Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 140p2

Chapter 140 p2: The Struggle

Finally, good news came from the Bluetooth headset. The central control room had just notified: Liu Jia had been successfully rescued.

Being notified that she had been rescued meant that she was alive.

Shen Yiyi finally let out a sigh of relief. She shrugged her shoulders and ignored the shotgun in Zhan Luo’s hand.

She was sure that the other would not shoot her.

Without the burden of a hostage, Shen Yiyi was no longer cautious. She circled around and took the initiative to speak. “I’m thirsty. Is there any water?”

Zhan Luo did not let go of his gun. He swayed to the table, poured a glass of boiled water, and handed it over. “The cup is new.”

Shen Yiyi smiled as she took the cup. “You know me so well.”

Zhan Luo took the opportunity to sit down, crossed his legs, and rested the shotgun on his lap, like a master. “Qin Luo likes you so much. I had no choice but to get to know you.”

Since that day when they had bumped into each other in the elevator, the elevator doors had not yet closed when he had left. He had seen the look in Qin Luo’s eyes through the gap. It was a Qin Luo he had never seen before. Her eyes were like they had been waxed, and the solidified candle had been lit by a match, burning and turning into a liquid, her smile overflowing.

If a person’s outline had a color, then the Qin Luo at that time must have been the most solid rainbow color.

Before the elevator doors had closed, Qin Luo’s movements had not changed.

Zhan Luo could not describe that look in Qin Luo’s eyes. It wasn’t until the elevator doors had closed that he had seen himself in the reflection.

The way Qin Luo looked at her was like a mirror. He seemed to have seen the way he looked at Qin Luo.

“She likes alcohol wipes.” Zhan Luo held out his fingers and counted them one by one. “She doesn’t use public utensils, doesn’t accept water droplets, and doesn’t like to shake hands.”

Shen Yiyi did not speak and avoided his gaze with a cold expression.

Zhan Luo was very confident in the information he had. “I also know more.”

He even said with a smile, “I don’t think even Qin Luo knows you better than I do.”

Shen Yiyi knew what he was implying. It was just an old case. She sneered. “If knowing about past cases means knowing each other, then I don’t think anyone knows you better than I do.”

“Really?”

Zhan Luo leaned back in his chair, raised an eyebrow, and looked forward to her next narrative. “Let’s hear it.”

Shen Yiyi did not choose to answer directly, but pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him, their eyes meeting. “Before you joined the reading group, you were an extremely self-deprecating man. You found your confidence in the reading group, but now you want to destroy it with your own hands.”

“Destroy it?”

Zhan Luo’s expression was one of dissatisfaction. He put his hand on the gun and sneered. “The one who wants to destroy the reading group is not me.”

“It is you.”

Shen Yiyi looked straight into his eyes and confronted him coldly. “If it weren’t for you killing so many people and making the reading group the target of public criticism, it would have quietly ended in glory and become a bright history.”

Zhan Luo was unmoved, but his fingertips were pinching the handle of the gun, and his breathing gradually became unstable.

“Qin Luo wants it to quietly disappear from everyone’s sight.”

Seeing this, Shen Yiyi leaned forward and began to point at his chest, continuing to put pressure on him with her tone. “And you… you’ve turned the reading group into a den of murderers, a reason for you to kill with a borrowed knife.”

“Kill with a borrowed knife.”

Zhan Luo’s face was cold. He did not agree with Shen Yiyi’s evaluation. “I didn’t kill with a borrowed knife. I punished them openly and honestly.”

Zhan Luo’s knuckles slowly tightened, and he said in a low voice, “I just let it die a meaningful death before it withered.”

“But you killed someone.”

Shen Yiyi reminded him, “You have no right to take away another’s life. You have no right to judge anyone.”

Zhan Luo hesitated for three seconds and asked back in a slightly cold tone,

“If the criminal who killed your mother were standing in front of you right now.” He asked casually, “What would you do?”

…

Shen Yiyi was silent for a few seconds and shook her head. “I would catch him with my own hands.”

“I don’t believe you.” Zhan Luo was disappointed in Shen Yiyi. “You’re lying.”

Shen Yiyi glared at him, as if she were looking directly at the nightmare that had haunted her childhood. The shadow was sitting opposite her, looking back at her with Zhan Luo. She also wanted to see the limit of her patience, to know if she was lying or not.

But after a few seconds of staring, she felt a little guilty. While reminding the other, Shen Yiyi also warned herself, “These are not reasons for a crime.”

“I’ve looked at your case carefully.”

Zhan Luo was happy that Shen Yiyi finally had an emotional fluctuation. “That killer was a man.”

Zhan Luo’s words were more fatal than a gun muzzle, and they even captured Shen Yiyi’s attention. She had a hard time detaching herself from the criminal. The person opposite her was a double image.

She knew that a criminal’s view of their own kind was often more accurate, so she wanted to hear him continue.

But Zhan Luo also paused.

“Speak?!” Shen Yiyi said.

Zhan Luo smiled. He looked down and played with the gun in his hand, his fingers bouncing on the smooth iron. He said unhurriedly, “I’ve also seen your mother’s stage play. She was a very elegant dancer.”

“On the stage, she was very confident and charming, like an elegant swan.” His fingertips imitated the steps of a ballet, and he hummed a melody under his breath. “It’s a pity you don’t dare to look.”

When he looked up, Zhan Luo had a disappointed look on his face. “It’s a pity you don’t have the courage to face your mother’s past. You’ve never dared to watch her stage play recordings.”

What was it like?

Shen Yiyi was completely taken away by her thoughts. The shadow opposite her began to fluctuate, its shape constantly changing, from small to large, from fat to thin. She seemed to be filtering through ten thousand possibilities. Even the shadows of Qin Luo and her father flashed before her eyes.

“Alright, I won’t tease you anymore.” Zhan Luo shrugged his shoulders, proud that he had gained the upper hand in this round, and had fought her to a draw. “The comeback show that your mother performed before she died, she also performed it in Paris. She was wearing a very gorgeous red dress.”

A red dress.

Yes, Shen Yiyi had an impression. Her mother had indeed shown her her performance costume at home. It was indeed a bright Chinese red.

But so what?

Zhan Luo said, “That man hated red.”

Shen Yiyi looked at him blankly.

Zhan Luo had read a few reports. It was not difficult to find newspapers from the nineties, but at that time, the newspapers were not yet in color, and the black and white pictures could not even be seen in perspective.

But at that time, the news dared to write anything, and did not cover up anything. The sensational assault case was described in a bloody way, to serve as a propaganda to improve security. He had read the content of the report. The woman who had been hacked was had died of excessive blood loss. She had been hacked several times but not fatally, and after she had died, her whole body had been smeared with blood. Zhan Luo had imagined the criminal’s clumsy actions at that time and had once thought that the other was a fool.

“This kind of criminal.” Zhan Luo sneered. “He doesn’t dare to kill men. Men will make him afraid.”

“Shen Yiyi!!” Piao Zheng was shouting her name in his headset, reminding his own police officer not to be pulled by the criminal’s thoughts, so that the negotiation would not be in a predicament. “Don’t talk to him about private matters. Hurry up and get the hostage to talk, and ask him how he killed the person!”

“So?” Shen Yiyi also realized that her thoughts were being led by Zhan Luo and instantly became sober. “So you’re expressing that you dare to kill men?”

“They shouldn’t be alive.”

Zhan Luo stared at Shen Yiyi, his voice low but firm. “That lawyer, that internet celebrity, and Shang Yi, they deserve to die! They represent the entire world that is deaf and dumb, the imbalanced power, a system that only reaps women’s trauma, consumes their suffering, and uses power to silence them.”

“Why can’t I kill?”

He even emphasized, “If the person who killed your mother were standing in front of me, I would not hesitate to do it.”

At this, Zhan Luo was a little excited. His fingers left the stock of the gun, and he waved his arm. “This world is so unfair. The law can’t control them.”

Shen Yiyi looked at him.

Suddenly, it was as if she had seen the deep-seated obsession in his bones.

But this was also good. What she wanted was for Zhan Luo to confess his crime.

“So, you even killed your own father!?” Shen Yiyi said bluntly. “Is he also a small cog in your unfair world?”

Zhan Luo’s expression was slightly stunned, as if he were surprised by this.

Shen Yiyi did not give him room to think and asked three questions in a row.

“Can you get fairness by killing him?”
“Can you get freedom by killing him?”
“Can you only find happiness by killing men?”

Zhan Luo’s legs, which had been naturally crossed, slowly began to tremble slightly. The muscles at the corner of his eyes twitched. The two looked at each other for a long time, and then he suddenly showed a frank smile.

He clapped his hands and expressed his almost-breaking emotions without any concealment.

But Shen Yiyi felt that what was hidden behind his emotions was not relief, but a sense of weightlessness caused by the deep-seated sin. He was laughing dizzily.

Shen Yiyi pointed to the gun in his arms. “This gun was once his hidden toy, a tool to threaten you, and your childhood nightmare.”

Shen Yiyi used a mocking tone to narrate the truth hidden in his violence.

“Patricide was the starting point of your killing sequence.”

The two were at a stalemate.

On the way to the mountain, Shen Yiyi and Piao Zheng had repeatedly confirmed Zhan Wenge’s death. The feedback from the household registration department was that the death certificate had been issued by a local hospital, and the cause of death was a sudden cardiac death. Zhan Wenge had not been hospitalized on the day of his death, but had only appeared in the emergency room registration. The emergency room record was a respiratory arrest. After many rescue attempts had failed, he had died in the hospital.

Shen Yiyi didn’t have to think to know that her father’s death that year was the same as Shang Yi’s case. He had died of a heart disease, but because it was covered up by the victim’s own illness, it had not been noticed by the police. And because the family had sent him to the hospital in time, he had not been suspected by the hospital.

With his father as a guinea pig, Zhan Luo had only become skilled in killing Yanli’s father, and had only then become intensely interested in crime and had constantly looked for targets.

Unfortunately, he seemed to be indulging in his own lies and was unwilling to extricate himself.

Shen Yiyi said, “Our police have contacted your ex.”

—The girl who had not been able to marry him.

Zhan Luo looked down, his gaze briefly out of focus. It was as if the unpleasant memories in his mind were rushing at him. He was crushed under the Five Finger Mountain, with an irresistible shadow on him.

“She said that your father not only had a serious tendency toward violence, but he was also an alcoholic.”

The physical advantage left over from the hunting era had gradually been alienated into a symbol of masculinity in the narrative, and the industrial era had also written about the culture of alcohol and the worship of strong liquor. It was unknown from when, but the post-industrial layoff wave had romanticized frustrated alcoholism and violence, becoming a praise for a life of unfulfilled ambitions. And so it had been passed down from generation to generation, and violence had become a label of masculine charm in the collective subconscious.

Rage is bloodiness, and alcoholism is a painful prodigal son.

It’s just a little bit of drinking. At worst, it’s the collapse of a building.

These shortcomings are not an isolated case for men, but are tacitly approved and condoned by the collective. Even in the news, it’s so common that it doesn’t cause a ripple.

Oh, it’s a tendency toward violence again. Male animals are all like this.

Only the victim cannot accept the silence.

Shen Yiyi said slowly, “The reason why your ex-wife left you was because she was afraid that you would become as terrible as him after you got married.”

The scene of the past argument was suspended in front of his eyes. Zhan Luo saw the desperate himself at that time. Beside him was his mother who had just been beaten, her face pale. And his own eyes were bloodshot. He was kneeling in front of his father, his hands trembling, but he did not dare to move, and he was begging for mercy in a low voice—he was a dog that had been beaten into a corner.

It was this gun.

This gun was on the table. He had held the muzzle to his own head, questioning him why he was out of breath even after running eight hundred meters, asking him why he was crying like a woman.

At twelve, he had really wanted to snatch the gun and kill him.

He had tacitly agreed that violent blood flowed in his body. He not only hated his own gender, but also his father’s gender. Zhan Luo said lightly, “To have a gender that must rely on violence to survive is my shame.”

“I am grateful to Qin Luo.”

Zhan Luo’s hands were on the gun, his eyes like ice. He murmured, “She always encourages people to find and decide their own destiny.”

When he had once again proposed to his father that he did not want to study sports, his father had slapped him hard, saying that his sister could even get into the provincial track and field team, and asked him why he was like a coward.

It was on that day that he had seen the serialized Hitting a Rock in the newspaper.

For the first time, he had been curious about a female writer, so he had searched for the full novel online and had watched her interview.

“First of all, we are individuals, and then we have a gender. No one can regulate the posture of gender growth.” Zhan Luo recalled Qin Luo’s interview at that time and held up the heavy gun. “For this world to be fair, we must first liberate gender.”

The movement was not large, but it was particularly sensitive in this situation.

Shen Yiyi looked at him quietly. Outside the window, the special police’s gun was aimed at his head. The night wind was rising in the mountains, and the cold wind that was blowing in from the broken window was a kind of silent warning.

Piao Zheng’s voice suddenly came through the headset:

“Old Li just called. He said that Little Lu thinks that Zhan Luo has a possibility of committing suicide, and even a possibility of committing suicide on a live stream. You should be careful of his movements.”

Suicide.

Shen Yiyi was not shocked by this judgment.

He had imitated Liu Jia and had sent a message to delay the time to enter the mountain, had persuaded Yanli to film the live stream for him, and had used the live stream game to stall for time. He had not set up an escape route, and he did not care about Liu Jia’s life or death. He had not even used himself as a hostage to make demands on the police, and he could still talk to her calmly.

After her conversation with Li Peipei, Shen Yiyi had had a premonition. The cat-and-mouse game that Zhan Luo and the police had played all night was perhaps just a prelude to the final curtain call.

As he himself had said: withering is a matter of time, but death must have meaning.

Shen Yiyi crossed her legs and kept her body relaxed.

She had come alone with only one purpose: not only to catch him, but also to let him live and be judged.

Zhan Luo did not point the gun at his own head, but put it down again. He said calmly, “The reading group has encouraged many girls, and also many who are lost.”

“She encourages humans with normal thinking.”

Shen Yiyi thought that the conversation between the two of them might be broadcast live, so she couldn’t help but explain for Qin Luo. “It’s not to encourage a… criminal like you.”

She corrected Zhan Luo seriously. “You’re just using the reading group as a shield to make your own violence legal.”

A beast.

Zhan Luo hated this kind of rhetoric.

He stood up, and Shen Yiyi subconsciously stood up with him.

“They only dare to clamor online, to resist in the dark, thinking that as long as they become a collective and shout a slogan, they will have the power to split the rights.” He shook his head and said in a regretful tone, “They are all beautiful screen phantoms.”

“A struggle always has to be paid for with blood.” He said seriously, “Violence does not only belong to men. I am being a pioneer for them, telling them that they can use violence like men.”

Ridiculous.

Anyone who is oppressed by a structure needs the same mirror, to see their tired and ugly appearance when they are struggling, how much they are like each other.

Shen Yiyi really wanted to find a mirror for him to see his own frantic expression.

But before Zhan Luo had personally admitted his crime, she had to remain calm.