Animal Detective

Three days after Li Fusen attacked Shen Xin, Yang Zeran and his team returned to Nanjiang. The various parties involved met to consolidate their information.

Regarding Li Fusen, Yang Zeran’s guess had been spot on: his family of origin was a huge problem.

His father, Li Ming, was a full-time driver for a factory, making deliveries all over the country.

Back in the eighties and nineties, that was a highly sought-after job.

So even though Li Ming wasn’t handsome, he still managed to marry a very pretty girl through a matchmaker.

Her name was Tao Jianfen.

Two years after they married, she gave birth to Li Fusen.

But Tao Jianfen was unfaithful. While Li Ming was out on the road, she got involved with the head of the factory’s shipping department.

And she did it in Li Ming’s own home.

For convenience, Tao Jianfen would often give Li Fusen a few dimes and tell him to go out and play by himself.

The neighbors all knew about it.

Some of the adults would even joke about it with Li Fusen.

For instance, if they saw him squatting outside, they might say something like, "Is your mom ’fighting’ with that uncle at home again?"

Combined with the teasing from his peers, this left a deep psychological scar on the young Li Fusen.

Inevitably, the affair came to light.

And Li Ming discovered it wasn’t the only time he’d been cuckolded.

From then on, there were no more peaceful days in that house.

Then came the wave of layoffs. The couple divorced, and Li Fusen went to live with his father.

But Li Ming couldn’t stand the sight of him, always feeling the boy didn’t look like him.

Having also lost his job, he frequently beat Li Fusen. The police and the neighborhood committee had to intervene several times.

In the end, Li Ming dumped Li Fusen on Tao Jianfen.

Tao Jianfen saw him as a burden and beat him just the same.

At school, he was called a bastard who didn’t even know who his real father was.

All of this inevitably left Li Fusen with deep psychological trauma. Interviews with people who knew him all mentioned that he had a very strange personality.

After becoming an adult, Li Fusen promptly left Peng An and never went back.

But the shadows of childhood aren’t so easily healed.

And there was something else.

When he first started working odd jobs in Pingyu, he was reported for stealing a female colleague’s underwear from the dormitory.

According to that colleague, she had seen Li Fusen staring intently at her underwear on several occasions.

The police investigated but found no stolen underwear in Li Fusen’s home, nor any evidence that he had done it.

He may have been framed, but the incident led to him being ostracized, and he quit soon after.

Yang Zeran believed that these experiences caused Li Fusen to develop a strong aversion to women.

Yet he still had needs, which were heavily repressed. A colleague reported that he had visited prostitutes.

But as Yang Zeran put it, Li Fusen’s problem wasn’t simply about satisfying a need. It was his inability to obtain the stable, normal romantic relationship he deeply craved.

This information helped flesh out the profile of Li Fusen as a person.

It could answer some questions about his motive, but it wasn’t enough.

However, they did discover some issues regarding Li Fusen’s finances.

The Tamer, Dai Keqin, who had resigned after Lin Zenghui’s death, reported some new information.

He said that Lin Zenghui and Li Fusen’s relationship hadn’t been that good originally. They were just ordinary colleagues. He mentioned that Li Fusen wasn’t very talkative, and their interactions were limited to polite nods at work.

He himself had been on better terms with Lin Zenghui, and they often went clubbing together.

Then, starting a few months before the incident, Lin Zenghui and Li Fusen’s relationship suddenly improved.

Lin Zenghui often invited Li Fusen to hang out with them.

Clubbing, dinners, karaoke.

And on many of these occasions, Li Fusen was the one who paid.

In Dai Keqin’s words, with that many outings, the expenses must have been quite high.

He had even asked Lin Zenghui if Li Fusen was an idiot for being willing to be such a sucker.

Lin Zenghui’s exact words were, "Don’t worry about it. He’s willing."

In that case, it was possible that Lin Zenghui was using a secret he knew to blackmail Li Fusen, forcing him to cover his entertainment expenses.

Beyond that, interviews with the Oceanarium staff and investigations into Lin Zenghui’s social circle yielded no new discoveries.

All the physical evidence was re-examined, also with no new findings.

During this time, Shen Xin interrogated Li Fusen again.

The result was just as he had expected. Having failed to break him the first time, getting him to confess on the second try was virtually impossible.

Since the case was under the Lishan Branch’s jurisdiction, Shen Xin had requested a separate room for the four of them to use for the investigation.

The room wasn’t large.

Yang Zeran sat at his desk with his arms crossed, feigning sleep with his eyes closed as if in a deep meditative state.

Zhao Tianxing was slumped over his desk, listlessly scrolling through his phone with vacant eyes.

Shen Xin stared up at the ceiling. ’My brain feels like a pile of mush,’ he thought. ’What’s the next step?’

They had some new discoveries, but none of them were very useful.

The core problem was that they couldn’t prove Li Fusen had trained Hua Zi to drown Lin Zenghui.

That was the key. They needed hard evidence.

Just as he was thinking this, Ding Yuwei came in carrying a late-night meal and called the three of them over to eat.

"An army marches on its stomach! You need to eat and drink to build up your strength. Only then will you have the energy to work on the case."

Ding Yuwei offered some encouragement, adding that she thought the earlier case analysis meeting had gone quite well. She felt they’d made significant discoveries and that if they just kept investigating in the current direction, they would definitely find the crucial evidence.

She was certainly optimistic.

Of the three men, only Zhao Tianxing perked up, but after glancing at the food and seeing it was fried rice, he immediately lost his appetite.

"Let’s go."

Just then, Shen Xin shot to his feet. "My treat. Let’s get some barbecue."

Zhao Tianxing’s eyes lit up, and he immediately got up to follow.

Yang Zeran didn’t move. Without even lifting his eyelids, he said he wasn’t hungry.