The Yu Brothers’ Case Book

“Damn it, my shoes.”

The person that had just entered immediately stepped onto some paint and let out a rebuke of protest. He then retreated backwards to stamp his shoes against the ground a few times before re-entering.

“Didn’t the people outside already warn you about there being paint here?” Yu Xia had just arrived at the scene with a face mask. He snorted at the person, not sure why they were here. “Have you already finished examining the body if you’re trying to mess around here?” They had not contacted the forensic investigator, so why had he appeared here?

Yan Si happily grinned as he stepped aside to make way for the prosecutor behind him to walk in. “We were just eating together to reminisce about the good old times while discussing some other things, so I was generous enough to bring Prosecutor Li over here!” Actually, they had just been at a restaurant nearby. When Li Zi Hong picked up the call, Yan Si had thought it sounded interesting, so he had followed along.

Li Zi Hong didn’t express his opinion, only caring about what had happened. After putting on the face mask offered by a nearby officer, he stepped inside to see Yu Yin and Yu hanging out outside on the balcony. Only one of the two answered the officers’ line of questions. On the other side, the locksmith was also answering questions. Li Zi Hong shifted his gaze back onto the person that had probably been the first to be called over. “What is the situation?”

“Xie Jun Wei, twenty-seven years old. He was just sent away to the ER, but we probably need to prepare ourselves; he was lying here for quite a long time. We just checked; although this place only has traces left, the concentration is pretty high.” Yu Xia crossed his arms and glanced at the two little devils standing on the balcony. “But luckily, he was discovered earlier. Any later, and we probably would be investigating another suicide case.”

“Suicide?”

“It’s not for certain yet, but there was a bunch of sleeping pills next to his body, as well as traces of having opened the paint on his fingers. Even his clothing and shoes all had it. Aside from the amount that got stuck on him while dragging him out, I’m sure that everything in here was probably done by him.” Yu Xia paused and eyed the prosecutor. “We’ve already sent the tape and stuff over. If the fingerprints match, then it’s without a question. We found records of him having bought paint recently, and there are no traces of fighting or anyone else going in and out of here. The possibility of it being an accident or suicide is pretty high. However, based on the fact that the entire house was taped up, suicide is more likely to be the top guess.”

Li Zi Hong nodded in agreement after circling the home and not seeing anything suspicious.

He then walked over to the side and noticed the picture.

The people in the photo seemed extremely happy.

“But the stink here is beyond horrible. If I wanted to kill myself, I definitely would not choose to use paint…” Yan Si followed him around while pinching his nose. The entire room still smelled like paint. Although they were wearing masks, it was still an uncomfortable feeling, so they still wandered over to the balcony seeking fresh air.

They probably should have requested gas masks before coming here. Their equipment was too poor quality.

Upon noticing who had arrived, Yu Yin immediately stopped talking to the officer in front of him and began to argue, “Hah, I didn’t think that Yan Si-dàgē would ever think about committing suicide!” He thought that kind of person would happily live until they turned old, and even continue living longer than possible.

Yan Si shot him a supercilious look. “Student that was ganged up on, once you work for three straight days without sleeping to face a dead body, you will definitely feel the urge to jump off the top of a building.” He wasn’t a robot after all, doing such a thing often made him really want to jump off and kill himself.

If he was going on dates with a beautiful woman for three days straight without sleeping, he wouldn’t really complain. But going on a date with a corpse for three consecutive days made him want to protest for civil rights.

“Eh, it’s because you are so capable that everything is left to you! See how highly everyone regards you?”

“Forget that. It’s fine while I’m young, but once I get old I’m just going to give up and leave.” Yan Si waved his hand in dismissal and leaned against the balcony rail to look out. “But this place really has a large tendency to encounter incidents. In the span of a few years, it’s just had fatal case after case.” The bunch of them had all looked through the related cases, so they obviously knew about what had happened before.

“It’s probably because it has bad fengshui…” Yu Yin randomly answered. Don’t people often say that a location’s environment can have an impact?

Although he didn’t really understand such things, this building undoubtedly gave off a very strange feeling.

Yan Si chuckled, as he was pretty much a spiritual block that did not believe in such things. Although he had run into this before, he didn’t feel it was anything practical.

After a moment of silence, Yu Yin suddenly recalled the conversation he had just overheard.

“…Wait, Prosecutor Li came here in your car?”

“Yeah, is there anything wrong with that?”

That car had left a very deep impression on Yu Yin. He coughed and asked, “Nothing happened, right?”

Although there were people willing to take that car, he definitely did not want to go on it a second time if he didn’t need to.

“Nope, that guy always falls asleep the instant he gets into a car. How could something happen?” Yan Si looked at the university student in confusion, not really understanding the question. The one driving the car was him, not the one sleeping next to him?

“Never mind.” If neither of them felt anything, it didn’t matter. Yu Yin couldn’t be bothered to explain. Sometimes, he really envied these oblivious people. Why couldn’t they occasionally be frightened once or twice?

Yu yawned at his side.

“It’s twelve, you guys should hurry on back. We can talk about the rest tomorrow.” Yu Xia walked out from the room, having finished recording everything inside. He told them, “Ah Yin, don’t go making random detours to anywhere else.”

“As if I have any desire to make random detours for nor reason…Uncle, what’s that on your ear?” Just as Yu Yin was about to protest, he noticed the slight abnormality with the person in front of him.

Yu Xia subconsciously rubbed his still somewhat hurting ear and glanced at him. “Nothing, it’s probably just inflamed.”

“An inflammation would make it turn black?” Yan Si approached him and said, “Boss, it’s gotten serious! Did you do anything to get the wound infected recently?”

“Don’t remember.”

“Alright, let me rephrase that. Have you recently skipped showers and gotten so dirty that it led to an infection?”

“…Go die!”

After punching Yan Si off to one side to make him repent, Yu Xia rubbed his ear again and grumbled in a low tone before raising his head so that everyone could see the baby face that could make anyone curse at him. “Whatever, hurry up and scram home. You probably need to go to classes tomorrow too.”

“Okay, okay. You need to go to the doctor, alright?” After seeing a fist fly towards him, Yu Yin hurriedly pulled the dozing Yu over and quickly escaped through the door.

Yu Xia watched the children from his family run off, only shifting his gaze once he could no longer see them.

“So violent, Boss. You should be nicer to children.” Yan Si rubbed the bump swelling up from the hit just now and threw his arm around Yu Xia’s shoulders. “But this really isn’t something that I just like saying; that wound of yours is too strange. It’s entirely black…it can’t be poisoned, right?” Because of his profession, he had seen all kinds of injuries before, but he had never seen a cut turn entirely black. It was definitely a bit bizarre.

Yu Xia pushed him away and snorted, “It’s just a scrape, it’ll get better by itself.”

“If it gets really serious, please go to a hospital to treat it first!” Li Zi Hong, who had stayed silence during this conversation the whole time, simply expressed his opinion.

“See, even that guy is saying so. Come on, there’s a readily available doctor right here, right now. I can help you check it first.” Yan Si pulled out a band-aid with a picture on it, a foolish expression on his face. He even wagged his butt a bit. “A young friend gave me this strawberry-scented band-aid today. I can help you do some emergency treatment first…”

Yu Xia evilly glared at the strawberry covered, pink band-aid and used all his strength to resist his urge to send this person flying through the walls. “I’ll go to an outpatient service tomorrow. Since it seems like there’s nothing much here at the moment, I think everyone should head home and rest. If we have any issues advancing, we’ll contact you again.”

One could practically hear the sound of his grinding teeth. Yan Si was also aware he couldn’t fool around too much, or else he would end up becoming a fatal case. He put the strawberry band-aid away and sobered up. “Oh, the seventh floor examination report will probably come out tomorrow. I’ll come find you then, Boss.”

“Hurry up and get lost!”

***

He stopped the motorbike.

Yu Yin, who had truly not planned on doing anything originally, suddenly stopped after turning around the corner and passing the other crime scene.

There was a car that he knew by heart there; the car was always out in front of their home, so he knew he wasn’t mistaken. There was also the person currently standing in front of the alley.

“Dad?”

It was past midnight, why was his dad standing in front of the site where a fatal incident had occurred?

Yu Tong had come to compare with the photos. Upon hearing the voice, Yu Tong spun around to see his own son stop his motorbike, with another boy about to fall asleep sitting in the back. He asked suspiciously, “Ah Yin? Why are you guys here?”

Yu Yin parked the vehicle and got off. Yu was dozing off in the back, only half awake, and Yu Yin had no intention of waking him. He took off his safety helmet and walked over. “We were just over at the building there, did Uncle not tell you?” He had thought that his uncle would complain about it immediately, but judging from his dad’s manner, it didn’t seem as if he had been told.

“The building? Did something happen there?” Yu Tong looked at his son in confusion and said in a bewildered tone, “I just tried calling Xia, but all I got was interference and couldn’t connect. What happened?”

After giving a general explanation of what had happened, Yu Yin asked in return, “Going back to my original question, what are you doing here in the middle of the night, Dad?” If he hadn’t been mistaken just now, it seemed like his dad had been holding a photo and trying to compare something.

“Mm…it’s a long story. Jiu Shen and the others took a paranormal photo here two days ago.” He passed over the photo. This matter actually bugged Yu Tong quite a bit, and he furrowed his brows together. “The half face above looks very similar to the victim here, so I wanted to come over and take a look. Maybe something…”

When Yu Yin caught the photo under the light from the street, he let out an astonished shout, “This is where Uncle’s ear injury came from!” There was a small dot of black in the photo, but if not carefully looked at, would definitely be overlooked.

“Yes, but he keeps saying it’s fine.” Yu Tong signed at the thought of his somewhat troublesome younger brother. “He also said he was fine during the previous incident after getting shot, so I really have no idea what level of ‘fine’ he is referring to.” Would it be more precise to say that his younger brother had an insanely high level of pain tolerance, or was he just slow-witted? Or he just didn’t pay enough attention to his own body?

Sometimes, he found it really hard to not worry about his own family, especially these kinds of people.

Ever sing long ago, he had always accepted the fact that his younger brother was extremely terrifying in certain ways, especially with how he could so confidently do something dangerous. He had lectured his brother on this many times, but the other never listened and did not take it seriously, which Yu Tong found a pain.

“Uncle’s always like that.” Yu Yin had long since gotten used to it. He glanced back at the photo and then checked the alley but did not notice anything strange.

The pile of junk at the very end was still there. Perhaps someone had tossed some more garbage there, as it seemed a bit different from how it was in the photo. However, the photo in his hands was pretty blurry, so it wasn’t possible to discern any details.

“Oh right, I heard that the case here and the one on the seventh floor have some common points.” As Yu Yin peered into the gloom of the alley, he recalled the conversation he had overheard before.

“Yes, we’ve already started running a comparison. That’s why work is running so late today.” Yu Tong vaguely knew about the other’s involvement this time, so he did not try to purposely hide anything. “We’ve already learned that Xu Ru Xian and Lai Qi Lin undoubtedly have a relationship. Firstly, Xu Ru Xian is a saleslady at a cosmetics shop and Lai Qi Lin is an established customer of hers. According to her colleagues, Xu Ru Xian has also sold other things, such as weight loss pills, health supplements, and such, and the two had a pretty good relationship. They would even go out shopping together on occasion. But not long ago, a fight seemed to have occurred, although her colleagues aren’t really sure why. All they know is that Lai Qi Lin stopped going over there to buy products, and when she did, she would purposely choose a time when Xu Ru Xian wasn’t there. I checked the customer list, and as expected, she bought from Xu Ru Xian a lot before, but recently has not.” For this information, he had made a special evening trip to the sales counter to ask again and had been played around with once more.

This was pretty much all he had gotten out of the questioning. In reality, although Xu Ru Xian had communications with her coworkers, most of them only knew that she had a lot of jobs and liked to make sweets, and did not know much else.

She had not let her coworkers into her private life.

“I see…”

If they’d had a fight, it could possibly end up into a murder incident.

But what kind of dispute could it be? Yu Yin contemplated this and returned the photo back to the other person. He then raised his head and saw a scene pretty much identical to what he had witnessed last time.

But last time, he had been behind the wall, and now he was standing at the entrance of the alley.

Honestly speaking, Yu Yin was getting annoyed after all that had happened today. No matter where he walked, that was all he saw. Is it because it is July, the so-called month of ghosts? That’s why their numbers have increased?

“What’s wrong?” Yu Tong instantly noticed his son suddenly stiffen slightly and quickly asked, “Don’t tell me you…”

“Yeah, I see it.”

Yu Tong pulled him to the side and asked in a low voice, “Where is it?”

“…On top of the junk pile all the way inside.” Yu Yin also lowered his voice and leaned close to whisper to his father, “It was there last time too, but it felt very malicious.” He briefly described what he saw.

Yu Tong thought over this for a moment before starting to walk into the alley.

“Dad, what are you—”

Yu Tong shushed him. His gaze was not immediately focused on the innermost area. Instead, he was carefully looking left and right as he slowly neared the pile of junk, step by step.

Right before he was about to touch the pile, he heard a strange sound come from above. Without much thought, he immediately jumped back to draw some distance. In that same moment, a brick that had originally been sitting on the wall smashed down where he had just been standing with a huge crash.

“Hurry up and get out of there!” Yu Yin had seen that thing push the brick down. Thus, before the other party could act again, he quickly shouted out.

Yu Tong immediately ran outwards.

For a moment, he seemed to feel something brush past his face with a chilling breeze, but nothing touched him.

After stepping out of the alley, Yu Yin frantically dragged him over to his motorbike. Because of the commotion just now, Yu, who had been falling asleep earlier, was now rubbing his eyes and staring at the two of them in confusion.

“Was I attacked just now?” Yu Tong turned to ask his son without any signs of panic in his expression. He had actually mentally prepared himself more or less before going in, he just had not expected to get attacked.

“Yeah, after pushing down the brick, it also tried to slap you. It’s gone back to crouching in the same place now.”

Yu Yin anxiously told his dad everything he had seen and asked, “You weren’t purposely teasing her, right?”

Yu Tong nodded and explained in a proper manner, “Of course it was on purpose. But now I know that there might be an issue with that place. A victim would typically hope for the case to be closed sooner and wouldn’t try to obstruct the investigation process otherwise.” Watching over that pile of garbage made no sense, so he was beginning to suspect there was something else in there.

“Then what do we do?” Yu Yin asked, understanding his meaning.

“We have to go in and look. It might be critical to breaking this case.”

“That’s true…but if we go in now, she’ll attack us!”

He was convinced that the wound on his uncle’s ear had been a result of this, although his uncle had not noticed it himself.

They did not know what a wound inflicted by a ghost would do.

Yu Tong crossed his arms and stared into the dark, dead end, contemplating other possible alternatives.

As the two were silently pondering this, an amulet appeared in front of them.

They both turned to see a pair of violet eyes blinking at them.

“Perfect, let’s try that then!” Yu Tong took the somewhat old amulet. Ready for action, he started to walk straight into the alley.

This time, Yu Yin clearly saw that the moment his dad stepped inside, that thing crouching there immediately fled to the other side of the wall, instantly and without a trace. All that remained was its threatening sounds.

The sound was similar to that of a mournful, young cat. It was extremely sharp and piercing to the ear, which was extremely uncomfortable to listen to.

Upon arriving to the end of the alley, nothing fell down towards Yu Tong this time. He began to search around, taking out a small flashlight to shine over the pile of junk. But aside from some items of no value, garbage, and a bunch of ants and bugs, he did not see anything odd.

He put on his gloves and flipped through it a bit more but did not find anything still because he wasn’t carrying any search tools.

Yu Tong just took out the idiot’s camera to take some photos. However, because it was late at night, nothing would probably show up. Perhaps it would be better to ask Jiu Shen and the others to come take photos tomorrow.

This time, nothing really did happen. After glancing around once more, Yu Tong retreated back out.

As soon as he left, the thing immediately returned to crouch over the pile with a malicious glare.

“Nothing there.” Yu Tong walked out and shrugged at his son, who had a nervous expression. He passed the amulet back to Yu. He knew it belonged to Yu Yin, but there must have been a reason for giving it away.

“We’ll come back tomorrow to check. It’s pretty late today, so let’s just hurry home.”

When he checked the time, he realised they had stayed around here for a bit too long.

After pushing for his sons to leave first, Yu Tong re-entered his own car.

It was really too late, they would have to wait until tomorrow to continue with the rest.

***

It was the next day. Jiu Shen had a devastated expression on his face.

“Boss…why…do must you treat me like this…” He hadn’t come to work early just to do this kind of job!

“Any complaints?” Yu Xia stopped his questioning to coldly glare at the person he had randomly captured.

“No, it’s fine.”

Women…it’s women again.

Jiu Shen looked at the bunch of pretty females in front of them, very unaccustomed to dealing with such situations. He could only sadly shrink away to one side and carefully retrieve samples from the metal cabinets on the side.

Why did he have such bad luck? He had not come to work so early to day just to be seized and dragged over to a modelling agency for some questioning!

Yu Xia was currently interrogating some of the female models that had closer relationships with Lai Qi Lin. “You mentioned before that Lai Qi Lin used to go get weight loss pills regularly, but now she always asks someone to go to another place to get them?”

The girl sitting on the sofa across named Lisa nodded. “Anyone in our profession takes similar things, but everyone uses slightly different maintenance methods. Lai Qi Lin once introduced me to the kind she ate, saying it had pretty good results, so I started asking her to help me get them.”

“Did she get them from Xu Ru Xian before? The one at the cosmetics sales counter.”

Lisa nodded again. “That’s the one. I went along twice, but I always found that young miss a bit weird. She always looked at Lai Qi Lin strangely. I can’t really describe the feeling, but Lai Qi Lin said Miss Xu was very nice, so I never thought about it much. There was nothing wrong when I went with her a few times later either.” She shrugged, the scorpion tattoo on her snow-white arm moving along with her, as if it was alive. It was extremely eye-catching. “But I just don’t really like her. She would just stare at Lai Qi Lin every time…I know that Lai Qi Lin later introduced her boyfriend to Miss Xu, and the three of them have gone out together once or twice.”

“We know that as well. Apparently Lai Qi Lin and her boyfriend were just about to marry, and had already saved up quite a bit of money for it. In order to save the money, they had even been renting a haunted house for a monthly rent of three thousand yuan. But their families said they could not live together, so they each lived on separate floors.” A slightly younger girl interjected, “She also said that she would resign after marrying, and invited everyone to come attend the ceremony. She had originally planned on picking a wedding dress in the wintertime. Who knew that…”

The girls in the resting area all looked at each other and did not continue speaking.

It seemed like Lai Qi Lin had been pretty popular. Yu Xia continued to note down their conversation as he asked, “Her boyfriend was Xie Jun Wei, right?”

“Yeah, Xie-dàgē. Xie-dàgē ran ships, and we all knew him. He also wore a ring on his finger with Lai Qi Lin’s former name engraved on it. I heard that he had originally planned on giving Lai Qi Lin one with his name on it during their wedding, so that they would match.”

“I see.”

So that was the meaning behind the ring…

But why had it appeared in Xu Ru Xian’s stomach? Yu Xia really could not figure out why Xie Jun Wei would let something that had such an important significance be swallowed by someone else. Or perhaps the victim had been forced to swallow it?

“I remember now.” Lisa clapped her hands together and blinked her large, black-lined eyes.

“Not long ago, there was a time I went to help Lai Qi Lin pick up the weight loss pills. In the end, I saw that Miss Xu outside her home, the two of them loudly arguing and fighting with each other. As soon as she saw me, she left and glared really fiercely at me, which made me feel a bit scared.”

“What did she go over there to do?” Right, the residents had also mentioned frequently hearing a woman argue with Lai Qi Lin on her floor.

“I have no idea. I asked Lai Qi Lin before, but she said it wasn’t a big deal and wouldn’t say anything. But later, I saw Miss Xu pacing outside our company a few times without coming in to look for her. I have no idea what for…it was actually pretty scary. We even reminded Lai Qi Lin to be careful or else she would get injured. Luckily, it seems that Xie-dàgē came back and deal with it, and she never appeared again.”

Yu Xia was silent.

It sounded as if whatever had happened between Xu Ru Xian and Lai Qi Lin was more complicated than they had originally thought. Aside from being good friends, they had also had a dispute. Based on his experience, it could be nothing else but an issue related to money. However, there was possibly something wrong with the boyfriend too. It wasn’t impossible for two females to like the same man, especially since they had all gone out together before.

“That’s all I know,” Lisa hurriedly finished after seeing Yu Xia was quiet with an intimidating expression.

“I understand. Thank you for your cooperation.”

Yu Xia directly shut his notebook and stood up. Jiu Shen, who had huddled in a faraway corner, also gathered his tools and headed over once he saw Yu Xia heading out.

“If we need to, we will come find you again.”

“It’s fine, please quickly find who the culprit is,” Lisa softly said.

“Mm, we will.”

They then stepped out of the modeling management agency.

Upon leaving, Jiu Shen immediately signed in relief. However, he was starting to grow suspicious. Last time Yu Tong went to the sales counters, a bunch of young ladies surrounded and played around with him. How come nobody dared to reach their evil claws towards Boss here today?

Theoretically speaking, Boss should look younger than Yu Tong…

He knew the answer. As expected, animals had the ability to sense danger, including humans. They knew who they could touch and who they couldn’t. So mysterious and amazing!

After coming to this conclusion, Jiu Shen felt extremely proud of himself.

“Why are you standing there with a weird expression on your face!” Yu Xia noticed the person behind him had first frowned, then raised his eyebrows, and finally broke out into an odd smile. Yu Xia narrowed his eyes and said, “If you cramp a muscle in your face, I’ll slap you twice to help you recover.” He had forgotten about teaching a lesson for the matter with the spirit recovery; he could get back at both of the matters at once now.

Jiu Shen hurriedly covered his face with his hands and backpedaled a few steps. “No reason, nothing at all. Please don’t pay me any mind, I’m absolutely fine.” I’ll die. It would be stranger if the slap didn’t ruin his face. He still remembered the fate of that brick, and he was certain his face wasn’t any harder than it.

Yu Xia couldn’t be bothered to deal with him either. He rubbed his somewhat painful ear ailment. “We’re going back.” They still had a bunch of things to do.

“Huh? Didn’t Ah Si say you had to go visit an outpatient service today?” Jiu Shen questioned, having noticed the other’s actions.

“Who cares!”

“Your wound will worsen otherwise. It might end up turning into cellulitis. Boss, I think it’s best if you still go get it checked.”

“…Are you my mother?” Why keep bugging me about this?

“…If I had a child like you, I wouldn’t know whether to be happy or scared,” Jiu Shen quietly answered as he shifted his gaze away.

“What did you say?”

“No-nothing.”