Controlled Experiment Chapter 18

Controlled Experiment – 18

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Li Yao's car was parked just outside, black, like all the others. He seemed a little tired, squeezing his own shoulder as he sighed deeply.

Du Yusheng trailed a short distance behind Li Yao. He was worried someone from the casino might come out looking for trouble, so he lingered at the door for a few minutes before following. He wasn't sure if Li Yao was simply naïve or genuinely believed that the people at the casino wouldn't make a move. From the moment they stepped out, Li Yao hadn't so much as looked back.

Li Yao had a broad back, the kind that looked made to be embraced. From behind, Du Yusheng could clearly see the tension slip from Li Yao's shoulders, as though he had set down something heavy and suddenly felt lighter. Li Yao rubbed his face, lowered his head, and took out his phone. It was obvious he was typing. Du Yusheng didn't have much in the way of real skills, but he was sharp in small ways. He could guess what you were typing or texting even with a pocket in the way, let alone when it was happening right in front of him.

Six characters in total. No punctuation.

"You didn't die come see me"

Du Yusheng wasn't truly a fool, he had a rough idea who the "you" in that message referred to. Glancing back at the underground casino, Du Yusheng rubbed his neck, and a thought began to form in his mind.

By the time he snapped back to his senses, Li Yao was looking at him.

He was smiling.

Du Yusheng had noticed it many times, Li Yao liked to smile. Polite smiles, warm smiles, distant smiles. Just like in the casino earlier, his face had smiled, but his eyes hadn't held a trace of it. This, however, was the first time Du Yusheng had seen a smile that seemed genuinely from the heart. It was as if Li Yao had shed everything he carried. His eyes curved gently and a faint arc lingered at the corners of his lips. It felt like this man had stepped out from behind frosted glass to smile at him, properly, right in front of him. There was a rare sense of something real in it.

Du Yusheng suddenly didn't know what to say. His mouth opened slightly in stunned silence.

Li Yao seemed to realise it too, and the smile vanished in an instant.

"Get in," he said. "I'll take you home. You... didn't drive, did you?"

Du Yusheng said nothing, only nodded again and again.

It was cold. As soon as they were in the car, Li Yao switched on the heater. Du Yusheng's coat didn't have pockets, and his hands were freezing, constantly pressed to the air vent.

But the car didn't start for quite a while, and Du Yusheng began to get a little restless.

"Not going?"

Li Yao glanced at him and shook his head. "The car hasn't warmed up yet, there's no rush."

It looked as though he was just waiting for the temperature inside the car to rise, but from what Du Yusheng could see, Li Yao's gaze hadn't once strayed from the entrance to the casino. Following his line of sight, perhaps because he and Li Yao had caused such a stir with the boss, it seemed the casino had closed up for the night. People were filtering out, most of them men. Du Yusheng counted, there were more than twenty in total. These men were all under Li Yao's command, though of course, Du Yusheng had no idea, he simply found it odd. Only once those men had left did Li Yao finally start the engine.

After a while, as the car warmed up, the feeling began returning to Du Yusheng's hands.

He turned to look at Li Yao, who hadn't said a word, and asked, "What did you say to that boss just now, he let us walk out just like that? I was ready for a fight."

"I told him you were a police officer," Li Yao replied flatly.

Du Yusheng frowned and put on an expression of mock anger. "You sold me out?"

"I wouldn't call it selling you out." Li Yao turned the wheel and rounded a corner. "A fight? Did you count how many of them there were? If things had really kicked off, what chance would you have had?"

Du Yusheng didn't say anything, he hadn't actually considered that.

"Sometimes you don't seem like a police officer at all." Li Yao glanced at Du Yusheng and teased. "You're not faking your identity as an officer, right?"

"You want the truth?" Playing along, Du Yusheng pulled a ridiculous face, waggling his brows.

Li Yao shook his head. "Not really."

Du Yusheng chuckled, thinking to himself, Alright then, I'll tell you when you're ready to hear it.

"I heard you only let that boss win two rounds. Dr Li, that's really something." Du Yusheng praised, "Do they teach you that in med school too? I feel like I understand you less and less. Like showing up in a casino, even if I asked, you'd have a hundred perfectly good reasons."

Li Yao smiled, but sidestepped the second part entirely.

"I dabble in everything, but I'm not good at any of it, just a bit of surface-level knowledge."

What kind of thing was that to say? The remark left Du Yusheng rather annoyed.

"Weren't you scared? Stepping in for me, paying the debt? I went in there with my own purpose, I knew what I was doing. If I could get in, I could get out, I was confident. But you? Is it because you're used to holding a scalpel as a doctor that you think you can stay calm no matter what you do? Do you have any idea that if I hadn't had the guts just now to shove a gun in that boss's face, neither of us would have made it out in one piece?"

Du Yusheng's skin was very fair. As he spoke more agitatedly, it flushed red, especially his ears, which were now burning red, and the veins on his forehead stood out, he was truly furious. But what exactly was he so angry about? Li Yao couldn't tell. Was it because he was afraid something might happen to him? Du Yusheng's flustered manner was somewhat amusing, and Li Yao really wanted to call him out, but when he looked at the serious expression on his face, he hesitated. Li Yao suddenly found Du Yusheng rather amusing.

He wondered what expression Du Yusheng would make if he told him he'd gone in there to save him.

Li Yao was a little curious.

Originally, Du Yusheng's well-being had nothing to do with him, but after receiving that mistakenly sent message, Li Yao felt compelled to go and have a look. That was when he discovered that Du Yusheng had been deliberately losing money at the casino. It was a place Luo Yang used to frequent, and Li Yao had heard about it before, so he could more or less guess what Du Yusheng was trying to do. Li Yao had planned to leave it at that. Maybe it was because Du Yusheng pestered him every day, always talking nonstop, that he'd slowly shifted in his mind from just a passer-by to a more solid presence. Li Yao suddenly felt uneasy. That, and the memory of the boss's face, had prompted him to step in.

"So I should thank you?" There was a touch of coolness in Li Yao's tone.

"No need for thanks," Du Yusheng smacked his lips. He felt he might have gone a bit far just now and softened. "As long as we're both alright, that's what matters."

And with that, the conversation came to an end.

When the car reached the roundabout, barely five minutes of silence had passed before Du Yusheng could no longer hold it in.

"I still want to ask, why were you there? Or rather, how did you even know that place was a casino?" Du Yusheng added. "It's an underground casino, not something just anyone would know about, and it's in a pretty out-of-the-way spot. Don't tell me you were there to gamble?"

There he went again.

Li Yao frowned and pulled the car over to the side of the road.

"You sent me that text. If you hadn't, I wouldn't have gone. You should be asking yourself, not me," Li Yao snapped. "If you want to interrogate me, get a warrant and drag me to the police station."

That's not what I meant, Du Yusheng wanted to explain.

After thinking about it, Du Yusheng sighed, pulled a book from inside his coat, and tossed it onto Li Yao's lap.

"There was a car parked in their backyard, the one Luo Yang traded to the casino boss, I found this inside it. The book was tightly wrapped in a cover, and when I took the cover off, I found these." Du Yusheng laid two photographs neatly in front of Li Yao. "There are two photos of you in it, one of them's marked with a red cross."

Li Yao picked up the items Du Yusheng had thrown over. He glanced at the title page of the book first, then picked up the two photos.

It was his face, yet it wasn't his face.

"You know what this means?" Du Yusheng pointed at the photos. "Do you remember the day my Bentley exploded and we almost died? I've never been able to figure out what I did that made someone hate me enough to want me dead, until just now. I finally realised it wasn't me Luo Yang wanted dead, it was you."

Li Yao pinched the corner of the photo tightly. "You mean the explosion that day had something to do with Luo Yang?"

The Bentley explosion never really weighed on Du Yusheng's mind. The other team had brought back only a few useful fragments from the scene. The bomb had been homemade, its range limited, but its power substantial. That same kind of tape used on the bomb, Du Yusheng had seen in Luo Yang's renovated home. Not only that, but he'd also seen it on the cover of that book. It was a special kind of insulating tape, very thin, all imported. There was no way it was just a coincidence that all three places had it and that all three samples were the exact same type.

On the day of the Bentley explosion, Luo Yang hadn't yet returned to the country, so perhaps he hadn't planted the bomb himself. Maybe he'd had someone else do it. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him at all, maybe someone else had planted the bomb in his car or his house. If it was the latter, then Du Yusheng was certain: the person who planted it was the same person who had done the renovations on Luo Yang's home.

"Do you have a grudge against Luo Yang?" asked Du Yusheng. "He clearly hates you."

"You'd have to ask him that."

Li Yao didn't show any signs of panic or shock, it was as if he'd already known.

"I heard he's awake, you can go and ask him yourself." The 'yourself' was emphasised. Li Yao glanced at Du Yusheng, his meaning clear: Stop wasting your time here with me.

Du Yusheng licked his lips and said, "There's something I'm quite curious about. Why do you think Luo Yang had two photos of you? If he hates you, wouldn't one have been enough? Why go through the charade of having two, is it that he likes one and dislikes the other?"

Du Yusheng chuckled to himself, but Li Yao, with lips drawn coldly, didn't find it the least bit amusing.

He knew all too well why Luo Yang had two photos, because the other one was of Jing Mo.

Li Yao slotted the photographs back into the book, flipped through a few more pages, and, while Du Yusheng wasn't looking, dog-eared one of them. Then he handed the book back to Du Yusheng.

"Does this book belong to Luo Yang?" Du Yusheng wanted to confirm.

"I don't know whether it's Luo Yang's or not, but I've seen it before in their living room." Li Yao restarted the car. "You could ask the housekeeper, he'd know for sure, and he'd be willing to tell you."

Du Yusheng yawned and leaned back against the seat, nodding slowly.

If Luo Yang really had killed his father, what was his motive?

Luo Daheng's inheritance distribution, Luo Yang had not only forged documents and bribed the lawyer, he even deliberately left them out on the table for the housekeeper to find, setting the stage for murder. Was money really Luo Yang's motive? If it was, then how exactly had he used nitroglycerin to kill Luo Daheng? What had he done during that time inside the villa, what couldn't be retraced?

There had to be traces left behind after committing such a crime. Scratching his cheek, Du Yusheng thought, Regardless of whether the evidence chain is complete or not, meeting Luo Yang in person is absolutely necessary.

And why did he want to kill Li Yao?

As he looked at Li Yao's side profile while he drove, Du Yusheng sniffed, his head buzzing with noise.

He absently rubbed the corner of the book, then suddenly realised something. This case always felt like two jigsaw puzzles stacked on top of one another. But if he removed the parts that didn't fit, then the Luo Daheng case would actually be quite simple. For instance: if he discounted Zhuang Hao's death, discounted the Bentley explosion, removed everything about Li Yao that had no relation to Luo Daheng, and even disregarded the inexplicable renovations Luo Yang had done, cut away all the extraneous branches, what remained, clean and clear, would be the real case concerning Luo Daheng.

Thinking about it like that, everything that hadn't made sense began to fall into place.

The thought startled Du Yusheng. If he removed one piece of the puzzle, who did the remaining puzzle belong to?

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: May 23, 2025 by Angel

Edited: June 12, 2025 by Angel