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

Lu Yuan ran wildly through the empty streets.

The lights in the pet shop were still on. He stopped and pushed the door open.

"The three-tiered cat tree, the off-white one."

The shop owner was startled by his imposing manner and hurriedly carried a huge cardboard box out of the warehouse. Lu Yuan scanned the code, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and went out.

Passing by the supermarket, Lu Yuan saw the last two bags of cat litter nearing their expiration date lying on the bottom shelf. He propped the cardboard box up on the ground, bent down, scooped out the two bags, and tucked them under his arm.

As I passed through the fresh food section, I saw a piece of Norwegian salmon in the freezer, its cut surface facing up, the marbling of its fat almost too beautiful.

Lu Yuan glanced at the price tag, then at the paper bag in his pocket.

Bought it.

---

With the last screw screwed in, the cat tree stood upright.

Three stories, off-white, with a hammock, cat bed, and sisal pillars. It occupies nearly one square meter in a corner of the living room, looking out of place in the rented apartment.

The sixth brother peeked out from the hole on the first floor, then withdrew, crawled out through the side door on the second floor, and rolled down from the hammock on the top floor. After three rounds of this, he finally occupied the highest hammock, lay upside down, and held the piece of salmon in his mouth, munching away with great enthusiasm.

Lu Yuan washed his hands and sat back down on the sofa cross-legged.

The kraft paper bag was turned upside down, and hundred-yuan bills were spilled onto the coffee table. The plastic seal was torn open, and the bright red banknotes were piled up into a small mountain.

He pulled out a stack of bills, flicked them with his thumb from the side, and pulled out fifty bills.

Another stack. "Whoosh." One hundred sheets.

The way he counted money was extremely professional—a basic skill from the Eight Thousand Thousand Generals of the past life. His fingers moved at a constant frequency, passing four bills per second with zero error.

By the time he finished counting the third stack, a wide smile had spread across his face.

In the dimly lit rented room, two sounds echoed: the crisp "swish" of banknotes being moved and the smacking sound of Lao Liu showing off salmon on the top of the cat tree.

---

at the same time.

The meeting room of the special task force on the fourth floor of the Municipal Public Security Bureau was brightly lit.

All traces of Lu Yuan's appearances are being systematically erased from the files.

This sensational ghost dismemberment case, which shocked the entire city, became a benchmark case in the final official report, thanks to the city's criminal investigation team's efficient resolution of the case through meticulous investigation and psychological profiling techniques.

When Jiang Yan got home, her legs were weak. She took out her keys, opened the door, and didn't turn on the lights.

The folding chair was right against the wall; she slammed into it, the springs groaning. Her temples throbbed, and her eyes were so dry they ached.

It's been three days!

Her hand reached for the FH-7B monitoring headphones on the table in the darkness and put them on.

Turn the gain knob to the maximum.

She knew better than anyone what level of psychological surgery that man had just undergone in the interrogation room. That level of mental exertion couldn't possibly go unnoticed.

Even the most composed person will let their guard down when alone.

Changes in breathing rate, involuntary sounds after muscle relaxation, even sleep talking—any slight abnormality will be captured by this through-wall microphone.

The green light on the listening device blinked in the darkness.

The first sound coming through the headphones was—"Swish. Swish. Swish."

The intervals are uniform, and the frequency is constant.

It's counting money.

Jiang Yan frowned slightly.

Then came the second sound: "Smack. Smack smack."

The cat is eating. It's eating happily, and the slurping sound of its tongue rolling around in the food is amplified in the high-sensitivity microphone, making it sound like it's gnawing on some high-end stuff.

The two sounds alternate, "swish swish swish" and "smack smack," creating an absurd duet.

No encrypted communication! No suppressed gasps! No whispers in the dark replaying the prey!

There was only one man counting money and a cat eating fish.

Jiang Yan leaned back in her chair, with listening headphones covering both ears.

She stared at the ceiling.

As she stepped through the door, she was convinced that a ferocious beast disguised as a human lived next door.

That beast personally tore apart the mental defenses of a serial killer, took 50,000 yuan in cash and rushed to buy a cat tree and discounted cat litter. Now he's sitting cross-legged on the broken sofa, counting his money and grinning from ear to ear.

Lu Yuan's voice came through the earphones again.

"Sixth Brother, your meal of caviar and salmon today cost me 103 yuan. Based on your weight of 4 kilograms, that's 25.75 yuan per unit of weight."

The cat didn't respond.

"I weigh 72 kilograms. Today I ate a bowl of pork rib rice. The cost, including rice and scallions, was about 11 yuan. That's 15.3 cents per unit of body weight."

"Your food allowance is 168 times that of mine."

The sound of the hammock ropes creaking and swaying came from the headphones, and Lao Liu rolled over.

"You still have the nerve to flip this out."

Jiang Yan took off her headphones.

She wanted to curse, but didn't know who to curse at.

I walked to the window and pushed it open a crack. The night breeze blew in, carrying the fresh, green scent of sycamore leaves dampened by the rain. The distant streetlights cut the skyline of the old neighborhood into jagged silhouettes.

The neighborhood fell silent. The sound of counting money stopped, and even the cat stopped making a fuss.

Close the window, get into bed, and close your eyes.

Three minutes later, Jiang Yan also fell asleep.

---

On its ninth day of release, "Black Gold" surpassed 3 billion yuan in cumulative box office revenue. Its rating remains stable at 9.3.

The entire network's traffic pool has been stirred into a boiling mess.

Thousands of new long reviews are added to the Douban review section every day. The most discussed topic is the eight-minute "zero-degree performance" of Shen Yibai, played by Lu Yuan, in the interrogation room.

Lao Xu's 10,000-word film review was like a delayed bomb, igniting a collective frenzy in the entire film criticism community. A large number of professional bloggers began to follow up with frame-by-frame analysis, some interpreting facial micro-expression control from a neuroscience perspective, and others tracing the origins of the "cancellation of acting" school of thought in the genealogy of acting history.

But ordinary viewers don't care about any of that. They only know one thing: when that man on screen kills without blinking an eye, their palms are sweating.

This viewing experience was so intense that it required some form of digestion after leaving the theater. As a result, an unstoppable in-depth analysis swept across the internet.

The hashtag #What is Lu Yuan's background?# surpassed 4 billion views on the ninth day.

The posts digging deep into his past on various platforms have piled up like mountains. Some people are digging up his records as an extra in Hengdian World Studios, some are checking his household registration information, and some are digging up the original footage of him playing a ruthless bandit NPC in a variety show and zooming in frame by frame.

I found everything, yet I found nothing at all.

An ordinary, clean-cut person. No combat training experience, no overseas living experience, not even a driver's license.

This blank space itself becomes the biggest mystery.

The mainstream opinions in the comments section are divided into two camps:

One school of thought believes he is a once-in-a-century genius with a mental structure that is different from ordinary people.

Another group believes that he must have experienced an extreme event, and his post-traumatic stress reaction was perfectly captured by Su Qinghan's camera.

The two factions eventually merged after arguing for a while—who cares which one, just keep fighting!

On the fourth day after the frenzy of digging deep into the internet reached its peak, a meticulously planned bomb was dropped.