Shen Xin took out his phone and pulled up the composite sketch drawn by Zhang Nanhai to compare.

"Captain Chen, this doesn’t look like him."

In Zhang Nanhai’s sketch, the suspect had an oval face, monolids, a small nose, and slightly thin lips.

His hair was a medium-length choppy cut, dyed a sort of golden brown.

But the mug shot of Li Xiaofei in the case file was different.

The contours of his face were sharper. Although he also had monolids, his features were more chiseled, with prominent cheekbones. His hair was a bristly buzz cut.

He looked much fiercer overall, nothing like the ordinary, unremarkable air conveyed by the sketch.

Chen Chao said, "I didn’t recall this person at first. It wasn’t until you mentioned Li Xiaofei that it slowly came back to me."

He picked up Li Xiaofei’s mug shot, thought for a moment, and said, "Whether it’s a match or not, let’s have the witness do a lineup."

Shen Xin nodded, then added, "Captain Chen, a lineup isn’t always accurate, is it?"

There are too many uncontrollable factors when it comes to witness identification.

Take Wang Linhong, for example. He only caught a fleeting glimpse of the person on his way up the mountain, and two and a half years have passed since. It’s hard to say if his memory might be mistaken.

Even if his memory is clear, studies have shown that there’s a high probability of error in eyewitness identifications.

Besides, even if Wang Linhong identifies Li Xiaofei as the young man he saw, we still can’t conclude that Li Xiaofei went up the mountain to commit murder.

He might have just happened to be on the mountain at the time.

So, we still have to investigate his relationship with Guan Hong from other angles.

And the murder weapon.

After two and a half years, a lot of evidence has disappeared. This is going to be really tough.

Chen Chao said, "I know. But at least we can start by confirming if Li Xiaofei is a viable suspect."

With that, he patted Shen Xin on the shoulder. "All right, this is a cold case. Let’s take it one step at a time. At least you’ve already solved Zhu Guishen’s disappearance."

Proving that Zhu Guishen didn’t just disappear but was murdered was already a huge breakthrough.

Shen Xin recalled Yang Huixia’s reaction and couldn’t bring himself to feel happy.

Preparations for the lineup had to be made.

After drawing Hua Juan’s blood, they had to wait for the forensics lab to extract the DNA and run a comparison.

At the same time, the blood test results confirmed that Hua Juan had indeed used drugs recently.

Shen Xin and someone from the forensics department returned to Guan Hong’s home to search it again.

Surprisingly, after Guan Hong disappeared, Hua Juan hadn’t thrown out her room or any of her belongings. Everything had just been left untouched.

That’s what she claimed, but when they actually opened Guan Hong’s room, there were clear signs it had been rummaged through.

It was only at this moment that Shen Xin saw what Guan Hong looked like.

On the desk sat a solo photograph of her.

It must have been taken in Nanzhu. She had light brown, slightly wavy hair and was dressed quite fashionably.

She had a good figure and fair skin. You could say she was pretty.

Shen Xin looked at the photo, then glanced at Ding Yuwei out of the corner of his eye.

’They’re definitely not the same size.’

"What are you looking at?" Ding Yuwei noticed Shen Xin’s glance and snapped irritably.

Then she handed him a diary.

Shen Xin flipped through it briefly.

Judging by the immature and pretentious adjectives, it had the flavor of an old-fashioned romance novel.

She must have written it when she was a kid.

’Once she dropped out of school, who would have time to write something like this?’

Other than that, they found nothing of particular interest.

From the bold, risqué clothing and large amounts of cheap cosmetics, Shen Xin felt he could sketch out a picture of Guan Hong’s character.

She was someone who lacked parental guidance, entered society at a young age, and picked up all sorts of bad habits.

However, judging from her attitude toward Jia Xiaojun, she probably hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. It seemed more like a means of survival.

After all, she was still young, and her mother could barely take care of herself. What source of income could she have?

Her only option was to hang around with other people and find ways to get money from them.

This was probably why she changed boyfriends so frequently.

But perhaps it was because of this that she met her fatal end.

After rummaging through everything without much success, Shen Xin sat on the edge of the bed.

’Hua Juan really is lazy. It’s been two and a half years, and she never even put away the bedding. It’s all covered in dust now.’

"Shen Xin, help me move the bed. I think I see something in this crack."

Ding Yuwei called out.

She pointed to the gap between the foot of the bed and a large, old-fashioned, black wardrobe.

Shen Xin leaned over to look. The wardrobe faced outward, with its side pressed against the foot of the bed. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

It was also an old-fashioned, very sturdy wooden bed. And in the tight space, there was indeed something stuck in the gap between the wardrobe and the wall.

The wardrobe wasn’t placed perfectly flush against the wall, leaving a small gap.

Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei got to work, pulling the bed out a little. Then, reaching in from behind the bed, they retrieved the object.

It was a crumpled-up photograph.

When they smoothed it out, they saw it was a selfie.

The photo wasn’t very big.

People rarely had photos specially printed these days.

It felt more like the small, few-inch photo a couple might include in a bouquet of flowers.

Looking at the back of the photo, they indeed found a faint watermark for Ten Miles of Flowers and a contact number.

The background of the photo appeared to be a zoo.

It was probably taken with a selfie stick. On the left was Guan Hong, her arm around the neck of the man on the right. She was turning her head to kiss his cheek while still looking at the camera.

The man had a bag slung around his neck and a cigarette between his fingers, and he was making a gesture at the camera.

A heart filter had been added to the photo, along with a line of text that read "Love you forever."

Most importantly, the man’s face was unmistakably Li Xiaofei’s.

And in the photo, Li Xiaofei didn’t have the buzz cut from the case file; he had a medium-length, choppy, golden-brown hairstyle.

Jia Xiaojun had said he guessed Guan Hong got a new boyfriend around April.

The clothing in the photo looked like it was from sometime between spring and summer.

"Shen Xin."

Ding Yuwei sounded excited.

This photo proved that Guan Hong and Li Xiaofei were in a relationship.

And his medium-length, choppy hair was a perfect match for Wang Linhong’s description.

Shen Xin didn’t speak, turning his head to look at the bed in front of him.

Jia Xiaojun had mentioned that at the end of April, Guan Hong had a fight with her boyfriend and came home cursing him out.

’Could it be that Li Xiaofei sent Guan Hong flowers afterward to try and patch things up?’

’And when she received them, perhaps she was on her bed, still furious. Seeing the photo inside the bouquet, she just crumpled it up, threw it toward the foot of the bed, and it fell into the gap by the wardrobe.’

’That seems like a reasonable speculation, but it’s impossible to know what actually happened.’

But this photo was the most direct piece of evidence proving they were a couple.

Shen Xin immediately contacted Chen Chao to report the situation.

It felt like they could confirm the killer was Li Xiaofei.

The discovery of the photograph made the case much clearer, but Chen Chao didn’t rush to see Li Xiaofei in prison. He decided to continue the investigation on the periphery.

They found the flower shop, Ten Miles of Flowers.

But the owner didn’t remember Li Xiaofei coming in to buy flowers two and a half years ago.

The shop’s records from that time had long since been discarded. This was understandable, considering two and a half years had passed.

Wang Linhong was brought in for a lineup.

Surprisingly, he identified Li Xiaofei from a pile of photos in a single glance.

He said, "That’s right, it’s this kid."

Another piece of evidence pointed to Li Xiaofei.

Meanwhile, the investigation into Li Xiaofei’s social circle also yielded some discoveries.

「A few days later」

The DNA comparison results came back.

The victim and Hua Juan were confirmed to have a mother-daughter relationship.

And the male corpse was indeed Zhu Guishen, who had been missing for two and a half years.

At this point, Chen Chao felt it was time to pay Li Xiaofei a visit.