[Cloud City · Apartment · Living Room]
Sometimes Yin Wuwang would wonder what three thousand years actually meant.
Mortals lived no longer than a century. From birth to death, the entirety of their memories fit inside one small skull, like a tape reel that played until it ran out and stopped. He had lived three thousand years. His memories had accumulated to the point where he had to actively forget portions of them, just to keep from being crushed under the weight of all those piled-up images.
He had forgotten many things. Forgotten what it felt like to kill for the first time, forgotten the name of some long-ago deputy general, forgotten which twelve cities had made up the Northern Desolation's Twelve in the year seven hundred.
But some things he had never forgotten for a single second.
Like that snow.
Ten o'clock at night. The apartment was very quiet.
Case files were spread across the living room coffee table—He Jinsong's closure report, Xu Ruolin's consumption records, the tie fiber comparison report, and the email Captain Lin had sent that afternoon.
Captain Lin's email contained a single line: "Chen Wan's mother's records have been processed. Come in tomorrow for a face-to-face briefing."
No details. But the weight of "face-to-face" was not insignificant—if it were just routine background information, Captain Lin would have sent the files directly. Requesting an in-person meeting meant those records contained things that needed to be explained in person.
Yin Wuwang leaned back on the sofa, turning to the last page of He Jinsong's financial records. He had already gone through them twice—not because he'd missed anything, but because half his mind was occupied with something else entirely.
Xie Qingyan emerged from the study.
He had changed into a loose, pale-gray long-sleeve—not the dress shirt from the daytime, but the kind meant for home. The collar hung open and relaxed. His hair hadn't been deliberately arranged; a few strands fell across his forehead.
He was carrying two cups of tea.
He set one on the coffee table in front of Yin Wuwang, then sat down on the other end of the sofa. Not a different sofa—the other end of the same one.
Roughly one person's width between them.
Yin Wuwang picked up the cup and took a sip. Green tea, with sugar. Temperature just right.
"When did you learn to put sugar in tea?" he asked.
"The day you bought the travel mug. It wasn't hard to figure out." Xie Qingyan held his own cup, gaze resting on the files spread across the coffee table.
Yin Wuwang set the cup down without responding.
Fuguang remembered the sugar thing—no. Fuguang remembered that I like sugar in my tea.
Wait. When did I ever say I liked sugar?
He traced it back. That day in Chapter 9, at the convenience store when he'd bought the travel mug, the green tea he'd made for Xie Qingyan had sugar—because Xie Qingyan had said "add sugar." But that was Fuguang's preference, not his own.
His own cup—when he'd been refilling his water in the precinct break room, he'd tossed in a sugar packet without thinking.
He'd assumed no one had seen.
"Your observation skills are too good," Yin Wuwang said, his tone perfectly flat.
Xie Qingyan offered no response. He simply took a sip of his own tea.
The living room lights were half-on—only the floor lamp in the corner was lit, its warm yellow glow hitting the ceiling and diffusing downward, bathing the entire space in something soft and dim. The city nightscape filtered through the translucent curtains, the lights on distant high-rises glimmering like unevenly scattered stars.
A stretch of silence.
Xie Qingyan spoke first.
"After He Jinsong's storyline was repaired, did Little Deer Assistant flag anything?"
Yin Wuwang directed the question inward. Little Deer Assistant 9527 responded promptly: "He Jinsong's character logic has fully closed. World stability in his corresponding zone has improved. However, overall stability remains insufficient—other collapse points continue to generate interference."
"It says the world is a bit more stable," Yin Wuwang relayed faithfully. "But not enough."
"Mm." Xie Qingyan looked toward the window. "There are still two half-finished suspects unresolved. Xu Ruolin is currently a key witness, not a suspect, so she doesn't count. The third one—"
"That patch of fog." Yin Wuwang recalled the image Old Mo had shown them—the third suspect didn't even have facial features.
"Little Deer Assistant warned last time that this one is more unstable than He Jinsong." Xie Qingyan set his cup down. "Random state, no name. If we encounter anyone during the investigation whose behavioral logic is erratic, it could be that half-finished character."
Yin Wuwang leaned back into the sofa, gaze drifting to the ceiling.
"So far, the thing that concerns this sovereign most about this case isn't the half-finished suspects, and it isn't the woman hiding in the shadows."
"What is it?"
"Chen Wan." Yin Wuwang said. "The man is already dead, but every step of the investigation circles back to him. He's the center of every thread. He Jinsong lost five hundred thousand because of him. Xu Ruolin cried over him, fought with him, spent over three hundred thousand because of him. Zhang Yunxiang went to prison because of him. And that woman—spent six months with the sole purpose of making him die."
He paused.
"A dead man, tangling this many living people's fates together. There has to be something buried in this person's life that we still haven't touched."
Xie Qingyan looked at him.
"Captain Lin will tell us tomorrow," he said.
Yin Wuwang gave a low hum of acknowledgment. He knew tomorrow would bring answers—at least about Chen Wan's mother and the source of the debt. But tonight wasn't the time for casework.
The files had been reviewed. The deductions had been organized. All that remained was waiting.
Outside, a car horn sounded faintly from several blocks away, muffled by the glass and the curtains into something that barely registered. The apartment settled around them—two people, one sofa, a coffee table covered in the fragmented life of a dead man.
The floor lamp in the corner emitted a faint hum, like a quiet insect beating its wings somewhere far away.
[End of V2_Chapter 48]
Next: This Sovereign Almost Said Something He Can't Take Back