Chen Lei

Biodata

Appearance

• Face: Stubbled, with two deep creases beside his mouth 5.
• Clothing: Wears a police uniform on duty. At the Construction Group banquet, he wears an open black jacket over a gray sweater washed nearly white 9 19.
• Signs of exhaustion: Prolonged investigations leave him with bloodshot or sunken eyes, longer stubble, and a hoarse voice 19 32 34.
• Habitual accessory: Frequently carries and smokes cigarettes, including during surveillance reviews and late-night casework 3 5 28.

Personality

Chen Lei is persistent, suspicious of convenient explanations, and willing to oppose his superiors when he believes a case has been dismissed prematurely. After Deputy Director Wang refuses to connect three apparently natural deaths, Chen secretly copies the files despite the risk of disciplinary punishment. Kannazuki regards his instincts and relentless pursuit as a serious threat 5 21.

His opposition to vigilante killing extends even to victims whose crimes disgust him. He predicts that Sun Ming may be targeted, attends the banquet to watch him, and attempts to stop his fatal bleeding. He also confronts Dongding Capital over attacks on delivery workers, condemning its treatment of Linhai City as a private hunting ground 9 25.

Chen can remain composed after investigative setbacks: when a digital trail collapses, he tells Zhou Ming that the failure is not his fault and changes tactics. His methods nevertheless include coercion and abuse. During Shrimp’s interrogation, he switches off the camera and uses a rubber baton with a thick law book pressed against the prisoner’s chest, resuming the recording only after Shrimp agrees to confess 28 47.

Abilities & Skills

Criminal Investigation

• Pattern recognition: Connects victims with different backgrounds through their wrongdoing, identical underlying causes of death, and abnormal behavior immediately before dying 5.
• Victim profiling: Recognizes Sun Ming as a likely target because his conduct, evasion of punishment, and public notoriety match the earlier victims 9.
• Physical-record analysis: Notices that a shipment supposedly containing twelve manga volumes weighs only 0.3 kilograms, suggesting that the declared contents are false 31 32.
• Interrogation: Repeatedly tests Kannazuki’s account of Lei Bao’s final minutes and challenges the apparent inconsistency between his delivery experience and the spilled congee 19.
• Limitation: His correct suspicions repeatedly lack admissible evidence. Surveillance establishes Kannazuki’s proximity to victims but cannot explain how he killed them 19 28 32.

Surveillance Coordination

• Digital filtering: Directs investigators to cross-reference Cape Community readership with hospital-area cell-tower data, reducing thousands of possible addresses to three 6.
• Visual identification: Compares height, build, posture, and gait across crime-scene footage; a 92% gait match helps identify Kannazuki 12.
• Physical monitoring: Uses stakeouts, delivery-account tracking, and a planned scooter GPS installation to follow his suspect 12 32.
• Evidence recovery: Searches Kannazuki’s discarded food packaging for paper fragments and writing impressions 35.
• Limitation: Kannazuki detects surveillance, plants misleading network trails, and alters logistics records to undermine these methods 28 33 36.

Protection Under Shen He

• Source: As a member of the authorities, Chen falls under the hidden protection associated with Shen He. Ryuk stops Kannazuki before he writes Chen’s name into the Death Note 21 22 23.
• Restriction: Ryuk describes Shen He as an absolute law whose violation would erase the world and its Creator 23.
• Possible loopholes: Kannazuki reasons that Chen could be killed through a controlled proxy, or lose protection if stripped of government status. The provided events do not show either method being carried out against him 22 23.

Perception of Ryuk

• Activation: Touching a genuine Death Note page glued into Shrimp’s diary allows Chen to see and hear Ryuk 48.
• Application: Becomes L’s intermediary for questioning the death god about the notebook and its detachable pages 49.
• Limit: Surveillance cameras and Chen’s body camera cannot capture Ryuk, requiring Chen to describe what he sees 48.

Background / History

Opening the “X Files”

Chen first investigates Zhao Gang’s death and questions whether it is connected to Wang Hu’s. Both men were healthy, died of sudden heart attacks within twelve hours, and were committing crimes at the time 3.

After Zhang Wei’s death, Chen establishes that all three victims suffered acute coronary artery occlusion. Their criminal histories and unusual final actions convince him that someone is systematically killing wrongdoers. Deputy Director Wang rejects his request to combine the cases, citing the absence of a weapon, suspect, or physical evidence. Chen continues privately, arranging copied files and victim photographs beneath the heading “X Files” 5.

Liu Qiang’s death supplies a fourth case. Xiao Liu’s discovery of Cape Community posts exposing the victims leads Chen to identify the forum as a likely source of target information. His IP-address search narrows the field, but a subsequent raid encounters a subdivided rental apartment with shared networking equipment rather than an immediately identifiable killer 6 7.

Identifying Kannazuki

Chen attends the Construction Group banquet expecting Sun Ming to become the next victim. Sun Ming publicly confesses to driving Lin Xiao to suicide and cuts his throat with a broken glass. Chen attempts to save him but cannot stop the blood loss 9.

Chen then focuses on food delivery riders, reasoning that their uniforms and routes provide a plausible reason to appear near unrelated crime scenes. Investigators reduce the rider shortlist from more than three thousand to fewer than three hundred 10 11.

A witness reports that a delivery worker spilled congee on Lei Bao shortly before his death. Comparing footage from multiple locations, Chen identifies the rider as Kannazuki and orders real-time tracking of his delivery account. Kannazuki responds by accepting a coffee order to the police bureau, where Chen questions him and checks his pulse without obtaining grounds to detain him 12 13.

The Alibi and Attempted Death Sentence

During formal questioning, Chen presents surveillance images placing Kannazuki near five deaths and examines his contact with Lei Bao. Kannazuki attributes his movements to delivery work, while forensic testing finds no poison in Lei Bao or the congee 19.

Li Jianguo dies in detention while Kannazuki is handcuffed across the table from Chen. Synchronized footage places them twelve kilometers from the detention center, giving Kannazuki an apparently airtight alibi. His summons period expires, and Chen later withdraws surveillance while the corruption revelations surrounding Li’s death occupy the Special Task Force 19 20 21.

Kannazuki nevertheless considers Chen too dangerous to leave alive. He prepares a Death Note scenario in which Chen dies fighting armed criminals, but Ryuk intervenes before any part of Chen’s name is written. This encounter exposes the hidden rule protecting government authorities 21 22.

The Cleaner and the Black Notebook Lead

After finding three dead bounty hunters carrying a Dongding Capital flyer, Chen confronts Wang Mingyuan over the violence against delivery workers. Wang denies responsibility and produces a special security permit. Chen later arrests him when Lin Yaodong’s compelled confession exposes Dongding Capital’s crimes 25 27.

The nonexistent afternoon-tea order and missing tower footage lead Chen back to the yellow-jacketed delivery worker known as the Cleaner. When the cyber investigation follows twelve international hops before its data self-destructs, Chen recognizes the trail as a deliberate diversion. He abandons network tracing and returns to investigating Kannazuki personally, visiting his apartment at one in the morning 27 28 29.

Chen’s review of Kannazuki’s purchases uncovers the suspicious manga shipment. Its weight and dimensions suggest a Black Notebook rather than twelve books. The bureau chief refuses a surveillance warrant but permits three officers to watch Kannazuki covertly 31 32.

Apartment inspections and searches of discarded rubbish produce no usable evidence. Kannazuki then alters more than a thousand historical package records to the same 0.3-kilogram weight, making his shipment appear part of a widespread logistics-system error and destroying the lead’s evidentiary value 34 35 36.

Shrimp’s Diversion and Kannazuki’s Apparent Death

Shrimp’s twelve killings create victims with no detected connection to Kannazuki, who appears to sleep through the deaths under observation. A dark-web claim of responsibility leads investigators to a Russian server, further undermining Chen’s working theory 41 42.

When L takes over, Chen hands over the relevant files. L’s profile and location analysis point toward the Red Star Abandoned Slaughterhouse rather than Kannazuki, and the bureau redirects its resources accordingly. Chen remains uneasy about Kannazuki’s unnaturally consistent behavior 44 45.

On the way to the raid, Chen leaves the operation to check Happy Home himself. An explosion at the residential complex throws him five meters backward and injures him, but he survives and orders DNA testing on recovered remains. The resulting match persuades him to close Kannazuki’s case as unrelated to Kira 46.

The identification is false: Kannazuki has used Zhao Qiang as a substitute body, planted protected strands of his own hair, and escaped under the identity Light Yagami 46.

Discovering the Death Note

During Shrimp’s interrogation, Chen examines the diary’s uneven pages, glue traces, and mismatched binding holes. L identifies it as a vessel containing pages taken from another notebook and concludes that Shrimp is a fall guy 47.

Chen initially dismisses Shrimp’s claim about a death god. Touching the genuine pages makes Ryuk appear to him, overturning his materialist understanding of the case. He draws his pistol before L persuades him to communicate with the creature 48.

Questioning Ryuk on L’s behalf confirms that torn Death Note pages retain their killing power. With the real Kira still unaccounted for, Chen takes the patched diary and returns to the morgue to reexamine the charred body identified as Kannazuki 49.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Service pistol — Drawn during the Dongding Tower response and his first encounter with Ryuk 27 48.
• Handcuffs — Used to arrest Wang Mingyuan after Dongding Capital’s evidence is exposed 27.
• “X Files” whiteboard — Holds victim photographs, case connections, and questions about the killer’s trigger conditions 5 6.
• Observation optics — Binoculars and a telescope used during the Happy Home stakeout 32 34.
• Rubber police baton — Used with an eight-hundred-page criminal code during Shrimp’s unrecorded coercive interrogation 47.
• Patched Death Note diary — Examined after Shrimp’s arrest; touching its genuine pages makes Ryuk visible to Chen 47 48 49.

Relationships

• Kannazuki / Light Yagami — Principal suspect and investigative opponent. Kannazuki repeatedly defeats Chen’s evidence-gathering efforts but considers his instincts dangerous enough to contemplate killing him 12 19 21 28 46.
• Deputy Director Wang — Superior who rejects the initial serial-murder theory and directs Chen toward other work 5 9.
• Xiao Liu — Junior officer whose discovery of the Cape Community posts provides an important early lead 3 6.
• Xiao Li — Assists with records, surveillance, apartment inspections, and the Kira operation 28 32 34 45 46.
• L — Coordinates the later Kira investigation remotely; relies on Chen to inspect physical evidence and question Ryuk 44 47 48 49.
• Lao Liu — Forensic examiner who supplies autopsy findings and reports on the unusual deaths 5 11 19.
• Shrimp — Captured killer whom Chen interrogates, exposing both the diary’s rules and his role as a decoy 47 48 49.
• Ryuk — Death god visible to Chen after notebook-page contact; provides crucial information while withholding details about the notebook’s earlier ownership 48 49.
• Wang Mingyuan — Dongding Capital figure whom Chen confronts over bounty-related violence and subsequently arrests 25 27.

Notable Quotes

“A uniform is the best cloak of invisibility. Focus on food delivery riders.” 10

“Having no flaws is the biggest flaw of all.” 28

“As long as he's human, he's bound to make a mistake. And when he does, I'll catch him.” 33