Chapter 126: What a Waste If You Don’t Go Into Criminal Investigation

Hearing Ye Qing’s words, Jiang Yan instinctively looked up at him.

Their eyes met across the table.

They silently held each other’s gaze for a few seconds.

In the end, it was Ye Qing who broke eye contact, his face flushing red.

Not only did his cheeks turn red, but even the tips of his ears were burning.

Fortunately, the lighting in the room was dim, which helped conceal it.

Jiang Yan’s gaze remained calm and steady on Ye Qing, but inside, her mind was racing: If he comes with me, will he hold me back or get in the way?

She quickly came to a conclusion: Probably not.

After a brief pause, Jiang Yan finally said, “Mm, that’s fine.”

“How about Sun Jingtao and I come along too?” Su Dai chimed in eagerly. “After all, there’s strength in numbers!”

“I don’t think we should all go down. Right now, our door on the 32nd floor is open, and not many people come up here—they’re wary because they know we’re still around. If we all go downstairs and leave the place empty, someone might take the chance to sneak in again,” Sun Jingtao disagreed with his wife’s suggestion.

“Sneak in again? What do you mean?” Jiang Yan was taken aback.

Sun Jingtao and Su Dai exchanged a glance. “Jiang Yan, do you remember the day you came over for grilled fish?”

“Yeah,” Jiang Yan nodded.

“After we went downstairs that day, did you hear any strange noises at home?”

Jiang Yan shook her head.

She’d spent that whole evening watching anime with headphones on—there was no way she could’ve heard anything outside.

Su Dai gave her a light pat. “Jiang Yan’s place is the farthest from ours, and it was pouring rain outside. How could she have heard anything?”

Sun Jingtao continued, “When we got back upstairs that night, we noticed two odd things: First, our door lock had been tampered with. Normally, it opens easily, but that night it took a lot of effort, and there were faint scratch marks around the keyhole.

Second, from the fire escape to the door of 3203, there were fresh bloodstains that had just dried. Someone must’ve been injured and entered 3203. The blood trail was only on the right side, and there were lots of messy footprints on the floor. It looked like the injured person went in and never came back out.

But there were footprints going both ways, which means a group of people had gone up and down, and there were quite a few of them.

Later, Xiao Ye followed the blood trail and found it started from 2703 and went upstairs. We asked Tian Jiliang—he said the people in 2703 are a middle-aged couple, a single-parent family. The old mother died during the heatwave, and there’s a son at home.”

Listening to Sun Jingtao, Jiang Yan narrowed her eyes slightly.

The hallway hadn’t been cleaned in months.

Even though it had been raining outside, making things damp and reducing dust, there was still some dirt on the floor.

And since there were so few people on the 32nd floor, any footprints left behind were easy to spot.

The hallway was dim even during the day, let alone at night when it was pitch black.

Naturally, no one would expect that footprints left on the floor could be seen by others.

In fact, using footprints and bloodstains to track people is a classic trope in movies and TV shows—most people get it.

Let alone Sun Jingtao and Ye Qing, who are both unusually observant, almost like scouts.

Still, Jiang Yan joked, “You two are so professional and meticulous—it’s a real shame you’re not in criminal investigation.”

“Just scratching the surface, really. Nothing much,” Sun Jingtao replied with a laugh, sneaking a worried glance at Ye Qing out of the corner of his eye.

Ye Qing, hearing Jiang Yan’s praise, just smiled faintly and said nothing.

But in the depths of his eyes, a flicker of pain flashed by.

“Jiang Yan, it’s all thanks to the flashlight you gave us. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have seen any of that,” Su Dai said as she got up to clear the dishes.

Jiang Yan chuckled and handed her own bowl over. “By the way, what time did you guys get back that night?”

Sun Jingtao thought for a moment. “Around midnight. Why?”

Jiang Yan shook her head. “Just curious, that’s all.”

She silently calculated the timeline for the night they had grilled fish.

Her home security system could store footage locally for seven days.

Today was still within that window.

With the timeframe narrowed down, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out what happened on the 32nd floor that night.

But this was something she definitely couldn’t tell the other three.

She’d just have to check it herself.

With that thought, Jiang Yan stood up. “You guys carry on, I’m heading back.”

Sun Jingtao said, “Alright, but be careful when you go downstairs. If anything seems off, come back up right away. Su Dai and I will keep watch by the fire escape—we can see both upstairs and downstairs from there.”

“Yeah, if anything happens, just shout and we’ll grab our weapons and rush down!” Su Dai added, pumping her fist.

Hearing their words, Jiang Yan felt a faint stir of emotion.

It had been a long time since she’d experienced this kind of unspoken understanding—everyone working together, hearts and minds aligned.

But her face showed little expression. She just nodded lightly and said, “Mm,” then turned to Ye Qing:

“How about we go down around one this afternoon? Let’s meet at the door then.”

From what Sun Jingtao and the others had said earlier, Ma Longbiao’s group were all nocturnal.

One o’clock, just after lunch, was probably when they’d be the least alert.

By “door,” she meant the fire escape on the 32nd floor.

“Okay, I’ll walk you out,” Ye Qing nodded, getting up to follow her.

Thanks to Su Dai’s decent cooking, he’d gotten a lot sturdier than before.

He was tall and broad-shouldered.

Jiang Yan walked ahead, with him following behind—like a small mountain shadowing her.

“Jiang Yan, see you this afternoon.” As they reached the door, Ye Qing strode forward to open it for her.

“Mm, see you this afternoon,” Jiang Yan replied, leaving 3204 without looking back.

As she passed 3203, she deliberately glanced at their peephole.

But she didn’t see anything.

Her enhanced vision was good, but it hadn’t turned her into someone with X-ray eyes.

Once she saw Jiang Yan safely enter her apartment, Ye Qing finally closed the door.

“Xiao Ye, what are you looking at?” Sun Jingtao asked with a smile, seeing him standing by the door.

Normally, they’d observe the hallway through the peephole, not by leaving the door wide open.

“Tao-ge, nothing,” Ye Qing replied, pulling his thoughts back.

*

3201.

Jiang Yan went straight to the master bedroom.

She turned on her computer, pulled up the surveillance footage from the night they had grilled fish at Su Dai’s, and dragged the timeline to after she’d returned home.

Soon, she saw footage of Zhou Wei and Wang Jin trying to break into 3204, followed by a group led by a dark, heavyset man entering 3203.

Jiang Yan had never met Ma Longbiao.

But as soon as she saw the man with the scar, she realized who he was.

After that, there was footage of a couple being brought into 3203.

Later, after ten o’clock, Ma Longbiao’s group left 3203.

They had stayed inside for two or three hours.

The middle-aged couple never came out after they went in."