Chapter 38 Have a Pot

After talking with Chen Qing, Yan Xue became even more certain of her previous view that this woman had a relatively low probability of being the suspect.

Putting aside factors such as personality and behavioral patterns, the mere points of the time and conditions of the crime made it quite difficult. After communication, Chen Qing told Yan Xue and her companion that ever since the child was born, because her health had never been particularly good, Chen Qing could not rest easy letting anyone else interfere, terrified of any negligence. She had always kept watch by the child's side, handling everything personally, and even when she went out, she made sure to take the child with her, fearing that Shi Shugao would return in her absence and snatch the child away.

Under these circumstances, burdened with a baby just a few months old, Chen Qing would not have been able to pull off that kind of criminal method even if she had three heads and six arms.

However, out of an attitude of caution, they still extracted relevant surveillance footage according to the time frames provided by Chen Qing to take back and verify.

Leaving Chen Qing's residence, the two of them drove back to the urban area. Yan Xue calculated that Kang Ge had finished setting up that burner account for a day and a half, and yesterday through the morning they had been busy with Chen Qing's matter, leaving no time to check on it.

"Is there any reaction from Xin Rui?" she asked Kang Ge somewhat nervously. "Have you logged into that burner account to check?"

"I already added him yesterday using the number on the business card he gave you, and I haven't had time to check today." While driving, Kang Ge pulled his phone out of his overcoat pocket and handed it to Yan Xue. "Log in and check it yourself; the password is your birthday."

"Oh!" Yan Xue instinctively took it, preparing to log into the burner account. When she had entered half the password, she suddenly felt something was a bit off. "How do you know my birthday?"

"Good grief, if I didn't even do that much homework, then my status as a probationary boyfriend would be far too unqualified!" Amused by Yan Xue's slow reaction, Kang Ge chuckled. "Not to mention that we are in the same unit and the same department, and given our kind of line of work, figuring out your birthday is a piece of cake. Putting all that aside, don't we still have an absolutely reliable 'informant'?"

Yan Xue naturally understood who this "informant" would be: "To be honest, back when Xia Qing and Ji Yuan's progress bar was stuck and not moving, were you also acting as an insider and informant for Xia Qing? So now she's basically repaying you for the clues you provided back then?"

"That's hardly necessary. After all, regarding those two back then—despite Ji Yuan acting all quiet and sullen, in the end, the one who took the initiative was still him—I was just acting as a behind-the-scenes cheerleader for Xia Qing, helping her steady her morale and appropriately pressure Ji Yuan a little!" Kang Ge praised himself with an unperturbed expression. "So, Xia Qing and I both have relatively good confidence in each other's judgment, which is why we just helped each other and gave things a little push."

By phrasing it this way, he incidentally praised Yan Xue as well. Yan Xue felt quite pleased inside, but she also felt she should give Kang Ge some preventive advice: "Although I admit your taste is indeed not bad, let's get the ugly words out first. I remember all the advice you gave me, but I might not always be able to hold my temper in every situation. If a day really comes when you encounter a volcanic eruption from me, you'd better be mentally prepared—go ahead and ask your 'informant' in advance or do some homework, just to avoid getting scared out of your wits."

"Youngster, you know nothing about my psychological resilience!" Kang Ge looked unconcerned, raising his index finger and shaking it at Yan Xue.

Smiling, Yan Xue entered the remaining digits and logged into the burner account. The chat list was completely blank, and the contact list was similarly blank. Clearly, Xin Rui had not paid attention to the friend request they sent the previous day.

"Xin Rui didn't add me!" Yan Xue frowned. "I think this burner account of ours looks quite convincing! There's nothing suspicious about it, so how could this happen? Did he notice something and suspect a trap, or is there some other situation?

Under these circumstances, shouldn't I add him again? Adding him again makes us look a bit too eager, right?"

"That's right, there's no need to rush. This kind of thing is fishing to begin with, not dynamite fishing! You can't just blast all the fish hiding at the bottom of the water up into the sky with a bang, right? Fishing is about setting the bait, and the next step is patience and waiting for the right moment.

I'm not just comforting you; my intuition tells me Xin Rui won't let this burner account go. As for why he didn't accept the request immediately, it's possible, as you said, that he might have some situation on his end where he has no time to deal with it. Another possibility is that he might be deliberately leaving you hanging to play a psychological game with you, making you think he is an arrogant artist who is hard to approach!" Kang Ge remained as unflappable as ever. "Our next task right now is to go to the apartment rented by Cong Fangfang and look for the ticket stubs."

With him saying this, Yan Xue's initial anxiety lessened somewhat, and she felt that Kang Ge's perspective made quite a bit of sense.

Arriving once again at the apartment previously rented by Cong Fangfang, they knocked on the door for a long time, but no one answered. Only then did Kang Ge take out the front door key that the landlord had previously obtained from the relocated Li Xiaoquo. He unlocked the main door, and the two of them put on shoe covers and walked inside. The room where Li Xiaoquo had originally lived was completely empty, and it looked like no new tenant had moved in temporarily over the past couple of days.

On the other side, the bedroom door of the male roommate named Wei Guangji was wide open. The room was still piled high with books like a mountain, but there was no one inside. Yan Xue walked over, stood at the doorway, and looked in. Her memory was quite good, and she felt that the things inside this room were exactly the same as last time, even down to their positions, which seemed unchanged.

She had originally expected to run into this person who claimed to hole up at home to work every day, but she ended up missing him. Yan Xue didn't know whether she should feel glad or regretful.

Kang Ge took out the room key to unlock the door to Cong Fangfang's bedroom, tore off the seal that had been pasted over it earlier, and the two of them pushed the door open and walked in. Because no one had been living here and the doors and windows had been kept shut, the air carried a stagnant, stuffy smell.

"It's a good thing Cong Fangfang and Shi Shugao went to see the exhibition and came back to tuck the ticket stubs into a book to show off to others," Yan Xue joked with Kang Ge. "If the person across the hall had gone to see the exhibition with Shi Shugao and ended up tucking the ticket stubs into a book, with a room full of books like that, it really would be enough to give the two of us a headache!"

"More than that! If the tenant from that room and Shi Shugao had gone out for a sweet art exhibition together, not only would the two of us have a headache, but if Chen Qing found out, she'd probably have several headaches!" Kang Ge shook his head with a smile, indicating that the mental image was too wonderful for him to contemplate.

There weren't many books inside Cong Fangfang's room. Yan Xue and Kang Ge searched through them one by one, and it didn't take long before they found those two ticket stubs—the exact ones that had appeared in the screenshot of Chen Qing's phone—tucked inside a collection of essays.