When the police were distracted by Yu Can's two boxes of fruit, many other events were unfolding simultaneously.
For instance, Ji Feng. He was well aware that there might not be any bombs in the fruit boxes at all, that the remote control could be just a bluff, but he couldn't afford to take that gamble.
There were far too many deranged individuals out there. Some criminals, knowing they couldn't escape, would try to take as many people down with them as possible. Who wouldn't feel wronged if they encountered such a situation? But once you're dead, you're dead.
Everyone only has one life.
And he only had one sister as family.
Moreover, Yu Can still had another hostage in his grasp.
But he still couldn't understand what Yu Can was trying to accomplish. Did he think he could escape by taking him hostage?
The car veered off the main road, heading towards the outskirts of the city.
Night had fallen deeply, and the white glow of the streetlights was bitingly cold, like winter snow, suddenly stinging the eyes. Ji Feng closed his eyes and suddenly said, "You threw away the phone. Can you tell me the truth now?"
Yu Can asked, "What truth?"
Ji Feng: "Why Li Xiaonuan?"
Yu Can countered, "Are you concerned about her because your father died in this case?"
"Because Li Xiaonuan is special," he replied calmly, not provoked. "She was the killer's first victim after five years of inactivity. They even prepared a scapegoat in advance, struck once, and quickly retreated. It's very different from the previous four cases."
Yu Can asked, "What do you think?"
"I can't figure it out, that's why I'm asking you," Ji Feng said. "You won't even answer this?"
The car turned onto a dirt road, with the scenery on both sides changing from highway railings to waist-high wild grass. As the tires rolled over the bumpy road, the car occasionally shook. After a while, Yu Can said, "She knew something she shouldn't have known."
As expected.
"What about the others?" Ji Feng asked. "Who were they, and why did you kill them?"
Yu Can didn't answer.
He continued, "They were all ordinary, decent people. Though young, you were also young in 2002. You can't have children, but they didn't have children either. Their financial situations weren't good, they weren't promiscuous, they worked hard... Ms. Yu, I don't understand, what was your motive?"
"Ordinary. Decent." Yu Can softly repeated these words, then suddenly laughed, his expression cold. "You think I was jealous, but can't find a reason for the jealousy, right?"
Ji Feng frankly replied, "Yes, that's why I'm curious."
Yu Can's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, veins protruding on the back of his hands: "It's simple. Some things that seem ordinary and unremarkable to most people are things that some people can never have."
Ji Feng furrowed his brow, quickly running through the lives of the victims in his mind.
Liu Jian's mother died of cancer, Li Xiaonuan's parents were both alive but poor, Wang Zihui's father was a farmer working at home, and her mother was said to have run off with someone, whereabouts unknown... What was the common thread?
The only commonalities among all the victims were three: young women, unmarried (this was just a guess), and childless.
After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
He couldn't help but look up at Yu Can.
"Don't bother looking, you won't be able to tell," Yu Can said, puffing out his chest. Even under the bulky down jacket, his figure was still curvaceous, a body that many women would envy.
Ji Feng stared at him for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Was the first victim actually Yu Can?" Though it sounded like a question, his tone was certain, as if he had figured out the most puzzling part. "The time between the first and second cases was too close, which doesn't fit the usual behavior pattern of serial killers, unless there was a clear logical connection between these two cases."
His thoughts flowed smoothly: "Are you Yu Can's older or younger brother? She was your sister, so you could take over her identity without arousing suspicion. What about the second victim? Was she your sister too? Did you kill her to silence her because she discovered your actions?
"You were afraid that their deaths would lead the police to you, so you killed Liu Jie and Wang Zihui to confuse the investigation. Very clever. Of course, by 2007, you had become even smarter."
As he spoke the last sentence, a hint of anger finally seeped into his tone.
The headlights illuminated the desolate path ahead, gray snow falling, landing on the windshield, wiped away by the wipers, leaving faint traces of water.
The light was dim, shadows danced in the grass.
"When I was very young, I often walked roads like this at night," Yu Can began speaking, as if he too had been waiting a long time for this moment. "In the countryside, we were poor. We didn't get electricity until 2000. As a child, I would go with others to catch frogs by the pond, and on the way home at night, we'd walk a road just like this."
He fell into reminiscence: "Back then, Eldest Sister would walk in front, I'd be in the middle, and Younger Sister at the back. The frogs in our pockets would croak incessantly, very noisy. When we got home, Eldest Sister would busy herself grinding flour and cooking noodles. But when it was ready, they'd eat steamed buns, while I ate noodles, even with a fried egg on top. Younger Sister would keep swallowing her saliva, but Eldest Sister said only I could eat it because I was a boy.
"From a young age, I knew boys and girls were different. Men were to carry on the family line, to continue the bloodline. Women couldn't do that. The meat and eggs at home were also for the men to eat. Women could only eat brown sugar and eggs after giving birth. But for some reason I don't know, I always wished I was a girl.
"Eldest Sister's floral dress was very old and tattered, but I liked it, even more than my own new clothes. Younger Sister and I were close in age. Once I tricked her into swapping clothes with me. Who knew my father would discover it and beat her so badly she couldn't get out of bed for days. But he didn't lay a finger on me, even praised me for caring for my sister. So I didn't dare tell the truth.
"But people are strange like that. The more you're not supposed to think about something, the more you can't forget it. When I hit puberty in my teens, seeing my Adam's apple made me feel terrible, and I hated how my voice changed. I liked Younger Sister's body, sometimes I would secretly look at her, imagining it was my own..."
At this moment, his thoughts traveled through the corridors of time, back to those gloomy teenage years.
Yu Can found he could still clearly remember how desperately that boy, hiding behind the bathroom door, longed for a body that didn't belong to him.
"What happened then?" Ji Feng asked. "Did you do something?"
"I got married when I was eighteen," Yu Can said instead. "It was arranged by an acquaintance. We didn't get a marriage certificate, everyone did it that way. Just having a wedding banquet was considered done. Once married, in my hometown you were considered an adult. When I said I wanted to go work outside, my family agreed quickly, so I brought my wife here."
"When we first arrived, we were very poor and couldn't find good jobs, so we lived with Eldest Sister. My wife was a sensible woman, like many women from my hometown - obedient, decent. But there was one thing I was afraid she would tell others."
He narrated plainly: "I never slept with her. Eldest Sister was worried she couldn't have children, so she told her to see a doctor. That's when she told Eldest Sister. Eldest Sister was worried I had a disease and wanted to find a chance to talk to me alone, but then..."
A series of uncontrollable cold laughs escaped his throat, gloomy and violent.
"She saw me, saw me wearing my wife's clothes. She was terrified, rushed in to try and strip the clothes off me... When I came to my senses, I had already strangled her."
He glossed over the most horrifying part as if it weren't important at all.
"I don't know how to explain my feelings to you. You wouldn't understand. She was lying there, her body so soft and beautiful. I couldn't control myself at all. I immediately took off her clothes and put them on myself. It looked so good, so beautiful. I look a lot like Eldest Sister, and in the mirror, it was as if I had become her."
Twenty years had passed since the first case in 2002, but at this moment, recalling that instant, Yu Can could still feel the tremors from back then.
He immediately made up his mind to replace Eldest Sister and become Yu Can.
Ji Feng asked timely: "Then what? How did you dispose of the body?"
"I thought about this question for a long time," Yu Can raised his head, recalling his feelings bit by bit. "To replace my Eldest Sister, I had to destroy her face. At that time, I didn't know about things like sulfuric acid. I only knew that after being burned by fire, you couldn't recognize a face anymore, so I decided to burn her."
Ji Feng nodded, thinking, this was the origin of everything.
"Who was the second victim? When did you act?" he asked, while an interesting thought suddenly flashed through his mind.
If Teacher Jian were here, he would surely say: "The second victim must have been your wife. She discovered some unusual traces, otherwise you wouldn't have acted against her so quickly..."
In short, speak the criminal's words, leaving the criminal speechless.
Perhaps this is the biggest difference between detectives and police officers.
Yu Can continued: "I hid the body in the woodshed behind the rental house. From that day on, I didn't let my wife go in there. But she didn't listen. That day, I went out to get gasoline, and the window was broken by the neighbor's kid. The wind kept rushing in, so she went to the woodshed to find wood to fix the window, and then she saw..."
He paused for three or four seconds before his voice resumed, emotionless, as if it had all been an illusion.
"She was a good woman, loyal to me. She didn't dare to say anything, pretending not to know, but I still found out. To be honest, I was very conflicted those days - every night, I would sleep holding her, and when I was drowsy, sometimes I felt it was just my body, but when I was awake, I was insanely jealous.
"I didn't want to kill her, but since she had discovered it, she would eventually speak out. So that night, when she came back from her night shift, I made her a bowl of instant noodles, added an egg and ham, and poisoned her to death."
He exhaled and said: "As for the two women afterward, just as you said, I was afraid of being discovered, so I decided to kill two more. I didn't think much when choosing them, just picked ones who looked similar to my eldest sister and my wife. Oh, right, that was also the first time I dressed up as a woman. In winter, with thick clothes on, and me being thin, it wasn't noticeable at all. My sister had a uniform issued by their agency, looking quite authentic, and they fell for it quickly."
Ji Feng asked: "What about Li Xiaonuan?"
"After 2003, I actually didn't want to kill anymore. There was no need," Yu Can voluntarily unveiled another mystery of the case. "I lied to my mother, saying my wife ran off with someone, and my eldest sister found a husband far away and wouldn't come back. I sent some money back, and they didn't ask much. Everything was going smoothly, but I had a bold idea in mind - I wanted to become a real woman."
"In 2007, I saved some money and went to the hospital for a check-up, thinking about having surgery. But unfortunately, I was hit by a car on the way. A kind-hearted young girl helped me gather my things and took me to the hospital. I wasn't careful, and she took my report. She returned it the next day.
"Although she said she hadn't looked at it, I wasn't at ease. The report was just a few pages, and you couldn't tell if it had been flipped through or not. But I pretended not to mind and managed to get her name. I found out she was studying painting, so I said I'd introduce some business to her... Then you know the rest. I found a suitable place and person, lured her there, and on the day it was about to snow, I went to check on her while buying lunch... It was that simple."
As the story of the past ended, so did the road.
The car stopped in the wild grass, with a dilapidated large building ahead.
Ji Feng, having studied old maps for the Li Xiaonuan case, thought briefly and recalled what this place was.
An abandoned thermal power plant.
"Get out of the car," Yu Can said. "Don't try any tricks. Your younger sister..."
Before he could finish, Ji Feng had already made his move.