Xiao Xiao had always loved eating melons. As a gossip-loving bystander, she was very familiar with Chu Huainan's lifestyle.

This handsome capitalist with superior conditions had always been strict and self-disciplined.
Because of this, even a normal social dinner with the opposite sex could be blown out of proportion and categorized as a "romantic scandal."

The young man's aggressive stance and red-rimmed eyes from anger also confirmed Xiao Xiao's previous speculations about their relationship.
But she believed that Chu Huainan—who would specifically come to confront her the very first moment he was misunderstood by his official lover—could absolutely not be a "fishery manager" keeping his feet in two boats.

Amidst the young man's increasingly fierce accusations, she silently lowered her head and carefully re-read the news article that had caused the trouble. She quickly discovered the source of the misunderstanding.

This piece of gossip was indeed published by Li Huanming on January 25th, but the article never stated exactly when the date captured by the camera took place.
It only vaguely used words like "recently" and "not long ago" to describe the timeframe.

"Li Huanming, was this news gathered on the day it was published?"

Asked this question, Li Huanming finally snapped out of the shock of the "pedestrian street body-dumping" case. He lowered his eyes, thought for a moment, and answered honestly, "No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Shen Ting, who hadn't given Chu Huainan a single good look this entire time, had his attention drawn by their conversation.

Having figured out the sequence of events, Xiao Xiao explained, "You really might have misunderstood. The 25th was merely the publication date of the news. This photo wasn't taken on the same day."

"Is that so?" Shen Ting raised his eye corners suspiciously.
Chu Huainan smiled, naturally grabbing the other's hand and rubbing it comfortingly within his own palm. "You see, I told you it was a misunderstanding."
Shen Ting used the opportunity to shoot him another vicious glare.

But this capitalist completely disregarded the presence of others in the room. Sweet, coaxing words came effortlessly to him: "I only want you."

The deep, overflowing tenderness in those peach-blossom eyes sent a wave of severe chills down Shen Ting's spine.
Yet Chu Huainan felt it wasn't enough. Pressing his advantage, a hint of grievance seeped into his helpless expression: "You're always so paranoid. Sometimes, I can't even tell if you lack confidence in me, or if you lack confidence in yourself. Alright, the truth is out now, you're not angry anymore, right?"

As a single dog, Xiao Xiao was caught completely off guard and force-fed a mouthful of piping-hot dog food. In her state of extreme excitement, she didn't even notice that the complexion of Li Huanming, standing next to her, had been quite poor since a moment ago.

Chu Huainan had always had very few scandals. In the past, bold media outlets had commented that the sexual orientation of this super-tycoon, who possessed both wealth and looks, was "a mystery." Who would have thought that today, she and Li Huanming would actually have the honor of witnessing him "publicly come out of the closet."
Xiao Xiao was thrilled beyond words.

Afterward, out of a desire to protect the romance of a minority group, she pulled Li Huanming aside and repeatedly warned him that he absolutely must not tell anyone about what happened today.
Li Huanming nodded absentmindedly.

Xiao Xiao spent the entire morning happily filling in the blanks with her imagination. By the afternoon, both of them actually received red envelopes sent by Yuannan's PR department.

After checking the amount, Xiao Xiao, secretly astonished by the other party's generosity, solemnly swore once again that she would keep her lips sealed about Chu Huainan and that hot-tempered, super-handsome guy!!!
...

"That Li Huanming is probably not the killer."
Just as they got into the car, before Shen Ting even opened his mouth, Chu Huainan had already voiced his thoughts.
But Shen Ting deliberately wanted to play the contrarian. Taking the opportunity while buckling his seatbelt, he finally pulled his hand out from the other's grasp and raised his eyebrow: "You can't judge a book by its cover. In today's world, beasts in human clothing are everywhere. A guy who looks weak and gentle could very well be a psychopathic serial killer."

Chu Huainan, having just been implicitly called a beast in human clothing, pondered for a moment. "With his physique, he's an accomplice at most." He stepped on the brake and pressed the ignition button. The W12 engine let out a low, roaring rumble. "At the very least, he couldn't handle a massive project like dismembering a body by himself."

As if acting on some tacit understanding, Shen Ting was thinking about the exact same thing.

The files showed that this Li Huanming suffered from congenital heart disease. Although he had undergone surgery, he still needed to take medication for the rest of his life. Even though he wasn't short, he was extremely skinny. When he carried the tray of water glasses, the bulging muscles on his upper arms were pitifully thin.

Furthermore, there were only slight signs of a struggle in Chen Feng's house. This proved it was not the primary scene of the murder and dismemberment.
Even if this person managed to knock Chen Feng unconscious while he was off guard, it would be impossible for him to transport an unconscious Chen Feng to another location, murder him, and dismember the body without the help of others.

Moreover, with such powerless arms, it was absolutely impossible for him to independently murder and chop Chen Feng into pieces within such a short timeframe, considering Chen Feng was dumped on the street after being missing for only a day.
And the reason Shen Ting deliberately brought up the murder case in front of Li Huanming just now wasn't merely to further confirm the unnatural expressions on his face. More importantly, they urgently needed to "beat the grass to scare the snake."

The commonality of human emotions dictates that whenever anyone suffers an unexpected fright or feels extreme anxiety, they will unconsciously seek the validation and support of a group.

This is also why the bonds between friends who have gone through hardships together are far more solid than those of ordinary friends. And when people feel wronged, their first instinct is to confide in close family or trusted friends.

Although Li Huanming couldn't have committed the crime alone, he must at least be in the know.
Because both Chu Huainan and Shen Ting could tell that the emaciated man had reached a state of extreme paranoia, seeing threats in every bush and tree.

In other words, as long as this easily startled bird harbored even the slightest bit of suspicion regarding their visit, then Li Huanming—dominated by worry and fear—would inevitably and uncontrollably try to contact his "companion" who also knew the inside story, seeking mental support and comfort.
Next, they simply needed to closely monitor his communications and whereabouts. That deranged killer hiding behind the fog would probably soon reveal their true form under the light.

"Where to? I'll drop you off."
Shen Ting stretched lazily: "Yuehuai."
...

Four days later.

The dim streetlights stretched the shadows of every passerby incredibly long.
The black reflections paved a human shape onto the road—twisted, deformed, and baring its fangs and brandishing its claws. It trailed neither too close nor too far behind its master, like a tailing thief trying to steal a soul.

Today, Li Huanming had worked an extra four hours of overtime.
By the time he left the office, the hands of his watch were pointing between nine and ten. The excuse for the overtime was that a colleague's Samoyed had contracted a skin disease and needed its owner to accompany it to the vet. The easygoing Li Huanming took over the work that the colleague was supposed to finish, using free overtime labor to maintain his title as the "nice guy."

Li Huanming was very thin, but his shoulders were relatively broad. When he walked, his back hunched, and his pace wasn't very fast. In the cold wind, his sunken, pale-blue cheeks looked terrifying—like a skeleton from a midnight ghost story, wrapped in a down jacket, standing by the roadside demanding the lives of pedestrians.

On this chilling spring night, this "skeleton" dragged a thin, sharp shadow, walking forward slowly, step by step.

Li Huanming didn't have much money, and his health was poor. The residential complex he rented in was located in a remote suburb of Jianghu City. This area was filled with "landscape apartments" reclaimed from farmland by hot-headed small developers during the peak of the real estate bubble.

Later, affected by the state's tightening policies, the crazed real estate speculators pessimistically cut their losses. This place turned into a desolate ghost town.

Li Huanming's home in Jianghu was just the most ordinary dark speck among these pitch-black windows. It was also very far from where he worked. Taking the subway required at least an hour and a half. Right now, it was approaching midnight. At this hour, near a complex that was still barren fields not long ago, you couldn't even see a single living soul.

Several thick, ancient trees stretched branches as thick as a child's arm toward the sky. The trunks, which two adults couldn't even wrap their arms around, were thick enough to hide a squad of assassins.

Spring had arrived very late this year. The Spring Festival had passed long ago, but the branches had still not sprouted new buds. Under the pale light of the streetlamps, the withered branches looked like walking sticks wielded by witches in nightmares.

A feral cat was curled up under a tree, dozing. Its half-open eyes emitted two eerie green glints.

A tall, heavily built man walked toward him. He wore a dark blue baseball cap, the gray brim pulled very low.

Li Huanming saw him from a distance, and his hunched back suddenly straightened up a bit.
He thought of that older brother who always kept his back perfectly straight, and remembered the harsh reprimand when he corrected his posture, full of frustration at his lack of ambition: "Li Huanming! Stop hunching your back all the time! Are we inferior to others?!"

Although he didn't dare say it out loud, deep down he always secretly thought: Yes. Poor and sick, even getting registered for a hukou dragged his elder down, forcing him to bow and scrape to those lucky ones in power. How could someone like him not be inferior to others?

There truly was no fairness to speak of in this world.
In different places, even the duration of sunlight varied. Let alone people. Both are humans, both have one life. Some are infinitely noble and precious, while others have a worthless, rotten life. A rotten life that could be bought for a hundred thousand yuan was only fit to be a stinking gun that shoots wherever someone points it, thrown away after use.

Back when he was studying, Li Huanming had also believed the line written in textbooks—"Everyone is equal before the law."
But the reality?

He gave a bitter smile. Money could buy lives, and power could reach the heavens. Otherwise, where did the old saying "Money makes the devil turn the millstone" come from?

The burly man, who had his head down rushing on his way, paused his steps when they brushed past each other.
"Keep walking forward with me, don't turn around!" The owner of the low, hoarse voice had the ferocious eyes of an injured lone wolf.
Li Huanming's body jolted, his bruised-purple lips turning white, but he matched the other's pace without a sliver of hesitation.

"Why did you look for me?"
"A few days ago, Chu Huainan came to our office."
"Did he discover your identity?"
"He shouldn't have..."

The person walking in front didn't walk fast, but his strides were very large. Li Huanming struggled somewhat to keep up. After taking a few quick steps, he hesitated and said, "I can't be sure. But the person who came with him explicitly brought up that case right in front of me..." He lowered his head, his peeling lips stretching into a sorrowful smile. "Perhaps I'm just overthinking it."

"Keep observing. If he really gets suspicious, before he calls the cops, the worst that can happen is I kill one more."

Hearing this, Li Huanming's pale, cyanotic face suddenly flushed bright red: "Brother, if we get discovered..."

"We won't!" The man walking in front spoke with absolute certainty. A flash of unyielding resolve crossed his lone-wolf eyes. Gritting his back molars hard, he said, "If we really get discovered, I did it all. It has nothing to do with you!"

"Brother, why don't we turn ourselves in! Go tell the police! The truth about Dad's death back then..."

"The police? You still dare trust the police?"
"But—"
"No buts! That bunch of useless freeloaders won't necessarily be able to track me down! Over all these years, I've killed more than one person. Weren't they all just classified as missing every single time!? They can't catch me! And it'll be the same this time!"
"Brother!"
"Huanming, Chen Feng deserved to die!"

In the hollow, endless night, the words "deserved to die" sounded like a suddenly plummeting, blurry sigh.

Li Songyuan used his callused hand to touch his younger brother's face.

This half-brother of his was born to their father and a prostitute who wanted to wash her hands in a golden basin and leave her old life behind.
The newborn baby was only the size of a little puppy. His eyes were bright, but his round little face was as purple as an old eggplant from a private farming plot.

When they took him to the hospital, the doctor said the baby had heart disease—a severe illness carried out from the womb. It could be cured, but it would cost a massive amount of money.
The child's mother had no money to go to the hospital when she went into labor. To give birth to this unhealthy child, she died of dystocia. Hardening his heart, their father, Li Guangqiang, abandoned the child who had no money for treatment by the side of the road.
But before he even reached home, his heart filled with regret. When he rushed back, the child was gone.

This was a son of the old Li family! He had his blood flowing through his veins! If he hadn't done drugs, this poor nursing baby definitely wouldn't have been born sick!

A deathly pale Li Guangqiang rushed back home and called for his eldest son, Li Songyuan.
Stepping under the moonlight that scattered like broken silver, the two helplessly searched all along the road, but ultimately couldn't find him.

On their desperate walk home, they bumped into Li Liangzhong holding the swaddled baby.
Li Guangqiang forcefully snatched the peacefully sleeping younger son from him, using his own rough cheek to press against that soft, warm, round little face.

He bet everything, swearing on his life that even if he had to work like a horse or a cow, he absolutely would cure this lost-and-found little baby!

But he was a junkie with no stable job. Where was he going to get such a massive sum of money?
After smoking for a whole night, at the end of his rope amidst a floor covered in cigarette butts, he thought of robbing.

The loving father, willing to sacrifice everything for his sick son, draped himself in the night, put on a mask, and, driven to a dead end, picked up a knife to rob every innocent passerby.
Just as the misfortune brought by ignorance had done to him.

A terrifying misfortune had brutally robbed Li Guangqiang of everything he once had.

He, too, had once believed that heaven rewards the diligent, working desperately hard just to have a better life.

Running the furthest routes, earning more money. To keep his spirits up during long-distance transport runs, out of ignorance and misfortune, he strayed into the devil's claws of drugs. And then, the cunning and ruthless drug demon stripped away his love, his happiness, and even his soul step by step.

Today, he was finally no longer the one being robbed!
Counting the money he had stolen, he kissed the purple-faced son in the swaddle again. Li Guangqiang made up his mind; he decided to fall! To fall into a bad person with no conscience, who relied on robbery to survive!

Even in fairy tales full of goodwill, the hateful, sinister villains always met a bad end.

But bad people aren't born bad.
And a bad person's only mission isn't just committing evil.
He had his sufferings too. He was tortured by life, abandoned by luck, mocked by hardship, and looted entirely by poverty.
Until one day, left with absolutely nothing, he bowed his head to fate, determined to group together with the darkness and perish alongside kindness.
...

In the middle of that same year, Li Guangqiang was imprisoned for robbery and sentenced to five years.

But he was neither afraid nor regretful.
As a robber who needed to lay low during the day and act at night, the forward-thinking father entrusted his infant son, who wasn't even a year old, to his cousin Li Liangzhong.

So that his younger son with a bad heart wouldn't be poked in the spine and gossiped about in the future, he and Li Liangzhong aligned their stories. To the outside world, they both claimed the child was picked up off the roadside by Li Liangzhong.

Li Guangqiang had read some books. He gave the child a name full of hope—Huanming.
He hoped Li Huanming could grow up surrounded by light. To live under the bright, open sun, rather than in the dark nights that could not see the light of day.

Five years later, Li Guangqiang was released from prison. During a gathering with fellow inmates, he smoked a cigarette offered by someone else and once again became a slave to drugs.

After multiple thefts, Li Liangzhong was thoroughly disappointed in him, and the two severed ties.

Unable to find work in the county town, Li Guangqiang gritted his teeth, took his remaining meager funds and his half-grown son Li Songyuan, and boarded a train bound for Jianghu City together.
The bosses in the county town who had seen the world all said Jianghu was a sleepless city, with gold covering the ground. Li Guangqiang decided to be a lone hero and try his luck on that fertile land.

"But murder is illegal."
Li Huanming's low, hoarse, urgent voice pulled Li Songyuan back from his memories. He bared his teeth in a sinister, chilling smile: "Yeah! A life for a life! I killed Chen Feng because those corrupt cops owe our Li family a life!"
"Brother—"
"Shh!" Li Songyuan pressed his lips together and made a silencing gesture.
He noticed an unusual rustling sound behind him. Drawing the dagger hidden at his waist, he narrowed his eyes and walked toward a thick, ancient tree.

"Meow—" A dozing feral cat suddenly darted out from behind the tree.

A cat? Li Songyuan's tightly knit brows relaxed slightly. Sheathing the dagger, he turned back to Li Huanming and said, "Don't overthink it, and don't contact me for the next few days. Take your medicine properly and take care of your health. Also, remember one sentence! I killed the person! It has nothing to do with you!" Saying this, he walked straight past Li Huanming without looking back, vanishing into the deep, black night.

Watching Li Songyuan's back disappear at the intersection, Li Huanming stood lonely under the streetlight for a while longer before walking into the residential complex, going upstairs, and returning to the home where only he lived.

Behind the tree, Shen Ting retracted the foot he had used to gently kick the little cat.

His sudden appearance made a trace of astonishment flash across Chu Huainan's handsome face. Then, his distinctly outlined Cupid's bow lips were dyed with a smile deeper than the night. He silently mouthed to the guarded young man before him: "You're abusing small animals."

Shen Ting glared at him indignantly. Whose fault do you think this is?

This capitalist, who always traveled surrounded by an entourage, clearly didn't know how to conceal himself, yet he just had to play at tailing someone.

The Capitalist, who scores a perfect 100 in sweet talk VS Little Ear, who is a master of tailing and infiltrating, but turns in a blank exam paper when it comes to dating~

See you tomorrow at midnight as usual, cuties!

Fishery manager (渔场管理者): Chinese internet slang for someone who flirts with many people or keeps many romantic options open at once (keeping "fish" in their "pond").

Dog food (狗粮): Slang for public displays of affection (PDA) that single people ("single dogs") are forced to witness.

Coming out of the closet (出柜): Used exactly as it is in English.

Beat the grass to scare the snake (打草惊蛇): An idiom meaning to take action to alert or frighten the enemy, causing them to make a move.

Bird startled by the mere twang of a bow (惊弓之鸟): An idiom describing someone who is badly frightened and easily panicked due to past trauma or guilt.

Wash hands in a golden basin (金盆洗手): A martial arts/underworld idiom meaning to retire from a life of crime or a disreputable profession.

Old eggplant in a private plot (自留地里的老茄子): A highly descriptive rural comparison. The dark purple color of an old eggplant accurately describes the severe cyanosis (blue/purple skin) caused by a serious congenital heart defect.

Heaven rewards the diligent (天道酬勤): A classic Chinese idiom.

Useless freeloaders (吃干饭的废物): Literally "useless trash who only eat plain rice"; people who take up space and resources but do no actual work.

Cupid's bow lips (丘比特弓唇): The double curve of a human upper lip, considered a very attractive facial feature.