I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 222: Chapter 220: Evolved? It’s Him Again

Everything suddenly went dark.

A few seconds later, Su Miaoyi’s eyes adjusted to the darkness.

In the dark scene, she felt as if she were also standing right next to the door.

In front of the door was a man dressed in black, seemingly one with the night, picking the lock with gloved hands.

He was dressed in black from head to toe, wearing a hat and, from the side, a mask.

He was bent over, one hand on the doorknob while the other twisted a piece of wire inside the lock.

As Su Miaoyi watched him, she couldn’t see who he was at all.

She wanted to go forward, to grab him and rip off his hat and mask to see who he really was, but she couldn’t move. She could only watch, powerless.

Just as she was getting anxious, the lock suddenly gave way.

She watched the door open.

The lock-picker pulled out the wire and cautiously looked left and right.

As he turned his head from left to right, Su Miaoyi caught a glimpse of his eyes.

Then, she was pulled from the vision.

Her vision cleared, returning to the brightly lit doorway of her own home.

Su Miaoyi glanced at the door, then at the police officers inspecting the room inside.

She then took out her phone, walked to the stairwell, and called Zhuang Yanzheng to tell him about the person she had seen.

Returning to her doorway, she stared at the security door in a daze.

’Did my superpower evolve?’

She raised her hand and knocked on the door again.

’Did the door come to life?’

"Why not just say the whole house became sentient?" the voice in her head said.

"Aren’t things forbidden from coming to life these days?" Su Miaoyi muttered under her breath.

Su Miaoyi didn’t hear the voice again, but she could feel its speechlessness.

’The door coming to life... that’s probably not it.’

’Then it must be that my ability evolved.’

’It can evolve?’

She had become so familiar with this Special Ability, and now that it had suddenly evolved, it felt a little foreign.

"Those eyes belonged to Zhang Bai," the voice in her head said again.

Su Miaoyi nodded.

Zhang Bai’s height, build, gait, posture, and footprints from her other visions all matched up.

It was Zhang Bai again.

The nerve of him. The police were searching for him, yet he still dared to operate in Jinghai, even coming to the old district.

’Has going undiscovered for so many years made him overconfident and reckless?’

After the room was checked, Su Miaoyi and the officers from the local precinct took two pictures of Zhang Bai and asked the nearby residents if they had seen him.

One was a photograph of Zhang Bai, and the other was a sketch of him wearing a mask.

They asked around, but everyone said they hadn’t seen him.

The surveillance footage from the apartment building and the residential complex was also pulled.

The complex had a lot of cameras, and the review was ongoing, but so far, there was no sign of Zhang Bai on the footage.

As for the surveillance cameras in the apartment building... the wires had all been cut.

It was an old complex. The exterior of the building was a mess of electrical wires, many of them tangled and bundled together.

None of the other wires were broken, only the ones for the security cameras.

Judging by the wires, the cut was recent.

The intent was perfectly clear.

All the surveillance footage from the complex and its surroundings was taken back to the municipal bureau.

They watched the footage until after ten at night, but they still didn’t find Zhang Bai.

The old district’s infrastructure was simply inadequate, with no surveillance in many areas. As a result, there were many gaps between one street’s coverage and the next.

And Zhang Bai had deliberately avoided the cameras.

With the investigation underway on all fronts, Su Miaoyi decided to head back to Weiyang Palace first. She told Zhuang Yanzheng she would meet him directly at the hospital entrance tomorrow, then walked out of the municipal bureau.

She happened to run into Lu Zhishen, who was also getting off work.

"Perfect timing. I’ll give you a ride," Lu Zhishen said.

Su Miaoyi walked with him.

Once they were in the car and he had started it, Lu Zhishen asked, "I heard you shared a perspective with a door today?"

Su Miaoyi turned her head to look at him. She had only told Zhuang Yanzheng, so he must have been the one to tell Lu Zhishen. "...How is that possible? How could I share a perspective with a door? Doors don’t have perspectives."

"Captain Zhuang said..."

Su Miaoyi cut him off. "Actually, I communed with the door’s spirit."

Lu Zhishen fell silent and gave her a very serious look.

Seeing his expression, Su Miaoyi scooted a little closer to him.

Lu Zhishen assumed she was about to share a secret. Even though it was just the two of them in the car, he played along and leaned his head toward her. Then he heard Su Miaoyi whisper, "The door told me... that a little fool would believe I communed with its spirit today."

After she finished speaking, Lu Zhishen seemed to freeze for a moment.

As he turned to look at her, Su Miaoyi slowly tilted her head up to gaze at the car’s ceiling.

Lu Zhishen drove on in silence. After a moment, he asked through gritted teeth, "Is the ceiling that interesting?"

"Very," Su Miaoyi replied earnestly. "It looks just like a car ceiling."

Lu Zhishen sighed and commented, "Not a single one of you is a good person."

That definitely included Zhuang Yanzheng.

Su Miaoyi chuckled. "I saw it from a third-person perspective. I don’t know how it happened, it just suddenly appeared. To be honest, I was surprised too."

Lu Zhishen nodded. "With Kang Hong captured and Liu Shitang’s body discovered, for Zhang Bai to still dare to come out—and to commit another crime at that—is a whole new level of arrogance. Does he think the police aren’t onto him yet?"

"Going to my aunt and uncle’s place at a time like this is both revenge and a threat," Su Miaoyi said. "He wants to stop us from digging any deeper."

"That just means whatever he’s hiding is even more serious, and we have to keep digging."

Su Miaoyi nodded. After a pause, she raised an eyebrow slightly. "Let him be arrogant. He’d better bring that arrogance right to our faces. I’d like to see what he’s really capable of."

Lu Zhishen turned his head.

Her eyes met his.

A slight smile appeared on Lu Zhishen’s face before he looked ahead again.

The Su Miaoyi right now seemed a little different from the one he usually interacted with.

It was the first time he had sensed this bone-deep confidence, this touch of audacity, in her.

Back at Weiyang Palace, Su Miaoyi got a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, she got ready and left her apartment.

While waiting for the elevator, she ran into Shen Yanzhou, who was just returning from a run.

"You came back last night?"

"You’re staying here?"

They asked at the same time, then answered at the same time.

"Heading out so early? Still busy with work?" Shen Yanzhou asked.

Su Miaoyi nodded. "Going across the street for some breakfast first."

Shen Yanzhou, who had just gotten out of the elevator, stepped back in. "I haven’t eaten either. Let’s go together."

Su Miaoyi pressed the button for the elevator and eyed him warily. "You’re not just trying to get a free meal, are you?"

Shen Yanzhou said, "I am. So what?"

"Call me ’sis’ once, and I’ll cover your breakfast from now on," Su Miaoyi said, crossing her arms and tilting her chin up at him.

Shen Yanzhou flicked her on the forehead. "Who are you telling to call you sis? Have some respect for your elders."

Su Miaoyi clutched her forehead, swaying as if she were about to faint.

Shen Yanzhou grabbed her by her clothes to steady her. "Stop pretending. I barely touched you."

Su Miaoyi lowered her hand and laughed.

Shen Yanzhou laughed too. "Call me ’bro,’ and I’ll cover your breakfast from now on."

Su Miaoyi tilted her head, looked him over, and said with a look of mock disdain, "You don’t really look like a good person, y’know."

Shen Yanzhou: "..."