Controlled Experiment Chapter 61

Two Missing One – 11

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Du Yusheng didn't sound like he was joking.

He Shen was a little surprised, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and glanced at this old partner-in-crime of his.

"Du Yusheng," He Shen said, "what the hell are you trying to do?" Halfway through speaking, He Shen suddenly slapped his own thigh and said, as if reminding him, "You're playing with your life now, is that it?"

"What the fuck are you on about?" Du Yusheng shot He Shen a blank look, then smiled. "I heard you've got an apartment your dad bought for you, renovated and all that, but still empty and no one's living in it?"

He Shen touched the watch on his wrist, the one Du Yusheng had given him, and nodded. "That's true."

"Alright then." Du Yusheng patted He Shen's thigh and smiled. "Give me the key, let me stay there for a while, I'll give it back later. If you've got a problem with it, you can pick any room you like in my place."

He Shen rolled his eyes, catching on to what Du Yusheng really meant.

"So I'm not just letting you stay there, I've got to keep it a secret for you as well, right?"

Du Yusheng nodded, then waved his phone in front of He Shen.

"When I've got the timing figured out, you send this message to that terminal." Du Yusheng lit a cigarette. "They've all been fucking around with me, haven't they? Treating me like some fucking idiot. Well, this time, let's switch roles, let's see if they can be played for a change."

He Shen didn't fully grasp what Du Yusheng meant, so he simply nodded along in agreement.

=========

After hanging around with He Shen for a bit longer in the bar, Du Yusheng finally left.

Before leaving, he glanced at his watch.

Exactly three o'clock in the morning, Beijing time.

Du Yusheng took the cigarette out of his mouth and held it between his fingers. The smoke in that cramped private room had clung to him, he reeked of it, and even Du Yusheng found the smell unbearable. So he stood at the corner of the street, letting the wind blow over him as he waited for the smoke to dissipate.

He pulled out his phone and opened WeChat. Apart from a few messages from Xiao Bai, it was all push notifications from public accounts. Truthfully, Du Yusheng knew full well that he'd given a blatantly false statement this time, which made things difficult for Xiao Bai. If not for him, with the kind of clumsy lies Du Yusheng had come up with, he'd either be in detention or locked up in the station. No way he'd be standing here like this.

Du Yusheng narrowed his eyes and stared at Li Yao's WeChat profile. Li Yao didn't post on Moments. The rare times he did post, it was academic papers, filled with technical jargon longer than the hair on Du Yusheng's legs.

Thinking of this, Du Yusheng rubbed the phone between his hands.

In the time it took for a cigarette to burn out, he spotted a taxi coming down the road.

Du Yusheng patted at his clothes, trying to brush off the smell of smoke before getting into the car.

Originally, he hadn't planned to go home, but Madam Du wasn't on the island at the moment, she was away travelling and hadn't yet returned, so even if he went to her place now, it would just be an empty house with no one but him in it. Just thinking about that made him feel a bit desolate. With no better option, Du Yusheng could only return to his own apartment.

It's really ironic to think about it. Back then, Du Yusheng moved all the way here for Li Yao, but now that he looks back, his behaviour of putting his warm face against a cold ass really was self-inflicted suffering. Du Yusheng stood downstairs, looking at the window of his home, and sighed.

He felt like smoking again.

Squatting by the flower bed next to the block, Du Yusheng fished a cigarette out of his pocket.

As he flicked the lighter to get it going, Du Yusheng suddenly saw Li Yao walking out of the building.

Out of instinct, he glanced at the watch on his wrist.

It was four in the morning, and the sun was nearly rising. Where the hell is he going at this hour?

He watched as Li Yao, dressed in a grey coat, opened the car door and got in, then slowly started the engine and pulled away.

Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Du Yusheng watched until Li Yao disappeared from sight.

With a heavy sigh, Du Yusheng suddenly remembered that when Xiao Bai had just transferred over, he had once helped him keep an eye on Li Yao. Du Yusheng clearly remembered Xiao Bai saying he'd seen Li Yao leave the apartment and exit the area, so why was it that when Du Yusheng later broke in, Li Yao was back at home? Thinking about it now, it must have been his brother that Xiao Bai saw that day.

If only he'd had his head on straight at the time, he might've realised long ago that there were two Li Yao's.

But this time, Du Yusheng wasn't about to take any chances.

Fumbling for the phone in his pocket, he dialled a number.

"Hello?" The sweet-voiced nurse on the other end of the line answered. "Hello, nurse's station."

Luckily, he'd memorised the number the night he'd slipped out of the inpatient wing.

"Hello, hello, yes," Du Yusheng mumbled with a cigarette between his lips, the words a bit slurred. "May I ask if Dr Li Yao is there?"

"The outpatient clinic opens at eight in the morning. This is the inpatient department." The nurse, who had worked all night, was utterly exhausted and could hardly be bothered to explain. She said, "Outpatient registration starts at eight in the morning. If you're in a hurry, you can make an appointment online or use the registration machine."

"No, no," Du Yusheng stopped the nurse just as she was about to hang up. "I've arranged to meet him at the hospital later, is he in? I don't have his cell number, and I don't want to make the trip for nothing, it's so late already."

"You've arranged to meet him? Hold on then."

Du Yusheng heard the nurse calling out from the other end of the line, "Is Dr Li in? Is he on night duty today or outpatient?"

Two minutes later, the nurse came back on the phone.

"He's got an emergency case this morning. We just called him, he should be here soon."

"Alright, I'll go and find him later then, thanks."

Looking up at the darkened windows of Li Yao's apartment, Du Yusheng sighed in relief.

The cigarette in his mouth had nearly burnt out. Du Yusheng stubbed it out on the garbage can beside him, then pressed the elevator button.

=========

When was the last time I was in Li Yao's apartment?

It had been during the Chen Xin case. In terms of days, not much time had passed at all.

But to Du Yusheng, it felt as though years had gone by.

He unlocked the door to Li Yao's home with practised ease, just as he had before. The apartment inside was pitch-black. Closing the security door behind him, Du Yusheng switched on the light in the living room.

He looked around. The place was empty, no one was there. It seemed Li Yao really had just left a short while ago, the air still held a faint trace of his presence. Standing in the centre of the living room, Du Yusheng suddenly felt his throat tighten. He could still clearly recall the first time he came here. Li Yao had been in his pyjamas, looking on calmly as he picked the lock and entered. Calm and composed, while he himself had been visibly flustered.

How come he is so confident in everything he does?

Now that he knew who Li Yao really was, Du Yusheng finally had an answer.

The apartment looked almost exactly as it had during his last visit, still clean and monotonous.

Sitting down on the sofa in the living room, Du Yusheng pulled open the drawer beneath the coffee table. It was filled, absolutely packed, with glasses.

As far as he could remember, Li Yao hardly ever wore glasses.

Du Yusheng thought that the owner of these glasses probably wasn't Li Yao.

Next to the living room was the bedroom. Du Yusheng had even slept in there before. Thinking back on it now, it really did make his heart race, What if I died in here? Du Yusheng leaned against the wall of the bedroom for a moment, standing still, his gaze falling just in line with the clock hanging on the wall. The clock was an ordinary one, the kind you'd find in a secondary school classroom. Aside from the numbers and the hands, there wasn't any extra decoration. Standing beneath it, Du Yusheng stared at the clock for a moment. He wasn't quite sure what came over him, but he grabbed a stool, stepped on it, and took the clock down from the wall.

Things hung up high on walls, especially things not frequently used, tended to be overlooked during cleaning.

A wall clock, by rights, should be just like that.

But this clock was odd. The face of the clock was grimy, and the back was just as dirty, only the knob used to adjust the time was clean.

Du Yusheng froze for a second.

Under what circumstances would someone turn that knob? Usually, only when the battery ran low and the clock stopped or if it had broken would the time need adjusting. Yet the compartment for changing the battery was filthy too, only that one knob was clean.

Why did someone tamper with the clock?

Suddenly, a troubling thought crossed Du Yusheng's mind. He had stayed the night here once, and Li Yao had even woken him up midway through the night. Could it be that the clock was tampered with that night?

Hanging the clock back on the wall, Du Yusheng took a photo of it.

Right next to the bedroom was a study. Honestly, though he'd been here several times, Du Yusheng had never once gone in.

Aside from the necessary furniture, there was also a large bookshelf.

Du Yusheng took a glance and saw that it was filled entirely with English books he couldn't understand, occasionally mixed with a few advanced publications he could comprehend. After pausing for a moment in front of the bookshelf, Du Yusheng opened the drawer at the bottom of the bookshelf.

The first thing he saw was a few brochures from medical companies, and underneath them was a Kraft paper document folder.

Du Yusheng unwound the string tying it shut.

Inside was a thick stack of documents, with a photo clipped to the top with a paperclip. First came a group photo of seven people. After that were two more photos, both of which Du Yusheng recognised. In fact, he was the one who'd given them to Li Yao. Those two photos had been inside the book found in Luo Yang's car, the one he'd lost at the casino. Du Yusheng was puzzled at the time, wondering why there were two photos of the same person, but only one of them had a cross marked on it. Now everything makes sense, because the other one belongs to Jing Mo.

With that thought, Du Yusheng cursed himself for being a fucking idiot.

He should've seen it a long time ago.

Beneath the photos were the personal profiles of several people.

Du Yusheng froze, he saw his own file.

It included everything from his date of birth and place of household registration, to his elementary school, high school, and university education, various awards and punishments throughout his school years, internal police notices of criticism or commendation, and even his star sign and blood type. Some of the minor details recorded were things even Du Yusheng himself couldn't recall, but here they were, documented in full detail.

At the very end of the file was a page showing the date the file had last been updated.

Du Yusheng glanced at it, then instinctively opened the calendar app on his phone to cross-check the date.

He had met Li Yao only after the Luo Daheng case, but the date on the file predated that by a significant margin. In other words, Li Yao had known about him long before they'd met.

Du Yusheng had a bad premonition. Although it's true that my transfer from the grassroots unit had been arranged through begging Director Er after the old man's sudden accident, is it possible that even that had something to do with Li Yao?

Or worse, is Old Master Du's death connected to Li Yao as well?

That thought sent a chill down Du Yusheng's spine.

The other files beneath his were all of the seven people in that group photo. Li Yao had neatly arranged them by size and clipped them together.

Du Yusheng took a couple of photos, then stuffed the documents back where he'd found them.

He rifled through the other two drawers as well, even flicking through the specialist textbooks, but there was nothing else of value.

Returning to the living room, Du Yusheng let out a long sigh. Just as Li Yao had said, there really wasn't anything here about his brother. If there was anything remotely related, it was Li Yao's own face, which looked just like his brother's, and that drawer full of glasses. Nothing else.

He'd originally hoped to find something useful here. Du Yusheng turned off all the lights in his house, and before leaving, he pondered whether to set up some listening devices.

Then, in the pitch-dark apartment, Du Yusheng heard a knock at the door.

‿︵‿︵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: June 22, 2025 by Angel

Edited: August 5, 2025 by Angel