Judge of Souls - Chapter 102

Jiang Feng asked, “So why did you call us over? What exactly do you want to question us about?”

“You two really have no self-awareness at all. Let me give you a heads up – think carefully in the car about how you’re going to explain this,” Officer Ye said. “You helped a man report to the police yesterday, right? Two people died in that residential complex last night.”

Zhang Yangyang was stunned. “What? That man wouldn’t say we were the ones who killed them, would he?! Where’s his conscience!”

Officer Ye clicked his tongue. “That’s enough from you. The first call we received was your police report, even faster than the pharmacy clerk’s call. But the location showed you were near A University campus, several streets away. How did you manage to teleport there, know he was going to call the police, and then report it for him?”

Zhang Yangyang fell silent for a moment, then tentatively asked, “For this kind of thing… can I say it was telepathy?”

“What do you think?” Officer Ye said. “My superior is handling this case. You’d better have some idea of what you’re dealing with.”

Zhang Yangyang said cheekily, “Right now my heart is full of West Lake’s tears – there’s no room to plant any more trees.”

Officer Ye raised his hand as if to hit him, and Zhang Yangyang ducked away with his head covered.

Officer Ye turned to Jiang Feng and asked, “What were you doing taking him there?”

Jiang Feng replied, “I wanted to help change his luck.”

Officer Ye said with complete disdain, “Give me a break. You’re going to change his luck? With your bad luck transferring to more bad luck – it’s all just pointless fussing.”

Jiang Feng said nothing. Zhang Yangyang covered Jiang Feng’s chest and said, “That really stabbed my buddy’sheart.”

Officer Ye seemed to have been upset about something somewhere, as he was particularly sharp-tongued today.

“Look at you two – face reality. Negative times negative equals positive, but you two are just adding up. You’ve gone off the negative scale.”

“Whether we’ve gone off the scale or not, the key is still up to you guys,” Zhang Yangyang said. “Didn’t you just say it was nothing?”

Officer Ye replied, “I know you two aren’t guilty of anything, but whether you’ll have trouble is another matter I don’t know about. However, right now it’s just a summons – at most twenty-four hours and they’ll let you go.”

Zhang Yangyang felt relieved. “Good thing I don’t have class this morning.”

….

Half an hour later, the car stopped. Officer Ye called for the two to go inside and led them separately to different closed rooms.

After a moment, Officer Ye followed behind someone and together they entered Zhang Yangyang’s interrogation room.

It was a woman who looked quite capable – short, neat hair, sharp eyes, unsmiling. She wore a suit with one button left undone on her shirt. Officer Ye sat down in the chair beside her.

Deng Bian said, “You don’t need to follow me in here.”

“I’m watching over him,” Officer Ye said. “I’ll maintain absolute neutrality and just observe.”

Deng Bian: “If you want to observe, you can listen from outside.”

Officer Ye squeezed his eyebrows together. “I need to give them strength, right?”

Zhang Yangyang nodded. “Right. He’s my spiritual pillar.”

Deng Bian stopped paying attention to him, crossed her arms and said, “Two people died in XX residential complex yesterday.”

Zhang Yangyang felt uncomfortable under her gaze and said, “Actually, I don’t know. I just knew someone needed help, so I made the police call. I’m helpful by nature.”

Deng Bian: “You were at A University campus at the time, right? How could you simultaneously know that a murder case occurred at XX residential complex? Unless you yourself have a significant connection to the case.”

“Can I remain silent?” Zhang Yangyang suddenly had a flash of inspiration, his gaze shifting back and forth between the two. “Hey, that’s right – I have the right to remain silent, don’t I? That’s how they always do it on TV.”

Officer Ye desperately covered his eyes.

Deng Bian asked suspiciously, “Did you teach him that?”

Officer Ye shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t.”

“What is all this? I really don’t know! I don’t even know how to answer you,” Zhang Yangyang said. “Um, why don’t you ask Jiang Feng first? We have twenty-four hours anyway, right? I can wait for you!”

Deng Bian curled her lip, obviously not expecting much from this unreliable guy, and simply picked up her things and left.

The two then went to Jiang Feng’s side.

Jiang Feng was obviously much calmer, and not only that, he had a kind of leisurely feeling.

As Deng Bian looked at him sitting across from her, their eyes met, and she vaguely felt that he was examining her from a higher position, which made her inexplicably uncomfortable.

Deng Bian was the first to look away and said, “You’re just like your friend – saying you don’t know anything.”

“I do know,” Jiang Feng said. “Last night he rushed out from inside the residential complex shouting for help, so Zhang Yangyang helped him report to the police.”

“Where did you report it from?”

“Home.”

“A University?”

“Yes.”

Jiang Feng was straightforward, but Deng Bian seemed even angrier.

“What I hate the most are frauds like you—those flashy, swindling charlatans,” she said, slapping the table with one hand while turning to look at Officer Ye. “As a police officer, you’re friends with people like this, even revealing police information to cover for him. Do you have any professional ethics?”

Officer Ye touched his chin and made a confused “hmm” sound, channeling Zhang Yangyang for a moment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jiang Feng said, “A friend of mine saw him run out from the complex shouting for help and told me about it, so I helped report to the police.”

Deng Bian: “Which friend? Give me his name.”

Jiang Feng: “Who he is doesn’t matter. Last night, since you know we were at A University campus, that proves this matter has nothing to do with us. You’re treating us as suspects just because we reported the case – that’s not reasonable. I don’t have to answer your questions.”

Officer Ye covered his mouth with one hand, and seeing the other person look over again, he coughed innocently.

“I’m really just sitting here. Look at me – I’ve consciously kept my mouth shut. Can you two stop looking at me? I’m not the one being summoned right now.”

“No need for you to remind him anymore. Let me tell you,” Deng Bian said. “The person who reported the case last night was named Liu Shan. When he woke up this morning, he said he was being pursued and killed, and the person chasing him was his downstairs neighbor.”

Jiang Feng: “Is he dead?”

“Not dead,” Deng Bian said. “But when we investigated the complex, we discovered that the neighbor’s wife was dead. Stabbed in the chest, with the body still in the house.”

Jiang Feng raised an eyebrow, not understanding what she meant.

“At this point in the testimony, two extremes appeared,” Deng Bian said. “The neighbor admitted that he killed his own wife, but claimed his action was completely in self-defense, accidentally causing death during resistance. He was also afraid and didn’t report to police immediately, but he also didn’t try to escape legal responsibility, so he didn’t dispose of the body. When police came the next day, he confessed everything.”

“He also claimed that Liu Shan conspired with his wife to kill him, but he escaped in the end, so they staged this whole drama. That Liu Shan had always been at odds with him and had verbally abused him many times – the idea that he would pursue and kill him was complete nonsense.”

“One of the two is lying,” Jiang Feng said. “You should interrogate them.”

Deng Bian said, “Both performed very realistically. If they haven’t received special training or have extremely strong psychological qualities, neither should be lying. Moreover, their testimonies both have a certain reasonableness. But at the same time, after analysis, we found that regardless of which possibility is true, neither makes common sense.”

Jiang Feng said disinterestedly, “Oh.”

Deng Bian took out a tablet and brought up a list to show Jiang Feng.

“We investigated carefully today and learned this isn’t the first time deaths have occurred in that complex. This is the resident list. Everyone circled in red has been confirmed dead in the past two months.”

“This woman, fifth-floor resident, was beaten to death by her husband in domestic violence two months ago. This man, third-floor resident, also two months ago, drowned while swimming.”

She continued pulling out photos. “This young man, only twenty-three years old, was beaten to death in an argument while traveling a month and a half ago.”

“This old lady committed suicide by taking sleeping pills last night.”

“She did indeed commit suicide,” Jiang Feng glanced at the floor number and said. “Because of a bottle of juice.”

Officer Ye said confused. “What the hell?”

Deng Bian smiled stiffly. “Heh. You know quite clearly.”

“There’s one more. Charged with a crime of passion by the prosecution,” Deng Bian rubbed her nose bridge. “Anyway, in these two months, too many people in this complex, this building, have had accidents. Due to various incidents, it’s now basically empty.”

Jiang Feng said, “Aren’t these all very natural deaths?”

“They are natural. But when the frequency reaches a certain level, I can’t believe in this naturalness. I’m more inclined to think someone is orchestrating things behind the scenes.”

“Such as?”

“That’s what I need to ask you.”

Jiang Feng: “So what does this have to do with me?”

Deng Bian: “Last night, Liu Shan said he saw two men outside XX residential complex. Appearing and disappearing out of thin air. He gave descriptions of these two people. It’s you two, isn’t it?”

Jiang Feng: “He saw wrong. Is there anything on the surveillance?”

“There’s nothing on surveillance, but his reaction at the time was very real,” Deng Bian said. “He said he’d never seen you two before, but the details he gave matched you two completely. Even if he saw the wrong people, there wouldn’t be such a coincidence, right? And you deliberately helped him report to police. So what was your real motive for reporting?”

Deng Bian continued, “I now suspect Liu Shan has mental problems, which is why he’s talking nonsense. Whether he wanted to kill his neighbor or the neighbor wanted to kill him, I think both are possible – both sides think this way because their minds are not normal.”

Jiang Feng said, “So am I.”

“Brainwashing, hypnosis, deliberate manipulation, inciting crime, copycat criminals trying to achieve the perfect crime – I’ve seen similar cases, but none as malicious as yours,” Deng Bian tapped her fingers on the table. “As far as I know, you’ve been connected to many supernatural cases. It wasn’t easy to get into A University, was it? Why do such things? Do you think playing dumb will let you escape punishment?”

Jiang Feng shrugged. Officer Ye was also somewhat helpless.

Deng Bian was sent from above and had a rather forceful work style. All the supernatural-related cases she had handled were ultimately proven to be fake mysticism. After all, truly supernatural events were still rare. Because of this, she held strong suspicions about similar religious matters.

When science met mysticism, neither could convince the other. From an attitude standpoint, Deng Bian was a good police officer. When she first encountered such things, she too had gone through a long period of worldview collapse.

At this moment, someone entered and handed Deng Bian a file.

Deng Bian opened it and looked, forcefully turned the page, wearing an expression of having seen through everything, looked up and sneered. “This is your file. After verification, your middle and high school attendance records are all fake! The schools have no record of you as a student. Who exactly are you?”

She slammed the table hard and demanded, “Who! Are! You!”