Chapter 3.1

Jiang Rou was deeply impressed by those eyes as if she had glimpsed the man he would become twenty years later.

Her master had taken her along to question him, and he was sitting in the interrogation room. When they opened the door, he looked up for a moment. Even though he was already forty years old at that time, with the weathered marks of time on his face, it still made her momentarily awe-struck.

She never expected that a person dressed in wrinkled old clothes who looked poor and disheveled could still look so handsome that anyone could be captivated.

He was cold and aloof, with a casually indifferent smile on his lips, and his sharp eyes were full of mockery.

His inherent hostility towards the police didn’t just stem from his daughter but also from his upbringing.

According to the records, his father was abusive and an alcoholic, and he died in an accident when Li Xiao was nine years old. His mother had remarried twice, and neither of the men was good, and no one looked after him.

He grew up with a group of local thugs, brawls were commonplace, and going to the police station was a regular occurrence.
That’s why, even though he had voluntarily turned himself in, he didn’t cooperate much.

It was to show his defiance and disdain.

Jiang Rou still remembered the night before the interrogation, when she had reviewed a lot of relevant information, revisiting what she had learned about analyzing valuable information, and interrogation techniques, and observing the micro-expressions of suspects, preparing not to overlook any clues.

But she didn’t expect the man to completely ignore them.

No matter what they asked, he remained silent.

His being uncooperative made everyone at a loss.

It wasn’t until three days later that he suddenly spoke, and his first words were a request for a cigarette.

After handing him a cigarette, he didn’t use it; he just held it in his hand and looked at it.

Afterward, he became very cooperative.
No one knew what he was thinking at the time.
If her master hadn’t discovered a suspicious point in this case, it would probably have been closed immediately.
If Li Xiao twenty years later appeared mature and astute, then his younger self was like a sharp blade, full of sharpness, with a hint of ferocity and rebellion hidden in his gaze.

He looked like someone not to be trifled with.

Jiang Rou had seen photos of Li Xiao when he was young, but he doesn’t look like this now. In the past, people didn’t take many photos, and there were even fewer photos of Li Xiao. The only one was a picture of him standing in the snow with his four-year-old daughter.

The little girl was perched on his shoulders, her hands tugging at his short hair, smiling like a little sun.

Beneath her, he was also smiling, though his smile was faint, with a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. His handsome, mischievous face had a somewhat carefree and lazy expression, tinged with a subtle hint of indulgence. Just like any ordinary father, except that he had exceptionally good looks, you couldn’t tell that he would become someone who would endure and plot revenge for over a decade for his daughter.

Now, the same pair of eyes had twenty years of life between them.

Jiang Rou’s heart suddenly became a bit complicated. She pursed her lips and was hesitating whether to say anything. However, the man only gave her a fleeting glance and turned to pick up the fallen door plank.

Then he walked towards the entrance of the courtyard with the door plank in hand.

Jiang Rou breathed a sigh of relief and quickly went inside when he turned his back. She headed to the kitchen at the back.

As the footsteps faded away, the man at the door, pretending to fix it, glanced back, his eyes filled with thoughtful contemplation.

After installing it, he closed the door and entered the yard. After taking two steps, he seemed to have noticed something. His footsteps stopped, his eyes scanned the clean and spacious yard, and he was slightly stunned.

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