April

February passed, and March arrived.

The weather gradually warmed. The snow on Xingjing's streets had completely melted, and the willows by the roadside were beginning to sprout tender green buds.

But none of those changes could be seen in Fourth Squad's office area.

The seventh underground level was always the same—constant temperature, constant humidity, eternally bright lights, with no way to tell day from night.

All they knew was that, over these two months, they had handled as many cases as they normally did in an entire year.

Zhou Bin ran the numbers again. From the end of Li Mingyuan's case until now, Fourth Squad had independently handled seventeen cases and assisted with another twenty-three.

That made forty cases in total, exactly last year's full-year total.

And it was only the end of March.

When he told the others that number, everyone froze for a moment.

Fang Xiaoxiao's eyes widened. "Forty cases? We handled forty cases in these two months?"

Zhou Bin nodded. "That's right. Exactly forty."

Leaning back in his chair, Sun Jing showed a rare expression of surprise. "I remember we only handled forty-one cases last year. It's only been three months this year, and we're already at forty?"

Li Zhaowen adjusted his glasses. "To be precise, it's been two and a half months. From late January until now—exactly two and a half months."

Fang Xiaoxiao sucked in a breath. "My God, have we lost our minds?"

Chen Yunxuan said quietly, "But I don't feel like we've been that tired. We've just handled cases step by step every day, and before we knew it, we'd done this many."

Zhou Bin thought for a moment. "That's because we're more efficient now. Back then, just the preliminary investigation would take ages. Sometimes we'd investigate for months, only to find out