A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

The sixth brother's ears perked up, and he turned ninety degrees toward the door.

Lu Yuan, still biting his chopsticks, got up and shuffled to the entryway in his slippers. He opened the security door with his left hand.

The door next door was wide open.

Jiang Yan was pushing a 28-inch suitcase across the threshold with one hand.

A black, fitted, quick-drying athletic shirt, its tight fabric revealing the powerful yet supple muscle lines of her waist, abdomen, and shoulders. A thin layer of sweat, from carrying heavy loads, glistened on her healthy, honey-colored skin under the light.

The brim of her hat, usually pulled low, was gone. Her long hair was tied into a neat high ponytail, with a few damp stray hairs clinging to her slender neck.

The most deadly thing is that face.

Her high brow bone framed a pair of amber fox-like eyes. Normally, those eyes were full of ruthless decisiveness and sharpness, suppressing her exquisite femininity and turning it into a glint of steel.

But at this moment, because he was sweating from carrying heavy objects, his already distinctive Eastern bone structure revealed a breathtakingly wild beauty under the moisture of the sweat.

"Mr. Lu."

She pushed her suitcase inside the door frame and turned around. Her ponytail swayed behind her head.

"From today onwards, we are neighbors."

Lu Yuan still had chopsticks in his mouth, with Kung Pao Chicken sauce dripping from the tips.

He glanced again at the empty room behind Jiang Yan, and then at her suitcase.

Twenty-eight inches. One person lives there, and there's a suitcase.

"Officer Jiang," Lu Yuan pulled his chopsticks out of his mouth, "has the rent in this area dropped, or is the public security system issuing relocation subsidies?"

Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow.

"It's a personal choice. It's close to my workplace, making commuting convenient."

Lu Yuan nodded and stepped back inside.

Lu Yuan returned to the sofa, picked up the lunchbox, and shoveled a mouthful of rice into his mouth.

After chewing a couple of times, he said to Lao Liu, "They've moved into the next room so quickly. Officer Jiang's organizational efficiency has improved."

After licking his paws, the sixth brother jumped onto the sofa armrest and squatted down to watch him.

Lu Yuan took another bite of rice.

"Be careful when you visit other people's homes in the future. They might have a recording device in their house."

The sixth brother yawned.

I could hear the sound of clothes being hung on a clothesline next door.

Lu Yuan closed the door, sat back down on the sofa, and picked up the last piece of chicken from his lunchbox.

The sixth brother jumped onto the handrail, tilted his head slightly towards the door, and turned his ears back and forth slightly.

"Stay put." Lu Yuan used his chopsticks to turn the cat's head back.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door.

Jiang Yan stood outside the door, a smile on her face, holding a disposable plastic tray from the supermarket, filled with apple slices. The slices were unevenly cut.

"Come see our new neighbors." She shook the tray.

Before he could move aside, Jiang Yan squeezed through the gap between his arm and the door frame.

"Where's the cat? Let me check on Lao Liu." He walked towards the living room, his gaze sweeping across the entire house.

Entryway shoe cabinet – nothing unusual, three pairs of shoes, two pairs of slippers and one pair of canvas shoes.

The entrance to the kitchen—the magnetic sticker on the refrigerator door is a cartoon cat, and two supermarket flyers are magnetically attached to the side. The enamel basin on the stove has been washed and is upside down.

In the master bedroom—the bed is against a load-bearing wall, with a quilt folded on top, the corners not fully tucked in. There's a charging cable next to the pillow.

In the corner—two unopened bags of cat litter, a bag of cat food, and a cardboard box—nothing special.

There was no computer. No external hard drive. No encrypted communication devices. There wasn't even a nail on the wall.

Clean. Too clean.

It's abnormally clean.

Jiang Yan squatted down and reached out to scratch Lao Liu, who was leaning on the sofa armrest. Lao Liu pulled his hind legs back and ignored her.

wrong!

The sofa is in the wrong position.

The living room of the rented apartment has a south-facing window overlooking the canopy of plane trees, and the stairwell window of the opposite building creates an angled view of sunlight. The sofa is placed in a slightly north-facing position in the living room, perfectly avoiding all direct and reflected views from the south-facing window.

The person sitting on the sofa cannot see anything from any high vantage point outside the window.

Her gaze shifted to the bed. The wall behind the headboard was the building's load-bearing structure, reinforced with concrete and steel, at least twenty-five centimeters thick. Ordinary rifle bullets couldn't penetrate it.

Then look at the coffee table, and there's that aluminum thermos.

The thermos was placed on the right side of the coffee table, less than forty centimeters from where I usually sit on the sofa.

Boiling water, from grabbing the bottle to uncorking to splashing it, takes 0.5 seconds.

Jiang Yan's neck skin tightened.

In this shabby room, the relative positions of every piece of furniture were meticulously calculated. The sofa was positioned away from sniper lines, the bed was against a bulletproof wall, and every household item within easy reach was a potential weapon.

A tactical fortress disguised as a rental house!

"Officer Jiang."

Jiang Yan's thoughts were interrupted.

Lu Yuan sat cross-legged on the sofa, a piece of apple with the peel still on it stuck in his mouth with a toothpick, and chewed it with a crunching sound.

"Looking at the apartment? You can sit on this sofa. While you're at it, could you check under the sofa for me? There's a bunch of sunflower seed shells stuck there, and I can't stick my hand in."

Jiang Yan stood up; her knees were a little numb from squatting.

She placed the cat toy on the coffee table and glanced one last time at the corner of the room.

"The fruit platter is here." She pushed the plastic tray towards the center of the coffee table.

Jiang Yan went out the door, and the door next door opened and closed, the latch clicked into the lock.

The motion-activated light at the end of the corridor turned on briefly and then off.

---

Jiang Yan entered the house and pushed the bolt all the way down with her backhand.

The suitcase lay flat on the ground, its lid flipped up. Five grooves were cut into the shock-absorbing foam, each fitting the equipment perfectly.

Top left: FH-7B wall-mounted acoustic monitor, with a receiving frequency range of 20Hz to 18kHz and an effective sound pickup distance of six meters through walls.

In the upper right corner, a portable thermal imaging terminal can capture the outline of body temperature distribution of a person on the other side of the wall.

In the largest recess in the middle, the low-light night vision probe, along with its matching wireless receiver and power supply module, are bundled together with cable ties.

She took out the listening device, placed her left palm on the wall facing the adjacent wall, and slowly slid her fingertips along the mortar joints. Load-bearing walls are not of uniform thickness throughout; the mortar layer between the bricks is the most efficient path for sound wave conduction.

Found it. Attach the listening device and press it firmly with the heel of your hand. Plug in the receiver and connect the headphones.

Frequency band calibration. Noise floor elimination. Gain increased to 70%.

Jiang Yan leaned back in her chair, her earphones covering both ears.

From next door came the soft sound of Lao Liu jumping onto the furniture, and the footsteps of Lu Yuan walking around.

The refrigerator door opened, and bottles and jars clattered together. The refrigerator door closed.

It's all everyday sounds.

She sat in the folding chair, opened her surveying notebook, and held her pen to the paper, ready to be used.

Patience. She has plenty of patience.

Suddenly, the ambient sound in my headphones changed.

Dialing tone.

drip-drip-drip-

connected.

Jiang Yan straightened her spine segment by segment, starting from the tailbone.