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Kapitel 12

"Yes, there's someone else behind you. Have you offended anyone? Perhaps this serves as some kind of warning."

"Warning?" He Xi repeated the two words in a very low voice. She looked up, saw my questioning gaze, and slowly shook her head.

I recalled her unusual enthusiasm for Cheng Weiping.

"Be careful when you go out alone these next few days," I said. "I'll pick you up tomorrow morning."

"No need. You should go to a hospital to get it bandaged up." He Xi looked at my forehead, and I quickly reached out and wiped away a streak of blood.

The next day, I wore a hat to cover the gauze on my head and went to Ruijin Hotel to pick up He Xi. I could estimate when she would leave the hotel based on her usual arrival time at Xinjingyuan, and when I knocked on the door, she didn't look surprised. To be sure, her facial expression was always calm, and very few things could move her.

After that, the daily pick-up and drop-off became an unspoken agreement, and we would run into each other again at the bar that night. To be honest, I was completely captivated by her. She's so smart, she must have noticed. But I was always mentally exhausted, unable to muster enough energy to confess to her.

Let's wait a few more days. The situation in Xinjingyuan is improving, and the tension I was feeling, which had been so high I was practically cutting myself, is gradually easing. Although the death toll has reached seventy, enough to shock anyone unaware of the facts, the outbreak is firmly contained within the three buildings and has not spread.

Thirteen people are still living on the basement level. The two buildings where the outbreak first occurred have seen no new infections for two consecutive days, and the infection rate in the third building has also slowed significantly. Currently, there are thirty-eight survivors in those three buildings. Ouyang's spirits are slightly better than before. These past few days, he's spent most of his time visiting residents of Xinjingyuan. I accompanied him to several homes; this was part of the interviews. He specifically went to my house first, offering comfort to my parents and praising me highly. These days, I visit my parents almost every day first, so they know everything is getting better. My mother isn't as worried about me as she was on the first day, but seeing how noticeably thinner I've become, she still couldn't help but give me some advice.

Nothing like that night ever happened again, and I basically knew He Xi's whereabouts; there were no unusual signs. Although I still had doubts about it, I couldn't figure it out. The police couldn't possibly devote a lot of effort to investigating such an attack, so there were no results.

Guo Dong went to another city for closed training some time ago, and the matter I asked him to handle has been delayed. I'm very interested in what kind of training the deputy director of the Special Affairs Department received, and who provided guidance (this novel was first published on M and will be published by Jieli Publishing House this April. Please do not delete if reposting). But Guo Dong couldn't tell me.

That day, I didn't leave Xinjingyuan until evening. I received a text message on my phone from Guo Dong.

"The request has been fulfilled."

He usually calls during the day, but I can't answer them while I'm in Xinjingyuan.

I showed the text message to He Xi, who was sitting next to me.

She stared at those six words for a long time, her lips gradually pursing into a thin line.

“This case is very special; Interpol has already intervened in the investigation,” Guo Dong said.

He Xi and I sat in his police car, heading towards Tilanqiao Prison.

I glanced at He Xi out of the corner of my eye; she looked quite focused.

"The deceased had a large business before his death, with assets worth hundreds of millions, but his relationship with the suspect... oh, he was sentenced to life imprisonment last week, so he should be called a criminal, but his relationship with the suspect had always been quite bad. This father was always dissatisfied with his son's performance and would beat and scold him at the drop of a hat, and Cheng Weiping was a typical playboy, but he couldn't get enough money from his father, so he decided to kill him."

"It doesn't sound like anything special, so why are we having to drag Interpol into this again?"

“Cheng Weiping had a heated argument with his father in the hospital and, in a fit of rage, strangled his father to death on the spot. But before that, he had an attempted murder.”

"Attempted murder?" I asked, puzzled.

"Do you know what a dagger is?" Guo Dong asked me in return.

"A dagger? The kind of dagger used to stab people?" I was completely baffled.

“It’s a murder weapon,” Guo Dong said. “This is an international assassination organization.”

"Could it be that Cheng Weiping contacted this organization to kill his father? This organization sounds very powerful, but how come his father is unharmed and he has to do it himself in the end?" I remembered that he had mentioned Interpol before, and I became suspicious.

"You guessed right, Cheng Weiping did indeed target the dagger. He met some gangsters in a casino in Macau, one of whom told him about the dagger and helped him contact the organization in a very roundabout way. As for why his father wasn't harmed at first, it wasn't because the dagger was unworthy of its name, but because Cheng Weiping didn't have enough money. The thing he hated most about his father was that he was never willing to give him more money."

"Not enough money? Dagger didn't take his order?"

"No, based on what Interpol knows right now, the dagger is made up of many small organizations. The dagger is actually a platform. You can think of it as a platform with various products, some more expensive and some cheaper."

"So he chose the cheapest option?" I said suddenly.

"That's about it. It's self-service."

"Self-service?" I was dumbfounded. "Hiring a hitman and then having self-service?"

"According to Cheng Weiping, the other party provided a poison that would take effect 24 hours after ingestion and cause death in about 72 hours, making it quite insidious for the poisoner. Most importantly, the other party guaranteed that the deceased would die from a rare disease, and no medical institution would be able to detect the poison after death."

"Ah," I exclaimed softly, and He Xi turned her head to look at me as well.

Fan's virus! At this moment, we must all be thinking the same thing.

"What's wrong?" Guo Dong asked.

"Oh, I'm surprised that there is such a silent and undetectable poison, it's like something out of a martial arts novel."

"This poison..." Guo Dong chuckled, "This poison is quite strange. After administering the poison, Cheng Weiping deliberately left Shanghai on a business trip to avoid his father's time of death. He never expected that after returning, Cheng Gen would be even more lively than before taking the poison. Ironically, his father, who originally had a terminal illness, actually recovered after taking his poison."

I recalled his strange expression when I saw him at the hospital that day. It was probably his way of expressing his pent-up anger after learning that Cheng Gen had a terminal illness, which he couldn't vent.

"So, Interpol is now planning to follow this trail to find the dagger?" I said.

"It's not that easy. Since Dagger has managed to bring so many organizations together, they must have already planned how to deal with the exposure of one of them. Interpol has previously dismantled several organizations that were affiliated with Dagger and took on murders on commission, but they couldn't shake Dagger's foundation. This time, they're just trying to cut off another tentacle of Dagger. Even so, it's quite difficult. Cheng Weiping and the organization that gave him the poison contacted each other through a temporarily registered online email address. That email address is now defunct, and our network experts are powerless to help. They've already handed the information over to Interpol. In my opinion, without further clues, we can't catch them with just this information."

"How did the poison end up in Cheng Weiping's hands?" He Xi, who had been silent all along, suddenly asked.

Guo Dong turned and glanced at He Xi, quite approving.

This is a crucial question, but...

"Hey, focus on driving!" I was startled by his action and quickly reminded him.

"The package was sent via email at a specified time and place. The contents were a few milliliters of liquid in a small glass tube, which was buried under the soil in a flowerbed in Changfeng Park. No trace was left behind."

"How much did Cheng Weiping pay?" I didn't ask if it was possible to trace the payment. The other confidentiality measures had been done so successfully that it was impossible for there to be a loophole in this matter.

"Ten thousand US dollars. He borrowed that from his friends; he couldn't afford it himself."

"Not much. They'll probably deduct the cut from the dagger's commission."

"right."

I stroked my slightly stubble-covered chin and pondered, "If you calculate it this way, that organization probably won't actually get much. They must be taking orders globally and also responsible for arranging delivery to the clients. For them to make so little money doing this kind of thing seems..."

"This is something we don't quite understand, but that's exactly what they did, and they successfully stumped us. Oh, now it's Interpol's turn to have a headache. Oh, and another unusual thing is that, in return for the low price, the poison supplier requires the recipient to put the victim's complete medical records and autopsy report from the time of their rescue into that mailbox after the murder is successfully carried out."

"That's quite a strange request. It sounds like they're confirming the effectiveness of the poison." As he said this, a vague feeling swept through his mind, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

"Cheng Weiping certainly didn't have a proper autopsy report to send this time. Instead, he sent an email denouncing the poison they gave him as rubbish. Haha."

"Was it Cheng Weiping who stole the internal organs?" He Xi asked.

She seemed to be casually asking about the case, but I felt it wasn't so simple. It was my intuition; He Xi was particularly interested in a certain aspect of Cheng Weiping's case for some reason she didn't want to tell me. Was that aspect the theft of his internal organs?

She works in medical research, so she might deal with internal organs, like organ transplants, or something else? I was wildly speculating about all sorts of possibilities when Guo Dong was already answering He Xi.

"Cheng Weiping vehemently denied this, saying he hadn't hired anyone to do it and that he wouldn't have known about it unless the police told him. He seemed quite surprised. Of course, this could also be an act."

"Could they be involved in the black market organ trade?" I asked.

"That's possible. After all, Cheng Gen didn't die of illness; on the contrary, his internal organs were in very good condition before he died. But..."

“But even if he’s healthy, he’s still an old man. He’s taking the same risks anyway. Why not steal the organs of those who died in their twenties or thirties? That way, he could sell them for more money,” He Xi interjected.

“Yes,” Guo Dong admitted, “That’s a point of suspicion. In addition, the criminal investigator in charge of this case has a bold deduction: judging from the fact that they asked Cheng Weiping to provide medical records and autopsy reports, the poison supplier is quite concerned about the efficacy of the drug, so it is also possible that they were the ones who did it. But if that’s the case, there must be a reason that we can’t guess that makes them so concerned about it. Oh, by the way, the hospital’s surveillance video may have captured the person who stole the internal organs.”

"Oh?" He Xi and I exclaimed in surprise at the same time.

"It was captured by the surveillance camera in the outpatient hall at around 8:30 in the morning. There was a suspicious person wearing a hooded trench coat. You know, it was still very hot at that time. He was walking towards the exit with his head down, carrying two square suitcases that looked very much like boxes specifically used for storing human organs. Unfortunately, his face couldn't be identified in the video. But a hospital cleaner was walking next to him at the time, but he couldn't remember what the man in the trench coat looked like afterward."

As Guo Dong said this, he had already driven the police car into Tilanqiao Prison and parked it. He turned off the engine, checked his watch, and said to us, "Get out of the car. Cheng Weiping should already be waiting in the visiting room."

6. The Probability of Destruction - The First Game

Cheng Weiping, dressed in an oversized blue and white prison uniform, slumped in a chair with his obese body. Hearing us enter, he looked up and peered through the glass, his expression dejected and lifeless.

He looked at He Xi, slightly moved by her beauty, then glanced at me, his expression puzzled, before lowering his head again. I guessed he didn't remember me, which was why he was wondering why two complete strangers wanted to see him. Guo Dong didn't follow us in, but whether he was watching the surveillance footage was unclear.

"Do you remember me? The reporter who interviewed your father. I accidentally let it slip that he had a terminal illness." He Xi and I sat down opposite him, and I spoke first.

Cheng Weiping suddenly looked up: "It's you."

He still harbored resentment. If he had known earlier that Cheng Gen had a terminal illness, he would not have tried to kill him, which led to the current situation.

"What, you want to interview me? To interview me about how I strangled my own father to death?" he said slowly, with a sense of despair and resignation.

"Oh...no." I turned to look at He Xi. She was the one who wanted to come. I didn't have anything to say to this fat man.

“You didn’t notice, but I’ve been feeling very heavy-hearted these past few days.” Cheng Weiping apologized instead. “It’s okay, ask away. I’ll answer whatever I know. I did something unforgivable, and I’m repenting every day.”

Why was he so cooperative? He was even quite polite. I immediately understood why. He was currently sentenced to life imprisonment, but good behavior could lead to a reduced sentence, and he could be released within twenty years. Wouldn't his father's inheritance still be his then? Of course, he had to "reform himself properly."

“Mr. Cheng, hello. Actually, I wanted to see you. I work at Heller International, you may not have heard of it. It's a medical institution, and I do research in this area. I'm very interested in your father's sudden recovery from Hainig's disease. We've already learned some details about your case from the police, and we now have a hypothesis: your father may have recovered by taking the special drug you provided…”

Cheng Weiping's initially polite demeanor changed upon hearing the last sentence. His eyes bulged, his plump lips parted, his facial muscles began to twitch, and his expression grew increasingly strange.

"In fact, that kind of drug could be fatal to a normal person, but it is a great blessing for patients with Heinrich's disease."

He Xi's words shattered Cheng Weiping's carefully maintained composure. His hand had somehow moved to his head, tearing at his hair, as if he'd completely forgotten our presence, muttering to himself, "Damn it, just as I guessed, damn it, damn it all..."

After he calmed down a bit, He Xi asked again, "This is just our guess. Can you tell me if you noticed anything unusual about him after you went back, especially in terms of his mental state?"

"What's wrong? He's cursing me much more fiercely than before. Heaven knows how he can have such energy. For him, cursing me is the best entertainment," Cheng Weiping said, looking dejected.

"So you're saying he's in better spirits than before? Do you think he's excited?"

"Excited?" Cheng Weiping looked on with a look of recollection: "He was more agitated than before when he was cursing me, otherwise I wouldn't have lost my temper and lunged at him to grab his neck. At that time, I just wanted him to shut up, shut up!" Cheng Weiping sighed and calmed himself down again: "So, he was a bit excited."

"But why did you hire someone to remove his internal organs? Wasn't it satisfying enough that he died like that?" He Xi asked softly.

I frowned. Guo Dong had already said it wasn't Cheng Weiping, so why was she still asking?

Cheng Weiping shook his head and said, "It wasn't me, it really wasn't me. I had absolutely no knowledge of this matter."

"So, can you think of anyone who would do such a thing?"

Cheng Weiping shook his head again: "I can't imagine what the police would do."

"Do you know someone named..." He Xi stopped abruptly halfway through her sentence. She took a photo out of her pocket and showed it to Cheng Weiping.

Have you seen that person on the far right?

Cheng Weiping looked at it carefully for a few moments, then shook his head again: "Never seen it before."

A barely audible sigh escaped He Xi's lips. For a moment, she seemed extremely disappointed. Then, ignoring my questioning expression, she put the photo away without any intention of showing it to me.

I only caught a glimpse of it; it was a group photo of three people. The woman in the middle was He Xi, the man on the right's face was not clearly visible, and the one on the left seemed to be Rembrandt!

"Is there anything else you want to ask?" He Xi turned her head and asked me.

I shook my head.

"That's settled then, thank you," she said to Cheng Weiping.

As we walked out of the visiting room, Guo Dong patted my shoulder and leaned close to my ear to ask, "What's that photo?"

He was indeed watching from the monitoring room the whole time.

"I don't know, and I really want to find out," I replied bitterly.