Controlled Experiment Chapter 22

Controlled Experiment – 22

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Du Yusheng took his phone out of his pocket.

He hadn't shut his eyes for over a day, so his skin condition couldn't possibly be any good. The black screen of the phone was covered in smudges left by his face when he had just answered the call. Du Yusheng wiped it carelessly on his coat and unlocked it.

Just before dialling the number, a strange thought suddenly crossed Du Yusheng's mind.

It was common knowledge that nowadays phones have facial recognition unlock features. Compared to having to press a few digits, simply glancing at the screen to unlock it was much faster. That was the case for most people, but what if the owner of the phone were a twin? Wouldn't his face be able to unlock two phones?

The thought startled Du Yusheng for a moment. He had no time to dwell on it, as the call had already connected.

It was a colleague on duty at the bureau who answered.

"Bring a few people over, Luo Yang's apartment."

Du Yusheng was utterly exhausted and didn't want to say a single extra word.

After hanging up, Du Yusheng didn't bother with anything else and flopped down onto Luo Yang's dusty bed.

His eyes stared blankly at the white ceiling. Despite having been awake for more than twenty-four hours straight, not even a trace of sleepiness came over him. His eyes were like light bulbs, and his mind seemed to be wide awake, as if the Swiss army knife in his hand had opened a can of energy. He hadn't felt this clear-headed in a long time.

All the inspiration came from that hidden compartment.

Everyone knows a rectangular prism has twelve edges, and the compartment is a very narrow cuboid. The three edges at the back were all straight, except for the one on the far right. That edge had a slight protrusion. Du Yusheng had run the Swiss army knife lightly along it, and that was when he discovered a thin strip of white paper stuck to it.

The compartment was white, and so was the paper. Stuck together, their size and length were nearly identical. Had one corner of the paper not curled up slightly, Du Yusheng would never have noticed it.

The paper looked very familiar to him, not because of the material, but because its size and shape were identical to the strip of paper found in Luo Daheng's stomach, the one with the note on the controlled experiment.

Could it be that Luo Yang had accidentally dropped it in the compartment during the crime?

It wasn't impossible, but there was still one question: from the time of Luo Daheng's death until now, day after day had passed, why hadn't this piece of paper fallen to the ground under the force of gravity? Du Yusheng carefully removed the paper from the compartment using the Swiss army knife.

He let out a long breath.

Just as he had suspected, it had been stuck there by some kind of liquid that had accidentally dripped onto the compartment.

This liquid, Du Yusheng reckoned, was likely a highly concentrated form of nitroglycerin.

Staring blankly at the warm yellow chandelier on the ceiling, his eyes empty and lifeless, Du Yusheng's mind played out scenes like a film, superimposing Luo Yang's face and imagining everything he had done in this room.

The bottle of salbutamol hadn't been an ordinary plastic one, its opening had been sealed carefully with a metal fixture. Opening it and replacing its contents with something else would have been difficult without the use of a tool, bare hands alone wouldn't suffice. So, Luo Yang had very likely chosen a tool for the job. It might have been a wrench, a screwdriver, or even a nail clipper. Whatever it was, Du Yusheng suspected it had come from the compact toolbox inside the hidden compartment.

The mouth of the bottle of salbutamol was very narrow. Pouring something into it cleanly would have been difficult. Luo Yang might have been nervous, but more than that, after having met him, Du Yusheng believed it was excitement, even exhilaration, that had caused Luo Yang to accidentally spill some of the concentrated nitroglycerin.

Spills on the desk would be easily spotted and wiped away. On a book, they couldn't be cleaned off. And the inner side of an inconspicuous toolbox was even easier to overlook. As a result, a trace of it had remained on the compartment wall, sticking to the paper and covering it perfectly.

That hidden compartment was extremely difficult to detect.

Not only because Du Yusheng had had to mimic Luo Yang's reading posture, tilting his head back and leaning beneath the desk between two drawers, to find it, but more so because all the furniture in Luo Yang's home was new. Once a person assumed that all the furniture was new, they were far less likely to inspect it carefully, especially when the piece of paper overlapped with the compartment almost flawlessly.

Having finished assembling the murder weapon, Luo Yang took it to Luo Daheng's villa and replaced the original with it.

Meanwhile, the housekeeper, who had been incited to kill by the forged will, had also chosen to act that day but failed in his attempt.

Luo Yang's setup had been nearly flawless, and his method of murder was quite unique. However, he hadn't accounted for the fact that the toner cartridge Luo Daheng had used that evening would be running low. When Luo Daheng opened the printer to check the cartridge, he inadvertently inhaled a large amount of toner powder in a short span of time, which triggered a bronchial asthma attack. He had then used that bottle of salbutamol and died in the study. On the very night the medication had been swapped, Luo Daheng had died. In other words, had it not been for the insufficient toner cartridge, the range of suspects wouldn't have been limited to just Luo Yang and Li Yao because Luo Daheng might not have died at home at all.

If Li Yao hadn't gone to see Luo Daheng that night, Du Yusheng wouldn't have had to go around in such a big circle, and wouldn't have come to know Li Yao at all.

Du Yusheng sat up in bed, staring at the narrow strip of paper. Suddenly, it felt as if he had been living through a script, everything was already written and he was merely dragged along by its course.

Everything in Luo Yang's house was brand new, except for that inconspicuous compartment. Why? Could it be that the decorators overlooked it before renovation, and then, out of laziness, simply put it back as it was afterwards? The whole thing felt as if it had been left there deliberately, just to point the finger at Luo Yang as the killer.

Of course, that first theory wasn't impossible.

Whatever the reason for the compartment being left behind, its presence had at least confirmed the fact that Luo Yang had committed the crime.

With that thought, Du Yusheng finally let out a full breath.

Du Yusheng mentally reviewed the case once more, sniffed lightly, and felt his mind start to cloud over again.

So, what exactly is the relationship between Xiao Bai and Li Yao...?

Clearly, he'd got it all wrong before. Annoyed, Du Yusheng clutched at his hair and flopped down onto Luo Yang's pillow with a dull thud.

When his colleague came in from outside, Du Yusheng was lying spread-eagled across the bed in the bedroom.

His gaze was vacant, limbs loose, posture composed, and he looked completely detached from the world, even letting out a groan from time to time.

Du Yusheng had no desire to say a single unnecessary word. He relayed all the thoughts and questions in his mind to the colleague who had just come in, then watched as they packed up and took away the few items found at the scene. After signing his name, Du Yusheng left. Apart from reminding them to make sure there were results by tonight, he said nothing else.

The longer the night dragged on, the more he was afraid something unexpected might crop up again in Luo Yang's case.

As he stepped out of Luo Yang's house, he realised it had started snowing at some point.

The snowflakes were fine and light, so light they looked as if a gust of wind could carry them off.

The ground wasn't cold enough for the snow to settle, and watching it fall like that felt strangely dull.

Staring at the pitch-black sky, Du Yusheng opened the car door and climbed in.

Perhaps Luo Daheng's case could be drawn to a close here, but Du Yusheng felt no sense of satisfaction. It was as though a large stone were pressing on his chest, an indescribable feeling of suffocation. Du Yusheng slammed his hand down hard on the steering wheel, honking three sharp blasts as if venting his frustration.

The expensive watch on his wrist showed the current time.

Du Yusheng ran his fingers over the cold metal of the strap, turned the car around, and drove straight to that underground casino.

It was his second time there. Returning to a place like that, Du Yusheng was no longer in the mood to play nice.

The balding boss was still seated inside, running the place. Without a word, Du Yusheng pushed past the crowd and dragged him out from within. The man's heavy body squirmed in his grip, but Du Yusheng pressed the barrel of his gun hard against the man's waist, and that alone was enough to make him behave.

In their circle, loyalty and trust were the rules of the game. Du Yusheng had dealt with that world before, he understood how it worked.

Before arriving, he'd taken a coarse rope from the trunk of his car.

The slightly plump boss ended up hanging upside down from a bamboo pole next to a garbage bin in the alley. Whether it was because the bamboo pole was too high or the man too short, once he was hoisted up, there were still two centimetres between the top of his head and the ground. It's like he was swinging upside-down on a round swing.

At first, the boss struggled and shouted, then begged for mercy a few times, and finally began cursing. Du Yusheng remained calm and deliberate, resting one foot on the step nearby as he cleaned his ear with a finger, then kicked the man's belly hard. The bamboo pole wobbled slightly with the jolt of flesh.

All the blood in his body had rushed to one place, and the feeling of blood congestion in his head was not very pleasant.

Du Yusheng lit a cigarette and slowly blew out a ring of smoke.

"What the fuck do you want!" The boss tried his best to tilt his body forward to ease the pressure in his head, but it had little effect. "Do you even know who the fuck I am? Think I'm scared of you just 'cause you've got that damned badge? Either you kill me tonight or I'll make sure you're dead once I get out."

Du Yusheng sneered.

This man knew Du Yusheng was a police officer, he couldn't go around killing people or setting fires. His words were both a provocation and a threat.

But Du Yusheng didn't buy into any of it.

Without a change in expression, he stubbed the cigarette out on the man's stomach. The smell of burning flesh filled the air in an instant and then came a torrent of curses involving the boss's ancestors going back eighteen generations.

"I lost a watch, lost it at your place," Du Yusheng clicked his tongue as if it were a matter of fact. "That watch, my dad bought it at an auction house in Australia. The designer only made two of them, I won't say how much it cost. If you can get it back for me, I'll let you down. If not, you answer whatever I ask."

Du Yusheng blinked slowly, squatted so they were eye to eye, and held up five fingers.

"You've got five seconds, find it."

One by one, Du Yusheng's fingers folded back in as he counted down.

"Fuck!" The boss thrashed about violently. Watching him, Du Yusheng was suddenly reminded of pigs hanging in a slaughterhouse. "Who the fuck do you think you are, what the fuck are you doing!"

When the five seconds were up, Du Yusheng's hand curled into a fist.

"I gave you a chance, it's you who couldn't do it, you couldn't get it back, don't blame me. That watch cost a fortune, you know how much it's killing me inside?" Du Yusheng smiled. "That night, what did Li Yao whisper in your ear?"

The boss exploded with more curses. "How the fuck should I remember!"

"Oh, forgot?" Du Yusheng dragged out his tone. "So that means, you do know his name's Li Yao? Who told you that?"

The boss's face was flushed, making him look like a red matchstick. After Du Yusheng finished speaking, his expression shifted slightly, there was even a faint patch of white visible on his flushed face.

Seeing that the boss still wasn't saying anything, Du Yusheng raised five fingers again.

"Shall I count down one more time?"

‿︵‿︵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 24, 2025 by Angel

Edited: June 12, 2025 by Angel