[Holy crap, where the hell did Shen Li go?!]
[He’s been off-camera for twenty minutes already. Is the production team going to send someone to look for him or what?]
[Exactly. It’s pitch-dark outside. This crappy village doesn’t even have streetlights, and Shen Li’s leg is bad. What if he fell somewhere?]
[The production team is seriously way too irresponsible. Are you still not going to give us an explanation???]
[I’m genuinely speechless. The camera that had been fixed on Shen Li suddenly switched to Yang Zhiqi… you guys are really something.]
[It’s been twenty minutes. We want to watch Shen Li. We don’t want to listen to Yang Zhiqi lecture us about his WeChat-business course! Why are you ignoring what we’re asking for?]
As the protests in the online comment section grew louder and louder, Liu Jinci could no longer quite keep the expression on her face steady.
She glanced at the director, then at the freshly updated teleprompter, and forced herself to maintain a smile as she began explaining:
“All right, the production team has seen everyone’s comments. Here’s what happened. Uh, the director has asked me to explain it to everyone: Shen Li has actually already left the security booth at the strawberry garden and is expected to return to the wooden house at 22:40—also, to address everyone’s question about why Shen Li isn’t currently on camera.
“Actually, even in a livestream variety show, we still need to ensure that every guest’s screen time fluctuates within a normal range. Today, the camera team gave Shen Li a fixed camera and filmed him for nearly nine hours, which is already quite a bit over the usual amount. As for this section of his return journey, because it’s too dark and mobile filming is difficult to operate, his camera has temporarily been removed.
“Once Shen Li returns to the house, filming will of course continue.
“Thank you, everyone, for your concern and affection for our guest. Shen Li is perfectly safe right now, so please don’t worry.”
The instant Liu Jinci finished speaking, she let out a long breath of relief.
The explanation the production team had cobbled together was not bad and essentially contained no obvious holes. After she recited it as written, the real-time comments scrolling through the discussion area really did quiet down. Viewers began copying [As long as he’s safe] and [Then why didn’t you say so earlier? You could’ve just explained], so the occasional comments asking [Then what was that white Santana about?] were drowned beneath entire sheets of repeated messages.
Meanwhile, Shen Li himself was sitting in the passenger seat of that very white Santana, holding a plastic bag of buns. He ate silently while keeping his attention on the phone resting on his lap.
Qian Xingzhi’s phone.
Qian Xingzhi sat beside him, his gaze also fixed on the screen.
Shen Li’s fingertip moved across the display at an almost perfectly even pace. He was not slow; he flipped through roughly one page every four seconds.
“You’re reading that fast. Can you actually remember it?” Qian Xingzhi rested one hand on the steering wheel and casually tried to make conversation with Shen Li.
Shen Li absentmindedly hummed in acknowledgment without really responding, then kept scrolling, fully absorbed in reading the PDF.
He heard Qian Xingzhi say again, “Tsk. With a brain as good as yours, why didn’t you apply to Qing University and become a cop—”
“—Stop talking.”
Shen Li cut him off and effectively muted Qian Xingzhi. He stopped on the current page and examined it carefully for a moment. His brows knitted slightly, a trace of puzzlement entering his eyes as though he were thinking something through.
After a while, he finally asked Qian Xingzhi, “On page thirty-one—this evidence isn’t really sufficient, is it? Can this actually prove anything?”
Qian Xingzhi did not know which piece he meant, so he leaned over abruptly to look at the phone. His expression shifted slightly. Even though he already knew Shen Li extremely well, he was still startled by Shen Li’s police intuition and astonishing reaction speed.
“It really can’t yet.”
Qian Xingzhi’s smile faded too. His brows lowered and his expression turned serious. “When I took the victim over today, that was the main area they questioned her about. Too much time has passed. Any traces the suspect left back then are completely impossible to verify now, and finding eyewitnesses is even more like searching for a needle in the ocean.”
Shen Li paused in the middle of eating his bun. His cool, clear brows and eyes darkened further. His tongue pressed hard across the tip of one canine, and his gaze suddenly sharpened.
“So that means this girl, Xiaoting, still doesn’t know who assaulted her three years ago?”
Qian Xingzhi gave a small nod, indicating yes.
Shen Li narrowed his eyes slightly, his gaze cutting like a blade. He said nothing and continued reading at a steady pace, sliding the documents downward while eating his bun more and more slowly. Qian Xingzhi stopped disturbing him and only glanced at Shen Li every so often through the rearview mirror.
Shen Li had not changed.
He was still the same as he had been in high school. The moment he concentrated, his entire person became unaffected by the environment around him. A calm, silent steadiness seemed to materialize on him instantly, washing over those already outstanding features and giving him a dazzling quality that was completely nonaggressive.
Qian Xingzhi therefore felt that no matter who it was, one glance at Shen Li like this would hopelessly glue their gaze to him.
“Finished. You did very well.”
Shen Li stopped on the final page of the PDF and generously gave Qian Xingzhi his conclusion. He picked up another bun, then looked at Qian Xingzhi and confirmed, “You collected all this over three full years. How did it start? Why did you decide to investigate?”
“At first, it was because of the crew for a new film I was doing. The casting director privately made young actors accompany people drinking, and something happened at one of those drinking sessions. A drunk girl fell into the water and died. The crew wanted to suppress the news, so they compensated the family to settle the matter.” Qian Xingzhi paused. “I heard about it and kept paying attention. Later, Xiaoting came to me and said she had nowhere else to turn. She asked whether she could borrow some money from me because she wanted to go back to her hometown and genuinely had nothing left.”
Shen Li’s expression remained calm, but when he heard this, an indescribably complicated emotion still flashed in the depths of his eyes. “Then what? You gave it to her?”
“Mm. Of course.
“At the time, I thought she was just some young kid who had come out to work on film crews and wanted to go home because she didn’t want to keep doing it. I had no idea she was connected to the case, so I simply lent her travel money.”
“She really went back to her hometown?”
“Yeah.” Qian Xingzhi’s gaze shifted toward the window. “At first, I also thought the girl who drowned had simply gotten drunk and drowned normally. Later, filming got delayed, and I had someone ask around. Someone on WCC’s side let something slip. That death was caused by someone. It wasn’t an accident at all. After that, one thing after another went wrong, and the investors blamed everything on bad luck. That’s why the project never actually started filming.”
Shen Li had already learned all of this while reading the documents.
But hearing Qian Xingzhi recount it now in the tone of ordinary conversation still inevitably caused a faint anger to rise inside him.
Tiny as a spark, but real—and flammable.
Qian Xingzhi’s magnetic, cool voice paused before continuing:
“By then it was already too late. The body had been cremated. Those people destroyed the evidence and bought off the family. You worked criminal cases, so you understand better than anyone that a case like this had practically no conditions for investigation. Back then, I had people report it to the police again and again, but every attempt vanished without a trace.”
At this, Shen Li’s stomach began churning with acid again.
His appetite vanished immediately.
“So starting three years ago, you basically stopped filming because you were investigating this the whole time?”
“Yes and no.” Qian Xingzhi’s gaze was deep as he answered briefly. “The entertainment industry is one enormous arena of fame and profit. Industry giants like WCC, where all sorts of people and interests are mixed together, are rotten from the roots. If you don’t bring the whole thing down, cases like this will just keep happening. But if you want to clean out a black den like that, the most fundamental way is through its interests. Ordinary Weibo exposés can at most knock down one of their money trees.”
Shen Li understood what he meant. That was why Qian Xingzhi’s PDF had so many pages. Most of them contained evidence related to WCC Group’s tax evasion, organizing prostitution, stock manipulation, and other financial crimes. As for the original rape-and-murder case, the only thing left was the testimony of Xiaoting, herself another victim.
Before reading this PDF, Shen Li truly had never imagined Qian Xingzhi had done so much.
…
Would the old Qian Xingzhi have put this much effort into something?
Shen Li was not sure.
He only felt that in the years since their divorce, he seemed to recognize Qian Xingzhi less and less.
“Who was the case assigned to?”
“Old Yu. You’re forming a special task force today. Lin Jie should be in the group too. If you want updates, you can ask her.”
“Mm.”
Shen Li nodded, weighed down by thoughts, and forced down another difficult bite of bun. He had no idea what he was thinking about when Qian Xingzhi said, “Can you still eat? If you can’t, stop.”
Qian Xingzhi always noticed his discomfort immediately.
Shen Li’s stomach really was uncomfortable again. He looked at the half-bun remaining and insisted with a frown, “…I’m fine. There’s only a little left. Throwing it away would be wasteful.”
“Give it here.”
Qian Xingzhi’s huge figure abruptly leaned closer. He reached out and snatched the bun away. His warm, dry palm accidentally brushed the back of Shen Li’s hand, and Shen Li instantly pulled his hand back. Qian Xingzhi seemed not to notice that distant reaction at all, much less comment on it. He simply took the half-eaten bun Shen Li had left, naturally bit into it, crumpled up the plastic bag, and stuffed it into the storage pocket in the side door. As he started the car, he spoke somewhat indistinctly around the food:
“It’s ten thirty-five. I’ll take you back first.”
Naturally, Shen Li had no objection. He hummed in acknowledgment. Through the rearview mirror, he watched Qian Xingzhi’s profile and the way he ate the bun, and it remained incredibly easy to remember everything about the two of them in the past.
Qian Xingzhi had never minded eating Shen Li’s leftovers.
He simply had not expected the man to still be the same after their divorce.
After finally reading the PDF he had spent an entire day desperately itching to see, Shen Li at last became interested in Qian Xingzhi’s motive for his actions.
If Qian Xingzhi had joined the show to expose WCC, then he should have handed the evidence to the police before the show even started. Once the case was formally opened and reached the stage where a public announcement could be made, he could then expose it directly on the show.
Why had Qian Xingzhi chosen this exact point in time?
Why wait until the show had already begun and then rush to open the case?
“Why didn’t you report it earlier?” Shen Li turned his head, shifting his gaze away from Qian Xingzhi’s reflection in the rearview mirror and directly onto the man himself.
Qian Xingzhi’s tall, straight nose was half-lit and half-shadowed by the lights outside the window. His peerlessly handsome features looked extraordinarily striking, genuinely as though he had stepped straight out of a screen.
“Ah.”
Qian Xingzhi made a vague sound and pondered for a long time without answering directly.
Shen Li understood. He knew Qian Xingzhi did not want to say, so he did not insist. Instead, he shifted his gaze away and looked out the window.
Only his brows drew tighter.
Qian Xingzhi really had changed.
Before the divorce, there had never been secrets between them.
The strawberry garden was not far from the wooden house. Even with Qian Xingzhi driving at only twenty kilometers per hour, the trip took less than ten minutes.
Yet Shen Li genuinely wished he would drive faster. At the very least, he should stop crawling along like a tractor. This inexplicable silence was nearly suffocating him.
Then Qian Xingzhi’s somewhat muffled voice broke the quiet on its own.
Apparently, he was about to answer the question Shen Li had assumed he would refuse to answer:
“If I’d done it in advance…”
Qian Xingzhi’s voice stopped again, and he did not continue.
After three to five seconds, Shen Li gave an encouraging little response:
“Mm?”
Only then did Qian Xingzhi continue. “If I’d reported it earlier, your master definitely wouldn’t have agreed to let me drag you into it this way.”
That was an answer Shen Li had never considered.
“…What do you mean? What does this have to do with my master?”
“You know what he’s like. His word is law. Stubborn old man. Control freak.” Qian Xingzhi irritably pressed the brake, his voice sounding faintly agitated. “If he’d known beforehand, would I still have been able to turn this show into a dating reality show?”
Shen Li: …?
Shen Li sensitively looked away, his brows furrowing deeper. He remembered the two kisses Qian Xingzhi had planted on his cheek the night before last, along with that statement about wanting to remarry, and the emotions in his heart became exceptionally complicated.
Before he could decide how to ask Qian Xingzhi about it, Qian Xingzhi slapped the steering wheel, pulled the handbrake, and stopped looking at him entirely. His tone turned icy too, as though he had not been the one to say any of those things just now:
“You’re here. Get out.”
Like a rideshare driver throwing out a passenger who had lit a cigarette in the car.
Shen Li: .
Fine.
Shen Li said nothing more. He placed Qian Xingzhi’s phone on the central armrest box to the left and was just about to unfasten the seat belt across his chest when Qian Xingzhi’s phone suddenly exploded with more than ten consecutive message alerts. Ding-ding-ding-ding, denser than a police siren, like a grenade going off.
Shen Li instinctively looked toward the phone.
The notification bar was going wild as fresh alerts continuously replaced one another:
[Lian Xiaoqi: [image]]
…
[Lian Xiaoqi: [image]]
More than twenty messages.
It looked urgent.
Shen Li froze.
After Qian Xingzhi finished filming something, he generally did not stay in contact with actors who had played opposite him.
Shen Li had never before seen another entertainer bombard him with messages like this.
Qian Xingzhi suddenly swept out a large hand in obvious panic and snatched his phone back, glancing at it hurriedly.
As he shut off the screen, he switched the phone to silent mode as well.
He clearly had absolutely no intention of explaining anything to Shen Li.
Shen Li’s eyes darkened. His Adam’s apple rolled as he glanced at Qian Xingzhi with slightly furrowed brows, then got out of the car and shut the door in one smooth motion.
He walked away without looking back.
He did not even say goodbye.
Qian Xingzhi watched his retreating back and sniffed, vaguely feeling that something was wrong.
But his phone kept vibrating. The person on the other side seemed to have gone insane, sending one message after another without stopping.
Qian Xingzhi unlocked the phone and opened the conversation. Every image was the same meme of a little rabbit screaming curses: Grass! (a kind of plant)
Below, the same two lines had been copied and pasted over and over:
[It’s 22:41. Does your phone not have a clock on it, may I ask? [smile]]
[Give Shen Li back to me give Shen Li back to me give Shen Li back to me give Shen Li back to me give Shen Li back to me]