their best to shout "Calm down, calm down," the other people were not talking much because Zhang Qin on the top floor was reminiscing about the past through a loudspeaker.

"The school has really changed a lot. Well, it's been fourteen years. The teachers' dormitory building has been converted into a student dormitory building. Room 403, where the murder occurred, has long been demolished. The few floor tiles that were stained with blood are probably thrown into some garbage dump."

"Perhaps few of you still remember the murder case from fourteen years ago? A pregnant teacher's family member was brutally murdered, resulting in the deaths of both mother and child. The perpetrators were a few bastards, but in the end, the crime fell on me, who was just passing by, and I was sentenced to fourteen years."

"Why would such an absurd thing happen? Yuan Hanyue, can you explain this to everyone?"

As the echo from the loudspeaker faded, Zhang Qin tugged at the rope in her hand, and someone cried out in pain in the dim light.

A dozen beams of flashlight light shone on them simultaneously, and Tan Jia and the others then discovered that Yuan Hanyue was tied up and hanging from the edge of the rooftop.

The light was so bright that she closed her eyes, so you couldn't see her eyes, but you could see her terrified and distraught expression and her trembling body.

Those below narrowed their eyes and quickly shouted, "Hold on tight! Hold on tight!"

Everyone looked rushed; some were setting up inflatable cushions, some were directing the doctors to approach, and others were tentatively going upstairs to try and dissuade the perpetrators. The police didn't have time to find out the truth; they were busy trying to downplay the severity of the situation.

Amid the noise, Yuan Hanyue's sobbing could be heard.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Teacher Zhang... I was wrong, I was really wrong, please put me down, I was really wrong..."

"Do you really know you were wrong? Then why didn't you tell the police about me after you knew that Zhou Wen'an's body might have been retrieved by me and exposed in the bar? Yuan Hanyue, I gave you so many chances: when I was wronged, when I was sentenced, when I was in jail, before Zhou Wen'an died, before Zhang Tai died... so many chances, but you didn't seize even one of them."

"Why? Because after lying, in order to cover it up and continue to hide the fact that your mother and Teacher Dong were having an affair, even if you become a murderer like me, you still refuse to tell the truth about what happened back then, right?"