On a Stormy Night, the Campus Belle Knocked on My Door Seeking Shelter
Chapter 9: Is He Really the Murderer?

Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Is He Really the Murderer?

A fierce wind and driving rain continued to pound the tin roof, an unceasing, dense drumbeat.

Chen Mo gripped the muddy fruit knife, his fingertips trembling slightly. Zhou Hao’s figure had long since vanished into the downpour, but the glint off the blade was like an ice pick, making his temples throb.

’So this is how the murder weapon turned up. Then who the hell is the killer?’

This was strange. Anyone could have found this weapon, which meant anyone could be the killer.

If anything, the original owner, Zhou Hao, was the least likely suspect.

The information about the murder weapon inferred from the wounds in the forensics report matched this knife perfectly, but Zhou Hao’s motive seemed utterly flimsy.

His mother’s critical illness, and even the frantic look on his face as he rushed away, all painted the picture of a devoted son forced to leave as quickly as possible.

Chen Mo took a deep breath, tossed the knife back where he found it, and slowly retreated to a hard-to-spot corner to lie in wait.

After many years as a criminal investigator, he still had the skills for a bit of covert surveillance.

If the murder weapon turned up in this spot, then the killer likely passed through here between 22:30 and 23:00 and discovered it by chance.

After all, there was no one else around at the moment, so it was impossible for anyone to have seen Zhou Hao’s knife fall into the mud, unless someone happened to pass by and pick it up.

As Chen Mo waited, although there weren’t as many pedestrians as usual on this rainy night, people still passed through the downpour from time to time.

When his waterproof watch ticked over to 「22:35」, the dense drumming of the downpour on the tin roof, far from letting up, only grew more frequent and thunderous.

Chen Mo huddled in the shadow of an illegal structure, the pooled water under his rain boots already rising past his ankles.

He stared at the fruit knife in the muddy water. The blade flickered in the lightning, like a coiled viper.

Suddenly, the sound of a glass bottle shattering came from the mouth of the alley.

A hunched figure staggered against the base of the wall and stumbled under the awning. A heavy stench of alcohol, mingled with a rotten odor, immediately permeated the air under the awning.

The vagrant swayed over to where Zhou Hao had dropped the knife. But he only lifted his foot and kicked over a soda can next to it, now full of water. His mud-caked cloth shoe ground heavily over the handle—the blade sank into the mire with a SQUELCH, but he was completely oblivious, merely muttering as he fumbled toward a nearby trash heap.

After rummaging for a moment, he found half a bottle of leftover liquor. Overjoyed, he carried it out from under the awning.

Chen Mo’s fingertips tightened in the cracks of the brickwork until the man swayed and vanished into the downpour. Clearly, it wasn’t him.

「22:47」 An electric scooter sped through the water, and the sound of it pushing up curtains of spray to either side reached Chen Mo’s ears.

A delivery driver slammed on his brakes under the awning, the reflective strips on his waterproof suit tracing a fluorescent green arc in the darkness.

He hopped off his scooter to check his navigation, but the sole of his boot accidentally landed on the back of the knife, and he slipped, tumbling straight into the muddy water.

"Dammit, where did this stupid knife come from!"

Seeing the culprit that made him fall, he cursed as he scrambled up from the muddy ground and kicked the blade into the crack of a drainage ditch, splattering the entire knife with filthy water.

Chen Mo wasn’t too concerned about the delivery driver. The chances of a delivery driver being the culprit were slim, since all their order completions were on record.

Based on the time and distance of their completed orders, it would be easy to deduce their route and the time taken.

That made them easy to investigate. If a delivery driver really had committed the crime, they would have been found out long ago.

But now that the delivery driver had kicked the knife into such a remote spot and covered it with muck, it would be incredibly difficult for anyone else to stumble upon it by accident.

And now, only 13 minutes remained in the window for the estimated time of death.

Of course, since it was just an estimated time, it wasn’t completely locked between 22:30 and 23:00. The actual time of the crime could have fallen outside such a narrow window. But not by too much.

The luminous dial of his waterproof watch jumped to 「22:55」 in the downpour.

The pooled water at the mouth of the alley reflected the fractured red glow of an unmanned adult toy store’s sign, like a congealed scab of blood.

Suddenly, a dark figure flashed past from behind the illegal structure at the far end of the alley.

Chen Mo’s pupils contracted—the person was wearing a black raincoat, a black mask covering the lower half of their face.

His back was hunched, and his rain boots made a sticky, squelching sound as they churned through the mud. He was unintentionally heading toward the sludge-covered blade.

Chen Mo saw that the dark figure seemed to have noticed the knife!

’Finally...’ Chen Mo’s Adam’s apple bobbed. The muscles beneath his soaked undershirt tensed like a bowstring.

The dark figure crouched. As his trembling fingertips were about to touch the handle, his sleeve slid back, revealing a scar from a healing chemical burn on his wrist. It was a perfect match for the scar on the wrist of the chemistry teacher, Li Yan! Three months ago, Li Yan had been burned by sulfuric acid from a beaker that was knocked over when students were roughhousing in the school lab.

Chen Mo suddenly strode out.

He was shocked to see that the dark figure was none other than the school’s chemistry teacher, Li Yan. He was wearing a black raincoat that covered his entire body. By the time Chen Mo walked over, he had already picked up the fruit knife.

’How could it be him?’ Chen Mo was utterly stunned.

Teacher Li was famously a good-natured man. Even though he had been burned because of the students, he had kindly forgiven the two who were roughhousing and had even gone out of his way to comfort them when they were terrified of the trouble they had caused.

His reputation had always been excellent; no one had ever heard a single bad word about him.

Moreover, he was said to be a man who deeply respected his wife at home. She basically had the final say in everything. For miles around, no one had a bad thing to say about him or held any grudges against him.

During the initial investigation, it had never even occurred to anyone to look into him.

But today, witnessing him pick up the murder weapon with his own eyes, Chen Mo felt his entire perception of reality shatter.

Could a man everyone considered a good person really be the brutal killer who attempted to rape Su Yuqing and then slit her throat?

’Is he really the killer?’ Chen Mo refused to believe it, but the facts were laid out before him.

If it was him, that would explain why there were no signs of a struggle when Su Yuqing was killed in that unlit area up ahead.

Because in Su Yuqing’s eyes, Teacher Li would certainly have been a trustworthy, good-natured person, so a chase would have been out of the question.

If he had offered to shield Su Yuqing with his raincoat and take her to his house, that kind of excuse would have easily convinced her.

It was common knowledge that Teacher Li was henpecked; he had a wife at home. A man known for miles around as a good person, a man who was completely obedient to his wife—in a woman’s eyes, a man like that posed almost no threat whatsoever.

So, if a female student was in desperate need of help and he suggested taking her home to be looked after by his wife, it was highly unlikely any girl would refuse.