CH 151

Translated by Crooked

Edited by Dust Bunny 

Gu Xizhou was woken up by a phone ringing.

He drowsily kicked Si Yu. “Hurry up and answer the phone.”

Si Yu was kicked awake and rubbed his eyes. He habitually held Gu Xizhou and reached out for the phone on the bedside table. He held it up to his ear and answered with a slightly bewildered voice, clearly not knowing who would call him at this time.

“Who?” 

“Si Ge… Is Gu Ge with you?” Fang Zhi had called him, walking into the corner to ask him a question.

“He is.”

“Th-then, can you call Gu Ge? We received a report… but I can’t get a hold of Gu Ge’s phone. He turned it off.”

“Oh. Xizhou, it’s for you.” Si Yu said indifferently, handing his phone over to Gu Xizhou as he rubbed his forehead.

Gu Xizhou raised an eyebrow and endured the discomfort of his body to take Si Yu’s phone. He heard Fang Zhi’s voice from it. “Gu Ge, there was a homicide at an apartment building near Ningqing University. A female student was strangled to death in a rented room. The corpse was found when it began to smell.”

Gu Xizhou rubbed his eyes. “En… Okay, en, en, I know… Okay, I’ll head over right away.”

Fang Zhi, who rushed over to the crime scene from the station, suddenly thought of something after he hung up. Gu Ge and Si Yu seemed like they were sleeping in the same room?

Fang Zhi felt like his jaw was about to drop to the ground: what a terrifying thought. 

Gu Xizhou, aching all over, suddenly rolled over and got out of bed. Si Yu looked at him. “You’re going now?”

“En,” said Gu Xizhou. “Homicide cases are urgent. You can sleep.”

After Gu Xizhou finished speaking, he dashed into the bathroom to get ready and grabbed his car keys to leave the villa. Si Yu followed him out. “Why are you following me? Go back to sleep.”

“I’ll drive you over,” said Si Yu, looking at Gu Xizhou’s body. 

“That’s not necessary. I can go by myself,” Gu Xizhou said while he opened the car door.

Si Yu hesitated, then he asked, “Doesn’t it hurt?”

Gu Xizhou wanted to let his jaw drop.

Si Yu’s expression was very earnest, and he spoke seriously. If he hadn’t heard Si Yu speak, Gu Xizhou wouldn’t have believed he was actually discussing this with him. 

“I just want to ask…you…”

Gu Xizhou sat in the car and looked stiffly at Si Yu. He shook his head and said a little harshly, “I can go by myself. You can go back to sleep.”

Driving the car away, Gu Xizhou made the journey on a spacious and empty road. Gu Xizhou looked at the time. It was now 7:30, and no one was on the road. Gu Xizhou put his hands on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead.

He arrived very quickly at the scene of the crime. There was a police car parked downstairs with its lights on. Fang Zhi had arrived before him because he drove from Si Yu’s house, which was quite a distance. 

After Gu Xizhou parked the car, he didn’t say a word. Fang Zhi hastily came over and was shocked when he saw Gu Xizhou.

Gu Xizhou frowned. “Why are you looking at me?”

“Gu Ge, your clothes, I’ve seen Si Ge wearing those.”

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“Oh…” Fang Zhi immediately replied, “The nextdoor neighbor, another student, found it. She said that for several days, when she walked past the door, she could always smell something foul. Today, the smell was especially bad. No one answered when she knocked. The building’s landlord also lives in the community. She couldn’t stand the smell anymore, so she went to find the landlord. 

“The landlord called the student first, but her phone was turned off. Finally, the landlord opened the door. When they opened the door they got a real fright… Xiang Ge just went in for a look and said the victim died at least a week ago.”

Gu Xizhou frowned. “Aren’t all the students supposed to live on campus? How can they rent apartments outside?”

Fang Zhi scratched his head and said, “Some students with money don’t want to live on campus. There’s no air conditioner at school, so it gets very hot in the summer. They can’t bear it, so they live off-campus.”

Gu Xizhou acknowledged that and entered the crime scene. He investigated the corpse carefully. There were green spots on the body and some other things Gu Xizhou couldn’t describe. Strangely, there was a faint odor like laundry detergent in the room. 

“What do we know?” Gu Xizhou asked Xiang Yuan, who was still looking over the body.

Xiang Yuan said, “I just looked over the body, and my initial judgment is that the time of death is one week ago. She was strangled by someone and choked to death.

Gu Xizhou looked at the neck of the corpse. The body was already changing color, and the smell was awful.

“If she died so long ago, it should have smelled earlier, but it was only discovered now.” Gu Xizhou raised his eyebrows as he looked around the scene. 

Opening the window shades of the room, there was an obvious layer of reflective material on them. Gu Xizhou looked closer and discovered it was actually transparent glue piled onto every small crack of the window.

The other rooms were also covered. All the doors and windows were tightly covered up with clear glue. Clearly someone didn’t want others to smell the corpse and find it.

Gu Xizhou looked at the air conditioner and frowned. It was set to only 8 degrees.

No one found the dead body earlier because it was being preserved in the cold. 

Gu Xizhou turned and asked, “Did the power in this area go out a few days ago?”

The officer he asked was surprised and immediately went to look for nearby residents to ask.

“Leader Gu, the power went out in the area three days ago.”

“Oh.” That was unsurprising. 

Then Gu Xizhou took a few steps and looked at the locks. The lock was intact. Obviously, the killer didn’t break in by force. That left only two possibilities: either the student knew her killer or the killer followed her.

“Holy shit, what’s happening here? Someone’s actually dead? I’m scared to death!”

“I heard they were from our school.”

Gu Xizhou heard voices outside and wrinkled his brows. He turned around to pack his things and put things in order before going out front to ask about the specifics of the situation. 

The landlord who reported the case and the female student who lived next door were there. The student had a ponytail and even bangs, and she looked very ordinary. Right now she was shaking all over and sitting on the bed in her room. Her hands were wrapped around her legs as she curled up.

“Hello, I’m the police officer in charge of this case. I want to understand the situation. Do you know her name?” asked Gu Xizhou.

The landlord answered without hesitation. “Her name is Sun Feifei, and she’s a student at Ningqing University. She should be a first-year student.”

Gu Xizhou frowned, and the landlord hurried to explain. “I didn’t have any bad intentions! 

“When she wanted to rent here I asked for a copy of her student certificate. I’ve had some students before who’ve run without paying rent, but there are so many students it’s impossible to find them. Later I grew more conscientious. Renters must have a copy of their student certificate, so in case the tenant runs away, then I can go to the school and find their counselor.”

Sun Feifei was a freshman in class 3 of the business major at Ningqing University.

After getting the basic information, he discovered that the landlord knew almost nothing about Sun Feifei. Not only did she live in another building, but she never went over. Gu Xizhou’s main goal was naturally the student living next door to Sun Feifei.

Gu Xizhou looked over at the student and asked, “Don’t be afraid. Can you say anything about the course of events?” 

The student looked at Gu Xizhou and shrunk her shoulders, chewing on her bottom lip. At Gu Xizou’s encouraging look, she opened her mouth. “Yesterday, I was working on my graduation project until dawn. In the morning, I was really sleepy, but the smell next door was too overpowering. I couldn’t stand it, so I went to look for the landlord…”

The student’s description was about the same as what Fang Zhi told him earlier. Gu Xizhou was silent for a moment, then he said, “Have you lived here longer than the victim?”

The student nodded. “I’ve lived here for two years. She moved next door at the beginning of the semester.”

“Oh.” Gu Xizhou hesitated and asked, “When was the last time you saw the victim?” 

The student wrinkled her brow, seeming to ponder Gu Xizhou’s question deeply. Finally, she shook her head. “I really don’t remember. I go to school every day to work on my project design, and I haven’t paid attention.”

“Ah, in any case… I remember I saw her half a month ago. That day I was also working on my graduation project. Anyway, it made me very troubled. That night, I got delivery, and when I went downstairs to get it, I saw her!”

Gu Xizhou looked down and carefully sized up the student. He asked, “You remember it quite clearly?”

The student hesitated before speaking directly. “Eh… If I’m not remembering wrong, she had a boyfriend that also goes to our school. I saw him several times. 

“That night, she returned home with a man… I thought it was her boyfriend, but it wasn’t a man I’d ever seen before. The two were very intimate, so I thought she’d broken up with the last man and didn’t care about it.

“But the next day, I saw that man come over. They were still smiling together, and the male student gave her a present, so I was shocked. I remember it very clearly.”

Gu Xizhou was silent. There was a complex relationship. The girl was shocked. She probably thought Sun Feifei’s boyfriend’s head was covered in green.

Gu Xizhou asked, “You didn’t hear anything strange from next door? Like a quarrel?” 

The student thought about it and said, “En, there was nothing.”

“En, thank you.” After Gu Xizhou got a basic understanding of the situation, he got the girl’s contact information and let the officers inform the school after surveying the scene.

Gu Xizhou looked at the time. It was 9 o’clock. He went to grab something to eat on foot and had a casual meal. Then, he went to school. The school principal had a big potbelly and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

Once he heard about a student living off-campus being strangled, the principal’s forehead broke out into a sweat. This situation was terrible; it was a big mess. 

Gu Xizhou went straight to the heart of the matter and asked, “Does the school allow students to live outside?”

The president answered helplessly. “How could that be? The school doesn’t allow it, but the students don’t listen. We also don’t have the means to deal with it. We can’t have our counselors spend every day checking their beds; there’s work to be done.”

“En. Can we call the students who lived in the same dorm as the victim?”

“Yes, I’ll have the counselor quietly call them over.” The president felt a little sick and wiped his sweat and sent the teacher a meaningful look. That teacher immediately went out and a few students came in. 

Three female students stood and looked at each other anxiously. One of them was a little braver and was very pretty. With a young and clear voice she asked, “Is Feifei really dead?”

Seeing her worried expression, Gu Xizhou nodded.

The pretty schoolgirl covered her mouth and lowered her head. Her curls fell over her face as she let out a whimpering cry.

“It’s all my fault. If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have moved out and died…” 

The other two roommates who saw Gu Xizhou nod began to tremble, and they immediately went to comfort their roommate.

“Shu Yue, it’s not worth crying for her!”

“Exactly, something would’ve happened to her sooner or later!”

Gu Xizhou frowned and asked, “What do you mean?” 

One of them, a round-faced girl with glasses, didn’t hesitate to speak. “Sun Feifei stole Shu Yue’s boyfriend even though Shu Yue treated her well. She’s really shameless.

“Shu Yue also has a good temper. At first we all said we wanted to tell the class what Sun Feifei did, but Shu Yue disagreed and told us to let it go. However, apparently that scum man was just playing with Sun Feifei and dumped her soon after. At the same time, Sun Feifei started ambiguous relationships with a lot of people. We already knew about that, but we didn’t think that she wouldn’t even let go of her roommate’s boyfriend.”

After Gu Xizhou listened, it was clear that the reason Sun Feifei moved out of the dorms was because she seduced this Shu Yue’s boyfriend. As a result, all of the girls in the dorm wouldn’t give Sun Feifei face and looked at her coldly every day. Finally, she couldn’t stand it and moved out. These girls hadn’t spoken with Sun Feifei for half a year.

“Why did you say that something would happen to her sooner or later?” Gu Xizhou asked the round-faced girl. 

“That, ah…” The girl rubbed her forehead and said, “Do you know about the lo circle?”

“What?”

“It’s the small lolita skirts that a lot of girls wear now,” the girl explained.

“Oh, I know.” Gu Xizhou remembered occasionally seeing people walking on the street in hanfu or a type of small western style clothing. “What about it?” 

The round-faced girl spoke a little condescendingly. “Sun Feifei had a lot of those skirts, super tiny.

“Her parents are divorced and only give her money for basic needs. Every year she gets the school poverty scholarship. It’s not that I’m being dark, but I think only she knows where all the money to buy those skirts comes from.”

It was obvious what she was insinuating.

“I also don’t look down on those who wear lo skirts, but they should stick to their own spending level, right?” the round-faced girl mocked, glancing at Shu Yue. 

Gu Xizhou asked, “Why’d you look at her just now?”

“Ah, Shu Yue is also a lo girl.”

Gu Xizhou didn’t pay attention and said, “When did you last see Sun Feifei?”

The girl muttered irresolutely and said, “On Tuesday, that was Abbess Miejue’s course. She came.” 

Last Tuesday. Today is Wednesday, so the time of death was narrowed down one step further.

“Then do you know who Sun Feifei’s current boyfriend is?”

“Eh… he’s one of our classmates called Wei Ming.” Talking about that boy made the girl’s eyes show some sympathy. “He really likes Sun Feifei. He tried to commit suicide for her before.”