Xie Qingyan didn't respond, but Yin Wuwang sensed the footsteps beside him slow by half a beat.
He Jinsong's storyline had closed. A man who invested five hundred thousand and got burned, who hated Chen Wan for years, who showed up the night of the murder only to be turned away, bought a pack of cigarettes, and went home. Not the killer, not a hero—just an ordinary man ground smooth by life.
Now he knew Chen Wan had been crushed under debt too—and that knowledge dissolved the last of his resentment. He would keep running his repair shop, keep drinking beer and watching TV, keep living the quiet, complete existence of a half-finished character finally written to the end.
Yin Wuwang couldn't quite articulate why, as this thought formed, something faint stirred at the bottom of his chest.
Not compassion. Not sentiment. Something more like the peculiar loneliness of a spectator who doesn't belong to this world.
He Jinsong's fate had been scribbled halfway by an author and then abandoned, patched together only after they'd intervened. But the ending wasn't something Yin Wuwang had given him—the world had grown it on its own. He'd merely provided a push.
And He Jinsong would never know he'd once been a "half-finished character."
"Yin Wuwang."
He turned. Xie Qingyan stood one step behind him, the gray daylight tracing his outline with stark clarity.
"What are you thinking about?"
"Nothing." Yin Wuwang turned back and kept walking toward the car.
Xie Qingyan followed without pressing.
But after a few steps, he said something unexpected.
"It's a good thing—that he's become complete."
Yin Wuwang glanced at him.
"This world just got a little more stable." Xie Qingyan's tone was light, as if stating a simple fact. But Yin Wuwang caught another layer beneath the phrasing—not just task-level the world is more stable, but something more personal. An acknowledgment directed at He Jinsong himself.
Your story has been completed. You're a real person now.
Yin Wuwang didn't respond. He simply eased his pace by half a beat, letting Xie Qingyan move from behind him to beside him.
The two of them walked to the car, shoulder to shoulder.
[In the Car · Main Road]
The car pulled onto the main road.
Yin Wuwang drove one-handed, the fingers of his other hand tapping twice against his knee.
"Dragon Brother," he said.
"Mm." Xie Qingyan leaned back in the passenger seat, flipping through the case folder he'd brought along. "He Jinsong was right. Chen Wan's debt is the underlying logic of this entire case. Dragon Brother is the creditor—and the person who dealt with Chen Wan most closely over the past five years."
"Captain Lin mentioned before that the fastest way to understand the debt situation is to go straight to Dragon Brother." Yin Wuwang recalled. "He told us to wait until the background check on Chen Wan's family was finished first."
"What He Jinsong said today confirms one thing—Chen Wan's debt is connected to his mother." Xie Qingyan closed the folder. "He said 'his mom got into trouble,' and then Chen Wan started disappearing from the bar constantly, and eventually mortgaged it. The timeline lines up."
Yin Wuwang recalled Captain Lin's words on the phone: "The information on his mother's side is more complicated—there are migration records in the household registry."
Chen Wan's mother. Long Wei Trading, with its gambling connections. A debt exceeding ten million yuan.
"We'll contact Captain Lin when we get back," Yin Wuwang said. "See how the family background check is going. Once the information's in, we can arrange a visit to Dragon Brother."
Xie Qingyan nodded.
The car reached an intersection. Red light. Yin Wuwang pressed the brake; the car tilted slightly forward, then steadied.
Across the intersection sat a row of small shops—a breakfast place, a hardware store, a laundry with half its signboard missing. The afternoon street was quiet: a few elderly people sunned themselves outside the hardware store, and an orange cat dozed on top of the laundry's rolling shutter.
Yin Wuwang stared at the cat for two seconds.
Then he said something unrelated to the case.
"Fuguang, have you ever thought about something."
"What?"
"He Jinsong hated Chen Wan for years. But when he heard today that Chen Wan had been crushed under debt too, his first reaction wasn't 'then why didn't you just say so'—it was silence."
Yin Wuwang paused.
"When someone who's hated you for years finds out you were just as miserable as they were, the hatred doesn't disappear—it just suddenly becomes meaningless."
Xie Qingyan looked at the road ahead and said nothing.
The light turned green. Yin Wuwang hit the gas.
He didn't know why he'd said that. Probably because He Jinsong's exhale—that breath deeper and heavier than a sigh—had stirred up things he shouldn't be thinking about during a case.
About hatred. About the void left behind when hatred dissolves.
About three thousand years ago, when he had launched that great war, believing he despised the entire Immortal Sect to the marrow.
Only to learn later that it was never hatred at all.
He severed the thought before it could take root.
"About Dragon Brother—" Xie Qingyan spoke, his tone snapping back to case mode, as if those few seconds of silence hadn't existed. "Captain Lin warned us that this man is shrewd. Before we go, we need all known information prepared. We can't let him turn the tables and extract intel from us."
"Has anyone ever talked this sovereign into giving away information?" Yin Wuwang raised an eyebrow.
Xie Qingyan turned his head to look at him.
"At that relay station, you nearly fell for Old Mo's pitch selling Heavenly Secrets."
"…That doesn't count."
The corner of Xie Qingyan's mouth moved, very faintly—lasting less than a second. But from the passenger seat's direction, Yin Wuwang caught it in his peripheral vision.
That was a smile.
Very shallow, very quick, gone in a flash.
Yin Wuwang kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead, expression perfectly unchanged. But his fingers tightened on the steering wheel for just an instant.
Fuguang smiled. Because of something stupid I said.
He archived this image. Numbered it, categorized it, locked it away in the innermost layer. Filed alongside every other stolen moment he'd secretly saved.
The car turned onto the road leading back to the precinct.
The road ahead stretched straight, flanked by rows of trees reaching into the distance, forming two steady lines beneath the gray sky.
He Jinsong's story was over. Xu Ruolin's suspicion had dropped a tier.
But Chen Wan's story had only just begun to reveal the tip of the iceberg.
Dragon Brother. Ten million yuan. Five years of a young man being ground to dust by debt.
Next stop: Long Teng Tower, eighteenth floor, east side of the city.
[End of V2_Chapter 47]
Next: Dragon Brother Pours Tea Like a Man Who's Already Won the Negotiation