[Also had both eyes gouged out, died on the bed]

Huo Zhenye’s back was soaked in sweat. He instinctively turned, aiming his gun at the door.

Bai Zhun glanced at him—useless as he was, the man still had guts. Not even a single cry for help.

He didn’t take the gun seriously at all. Rolling his wheelchair into the room, he looked down at the claw marks left on the floor by the ghost’s fingernails, his brow slightly furrowed.

That ghost woman actually managed to break free?

Bai Zhun opened his mouth, and his voice pierced through the darkness. The entire room lit up. Huo Zhenye blinked, snapping out of it and lowering his gun. He was still in his own room—this wasn’t a dream, nor a murder plot.

He had really seen a ghost.

Jin Dangui must have sensed Bai Zhun standing behind the door—only then did she flee.

“Who exactly are you?” Huo Zhenye changed his tone as he questioned him.

Bai Zhun didn’t answer. He wheeled himself over to the window. There were still scratch marks on the window frame. Jin Dangui had crawled out along the wall and was long gone.

The wisp of smoke that had curled around Huo Zhenye’s shoulder dissipated instantly, drifting out into the night breeze.

Bai Zhun picked up the fallen paper yoke from the floor. The yoke and shackles had been a set—while the shackles worked, the yoke had been soaked through with Huo Zhenye’s sweat, rendering it useless.

With a flick of his fingers, Bai Zhun rubbed the yoke into paper ash.

The room was filled with heavy resentment. And for Jin Dangui to escape using only her hands after her feet were bound—she was no ordinary ghost.

It had been three nights since her death. Once her soul returned on the seventh day, her ghostly power would surge. By then, mere shackles would no longer be enough to restrain her.

Huo Zhenye stared at the scratches on the floor and the ten small holes in the cabinet door, realizing how close he’d come to death. But instead of feeling relieved, a strange sense of absurdity rose in him. “Why did she come after me?”

Only then did Bai Zhun believe Huo Zhenye hadn’t killed her. Strangely, a trace of relief flickered through him. But then he reminded himself—it had nothing to do with him whether the man lived or died.

Judging by the situation, even Jin Dangui herself probably didn’t know who her killer was. She died in Huo Zhenye’s room and assumed the culprit was him—returning to seek vengeance for her death and her stolen eyes.

When she failed to kill Huo Zhenye, she’d go after Liu Da next.

Bai Zhun’s brows drew together tightly. What a damned headache.

Huo Zhenye pondered only a moment before stepping forward: “Tell me who you are and where we’ve met before, and I’ll figure out how to get a pair of paper shackles to Liu Da too.”

Bai Zhun shot him a sideways glance. “That thing won’t hold her anymore. If we don’t catch Jin Dangui within three days, both you and Liu Da are done for.”

“So we have met before, after all.”

Bai Zhun had let his guard down and been tricked. He pursed his lips and turned to leave.

Huo Zhenye saw that Bai Zhun didn’t move his fingers, yet the wheelchair turned and rolled out on its own. He quickly followed behind. “You’re a yin-yang master?”

Bai Zhun didn’t look back. A quiet, mocking laugh floated to Huo Zhenye’s ears.

Just as they stepped outside, they ran into Officer Chen San. He’d been in the room next door and had slowly wandered over after hearing the commotion. He looked first at Huo Zhenye, then at Bai Zhun, surprise on his face—followed by a lewd, squinting gaze as he sized Bai Zhun up.

This man in the wheelchair was too good-looking.

In the dead of night, a man that handsome appearing in Young Master Huo’s room, and causing such a commotion—turns out, Young Master Huo swings both ways, and has quite the taste.

That’s what Chen San thought. His face showed a hint of sleaze, his gaze lingering—upon closer inspection, this delicate man was even more stunning than he first appeared. So what if he was a guy? A beauty like that—who cared?

Then Ah Xiu came to push Bai Zhun’s wheelchair, and Chen San’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. He looked at the brother, then the sister—and decided the brother was the more tempting one.

Bai Zhun’s lips curled into a cold smile. As he passed by Chen San, something flicked out from his sleeve, landing silently behind Chen San’s heel.

Huo Zhenye’s eyes were sharp. He caught a clear glimpse—what Bai Zhun had flicked out was a paper-cut figure.

Huo Zhenye knew exactly what Chen San had been thinking, and he said nothing to warn him. In fact, he was curious to see what that thin piece of paper could do.

Bai Zhun refused to answer his questions, but Huo Zhenye wasn’t going to give up. Something deep in his gut told him this was important—yet his memory was like a door slammed shut. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t recall even a thread.

Once Bai Zhun was out of sight, Huo Zhenye told Chen San, “Let’s go to the station.”

Chen San lit up with joy. “You’ve thought it through, Young Master?”

Admitting Liu Da was the killer would finally settle the matter. Why keep insisting otherwise? If the press hadn’t been hounding them so relentlessly, Liu Da would’ve already been a nailed-down murderer.

Thinking Huo Zhenye had come to his senses, Chen San beamed and rushed to arrange a car. “Please wait a moment, I’ll have the car brought around.”

Huo Zhenye had already planned to wait three days. By the time the headlines had run their course, the whole thing would blow over.

At dawn, Huo Zhenye stepped out of the Ritz Hotel. The reporters who had camped outside for three days without catching a glimpse of him had given up and moved to the police station instead.

Chen San walked ahead, while Huo Zhenye’s gaze kept drifting toward the back of his heels. Chen San, noticing, turned around from time to time with a flattering smile. “Chief Song is waiting for you.”

Suddenly, his heel gave way and his whole body pitched forward, tumbling down the stairs and rolling all the way to the ground floor.

The other officers rushed over to help him up. Chen San howled in pain—his bones had cracked audibly on the way down. No doubt something was broken.

“Take him to the hospital,” Huo Zhenye said, then climbed into the car.

He had seen it: that thin paper man had risen just as Chen San stepped down the stairs, subtly lifting his heel.

By the time they arrived at the station, the sky was fully bright. The moment Huo Zhenye stepped out of the car, the reporters recognized him. One shouted, and the rest surged forward, surrounding him in a swarm.

“Regarding the murder of Jin Dangui, do you have anything more to say?”

“Are you the killer? Are you at the police station today to present new evidence?”

“Were you really too drunk to wake when the murder happened?”

The junior reporters couldn’t get into the station, but they had their own channels. They always managed to dig up some inside scoop.

Because of Jin Dangui’s death, newspaper sales had doubled. Every paper’s front page was dominated by coverage of the bloody case following the Courtesan Queen selection.

So when they saw Huo Zhenye, they scrambled to get a quote—anything for another headline. If he was the killer, sales would soar again. And if he wasn’t, they could still run stories on his romantic entanglements—there’d always be an audience for that.

Huo Zhenye didn’t say a word and walked through the main gates.

Chief Constable of the Central Municipal Police, Song Jingnan, personally met him and led him to the office. He wore a stern expression as they walked, but once the door closed, his face broke into a smile.

“Young Master Huo, please, have a seat.”

Another call had come in from Nanjing. Things weren’t looking great. Hongkou concession ^[1]Hongkou was a district that largely comprised the American Concession which later merged with the British Concession to form the Shanghai International Settlement in 1863. Ref: … Continue reading was, after all, still the foreigners’ territory. With foreign pressure from above and the press pressure from outside, they needed a resolution they could publicly explain.

Huo Zhenye draped his suit jacket over the chair. It had been three days now, and Song Jingnan hadn’t found a thing.

He sat down and got straight to the point: “Chief Song, any progress on the case?”

Given his distant relation to the Tao family and established business connections with the Huo family, Song Jingnan treated Huo Zhenye with exceptional politeness, eager to satisfy him. Yet, the investigation was utterly stuck, leaving him with no progress to report.

Whether it was a crime of passion or revenge, standard procedure called for interviewing everyone who had attended the banquet, including the ten remaining contestants.

But all of them were powerful and well-connected. Of the ten contestants, they only questioned a few without strong backers. The rest didn’t even set foot inside the station.

The murder had happened in the International Settlement, under Anglo-American jurisdiction. With pressure from all sides demanding a swift arrest, Song Jingnan had already made up his mind. Even if Huo Zhenye refused to pin the crime on Liu Da, Liu Da would still be declared the killer.

“This case involves too many parties,” Song said. “Young Master Huo, I’m sure you understand the position I’m in.”

Huo Zhenye smiled faintly. “Precisely because I understand your position, Chief Song, I came here today. I’ve recalled some new details. Would it be possible for me to review the case file—or meet with Liu Da directly?”

Song Jingnan was briefly taken aback. This young master had been uncooperative the whole time, insisting he wasn’t the killer and claiming he had no idea whether Liu Da had done anything. Now he was suddenly offering to cooperate, which made Song even more suspicious.

But since he had already decided on the outcome of this case, he figured he’d just let the young master do whatever he wanted.

“Da Tou, bring in the case file. And take Liu Da to the interrogation room—Young Master Huo wants to confront him.”

Inside the interrogation room, Huo Zhenye sat down and opened the file. The very first photo was of the crime scene—Jin Dangui’s corpse. The image made his stomach turn. He could almost smell the metallic tang of blood again.

He flipped through the pages. Testing had found traces of sedatives and alkaloids in the wine bottles in the room. If the killer had drugged the wine, then they could have slipped something into his drink as well. No wonder he’d felt dizzy after just one glass that night.

Unfortunately, the glasses from that banquet had been cleared away immediately by the servers. With so many guests, there must have been hundreds of glasses in use. They’d all been washed—any trace of fingerprints, long gone.

Further on were the testimonies of some dancers and waiters. But there had been simply too many people at that event—too many and too messy to sort through.

Yet many people had seen Huo Zhenye that night—once the coroner’s autopsy report came out and confirmed the time of death, it might prove he hadn’t been in the room at the time.

Huo Zhenye was flipping through the file when something suddenly occurred to him. He turned back a few pages, picked up the crime scene photo, and held it under the lamp for a closer look.

The jewelry box that held the earrings—was missing.

He turned to the report again. It detailed how Jin Dangui had been wearing a red lace nightgown, but notably, the pair of diamond earrings was absent.

Liu Da was brought into the interrogation room in shackles. After a few days in jail, he looked dispirited and broken. He kept insisting he hadn’t killed Jin Dangui, despite being covered in blood. Right before being brought out, he had taken another beating.

Da Tou shoved Liu Da into the chair across from Huo Zhenye. “Young Master Huo will ask the questions. You answer honestly!”

Liu Da raised his head and glared at Huo Zhenye, fists clenched tight, eyes burning with hatred. “You killed her! You’re the one who killed her!”

Huo Zhenye rubbed his brow—he had little patience for fools. He pressed his hand down on the case file and said coldly, “You know perfectly well—I didn’t even know her.”

Otherwise, Jin Dangui wouldn’t have needed to tip the servant just to get into his room.

Liu Da shrank into the chair like his soul had been sucked out.

Da Tou turned to Huo Zhenye and said, “It’s no use, Young Master. We’ve been questioning him for days. He won’t say a thing—just keeps throwing the blame at you.”

Huo Zhenye had refused to accuse Liu Da, yet Liu Da turned around and bit back, insisting he was the killer.

Huo Zhenye chuckled—he had expected as much. He tossed the case file onto the table. “The earrings you gave Jin Dangui—they’re gone.”

Liu Da’s head snapped up, his voice sharp with alarm. “Gone?”

He had stolen a string of jade from his senior sister’s trunk. But Jin Dangui didn’t like jade—she only wanted diamonds. So he’d exchanged it for a pair of diamond earrings to give her.

That trunk had held the things Master Han had collected in his youth. Back when Master Han performed with his master in royal mansions, he’d quietly taken quite a few valuables. For decades, he never dared show them, but before he passed, he handed them over as dowry for his daughter—to ensure her future.

Huo Zhenye leaned back in his chair, shook a cigarette from a silver case, and lit it with a slow drag. “You stole the dowry your master left for his daughter, planning to run away with Jin Dangui, didn’t you?”

Liu Da stared hard at him, fear creeping into his eyes.

“And now the earrings are gone,” Huo Zhenye said, exhaling smoke. “So—who do you think took them?”

Liu Da began to tremble. He’d been locked up for days, beaten repeatedly, deprived of sleep until his mind was slipping. Hearing the earrings were missing threw him into a panic. His voice wavered: “Who… it was… Master…”

Da Tou stared in shock. How did Young Master Huo know all this? They had questioned Liu Er and Han Zhu too—not one word about any earrings had come up.

Just as Liu Da finally started responding, and the interrogation could finally make progress—

Chief Constable Song pushed the door open, his expression grim. He forced a smile at Huo Zhenye. “Young Master Huo, you should go back.” Then he looked at Da Tou and pointed at Liu Da, who was still curled up in the chair. “Let him go too.”

“The case is solved?” Huo Zhenye asked, puzzled.

“Another one’s dead.” Su Manli—the Beauty of October.

Chief Song’s face was dark. The manner of her death was identical to Jin Dangui’s: eyes gouged out, body found on the bed.

With both Huo Zhenye and Liu Da under watch—one locked in a cell, the other never having left the Ritz Hotel—they were naturally cleared of suspicion.

It wasn’t them who did it.