Zhang Huijing had trouble with her legs and walked with a dragging gait.
Li Heng watched her retreating figure until it grew distant, then lightened her steps and followed. Shen Zhicheng’s quick reflexes earlier had saved her from being exposed, so even though he was now trailing alongside her, she didn’t chase him off—a tacit acceptance of his company.
Shen Zhicheng had only ever seen police stakeouts in crime dramas. In real life, the careful, hushed movements carried a different kind of seriousness and gravity.
He knew enough to keep his mouth shut the entire time, matching his pace to Li Heng’s rhythm—and oddly enough, they moved in sync.
When Zhang Huijing finally stopped, they stopped too, crouching on either side of the alley corner.
Throughout the chase, Li Heng had been guessing—why would Zhang Huijing, who wasn’t on her way to or from work and had limited mobility, deliberately take such a cautious detour into a back alley?
On the surface, her life was routine—work, grocery shopping, the library—seemingly flawless. But the more perfect it seemed, the more Li Heng felt something was off.
Beneath that calm surface—was there a crack, a lapse in control, a single flaw that could make her slip?
Before long, Zhang Huijing sat down slowly on the stone steps, pulled out her mobile phone from her pocket, and dialed a number.
After a few seconds, she spoke softly into the receiver.
Across the entire length of the alley, her voice was too quiet. Li Heng and Shen Zhicheng instinctively held their breath.
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Is it nighttime over there right now?”
Li Heng froze slightly.
Her tone had changed—her voice carried a subtle shift, no longer as reserved and restrained as before. There was a childlike quality to it now, almost like she was acting coy.
“I miss you so much,” Zhang Huijing said, her hand gently stroking the hem of her skirt.
“Of course—of course I’ve listened to you.”
“I’ve been eating well every day, going to bed early and waking up early.”
Li Heng had never experienced this kind of mother-daughter conversation.
As a young child, shuffled between foster families, she had once longed for affection. But after being sent back to the orphanage time and time again, she stopped hoping for warmth that wasn’t hers.
Now, Li Heng listened to this rambling phone call.
The schemes, the conspiracies, the carefully whitewashed truth—all of it seemed to have nothing to do with her. At twenty-nine, Zhang Huijing sounded like a little girl, chattering with her mother about the most mundane little details of daily life.
But the problem was—Zhang Huijing’s mother, Zhang Fengying, had no exit records. She wasn’t overseas at all.
Who was she actually talking to?
“What time’s your flight? I’ll throw you a welcome-home dinner.”
“You promised,” Zhang Huijing said softly. “Next time you come back, I’ll leave with you.”
Li Heng listened intently, not missing the slightest inflection in her voice.
Was Zhang Huijing aware she was being followed and putting on a show for the police? Or had she been planning to flee all along and was laying the groundwork?
Turning her head, she noticed that Shen Zhicheng was equally absorbed in listening.
The call lasted a full ten minutes.
She talked about much more—about how the eight o’clock drama last night was dreadfully long, about the roast goose leg she’d added to her dinner, crispy skin and tender meat, and about the flowers on the windowsill blooming… Her tone was light, as if she were giving her mother a daily update.
When she hung up, a smile still lingered at the corners of her mouth. She stood up, brushed the dust off her clothes, and slowly walked out of the alley.
As Li Heng followed, Shen Zhicheng kept pace without missing a beat.
The two of them maintained that careful distance until they reached the mouth of the alley.
Zhang Huijing headed back toward her office building. She passed a flower shop, went in and picked out a bouquet, cradling it in her arms, her face nearly buried in the blooms as she leaned down to smell them.
After paying, she walked along, stopping here and there, occasionally picking at a petal with a gentle expression.
It wasn’t until she entered the office building that Li Heng straightened up from behind the newspaper stand.
Shen Zhicheng stepped out from behind the stand as well.
…
Shen Zhicheng was still holding the repair receipt, slowly folding it up.
The old music box at home had stopped making sound, so he’d taken it to Apliu Street first thing that morning. Everyone said you could get anything fixed there—but shop after shop, he’d compared prices and asked around. By noon, all the shopkeepers could do was shake their heads.
They hesitated, explaining that the movement was too old, the parts long out of production. No matter how many times Shen Zhicheng raised his offer, the answer remained the same. Whether it could be fixed at all depended on finding vintage parts—a slim hope, and even the repair masters wouldn’t guarantee it.
Shen Zhicheng tucked the receipt into his pocket. “I heard the case can be closed now?”
“Police confidential—cannot be disclosed to outsiders.”
“I helped you out just now.”
“If you hadn’t suddenly shown up, I wouldn’t have needed your help in the first place.”
Shen Zhicheng was left speechless.
It was always like this—giving him a fake number, hanging up on him, hitting him on the head with a pillow, tattling to his grandfather, never once giving him a decent look…
His already frayed mood over the music box, compounded by old grievances, came to a head.
“Always so sharp-tongued.” Shen Zhicheng held back his spoiled temper. “Weird cop.”
Li Heng’s gaze darkened. “Say that again.”
Shen Zhicheng opened his mouth, then suddenly remembered her reaction the last time he’d called her “weird” at the hospital.
He turned his face away, shoved his hands in his pockets, and stubbornly craned his neck: “I’m not saying it!”
Behind them, the newspaper stand owner pushed up his reading glasses and stuck his head out: “Are you two buying newspapers or not?”
They spoke in unison—
“No.”
“Not buying!”
The stand owner muttered silently to himself.
If you’re not buying, don’t block the business.
But before he could get the words out, Li Heng and Shen Zhicheng had already gone their separate ways—one left, one right.
Li Heng’s expression was as composed as ever, wearing the cool look of someone finally shaking off a nuisance.
Shen Zhicheng turned on his heel, fuming.
He walked faster and faster, determined never to breathe the same air as that weird cop again.
…
When Li Heng returned to the station, she noticed her team members giving her odd looks and signaling with their eyes.
She was about to head to her own office when she heard Chief Inspector Pan Liqin’s measured voice from behind her.
“Li Heng—my office.”
Pan Liqin sat behind his desk, a stack of documents piled in front of him, his expression clearly displeased.
“This case should have been closed long ago. Forensics, technical, and identification units have been churning out reports nonstop. Every department is cooperating on the wrap-up—except you. You’ve been the bottleneck, with no progress at all.”
Li Heng glanced at the desk: “Have the DNA results from the powder puff on Ah Min’s makeup case come in yet?”
At the mention of that, Pan Liqin grew even more irritated: “Tech is rushing it, but that doesn’t stop you from writing the closure report first. Just attach the results when they’re ready.”
He paused, his tone growing heavier: “You know full well that result won’t change anything. At this point, what are you stalling for?”
“I think there are still loose ends in the case.”
“You think?” Pan Liqin stood up, bracing his hands on the desk. “Are you going to write ‘I think’ in the closure report too?”
He was well aware that Team A had been investigating the connection between Liang Wei and Zhang Huijing—but so far, all they had was one piece of surveillance footage showing Liang Wei in Cheung Sha Wan.
“Hong Kong’s only this big. What does him passing through Cheung Sha Wan prove? At most, he went that way on his way to the rooftop to jump.” Pan Liqin frowned. “Fine, even if there was some emotional entanglement—say he had a one-sided crush on Zhang Huijing—so what? I only care about evidence, and the court only cares about evidence!”
“I’m giving you three days to complete all the closure procedures. I want it on my desk by the end of the day after tomorrow.”
“But Sir Pan—”
“Li Heng, this is a disciplined force. This is an order!”
The boss was so furious he even switched to English.
Li Heng had no choice but to respond with a straight face: “Yes, sir.”
“Get out!”
Pan Liqin had given a direct order—the higher-ups wanted a high clearance rate and a quick closure.
Li Heng returned to her office, facing a desk full of case files.
Outside, the office area was unusually quiet—none of the usual joking around. A moment later, she heard her team members speaking in hushed voices.
“Strange—their mother, Zhang Fengying, also vanished into thin air?”
“I’ll go back to Yuen Long and ask some of the old neighbors. Maybe with luck, we’ll run into someone who knows the family.”
“I’ll pull a full month of surveillance footage from the shops in Cheung Sha Wan and look for more leads.”
Li Heng paused.
She hadn’t assigned them any tasks.
But this time, her colleagues in Team A had silently and firmly chosen to stand by her.
…
Li Heng sat down and re-examined the entire case from the beginning.
Statements, forensic reports, and all the relevant evidence were laid out before her.
The threads of the case were gradually coming together, with each link having a superficially reasonable explanation.
But the more she organized it, the more she felt something was off.
Liang Wei had been able to dispose of the body alone and hide it for six years. According to his father, he was a filial son—yet he cut off all contact with his family to cover up the truth. His psychological resilience was clearly not weak. For someone like that, after years in hiding, to confess so readily without any hesitation or struggle—it simply didn’t add up.
Surveillance had clearly caught him lingering near Zhang Huijing’s company, yet during the second interrogation, he insisted there was no connection between them—that it was all just a coincidence.
There was no trace of any link between the two—so clean it was airtight.
With all these anomalies stacking up, Li Heng grew more convinced that Zhang Huijing was the key to the case.
But the problem was—she didn’t have solid evidence.
Li Heng opened Zhang Huijing’s statement and read it word by word.
“Madam.” Wen Jie, the clerical staff, pushed the door open and handed her a report. “The forensic restoration results for the nursery rhyme note are in.”
“Thanks.” Li Heng nodded and took it, flipping through it.
The report stated clearly that the identification unit had restored the faded text—which had almost blended into the yellowed paper—to the maximum possible extent. The handwriting was now legible, confirming that the content matched the nursery rhyme Liang Wei had confessed to.
Li Heng glanced at the restored handwriting and was about to put it away when her fingers suddenly stopped.
The stroke pressure and the turns in the handwriting felt familiar.
She picked up Zhang Huijing’s statement form.
The right-side structure of the character “躲” (hide) in the nursery rhyme oddly matched the way the lower half of the character “章” in the signature was finished.
Li Heng compared them carefully, then pointed to the date numbers next to the signature: “Wen Jie, take a look at these two sets of numbers—don’t they look a bit alike?”
Wen Jie leaned in and said hesitantly: “The turning strokes do share similar writing habits… It looks like they were written by the same person.”
Li Heng pushed both sheets across the desk: “Please take these to the handwriting analysis unit for formal comparison.”
“Alright—I’ll send them over right away.”
Wen Jie took the documents and hurried out.
The office fell quiet again.
Li Heng idly flipped open another file on her desk, but her mind wasn’t on it.
If the forensic results confirmed they matched—
Then that nursery rhyme was written by Zhang Huijing.
Six years ago, she was at the scene.
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