Chapter 1

In ten years on the police force, I have handled countless major cases and reopened old ones.

But I have never spoken about the first homicide I investigated. I kept that one buried.

It showed me what people become when they lose every trace of humanity—and just how far human cruelty can go.

Now that everyone involved is dead, I can finally tell the truth I have kept hidden for ten years.

It began on a stifling, overcast afternoon. I was patrolling the mountain roads when my radio crackled sharply.

“Someone’s dead at Xie Feng’s house in Lijia’ao! Get over there!”

Xie Feng?

My heart sank.

He was something of a celebrity around our area—a fairly well-known livestreamer.

He had started making travel vlogs a few years earlier and built up a modest following. But what really made him an internet sensation was the “cliffside wedding” he had livestreamed the previous year.

I could still picture the video. On a desolate cliff, with blue water churning far below, Xie Feng stood in a suit, smiling tenderly at Ma Xiaoya in her wedding dress as they posed for the camera.

Then his foot slipped.

He plunged off the cliff into the sea.

What happened next was even more breathtaking. Without a moment’s hesitation, Ma Xiaoya gathered up her wedding dress and jumped after him.

The photographer captured the whole thing. Within half a day of being uploaded, the video had more than ten million views.

Both of them were rescued. But Ma Xiaoya lost her sight after inhaling water and suffering injuries in the fall.

Afterward, afraid of becoming a burden to Xie Feng, she offered to leave him. In front of the cameras, he answered with absolute conviction.

“For the rest of my life, I’ll be your eyes.”

Her sacrifice and his refusal to abandon her dominated the trending topics for days.

Someone even discovered that they had been classmates, and that Xie Feng had written her ninety-nine love letters to win her over.

The internet agreed.

“This is what true love looks like.”

I had recently heard that the golden couple had returned to his home village to recuperate. How could someone suddenly be dead?

Lijia’ao lay deep in the mountains. It took me more than half an hour along dirt roads to reach the house.

A crowd of villagers had gathered outside, whispering among themselves, their faces full of fear and pity.

I pushed open the gate.

The little courtyard was a mess of glass, timber, and building supplies.

Xie Feng lay facedown among the planks, his face twisted into a hideous grimace.

A long iron nail had pierced his right temple. Its other end was still attached to an old board. Blood had dried to a dark brown, matting his hair and sticking to his skin.

This was my first homicide. The sight made my scalp prickle.

Chen, the forensic examiner, had arrived before me. When he saw me, he gave a slight shake of his head.

There was nothing to be done.

A woman was sobbing inside the house.

I went in and found several elderly village women comforting Ma Xiaoya. She sat trembling on the bed, still clutching a peeled apple.

“Ma Xiaoya? I’m Song Chi, the officer handling the case.”

I kept my voice as gentle as I could.

Her sobbing faltered, then grew even louder.

It was a long time before she wiped her eyes, felt around for her sunglasses, and put them on. She lifted her face to “look” at me, but her gaze was well off the mark.

Between her broken account and the old women’s additions, I pieced together what had supposedly happened.

Feeling sorry for her blindness, Xie Feng had decided to build a sunroom in the courtyard so she could enjoy the warmth even in cold weather.

To save on materials, he had dismantled some old wooden crates. Several boards lay in the yard with nails sticking up, and he had warned her not to wander about.

Just before it happened, he had handed her the peeled apple and turned to clear away the wood.

He stepped on a piece of apple peel.

He slipped, fell—and struck his temple on one of the nails.

The fall had been hard and the nail was long. It had penetrated his brain almost instantly.

“I heard him cry out, and then there was nothing…” Ma Xiaoya’s voice shook. “I panicked. I felt my way over and touched him… I shook him, but he wouldn’t respond. All I could do was run to the gate and shout for help…”

By the time the neighbors arrived, Xie Feng was lying in a pool of blood.

One old woman had summoned the courage to check him. He was no longer breathing.

As Ma Xiaoya sobbed through her story, the people around her sighed with grief.

A love story the whole internet had envied, and now one of them was gone.

I went back into the courtyard and crouched down to examine the scene.

Footprints were everywhere. Too many people had walked through; the scene had clearly been disturbed.

The apple peel had been trampled into the damp earth.

Chen had removed the board. Dark blood coated the nail.

“There’s a clear contusion on his head. Probably hit the ground as well as the nail when he fell.”

He sighed.

“Only a few days ago I saw a video of him leading Ma Xiaoya through the village by the hand. He even picked wild chrysanthemums for her… I gave it a like.”

The villagers gathered around us were no less distressed.

“He cooked for her and did her laundry every day. Wherever they went, he held her hand, afraid she might trip.”

“Such a good young man. How could something like this happen to him?”

The evidence and the witness accounts all pointed to the same conclusion.

An accident.

But when I went back inside, Ma Xiaoya had stopped crying.

The despair that seemed to smolder inside her was more frightening than the sobs had been.

“We’ve finished our examination. Our preliminary conclusion is that it was an accident.”

She murmured, “When I felt my way over… I touched his blood… It was sticky… still warm…”

She lowered her head, and something caught my attention.

There was a small, scabbed wound on her forehead.

“Did you catch yourself on a nail?”

She looked bewildered, then touched the spot.

“No… I can’t see. I must have bumped into something.”

My gaze dropped. Dried blood marked her fingertips, the same color as the blood on the nail.

A flicker of suspicion stirred in me.

Then I looked at her pitiful state, and let it go.

Back at the station, I hurried through the paperwork. I only wanted to close the case and let the dead rest.

But the next day, just as I was about to submit my report, a visitor overturned everything I thought I knew.

The village chief brought in an elderly man, somewhere in his seventies or eighties.

He said that at around half past three that afternoon, he had seen Chen Yang—Xie Feng’s best friend—climb over the back wall and run away.

When he realized he had been spotted, Chen Yang had gone white and fled like a thief.

The death had not been reported until four.

A chill ran down my spine.

If the old man was telling the truth, this might not have been an accident.

I immediately ordered a search for Chen Yang.

Before long, officers found him in a small guesthouse in the neighboring county.

5

When they brought him in, he tried to look calm. His eyes kept shifting away; he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

But the moment he saw Mr. Zhang’s fingerprint on the witness statement, he broke.

Soon he was telling us everything.

“I graduated from university, but I couldn’t find a decent job. Xie was making videos, so he asked me to come and film for him.

“We were out shooting every day. At least half the credit for his channel, Where the Wind Meets Mountains and Rivers, belongs to me. We agreed to split everything fifty-fifty. But once he got famous and started making money, he went back on his word. He pocketed it all and paid me a lousy basic salary.

“I couldn’t stand it, so I left to work in another city. But with the pandemic these past few years, companies have been laying people off. Good jobs are hard to find. I came home a few days ago and heard Xie had brought his wife back too. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I decided to go over and demand what he owed me. Get whatever money I could.

“We’d barely started talking before we got into an argument. He lost his temper and pointed the apple knife at me. I acted without thinking and shoved him. I never imagined he’d slip on the peel and hit his head on that board with the nail. He died right there. I panicked. My mind went blank. I was so scared I climbed over the back wall and ran.”

He wept as he spoke, looking utterly remorseful.

But I watched him closely.

There was a glaring hole in his statement.

I asked abruptly, “What exactly is your relationship with Ma Xiaoya? Why would she cover for you?”