Hairpin

Lin Xiaosu did not rashly enter the room. He stood by the door and activated Time Reversal first.

A full four days had passed. His Time Reversal seemed to have reached its limit as well. Just as he felt a faint stabbing pain in his eyes, he finally saw the scene he wanted to see: a white-haired old man lying in a grand armchair, staring up at the ceiling with a leisurely expression, one foot braced against the ground.

That scene definitely did not look like someone who was about to die suddenly.

However, the next moment, something changed...

Lin Xiaosu's heart jolted...

Three meters away, Chang Ye and Zhou Mei were both watching him.

Zhou Mei quietly said, "Sister Chang, even if he has some way to track scents, this should be impossible. Four days have passed, the wind on the mountain is strong, and the windows have been open every day. Any smell would have dispersed..."

But Chang Ye's eyes lit up, and she stepped forward.

Her step was completely silent.

Lin Xiaosu suddenly felt a chill down his back. He withdrew from Time Reversal, turned around, and saw Chang Ye standing silently behind him. He was startled. Was this girl some kind of cat?

"Did you find anything?"

Lin Xiaosu said, "I can't see anything from out here. I'll go inside and take a look. Oh, right, do you have photos from the original scene?"

"Been waiting for you to ask!" Chang Ye raised a hand and put on a pair of glasses. "Retrieve photo number 1352!"

As soon as she spoke, a layer of light emerged from her glasses. A three-dimensional holographic projection appeared, its image extremely clear, every detail visible at a glance—the old man Lin Xiaosu had seen through Time Reversal was sitting in the grand armchair, his head tilted back and his mouth slightly open...

Lin Xiaosu sighed. "Your police technology is impressive. This is way too clear."

"Tell me, which part do you need enlarged?"

"I'll look inside first. No rush."

He entered the meditation room and inspected it carefully. At least, in the eyes of the two female officers, he was inspecting it carefully.

Ten minutes, twenty minutes...

Lin Xiaosu came out of the room and gently shook his head. "During the time of his death, there was no second person in the room!"

Tch!

Zhou Mei felt a little contemptuous inside.

After observing seriously for twenty minutes, that was the useless conclusion he came up with?

Now they had to face a question: did this count as fraud? He had taken ten thousand yuan and spent twenty minutes dawdling around in there. Wasn't this money a little too easy to earn?

"Are you sure it was a natural death?" Chang Ye asked.

Lin Xiaosu gently shook his head. "There's one more possibility that needs to be ruled out."

"What possibility?"

Lin Xiaosu raised a finger and pointed outside the window. Beyond it was a high bank about ten meters away.

The vegetation there was thick.

Chang Ye's brows furrowed slightly. "You suspect a long-range attack?"

"Is there any attack method that could produce symptoms like a cerebral hemorrhage?"

"No!" Zhou Mei said. "A so-called long-range attack would only cause external injuries, while a cerebral hemorrhage has nothing to do with external injuries... right, Sister Chang?"

Chang Ye did not answer. Her eyes held a thoughtful look. "Go over there and check first!"

"Fine!"

Lin Xiaosu arrived below the high bank and looked around. He climbed up another slope beside it, struggling for quite a while before finally reaching the top. Suddenly, he gave a soft exclamation...

Chang Ye had somehow appeared behind him. "What did you find?"

"Look!" Lin Xiaosu pointed at the ground.

Chang Ye stared at the weeds beneath her feet but could not make anything out. "What?"

"This blade of grass was stepped on and broken four days ago," Lin Xiaosu said.

Chang Ye's eyes lit up. The grass had been stepped on four days ago, and no one would normally come here. "Are you sure it was a person?"

"There's no direct footprint on the grass, but if you look closely enough, you can still determine a person's footprint from the way the grass was compressed. You can also judge when it was stepped on by how dry the grass has become." Lin Xiaosu traced the shape of a footprint in the air.

The more Chang Ye looked, the more it resembled a footprint.

"If you can't make that out, look here. There's something more interesting here!" Lin Xiaosu gently raised his hand and pointed at a leaf.

At the center of the leaf was a tiny hole—a puncture mark left by a needle.

Chang Ye's expression changed completely.

She was not very confident in judging footprints, but she was a true expert when it came to a needle piercing through a leaf, because she used needles herself!

To her eyes, this was clearly the mark of a needle piercing through it.

A needle had passed through this leaf, and its direction led directly to the head of Qu Taiqing, who had been lying in the grand armchair!

"Xinyue!" Chang Ye called softly.

"Sister Chang Ye, what can I do for you?" A sweet young woman's voice came from the glasses.

"Immediately check the corpse in Pathology Room 37. Is there a hairpin beneath the scalp at the right temple?"

"Received!"

On the other end, a rapid examination began. Chang Ye stood on the hillside, her gaze locked firmly on that window. Her eyes were infinitely deep at that moment. Lin Xiaosu had never seen such a look in her eyes.

Time passed minute by minute...

Five minutes later, Chang Ye's glasses lit up slightly, and a voice came from within. "Sister Chang Ye, you're freaking amazing! There's a hairpin inside his right brain! It penetrated one inch and seven tenths into the brain, with no external trace, so it was overlooked during the initial examination. The hairpin carries a neurotoxin: T30!"

"T30's only effect is to instantly coagulate blood in a localized area, creating an obstruction!" Chang Ye said.

"Yes! That was the true cause of death for 2198!"

The light on Chang Ye's glasses vanished.

She slowly turned around. At that moment, she resembled a night hawk soaring through the air. Her presence seemed to have dropped two or three degrees colder.

"Now only one question remains: can we track down that person from these traces?"

Lin Xiaosu turned away, stared at the tangled grass beneath his feet, crossed the road, and smiled on the other side. "We're in luck. He didn't take the main road. He took a forest path..."

Going down that path would inevitably leave traces of movement.

Although ordinary people would see nothing in those traces, compared to the miracle of finding a needle hole in a leaf, such traces were clearly far more routine to Lin Xiaosu.

After rounding a mountain bend, even Chang Ye saw a relatively clear footprint. Its tread pattern was plainly visible—thank heaven it had not rained in the past four days.

She aimed her glasses at the footprint and took a picture.

They continued tracking.

They crossed mountains and ridges all the way until they finally reached the county's main road. Lin Xiaosu stopped, frowning tightly. "Now we really have to rely on luck. Are there any cameras nearby?"

His difficulty had never been finding the murderer.

The murderer was wearing a plaid windbreaker. His build and face were imprinted in Lin Xiaosu's mind with perfect clarity.

But it was useless if only he knew.

He had to present that image to her in a reasonably believable way.

For that, he needed surveillance cameras.

And in truth, he could clearly see the cameras with his divine eyes. There was one a hundred meters away, hidden under an eave. From its angle, it should have captured the man in the floral hoodie getting into a vehicle...

He did not want anyone to know that his eyesight was that good.

So he asked for help.

Chang Ye's glasses lit up again. Countless grids appeared in midair, and three points of light emerged—three surveillance cameras. Besides the one Lin Xiaosu had already spotted, there were two others that had not even been visible to them, yet she had still located them through her astonishing technology.

"Retrieve the footage. Time..." Chang Ye gave an order.

The image in the air changed at once, becoming the night from four days ago.

Lin Xiaosu's eyes widened. Holy crap!

When the police retrieved footage, they did not even need to contact the owner?

She could just access it directly?

Was this some kind of hacking method?

Not just him—even Zhou Mei's eyes widened. As a police officer, much of her daily work involved investigation and evidence gathering. She had retrieved surveillance footage countless times, or at least several hundred. When had she ever seen a method that retrieved footage silently without disturbing residents or alerting anyone?

Though the retrieval process was practically miraculous, they still lacked the final step to directly identify him.

The footage had blind spots. The place where the man in the plaid hoodie came down from the mountain was one of them.

Even if the footage showed him getting into a vehicle, so what? Plenty of people got into vehicles by the roadside!

If they could not connect him to the route down the mountain, everything would be pointless.

Just as the footage reached the moment the man in the plaid hoodie got into the vehicle, Lin Xiaosu shouted, "Stop!"

The footage froze.

"Look at this man's shoes!" Lin Xiaosu said.

"His shoes? The tread pattern on the soles isn't clear..." Chang Ye said.

That was the drawback of civilian surveillance cameras. They could clearly capture a person's face, but seeing the tread pattern on the bottom of their shoes precisely was still beyond them.

"There's no need to look at the tread. You only need to look at the logo on these Warrior shoes to find the product details."

Chang Ye's eyes lit up...

"Search!"

As soon as the two-word command was issued, countless shoes appeared in the air above her glasses for comparison. Moments later, a pair of shoes appeared. Brand: Duli. Development date... manufacturer... product features...

The sole rotated, and it was exactly the same as the relatively clear footprint they had seen on the mountain path.

Zhou Mei cheered. "Found him!"

Lights flickered over Chang Ye's glasses. "Search for this person!"

In an instant, it was as though the vast world had unfolded before her. Countless figures flashed past, and the similarity score kept rising: 80%, 85.2%, 96%, 100%!

As green letters displaying 100% appeared, a profile materialized before them.

"Ding Haichun, male, forty-eight years old, from Fengcheng County, Eastern Chu Province. Founder and legal representative of Huanggang Science and Trade Company..."

Lin Xiaosu was dumbfounded. "Your system is insanely powerful. If you give it any random face, can it find the person?"

"It's not that miraculous. How effective the system is depends on how complete the database is. The database has undergone eight upgrades. At present, precise information only covers public servants at all levels, people with registered businesses, and people with criminal records. It can't fully cover ordinary citizens. Of course, as long as you've been to a train station or an airport, your information will exist in the database. It just shows when you were there, not your name or family information..."

As Chang Ye explained, the system continued running.

Finally, it stopped. A red dot displayed the target's location, less than ten li away from them.