Because a bloody handprint was found in Qiu Yao’s room, the whole case took a new direction.

But this bloody handprint appeared so bizarrely that the case became even more mysterious, with a hint of the supernatural.

The evidence was quickly sent to the lab for testing.

The fingerprint comparison results came out swiftly, but the DNA of the bloodstain was still being tested, and the results wouldn’t be available until the afternoon.

“The fingerprint belongs to Qiu Yao, and the bloody handprint matches his right palm completely.”

Now, everyone in the office was speculating whether the bloodstain belonged to the deceased.

If the bloodstain wasn’t the deceased’s, what was Qiu Yao so nervous about?

If the bloodstain was the deceased’s, did the murderer pass the bloody clothes to Qiu Yao through the window, and did Qiu Yao touch the blood on the clothes and then leave a bloody handprint on the wall?

But the amount of blood from the handprint didn’t match the amount of blood lost by the corpse, and why wasn’t any blood found at Zhou Ji Barbecue?

Everyone had different opinions and was curious about the final DNA results.

When Qiu Yao learned that the police had discovered the bloody handprint on the wall, he was so scared that he trembled all over, and sweat soaked his school uniform. At this moment, everyone’s attention was focused on him.

This important interrogation made Li Meng a bit nervous. He thought about asking Teacher Mo to come, but Mo Lin glanced at Qiu Yao in the interrogation room and said nonchalantly, “I’m afraid I’ll scare him, you go.”

Sure enough, Li Meng went in for 2 minutes, just said two sentences, and Qiu Yao suddenly fainted in the interrogation room. This scared Li Meng quite a bit.

Gu Yuan immediately entered the interrogation room and checked the other’s carotid artery: “It’s still beating, he won’t die.”

Only then did Li Meng breathe a sigh of relief.

Two police officers carried him to a ventilated spot by the door, and within a minute, he woke up.

“With his psychological quality, he’s bound to faint sooner or later. Let him rest for a bit, and we’ll ask him later.” Xiao Ze had just returned from a meeting in the province and happened to witness this scene.

Li Meng briefly reported the events of the past few days to Xiao Ze. When he mentioned Mo Lin, he couldn’t stop talking, his eyes shining.

“Teacher Mo is simply amazing!”

He went on and on, and Xiao Ze, feeling a bit dizzy, listened while rubbing his forehead: “If you like him so much, why don’t you just stick with him?”

Hearing this, Li Meng immediately shut up.

One had to admit, ever since Mo Lin arrived, the speed of solving cases had been incredibly fast.

Even though Mo Lin was working in such a down-to-earth place, he wasn’t idle. Just this morning, he had three video conferences, remotely participating in major criminal cases elsewhere, without neglecting his original work.

Many times, Li Meng was very curious about why Mo Lin stayed here.

“Captain, how long is Teacher Mo going to stay here?”

Xiao Ze: “As long as he wants to stay.”

“So, if one day Teacher Mo wants to leave, he can leave anytime?”

“That’s right, he’s a national treasure, not Yan Hai City’s private property.”

*

At 2 PM, the DNA test report finally came out, showing that the DNA of the bloody handprint completely matched the deceased’s DNA!

Meanwhile, after receiving a bottle of glucose saline, Qiu Yao felt much better and returned to the interrogation room, surprisingly calm.

Li Meng, afraid of provoking him, asked very gently, “Where did the blood on the wall come from?”

Qiu Yao struggled internally for a long time, hesitating for ages, and finally said, “The night before last, Zhou Hao was in my room.”

“What time was this?”

“Around nine o’clock at night.”

“But the surveillance shows the deceased never left the room.”

“He didn’t leave, but… there’s actually an attic above the ceiling.” The more Qiu Yao spoke, the lower his head dropped.

“An attic above the ceiling?” This was something Li Meng hadn’t considered.

“The space above the ceiling is quite large. Zhou Jie and I usually play up there, but that day her brother was causing too much trouble, so we had no choice but to take him up there. Who knew he’d play around and climb to the edge, fall through a gap in the ceiling, hit his head on the wooden ladder, and pass out… he bled a bit. I wanted to call 120, but Zhou Jie wouldn’t let me.”

“Why wouldn’t she let you call?”

“She said it would expose our secret base.”

At that time, Qiu Yao wanted to call 120. He picked up the bedside phone, but Zhou Jie stopped him.

Qiu Yao thought about it and agreed, so he put the phone down. Because he was too scared, when he stood up, he swayed a bit, and his right hand pressed against the wall, leaving a bloody handprint.

Zhou Jie used tissue paper to wipe the blood from Zhou Hao’s head. Fortunately, the bleeding wasn’t much, and they planned to take him back first.

So the two of them worked together to move Zhou Hao to the second floor of Zhou Ji Barbecue.

“At that time, he was still breathing,” Qiu Yao said. “We thought it was just a simple bleeding, and he didn’t bleed much. The bleeding had already stopped when we were in the attic.”

When they got Zhou Hao to the second floor of Zhou Ji Barbecue, Zhou Hao suddenly woke up, and both of them breathed a sigh of relief.

Zhou Jie hugged Zhou Hao and took him back to the room.

As soon as they entered, Zhou Hao started vomiting, and Zhou Jie panicked, patting his back continuously.

“He didn’t vomit much, but after a while, his face got redder and redder. I said we should take him to the hospital, but Zhou Jie was too scared to go downstairs. She said her dad would kill her if he found out.”

“We argued for less than two minutes, and Zhou Hao suddenly stopped moving. I checked his carotid artery, and he seemed dead!”

After checking the carotid artery, Qiu Yao was terrified.

“What do we do! He seems dead, did we kill him?” His face turned pale instantly.

Zhou Jie, trembling, held her brother’s body, not saying a word.

She forced herself to calm down. “We can’t let anyone find out about this. You go back first!”

Zhou Jie took off the bloody clothes and packed them with the vomit, handing them to Qiu Yao.

“I’ll just say he fell by himself. If the police come, you don’t know anything. This never happened! When you get back, deal with these things first!”

Listening to Zhou Jie, Qiu Yao climbed back to the attic with the stuff, pulled up the wooden ladder.

Zhou Jie added, “You can’t throw away the school uniform; it has your name on it. Use bleach to wash it!”

Terrified, Qiu Yao quickly disappeared into the ceiling, sealing it up.

“After that, I cleaned up the blood in the room, bought bleach, and threw the clothes into the washing machine.”

“I threw the rest of the stuff in a trash can far from here.”

“Because the blood on the wall had seeped into the wood, I couldn’t do anything, so I used a poster Zhou Jie gave me to cover it.”

“I don’t know what happened after that.”

After hearing this account, Li Meng felt a chill down his spine.

“What is your relationship with each other?”

Qiu Yao thought for a moment: “Friends.”

Everyone standing outside the interrogation room was amazed. Xiao Ze notified Yan Ji to check the ceiling according to Qiu Yao’s statement, being careful not to destroy any evidence on it.

Yan Ji stood on the second floor of Zhou Ji Barbecue, looking up at the ceiling. The ceiling was made up of many 60*60cm square tiles, all well-connected, with the gaps fixed by golden borders, no wonder they hadn’t noticed anything unusual before.

He used a stick to check the ceiling along the corridor from inside to outside, getting quite a bit of dust on his head. When he reached the ceiling outside the couple’s bedroom, he was surprised to find one of the tiles was loose. 

With a gentle push from the stick, a complete square tile was pushed up, revealing the dark space inside.

He had someone bring a ladder, climbed up to check, and sure enough, there was a hidden world above!

The structure above the ceiling was quite complex. With a flashlight, he saw sewer pipes and wooden posts, likely covered for aesthetics when the hot pot restaurant divided the rooms. The height left was about eighty centimeters, quite spacious.

The entire ceiling had been reinforced, with a high safety factor, fully capable of bearing an adult’s weight.

There was a lot of dust above, and in a distant corner, traces of rat droppings, but one relatively spacious area had been cleaned by someone, with a wooden board laid flat, a mat on top, and a lamp beside it.

There was no natural light above, and ventilation was poor.

Yan Ji turned on the lamp and found the walls covered in drawings. At first glance, they looked quite impressive, with skies, white clouds, and fish flying in the sky, their fins turned into wings, resembling “Kun.”

Adults are always amazed by the imaginative world in children’s minds, almost making Yan Ji forget he was there to collect evidence.

He used a laser device to scan the attic and found traces of dragged blood.

The blood trail extended from under his feet to a certain spot not far away.

He avoided the blood trail, observed where it disappeared, and found the nearby ceiling could also be moved. Moving the ceiling let light shine through, casting a beautiful glow on the painted sky wall.

He suddenly had a moment of realization.

Kids these days really know how to play!

*

After interrogating Qiu Yao, Li Meng, seizing the moment, took the evidence to question Zhou Jie. As long as the statements matched, the case could be closed.

“Officer, I really didn’t know there was an attic above the ceiling. I was in my room doing homework the whole time.”

Li Meng clearly didn’t believe her: “Such a big commotion, and you didn’t hear anything?”

“Because my brother was noisy, I wore headphones and didn’t hear anything with the door closed.”

The girl continued speaking in a tearful voice.

“Then how do you explain this?”

Li Meng slapped a photo in front of her, taken in the girl’s room, featuring a close-up of a small hole in the wooden wall.

Li Meng: “We’ve observed that this hole is larger at both ends and smaller in the middle, likely drilled from both sides to form this structure. Qiu Yao said you and he are friends, how could you not know about the attic?”

“This… we did make it together because Qiu Yao said his mom met a man secretly, and he wanted me to secretly see who this man was.”