[Cloud City · Public Security Bureau · Forensic Medicine Office]
When Yin Wuwang walked into the forensic office, Xie Qingyan was sitting at his desk with yesterday's autopsy report spread before him. His posture was perfectly straight, left hand bracing the edge of the report, right hand holding a pen, making annotations in the margins.
No one else was in the office. Old Sun had gone to the toxicology lab that morning to follow up on specimen analysis. The door was half-open, occasional footsteps echoing distantly from the corridor.
Yin Wuwang reached back and pulled the door shut. The lock clicked into place.
Xie Qingyan looked up, glanced at him, then lowered his head to continue writing: "Back."
"Mm." Yin Wuwang walked to Xie Qingyan's desk, pulled over a chair and sat down. The chair was very close to Xie Qingyan. With no NPCs present, he couldn't be bothered to maintain distance.
"Zhang Yunxiang did hit Chen Wan." He got straight to the point. "He took a bottle and smashed Chen Wan's right temple, then thought the man was dead and ran. That part is true."
Xie Qingyan set down his pen. "But he doesn't know Chen Wan was strangled."
"He doesn't." Yin Wuwang confirmed. "He thinks his single bottle blow killed the man. Never mentioned any details about strangulation from start to finish—didn't even say the word 'necktie' once."
"Matches the autopsy results." Xie Qingyan's tone was flat, but a sharp glint passed through his eyes. "The blunt force trauma was antemortem but not fatal. Zhang Yunxiang knocked Chen Wan unconscious, but the person who killed Chen Wan was someone else."
"Someone else." Yin Wuwang repeated. He leaned his chair back, crossed his legs, and stared at the ceiling. "Moreover, this other person had already laid the groundwork before Zhang Yunxiang."
Xie Qingyan tilted his head slightly.
Yin Wuwang brought his gaze back to Xie Qingyan: "There was a woman who, for at least half a year before the incident, repeatedly approached Zhang Yunxiang. Only when he went to the bar alone, only when he was drunk, she would get close and tell him the same thing—'Your wife is having an affair, with Chen Wan. She often waits for him at the bar's back door to go on dates.'"
Yin Wuwang held up three fingers, folding them down one by one:
"One: He said that sentence too fluently. He wasn't recalling someone else's words—it had been drilled into him countless times until it was carved into his brain. Two: He can't clearly remember what that woman looked like. Not because he's lying, but because every time she appeared, he was drunk. Three: When talking about hitting Chen Wan, he was steady and certain. But when mentioning his wife's affair, he hesitated."
Yin Wuwang lowered his hand, looking directly into Xie Qingyan's eyes.
"He didn't kill out of hatred. Someone spent half a year manipulating him bit by bit, waiting for his emotions to build to the breaking point. All it took was one final push—hearing those words again that night—and he'd explode on his own."
The office was silent for several seconds.
Xie Qingyan's gaze rested on Yin Wuwang's face.
For three thousand years, he'd watched this man toy with enemies on battlefields, watched him dismantle an entire faction's morale with a few words, watched him see through elaborate traps on instinct alone. But in this world without spiritual energy, he'd assumed these abilities would be limited.
Now it seemed that wasn't the case at all.
A cultivator's insight came from the understanding of human nature accumulated over an impossibly long lifespan—and human nature was the same whether in mortals or cultivators.
"This wasn't impulsive murder." Xie Qingyan spoke, his tone carrying subtle gravity. "This was premeditated manipulation. That woman's target was never Zhang Yunxiang—it was Chen Wan. Zhang Yunxiang was merely her tool."
Yin Wuwang raised an eyebrow. His thinking was completely aligned with Xie Qingyan's; no explanation needed to follow each other's reasoning—three thousand years of unspoken understanding wasn't just talk.
"Her original plan was probably to have Zhang Yunxiang kill Chen Wan for her, keeping her own hands completely clean." Xie Qingyan pushed the report on his desk. "But Zhang Yunxiang only knocked the man out and fled. The plan went wrong, so she had to do it herself."
"Using the necktie that fell from Zhang Yunxiang's pocket." Yin Wuwang picked up the thread.
"Yes. It was improvised. She hadn't originally planned to kill anyone herself."
Both fell silent for a moment, processing this conclusion in their minds.
Yin Wuwang suddenly spoke, his tone lighter: "You know, this case is completely different from what the original version showed on TV. In the original, Zhang Yunxiang was just a poorly written pawn with a motivation that was obviously forced. Now the world is patching its own logic, giving him a realistic psychological arc—but it's also generated a character who didn't exist in the original at all."
"That woman." Xie Qingyan said.
"That woman." Yin Wuwang repeated. "Did the world generate her to repair Collapse Point Two? Or was she always in the author's drafts, just never finished?"
Little Deer Assistant 9527 crackled in Yin Wuwang's mind: "This question... crackle... the original manuscript data is incomplete. I can't determine."
There it was again. Yin Wuwang sighed internally. Broken system, always dropping the ball at critical moments.
"Regardless of where she came from, she exists in this world now." Xie Qingyan stood and walked to the window. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the blinds, casting striped shadows across his face. "We need to find her."
Yin Wuwang watched Xie Qingyan's silhouette by the window. The sunlight traced his jawline and the curve of his neck; the collar of his white shirt was unbuttoned by one.
He quickly looked away, pretending to study the report on the desk, reminding himself to focus on the case. This was work. They were here to repair a collapsed world, not for him to stare at Fuguang like some lovestruck fool.
Focus, he told himself firmly. The case. The mysterious woman. The real killer.
[End of V2_Chapter 13]
Next: Captain Lin walks in—and suddenly that chair is way too close.