SES Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Mu Dai felt a chill creep over her heart. Without thinking, she grabbed the orange juice, twisted the cap open, and took a long swig. Then, after a pause, she took another.

“I didn’t understand what he meant at first,” Luo Ren said. “When I pressed him, my uncle just went back to acting like his usual scholarly self, bothered by interruptions and absorbed in his work. He waved me off and told me to go to bed.”

Luo Ren fell silent for a moment.

Mu Dai cautiously asked, “So… you didn’t take what he said seriously?”

“I did,” Luo Ren said with a bitter smile. “Just… not seriously enough.”

People who are obsessed with academic work tend to be a bit eccentric. Luo Ren had been unsettled by his uncle’s strange warning—Don’t make me kill someone—but he chalked it up to a moment of stress. He simply kept an eye on him, not to the point of constant surveillance.

Besides, Luo Wenmiao was a man of letters—he’d get queasy at the sight of blood, let alone murder someone. That had to be nonsense.

Days passed. His uncle seemed fine. Luo Ren gradually let his guard down.

Then one day, they went out for a walk and passed a fishing supply store. Out of nowhere, Luo Wenmiao insisted on going in.

Luo Ren thought maybe his uncle had taken up fishing.

But he didn’t look at rods or bait. Instead, he focused solely on fishing lines—nylon, PE, carbon fiber, steel wire. He took out samples of each, feeling them between his fingers, studying them with trembling hands and a strange light in his eyes.

Finally, he picked one, clutched it tightly, and went home gripping it like someone might snatch it away.

Once home, he skipped dinner and sat under the light, examining the line over and over. When spoken to, he barely responded.

It made Luo Ren’s skin crawl. The nylon line was translucent, almost invisible. The longer he looked at it, the more his neck began to feel tight, like something was about to wrap around and choke him.

That night, he told Pingting and Uncle Zheng, “Lock your bedroom doors.”

He kept the house keys and left his door slightly ajar—just in case.

Before bed, he passed by the study and saw Luo Wenmiao bent over his desk, writing and sketching with a magnifying glass. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

But something gnawed at him, and he slept uneasily. In the middle of the night, he was startled awake by a faint sound. The house was quiet. Light from the study cast a long arc through the crack of the door.

Still awake? Luo Ren hesitated, then got up to check.

The light was on, but the study was empty.

The bundle of fishing line that had been sitting on the desk was gone.

A chill shot through Luo Ren. He rushed to his uncle’s bedroom. The bed was neatly made, the blanket untouched.

He woke up Pingting and Uncle Zheng. They searched the house—no sign of Luo Wenmiao. Luo Ren checked the front door—locked, undisturbed.

Then Pingting, flashlight in hand, stopped by the courtyard wall. Her voice trembled as she called out to Luo Ren: “Xiao Dao, look… up there.”

Faint footprints dotted the high wall.

Mu Dai looked at him questioningly. Luo Ren gave her a firm nod. “My uncle didn’t know any martial arts. He was a typical academic—pampered, pudgy, slow, and steady in his movements. I’ve never even seen him jog, let alone climb walls. It’s unthinkable.”

Mu Dai said, “What happened next?”

Luo Ren left Pingting and Uncle Zheng at home and drove out to search.

Xiaoshanghe wasn’t big, but many alleys were too narrow for cars. On maybe the third or fourth time he stopped and walked in on foot, he heard something.

This was the same part Li Tan had told her, just from a different perspective.

“You knocked Li Tan out?”

Luo Ren nodded. “The scene inside was horrible. At that moment, I finally understood what my uncle meant when he said, Don’t make me kill someone. I couldn’t think clearly. When I saw him and Li Tan struggling, I acted on instinct and knocked Li Tan out.”

By then, the fire had already started. Leaving Li Tan behind would’ve meant burning to death. So Luo Ren dragged him out and drove toward the outskirts. He checked Li Tan’s wallet and ID, then dumped him in a sandpit.

He then called Pingting and told her to send Uncle Zheng to bed—after all, he wasn’t family. Luo Ren couldn’t trust him completely.

When he got back, it was almost dawn. Luo Wenmiao lay slumped in the backseat, unresponsive, foaming at the mouth. He didn’t speak a word.

Luo Ren carried him into the house and only then noticed that both of them had blood on their clothes. Pingting tried wiping the stains with a towel, tears streaming down her face. “Xiao Dao… what happened to my dad?”

She could tell—the blood wasn’t from Luo Wenmiao, or Luo Ren.

Luo Ren’s mind was a mess. After laying his uncle on the bed, he pulled Pingting out of the room, locked the door behind them, and handed her the key.

“Don’t let him out. No matter what, don’t let him out.”

He couldn’t explain it to Pingting, not clearly. His conscience battled his loyalty. His uncle had killed someone. The man in that room was a murderer. He should call the police. Even if he wasn’t ready to face it yet, at the very least, he had to make sure he didn’t hurt anyone else.

But… how could his uncle do something like that? What was the reason behind it?

Then another thought hit him. What about Li Tan? The crime scene? He’d rushed through things—there were bound to be loose ends. He needed to go back and check.

Pingting’s eyes were red from crying. She stared through the small window at the top of the staircase, into her father’s bedroom. He was lying under a blanket, utterly exhausted. Seemed like he was asleep.

Luo Ren told her, “Don’t let him out. And you don’t go in either. Don’t tell Uncle Zheng anything for now. Wait till I get back.”

Pingting asked, “Did my dad… kill someone?”

When he didn’t answer, her voice broke, “You’re going to call the police, aren’t you? You’re going to have him arrested?”

Luo Ren said softly, “Don’t be scared. I’m here.”

She looked at him for a long time. Then, sobbing, sat down on the stairs and watched him leave.

That moment—long, long ago—was the last memory Pingting ever had of him.

Mu Dai listened in a daze. Earlier, her spine had gone cold. Now, an ominous feeling settled over her chest. “And then?”

The kitchen staff had started prepping for the evening rush. The rhythmic thud thud thud of chopping vegetables filled the air, oddly hypnotic.

“I wasn’t gone long,” Luo Ren said.

And he hadn’t been. The crime scene had already burned to ash. The crowds had dispersed. He lingered near the police station and, by chance, spotted Li Tan.

Strangely, Li Tan stood there for a while, looking troubled. Then he turned and walked away without a glance back.

The police station’s sign wasn’t big, but the emblem of the public security bureau was visible. A few people—probably the family of the victim—stood there dabbing at tears with tissues.

An eye for an eye. That’s justice.

Luo Ren walked back, thinking he should talk to Pingting again, help her come to terms with it emotionally before calling the police.

Somewhere along the road, the wind picked up. Fine grains of sand hit his face, and the air seemed filled with the smell of blood and smoke. Xiaoshanghe was too small.

That fortress-like house finally came into view.

Something was wrong. Why were so many people gathered at the gate?

There was Uncle Zheng—his face pale—surrounded by people, shaking uncontrollably.

Luo Ren paused in the story and took a long drink from his water bottle, draining half of it before lowering it.

Mu Dai didn’t dare treat this like a story anymore. She didn’t say a word, just watched him closely.

“My uncle was dead. Suicide. He slit his own throat. And Pingting…”

Even saying her name seemed to take everything out of him. It was a long while before he finally said, in a low voice, “Pingting lost her mind.”

Mu Dai had expected tragedy, but hearing it confirmed still made her flinch. She instinctively looked at the necklace on the table—the framed photo of a beautiful girl, eyes bright and clear.

She went insane?

It sent a shiver down her bones.

“Uncle Zheng found them,” Luo Ren continued. “He passed by the bedroom and saw the door was open. At first, he didn’t think much of it. Then he saw Pingting sitting on the floor, pointing at the carpet. When he got closer, he realized she was pointing at a puddle of blood. Then he looked up—and saw my uncle slumped over the desk, blood still dripping onto the floor.”

Luo Ren looked up at Mu Dai. “Do you remember what Cen Chunjiao said about the case in Jinan? How was she out of the room for barely over a minute to get the gatekeeper, and during that time, Liu Shuhai was mutilated?”

Mu Dai nodded slowly.

“I believe Pingting lived through that same kind of minute.”

What kind of moment could drive someone insane? Mu Dai couldn’t imagine. The worst she’d experienced was crying from fear.

“But worse…” Luo Ren clenched his right hand tightly. “Do you remember Cen Chunjiao said Liu Shuhai, just before he died, started reciting all his crimes like he was reading from a script?”

Yes. She’d said his eyes were wide, staring at the ceiling. His voice had no emotion or hesitation, like a typewriter rattling away.

“Pingting always listened to me. If I told her not to open the door, she wouldn’t. Unless… unless something happened. Unless she saw her father raise a knife to his own throat.”

Mu Dai’s face went pale.

Luo Ren had said the window on the stairs overlooked the bedroom. Pingting had been sitting there when he left.

She wouldn’t have gone in—unless something was wrong. Like seeing her father about to cut his own throat.

Throat-slitting is quick. By the time she ran down the stairs and opened the door, it would’ve been too late.

Mu Dai could almost picture it—Pingting stumbling through the door, falling to her knees in shock. And just as she was frozen in horror, Luo Wenmiao’s slumped body lifted its head again, blood pouring from its neck, and in a flat, mechanical voice, it started reciting—

“On this date, in this place, I killed…”

Pingting lost her mind.

Luo Ren reached out and took the necklace from in front of her. He didn’t look at the picture, didn’t want to see Pingting’s face again. He flipped the photo side inward and put the necklace back around his neck.

“You asked why I care so much about the Luoma Lake case,” he said. “If I can only do one thing in this life—it’s this.”