Chapter 196 The Culprit

**Chapter 196: The Culprit**

The interrogation went smoothly—or at least, not entirely smoothly.

Lin Xiaowei had only been out of school for a couple of years and was still green. His little tricks were nothing in the face of seasoned detectives. After prolonged questioning, he started to crack. What really sealed his fate was the forensics team burning the midnight oil to lift Xia Tingyi’s fingerprints off his water cup. With the evidence staring him in the face, Lin had no room to deny anything.

After some back-and-forth, Lin finally caved.

He admitted to killing Xia Tingyi, but when it came to motive, he claimed it was due to a deadly grudge between them. He threw out excuses—like how she’d shot him down or looked down on him. But with Xia dead and no witnesses, it was just his word against a dead woman’s.

Yan Haifeng and the others naturally didn’t buy it.

No matter how much they pressed him, Lin stuck stubbornly to his story, taking the whole rap himself. Eventually, realizing the police weren’t buying it, he started wildly throwing accusations—first claiming a teacher told him to do it, then saying it was the dean. He even made up wild stories about being mentally unstable and just wanting to kill someone.

Yet none of his tales ever pointed to the Liang family.

Yan Haifeng tested the waters by mentioning the Liangs, but Lin just drew a blank. When he finally caught on, all he said was:

“Oh, you mean that ex of Xia Tingyi’s?”

“I know him. What about it?”

Shen Qingye and Yue Lingchuan watched him from the monitoring room, absently tapping their fingers on the desk, saying nothing for a long time.

They hadn’t expected Lin to come clean so easily.

If the real mastermind was the Liang family, then given Liang Shiming’s status and experience, he wouldn’t have picked someone who’d blab so easily.

Chances were slim they’d get what they needed out of Lin.

“How’s the investigation into Lin Xiaowei’s background coming along?” Yan asked, tilting his head toward Xiao Xu.

“I’ve got people on it,” Xiao Xu said with a sigh. “But we’ll need more time.”

Yan rubbed his temples. This case had been wearing him down. “Lin keeps changing his story—it’s clearly garbage. And the Liangs are tight-lipped. Prying anything loose won’t be easy.”

He glanced at Yue Lingchuan and raised an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

Yue lifted his eyes from the file, calm as ever. “No matter how tight they play it, there’s always a weak spot.”

“The Liangs are in this up to their necks—that’s certain.”

Yan perked up immediately. He dragged his chair closer, eyeing the documents. “What’d you catch? See something?”

Yue tapped the table lightly. “Since you took over the case from lower command, you’ve called in Liang Jinwen—not once, but multiple times, right?”

“Yeah,” Yan nodded.

He scanned the transcripts—Liang’s statements from each interview. “We brought him in three times, but his story held up every time.”

He skimmed through them again, still seeing nothing suspicious.

Yue shook his head. “That’s the problem.”

“Him showing up three times? That’s the red flag.”

Yan’s brow twitched as it slowly clicked.

Yue leaned forward slightly. “You don’t know him well, do you?”

Yan Haifeng slowly shook his head.

Though he had heard of this young master’s reputation, he hadn’t really interacted with him much. After all, he hadn’t been here for long—only three or four years.

Yue Lingchuan said leisurely, “Liang Jinwen has gotten bored with it in recent years—or maybe it’s not even that. He might’ve just had his fill of fun and found it all meaningless, so the troublemaking has lessened.”

“In his teens and twenties, he was far wilder. Getting hauled into the police station every other day was just another Tuesday for him. Sometimes, if he was in a bad mood, he wouldn’t even bother showing up—just had someone else deal with it.”

Yue Lingchuan looked at Yan Haifeng and continued slowly, “These past couple of years, he’s kept a lower profile, but that doesn’t mean his temper has improved.”

“You called him in three times, and each time he came. If this really had nothing to do with him, would he have been so cooperative?”

He chuckled. “He’s smashed up a police station before.”

The meeting room fell silent for a moment as Yan Haifeng sank into thought.

The fact that Liang Jinwen played along so willingly was suspicious in itself.

“In the past, whether it was brawls, assaults, or even near-fatal incidents, Liang Jinwen would show up if he felt like it—otherwise, he wouldn’t even acknowledge the summons. But this time, he showed up without a fuss each time.”

In other words, this wasn’t just any incident—it was something major.

Something so significant that even Liang Jinwen couldn’t afford to ignore it.

Yan Haifeng’s face fell.

Shen Qingye paused before suddenly speaking. “So, is Xia Tingyi’s case purely connected to Liang Jinwen, or… is Liang Shiming mixed up in this too?”

The room went quiet. Yue Lingchuan’s eyes gleamed with amusement as he looked at her.

Under their scrutiny, Shen Qingye explained slowly, “Right now, we can roughly deduce that Xia Tingyi must have done something—or discovered something—that led the Liang family to order Lin Xiaowei to kill her.”

“But what did she find out?”

“As Captain Yue said, the Liangs’ reputation in Huaiyang has been shady for years, and their hands aren’t clean. If Xia Tingyi had merely stumbled upon something minor, the Liangs wouldn’t have cared too much—to put it bluntly, they’re already knee-deep in scandals. So why did they decide to take her out?”

That suggested, as they had speculated earlier, that this was different from their past misdeeds.

“But as you said, Liang Jinwen has always been a good-for-nothing, living it up all day, never taking over the family business—someone like him, on a tight leash from his father, even his troublemaking had limits.”

Yet now, something had clearly exceeded those limits.

Could it really have been Liang Jinwen’s doing?

Yan Haifeng said, “Are you suggesting… the mastermind behind this case might not be Liang Jinwen, but Liang Shiming?”

Shen Qingye replied calmly, “It’s just a suspicion.”

Yan Haifeng’s eyes darkened.

Right. After this case surfaced, he had investigated Liang Jinwen. The man was indeed reckless, but whenever trouble arose, he usually threw money at the problem—there had never been reports of anyone involved ending up dead. But this time was different—

“We can test that theory.”

Yue Lingchuan spoke abruptly. Shen Qingye looked up at him. “You wanna bring him in again?”

Yue Lingchuan smiled. “Why bother?”