Chapter Fifty-Three: A Mistake! It Really Was a Mistake!
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Lu Yuan’s life was highly routine, almost a straight line between two points.
Every day, the place he visited most often after leaving home was a restaurant. Once he finished eating, he never lingered outside for long. He would return to the psychological clinic and devote himself to reviewing his materials, fitting in some exercise whenever he had the time.
In the past, Lu Yuan had paid little attention to physical exercise and had been, in the experts’ words, in a state of sub-health.
But ever since entering the Eerie Dream World, he had gradually begun to take his physical condition seriously. Even there, his body remained the foundation of everything.
Lu Yuan was alive.
For him, his body would always be the most important thing.
So keeping up with exercise could only do him good. Perhaps it might even increase his chances of surviving when danger came.
Inside the psychological clinic, Lu Yuan had spent a small fortune buying a bed from the secondhand market.
The sofa had been replaced by a bed.
“A bed really is more comfortable.”
Lu Yuan lay on the mattress as the four bed legs creaked and wobbled beneath him. The noise was somewhat irritating.
Still, compared with sleeping upright in a chair, such a minor disturbance was nothing. At least he would not have to worry about his legs going numb from being compressed the next morning.
Suddenly, Lu Yuan thought of something. He sat up in bed and used his phone to search for news about what had happened at the amusement park that day.
As expected, there were plenty of unofficial reports.
Too many people had witnessed Zhuang Dong falling from the Ferris wheel. The police had no hope of suppressing the news.
Although most reports had censored the state of Zhuang Dong’s corpse, the bloodiness of the scene had still made many people uncomfortable. Falling from a Ferris wheel was no different from jumping off a building to commit suicide.
Lu Yuan frowned slightly.
He had noticed something strange.
Zhuang Dong’s body seemed rather fragile…
Fragile in the literal sense.
“The Ferris wheel reaches a height of roughly thirty to forty meters at its highest point, about the height of a ten-story building.”
“If someone fell from that height, would their body really be smashed into pieces?”
Lu Yuan did not know much about such things, but his instinct told him that it should not happen.
Yet Zhuang Dong’s body had been shattered beyond recognition.
Other than his head, there had not been a single intact part of him. Judging from the scene, even the most skilled mortician would have needed considerable effort to piece Zhuang Dong’s body back together.
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Lu Yuan instinctively found it strange, but he could not figure out what was wrong.
After wrestling with it for a while, he set the matter aside and focused on reviewing his materials. No matter how difficult survival was in the Eerie Dream World, he still had to work hard to live in the real world.
Lu Yuan reviewed his notes while exercising.
…
The police station.
Wen Ke hurried back to the conference room.
The atmosphere throughout the station was oppressive. The cases of An Shi and Zhuo Yan remained unsolved, and now Zhuang Dong was dead as well.
Although Zhuang Dong’s death appeared to be suicide and there seemed to be little reason for suspicion, requiring barely any investigation, the repeated occurrence of deaths weighed heavily on every police officer.
“What does everyone think about Zhuang Dong’s death?”
Wen Ke removed her coat.
At her question, none of her colleagues spoke. Instead, they turned their eyes toward the medical examiner, who had made an unusual appearance in the conference room that day.
“After a thorough examination, we found no abnormalities involving drugs or medication in Zhuang Dong’s body. Considering the scene, an accidental death or suicide is highly likely.”
That was the medical examiner’s conclusion.
As soon as he finished speaking, one of the investigators rose and reported, “Captain Wen, I carefully examined the inner lock of the gondola. I found only Zhuang Dong’s fingerprints on it, along with clear signs of forced damage.”
“What’s your conclusion?”
Wen Ke sat down.
The investigator answered, “I believe that when the Ferris wheel reached its highest point, Zhuang Dong violently damaged the inside of the gondola and jumped out.”
The conclusion was perfectly reasonable.
Nearly every officer had reached the same assessment.
In other words, Zhuang Dong had indeed committed suicide.
Wen Ke pondered for a moment. “If Zhuang Dong killed himself, what was the reason?”
A young officer scratched his head. “Perhaps he learned that his former girlfriend had died. Since he still had feelings for her, he couldn’t get over it and chose to die with her.”
It seemed to be the only possible explanation.
Wen Ke tapped her fingers against the table.
She did not believe Zhuang Dong was a man capable of such profound devotion. From their previous questioning, she had sensed that he was actually quite selfish. In fact, he had cared far more about An Shi than Zhuo Yan.
Would a man like that really kill himself for love?
The possibility was simply too small.
At that moment, Old Zhang asked in confusion, “Captain Wen, why didn’t you bring Lu Yuan back?”
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Wen Ke rubbed her temples. “We can’t bring Lu Yuan back to the station merely because he spoke with Zhuang Dong. That wouldn’t be proper procedure.”
“I asked Lu Yuan about it. Zhuang Dong sought him out last night because he wanted to know An Shi’s whereabouts. Naturally, I don’t completely believe Lu Yuan’s account, but what happened today really does look like a coincidence.”
Or rather, she could not think of any reason Lu Yuan would have to kill Zhuang Dong.
The two had no conflict between them. Before the interrogation at the police station, they had been complete strangers.
Bang!
The conference-room door was shoved open.
A colleague stumbled in, gasping for breath. In his hand was a plastic bag containing a bloodstained phone.
“Captain Wen, we cracked Zhuang Dong’s phone. We found something.”
“What did you find?”
“The day before Zhuang Dong was forcibly summoned back to S City, he had a private online conversation with someone. That person…” The officer paused. “It was Lu Yuan.”
The moment those words were spoken, the entire conference room fell silent.
Lu Yuan again…
This changed everything.
Zhuang Dong had been in private contact with Lu Yuan before being summoned back to S City. That was clearly suspicious.
Wen Ke realized the significance as well. Xiao Wang, who was in charge of the presentation, projected the private messages from Zhuang Dong’s phone onto the screen so everyone could read them.
After a moment, several people looked puzzled.
“What is this ‘ghost’? Is it the thing I’m thinking of?”
Police officers were all atheists. They had never believed in ghosts or spirits, and the content of the conversation between Lu Yuan and Zhuang Dong struck them as nothing more than absurd nonsense.
But near the end of Zhuang Dong’s messages, An Shi’s name appeared.
A faint glimmer passed through Wen Ke’s eyes.
Lu Yuan seemed never to have intended to conceal his identity from the beginning. When they opened his personal profile, they found that his avatar was a photograph of himself, and he had bluntly listed his occupation as a psychological counselor.
“Did he deliberately reveal his identity?”
“Or was it a mistake?”
Wen Ke could not quite decipher Lu Yuan’s intentions.
If Lu Yuan had been there, he would certainly have offered an explanation. At the time, he had not known that the person was Zhuang Dong, so naturally he had had no reason to change his avatar or profile.
In the end, it was still a coincidence.
Among countless people online, Lu Yuan had simply happened to choose Zhuang Dong.
That was all.
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