A certain night in 2005—a late night that ought to be remembered forever. It was the beginning of the whole story.

It was supposed to be a simple, heartwarming tale: a doctor, finishing his night shift during a torrential downpour, offering a ride to a stranded mother and daughter by the road. Yet, no one could have ever imagined that this helpful, warm, and considerate doctor had a second, completely different face.

"After more than seven months of investigation, our city’s police force has cracked a massive drug trafficking case. A total of 98 drug users and dealers, including Myanmar nationals, were arrested, and 60 kilograms of Ketamine and Crystal Meth were seized. Simultaneously, authorities severed a drug trafficking pipeline that manufactured narcotics in Myanmar and smuggled them through Caiyun City into Jianghu City."

The broadcast abruptly transitioned. The anchorwoman's face vanished, replaced by chaotic footage of the arrest. Bags of white powder were exposed to the viewers, but what drew the eye even more was the large crowd of drug users and dealers squatting on the ground, hands clasped behind their heads, their faces heavily blurred by thick mosaics.

Accompanied by the anchor’s voiceover, the arrest montage quickly ended. However, the screen did not return to the studio; instead, it cut to a middle-aged officer in a police uniform.

The officer frowned. The deep furrows between his brows only stressed on his solemn expression.

"Following the arrest of the principal offender, our city's police immediately launched an overnight interrogation. The interrogation revealed that this syndicate is closely tied to the vicious murder that occurred recently on Jiangning East Road Pedestrian Street. One of the victims in that murder was a key expert on our city's Criminal Investigation Division task force, which is why the case has garnered immense attention and widespread discussion among our citizens.

As the public is aware, the suspect in that murder, Li, fled the scene in his vehicle after killing people in broad daylight. Within three short hours of the incident, by tracing his vehicle's trajectory, the police locked onto his hideout.

However, when riot police took forced action and breached the premises, they found the suspect dead inside due to a massive intravenous overdose of narcotics.

The police have now verified that the drugs Li used for injection were supplied by the trafficking syndicate dismantled today. Joint investigations by forensic and interdepartmental experts have also confirmed that Li’s daylight killing spree was an indiscriminate attack, triggered by hallucinations induced by severe drug addiction."

Upon hearing this, an off-camera field reporter immediately chimed in, "Thank you, Chief Li, for the detailed explanation. I believe our viewers are just as curious as I am: given that our city has always strictly enforced anti-drug campaigns and is recognized as a national model city for narcotics control, how could such a massive drug syndicate with so many members establish a foothold right here in Jianghu City?"

In that moment, the question felt particularly sharp.

But the interviewed officer was clearly prepared. He sighed slightly and answered frankly, "During our internal expert task force meetings, some experts deduced that this case differed significantly from typical drug trafficking cases.

"First, this trafficking network was colossal, spanning multiple provinces and even countries. Furthermore, it possessed a strictly compartmentalized mechanism between its upper and lower tiers; no information was ever shared across levels.

"Our police actually received tips from the public early on and spent years conducting preliminary work. We cast our net over seven months ago, biding our time to catch them all in one fell swoop.

"Of course, after the principal offender was brought to justice, the experts' theories were further validated.

"In the drug cases our city typically cracks, the main culprits mostly hail from other provinces. But the mastermind behind this syndicate was a local who intimately understood the area. He possessed extremely high counter-reconnaissance skills and was highly educated.

"He even held a highly respectable job as a department director at a renowned local children's hospital. He was what ordinary folks would call an outstanding young talent. This social standing provided powerful cover for his crimes..."

As Chief Li described the mastermind, a photo of a doctor in his work uniform—his eyes obscured by a mosaic—was magnified in the lower-right corner of the screen.

This news not only sent shockwaves through Jianghu City's medical circles but also caused a public uproar.

The next day, the front-page headlines of both television and print media were remarkably uniform.

News professionals were fueled by high-spirited zeal. They were either tracing and reviewing the entire timeline of the Jianghu City downtown massacre or fiercely condemning the "beast in human clothing"—the hypocritical pediatric director.

Under the intense scrutiny of the entire nation and the media, the drug case—dubbed with sensational headlines like The Super Drug Lord Behind the Doctor's Mask and The Ultimate Two-Faced Man! Pediatric Director Revealed as Transnational Drug Lord—saw its leader, a man surnamed An, officially executed a mere three months after his arrest.

Compared to the usual two-to-three-year span for ordinary death penalty cases, this lightning-fast execution was lauded by Jianghu City media as a milestone representing the "progress of Jianghu City's legal system."

The sheer speed of cracking the case, the massive quantity of seized drugs, and the high efficiency of the execution temporarily became a tale of glory within Jianghu City's entire law enforcement system.

It was a weekday morning. Women who had just finished grocery shopping happened to bump into each other in the stairwell, so they walked up together. As they climbed the stairs, they chattered away, gossiping about trivial family matters, yet managing to generate the righteous, noisy fervor of foreign parliament members debating politics.

As they talked, one housewife reached her door. Smiling, she dug for her keys to open it.

Suddenly, a sharp-eyed woman winked at the group. Following her gaze, the stairwell—which just a moment ago had been chirping like an overturned sparrow's nest—instantly fell dead silent.

The woman looking for her keys, noticing the sudden silence, kept digging through her bag while loudly inviting everyone inside to sit for a while. The group of women caught on immediately, chiming in with awkward smiles of agreement as they followed her into the apartment.

Further down the stairs, another woman had been walking quietly behind them. She clearly knew she wasn't welcome in this middle-aged housewives' circle. Head bowed deeply, she continued up the stairs alone with small steps, without uttering a single word.

The open door shut with a heavy thud.

Behind the door, the women huddled together again, their faces bearing the caution of whispering secrets.

"Hey, did you all see her just now?"
"How could we not? But why didn't she greet anyone?"
"Exactly. Trailing right behind us without making a sound... scared me half to death."
"Oh, please, even if she did say hello, who among you would have the guts to answer her?"
"True. I heard that when she goes to the market now, nobody even wants to sell vegetables to her. Tsk, what a sin."

The woman who had opened the door still clutched her keys, her face pale with lingering fear. "Can you believe we lived in the same building as Dr. An’s family for all these years without ever noticing he was a major drug lord? Sigh! This is the kind of sin that gets your head chopped off. He always looked so refined! To think he could do something like that! You really can know a person's face but never their heart!"

Her words instantly struck a chord with the other women.

A well-dressed doctor next door turning out to be the head of a transnational drug ring—this was a plot twist that wouldn't even appear in the romance novels these middle-aged housewives read. The housewives, usually starved for topics, were clearly unwilling to let the conversation end there.

Thus, the woman who had winked at everyone earlier leaned forward mysteriously, the corners of her mouth twitching down as she lowered her voice: "It's one thing for us outsiders to be in the dark, but do you really think his wife, who shared a bed with him for so many years, had absolutely no idea her husband was dealing drugs?"

It was a rhetorical question perfectly crafted to spark debate, with a clear insinuation already baked in.

Exactly as intended, these friendly, worldly, yet fiercely judgmental women plunged into a heated, half-hour discussion.

It wasn't until one of them checked her watch—"Oh my, look at the time, I need to go cook!"—that the impromptu stairwell roundtable finally adjourned.

The cold midnight wind blew through a cracked window. Inside the dim room, the lingering heat from the radiator was swept up by the chilling winter drafts, leaving behind a bone-piercing cold.

Outside, a bright, pristine moon hung perfectly against the pitch-black sky.

Its golden moonlight gently and impartially blanketed every corner of Jianghu City's dark night.

In this silent night, presided over by the moon's justice, a haggard, newly widowed woman sat by the window.

Her hair was a mess, her face ghostly pale. Her almond-shaped eyes were bloodshot, and her pearl-toned face wore the numbness of someone who had cried all her tears.

She stared blankly at the letter in her hand, just staring at it. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered to her anymore, save for the hastily scribbled letter before her.

She sat alone in the room—though perhaps "alone" wasn't entirely accurate, as a white porcelain urn rested on the nightstand, containing her husband.

A letter, a white porcelain urn, and this small but once perfectly happy home.

Yes, this was everything her husband—the ruthless, murderous drug lord portrayed by the outside world—had left her.

Since the incident, she rarely went out.

Her last outing was to attend the trial where her husband's crimes and death sentence were announced. Sitting in the public gallery, she cried and questioned every piece of evidence, but no one listened. She was thrown out of the courtroom by bailiffs like a madwoman.

Today's rare excursion was to visit the execution bureau to collect her husband's ashes and belongings.

"Belongings" was a generous term; there was only a letter and an urn bearing her husband's name.

Being a proper intellectual, she had no way of asking whether other death row inmates were also granted so pitifully little proof that they had ever lived.

The words on the letter were few, the handwriting messy. Perhaps due to a lack of time, or perhaps the writer had been too emotional. Or perhaps it was because of his profession.

He was a doctor.

It is a profession where one is forever forgiven for terrible handwriting.

Using that doctor's scrawl, he had written a final testament of exactly ninety-nine words.

The woman read it over and over, studying it endlessly. Her focus far surpassed the days when she used to read the love letters he wrote to her.

Her voice was hoarse from crying all night. As she read, the sounds rolling in her throat were like stifled whimpers, as if someone were strangling her.

"My dear wife, Lin Shu. Right now, how I wish I could finish telling our son that beautiful fairy tale. The ending of that tale is: the little white rabbit hiding in the chimney-less thatched hut eventually found the ancient tree. He obtained everything related to happiness and became king of the forest. I hope you will remember this story forever. Forgive me, I'm sorry."

The woman read and recited.

She was like a small boat lost in eternal fog. The truth was the enchanting, distant song of a siren drifting through the mist—seductive, yet fraught with peril.

She was like a helpless moth fluttering its wings. The truth was a fiercely burning flame, passionately and brightly beckoning to her.

A husband who had always been warm-hearted and righteous, a pediatrician who, despite occasional complaints, was always dedicated to his work—how could he be the mastermind controlling a massive drug network?!

But, was it true?

If it was true, why did she, the person who shared his bed, know absolutely nothing about it?

Had he hidden it too well? But they had started dating in college and married shortly after graduation. Over more than a decade together, how could he have constantly deceived her ever-watchful, loving eyes?

But, if it was false.

Then why did he confess?

Bearing countless doubts and questions, this bizarre suicide note became her only lifeline for answers. Thus, she recited it, copied it, and pondered it over and over.

Gradually, she began to wonder if she had lost her mind.

Did her husband really leave her this strange letter? Could this all be a hallucination triggered by the severe shock she had endured?

Suddenly, all the woman's movements stopped.

A realization flashed through her mind like lightning. She frantically grabbed a pen from the desk and scribbled a few strokes on her palm. Then, she stared blankly at her palm, the ink still wet.

From her already dried eyes, a string of scalding tears spilled over.

I knew it, I knew it! she screamed silently in her heart.

She threw herself helplessly toward the white porcelain urn on the nightstand. Just as she used to bury herself in her husband's chest whenever she felt wronged.

The tears of vindication now arrived with ferocious intensity, streaming heavily down the face of a woman willing to sacrifice everything for the truth.

This was the last time she would shed tears—for her dead husband, and for justice.

The sound of a heavy object plummeting from a high altitude caused residents across the complex to turn on their lights in the dead of night. It smashed the downstairs neighbor's awning and the community's newly planted flowerbed; perhaps it had destroyed even more, though no one could yet know.

The wind blew through the wide-open window, rustling the two letters left on the desk.

One was newly written, the handwriting elegant, still stained with the woman's undried tears.

Justice does not lie in the hearts of the people, but in the palms of the powerful.
The truth does not triumph; instead, the triumph becomes the truth.
Son, we love you. I hope you can be more clear-headed than we were.
In this life, there is no need to be kind.

A mother, having given up on herself out of rage and helplessness, wrote these four short lines through her tears.

In this sleepless night, they would transform into an eternal nightmare, accompanying a tragic young boy through his long, long life.

I will be updating daily for now~ There is quite a heavy focus on the cases in the early parts of this story, and the romance (and steamy) arc kicks off around Chapter 25. However, I genuinely hope you all enjoy the cases too!

It's been five or six years since I last wrote a serialized story! I'm so excited and nervous! Thank you all for your support! Please leave comments! Please bookmark (both the author and the story), and please interact with me in any way you can!

After struggling to decide for a while, I finally chose to start serializing a modern story first. I promise I won't drop this, and I will basically be updating daily.

Additionally, this modern criminal investigation genre is a theme I haven't tried before. I hope you all enjoy the read!

P.S.
The Top and Bottom make their first appearance in Chapter 3~