A Battle of Minds in the Interrogation Room
The metal table in the interrogation room was cold and gray; the ceiling lamp highlighted every sharp line of Li Changfeng's pale face. Detective Xia Zhixin aggressively spread out the complex engineering sketches he'd gathered from the hotel room on the table. To a casual observer, they looked like university scribbles, but to Xia, they looked like the plans for a flawless purge project.
The tension in the interrogation room reached its peak as Detective Xia's patience snapped. He snatched one of the equations from the table, almost tearing it, and thrust it close to Li's face. He no longer just suspected, he felt this person was mocking him and the legal system.
"You're telling me fairy tales, Li!" Xia shouted, striking with such force that the sound of metal echoed through the room. "Mathematics doesn't acquit a murderer. Fang Yun was healthy, Yang Chusheng's vehicle had no mechanical problems, and thousands of people had been transported on Wang Feng's balcony until that night." "The fact that they all died 'accidentally' according to your papers isn't statistics, it's a death row list."
Xia leaned closer to Li, lowering his head, and continued in a more threatening tone: "If you're so clever, answer this question: Why do only corrupt names like the Hengtai Group and Wang Feng succumb to this 'physicality'? Even the intentions behind these deaths are enough to send you to the gallows."
Li pointed to one of the equations on the table: "What's shown on this paper isn't a murder plan, it's just a few programmed actions of a curious mind. The police's job is to find the failure; my job is to prove the inevitability of the outcome. You can keep me here, but outside, the screws are still loosening, Detective. And they don't care whether I'm here or not."
Xia Zhixin realized he couldn't breach this rational defense without physical evidence. As he gathered the files to leave, he offered one final warning: "Every perfect equation hides a calculation error." "And I will find that mistake."
The 20 Yuan Room: The Curtain of Mathematics
Returning to his 20 yuan room after the interrogation, Li Changfeng transformed this dilapidated sacred space back into a workspace. Faint neon lights from the street filtered through thin curtains, illuminating files different from the "evidence" in the police's possession. In the corners of these documents were dates dating back days before the events.
For Li, mathematics wasn't about explaining the past, but about selecting parameters to make the future inevitable. But behind these brilliant calculations lay a truth Xia could never grasp: Mathematics was merely a veil for true power.
The Savior's Method: Li didn't write the deaths directly. First, he calculated the physical flaws – a micro-crack in the glass, wear on the brake disc, or tension in the elevator cable. Then, he used the Death Note to trigger these physical imperfections at precisely the necessary moment.
Internal Monologue: "The Note brings death; but mathematics makes death 'reasonable.' Killing someone is a crime; but to foresee the physical variables that lead to death and remain silent is only the observation of a genius."
In Li's eyes, his victims were not ethical beings, but equations of mass and velocity. Wang Feng's entanglement in silk flags as he fell was a mathematical harmony fixed by the Note's power. The "prediction" notes he gave to the police were a method of masking supernatural intervention with the laws of physics.
Li hadn't yet retrieved the black notebook. He meticulously examined every corner of the room, from the smoke detector to the window lock. He knew he was being watched; but as long as he remained behind his complex formulas, the world would see him as a "dangerously intelligent student," and he would continue to establish his dark justice.