Chapter 118: Chapter 116: Lure Him Out
Weiyang Palace.
Su Miaoyi suddenly woke from a dream with a jolt.
The bedroom light was still on, and a video was still playing on her phone.
She raised a hand to block the harsh light, gasping for breath. Her forehead and neck were covered in sweat.
After a moment, she sat up and leaned against the headboard.
She turned off the video on her phone and fiddled with the device, steadying her breathing.
"Ah Xu," Su Miaoyi murmured, recalling the scenes from her dream. The look in her eyes gradually turned cold as a name came to mind. "Huang Haoxu."
She closed her eyes for a second.
’Where did this memory come from? Whose memory is it?’
’But that man had called her Su Miaoyi.’
’Was it her own memory?’
She pressed a hand to her throbbing temples.
"Stop thinking about it. Find Lu Zhishen while you still remember," a voice in her head said.
Su Miaoyi immediately opened her phone and called Lu Zhishen.
Lu Zhishen answered quickly. "A case?"
"Yeah. You’re still awake?"
"Insomnia." Lu Zhishen had been drawing anyway. He switched to a fresh sheet of paper and said, "Go ahead."
Su Miaoyi described the appearance of the man from her dream, the one called "Ah Xu."
Lu Zhishen sketched the portrait and sent it to her.
Su Miaoyi stared at the person in the sketch.
Suppressing the questions in her mind, she called Zhuang Yanzheng.
Lin Yue was still at the municipal bureau. Zhuang Yanzheng had him run the sketch through the system, but there was no match.
Zhuang Yanzheng updated Su Miaoyi on the situation.
Su Miaoyi was silent for a moment before saying, "Maybe... we can lure him out."
"Hm?" Zhuang Yanzheng didn’t understand.
Su Miaoyi stood before the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the night cityscape outside, then at her own reflection on the glass.
She reached out and touched the reflection of her face on the glass.
She didn’t know where this memory had suddenly come from, or why, but she felt she knew Huang Haoxu very well.
"How do we lure him out?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
Su Miaoyi thought for a moment. "I don’t know if it’ll work."
"Tell me."
"The killer is a wanted man right now," Su Miaoyi said. "Let’s spread the story of how he got that scar on his neck."
"You saw a vision of his throat being slit?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
In the time it took for the sketch to be drawn and then run through the system, Zhuang Yanzheng still didn’t know the full extent of what Su Miaoyi had seen.
He only knew the killer’s name was Huang Haoxu.
After a moment’s thought, Su Miaoyi just hummed in agreement.
"Who was trying to kill him?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
Hearing his question, Su Miaoyi fell silent.
She knew with certainty that it wasn’t a vision seen through someone else’s perspective, through someone else’s eyes.
It was something she had dreamed.
What was even clearer was that it wasn’t a dream, but a memory.
She pressed her temples again before answering his question. "I don’t know. All I know is that it was a woman."
Zhuang Yanzheng sensed she was holding something back, but he didn’t press her.
Su Miaoyi recounted the process of how Huang Haoxu’s throat was slit to Zhuang Yanzheng.
"So the woman developed murderous intent during a sparring match?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
"Yes," Su Miaoyi replied.
"If it was a sparring match, it must have been someone from their own group. Internal conflict?" Zhuang Yanzheng mused aloud.
Su Miaoyi pressed her temples and said nothing.
’My head is such a mess right now,’ she thought.
’It’s like a tangled ball of string. I can’t find the end or make any sense of it.’
"Will he really come out if he hears about this?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
"For him, that incident is the black mark of his life. He can’t stand anyone mentioning it," Su Miaoyi explained. "Moreover, he’ll think his superiors have given up on him. Otherwise... this matter would never have been brought up. He might even think his superiors are using this to tell him he might as well be dead. A man with a death sentence hanging over his head will definitely try to eliminate the source of the rumor before he goes down."
"What if he tries to confirm it with his handler?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
"He can’t contact them," Su Miaoyi said. "Unless his superiors contact him first, he has no way of reaching them. We need to move fast."
"Is the throat-slitting incident really that significant to him?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked again.
"Yes. Because later, he killed everyone who knew about it, except for a few people he trusted and couldn’t touch," Su Miaoyi said.
"You saw that in the vision too?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.
His question startled Su Miaoyi.
’She hadn’t seen it.’
’Nor had she dreamed it.’
’This seemed to be her memory.’
’It didn’t feel like someone else’s memory. It felt like her own.’
A ridiculous thought suddenly surfaced in Su Miaoyi’s mind. She swallowed, her fingertips trembling slightly.
Zhuang Yanzheng asked again, "You only saw the vision of their sparring match... How do you seem to know Huang Haoxu so well?"
Su Miaoyi still didn’t say anything.
When she didn’t answer, Zhuang Yanzheng said her name: "Su Miaoyi."
Su Miaoyi let out a slow sigh, pushing down all the questions swirling in her head. "Captain Zhuang, can we not talk about this? I’m even more confused than you are right now."
"Alright," Zhuang Yanzheng agreed readily.
He had only asked because Huang Haoxu was in possession of the wooden beads from Qin Leyan’s bracelet.
It was possible that Huang Haoxu had met Qin Leyan.
And now, Su Miaoyi suddenly knew so much about Huang Haoxu.
One could even say she knew about his superiors.
"Find a place where rumors spread fast and all sorts of information gets jumbled together," Su Miaoyi said.
"Okay."
...
「Two in the morning.」
Menglan Nightclub.
Su Miaoyi felt like the flashing lights inside were going to make her eyes mutate.
The DJ’s voice and the blasting music made her eardrums buzz.
Su Miaoyi ordered a drink, took a sip, and then walked deeper into the club, glass in hand.
Her hair was down, conveniently covering her ears. She wore a single earbud in her left ear.
Zhuang Yanzheng’s voice came through the earbud once again: "Your safety has to be the top priority."
"That’s the twelfth time," Su Miaoyi said.
He had already reminded her twelve times.
The music was so loud that people had to shout to be heard even when they were face-to-face.
Her voice was low, attracting no attention from those around her.
After some discussion, the two had decided that Su Miaoyi would spread the rumor herself.
She felt the chances of success would be much higher if she did it in person.
Zhuang Yanzheng had been staunchly against it, thinking it was too dangerous.
Su Miaoyi insisted on coming, confident she could handle herself.
The two of them went from arguing stubbornly over the phone to arguing stubbornly face-to-face.
In the end, a winner and loser of the stubbornness contest were decided.
The grand champion of stubbornness, Su Miaoyi, was victorious.
"Hey, beautiful. You’re a new face. First time here?" someone suddenly came up to hit on her.
Su Miaoyi glanced at him, then looked him up and down before smiling. "Just got to Jinghai. I’m bored, looking for some fun."
Zhuang Yanzheng sighed heavily through the earbud.
Su Miaoyi ignored him.
The man who’d approached her said, "Perfect. I’m by myself and bored too. Can I buy you a drink, beautiful?"
"Look further in. The one with pink hair, wearing a white sleeveless tank top. That’s my informant," Zhuang Yanzheng said.
Su Miaoyi raised an eyebrow. She looked at the young man in front of her—he was handsome, fair-skinned, and not very old. She smiled and said, "Of course not. It should be my treat."
The young man grinned and raised a hand to wrap around Su Miaoyi’s shoulder.
Su Miaoyi blocked his arm.
The young man froze for a second.
Su Miaoyi glanced into the distance and saw the pink hair. "Sorry, I just spotted someone more interesting. Let’s... talk another time."
With that, she turned and walked away.
Leaving the young man standing there, stunned.
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