The moment Xiao Fen aimed the syringe at Lu Jin’s neck and jabbed it in, his personal live stream chat exploded.
【Bro Fen is mighty!】
【I’ve been waiting forever for Bro Fen to make his move!】
【The instant Bro Fen appeared in front of President Lu, family—who gets this sense of relief?】
【I get it. My heart was hanging by a thread, but now it’s finally settled. Lu Jin’s finally “dead” at Bro Fen’s hands.】
【The real killer’s caught. I was just about to happily keep chasing the variety show, and Bro Fen immediately drops the big move. Bro, you really get me!】
【What kind of car is this, what model? Can someone explain the mechanism? How does a perfectly fine car trap someone inside? Dodge this—won’t buy it in the future.】
【As if you could afford a supercar anyway.】
【Bro Fen cut the motor wiring under the hood. The odds are low, but in real life, circuits can fuse. If you’re stuck inside then, think about President Lu’s little “performance” earlier—terrifying.】
【This is gonna bake someone alive.】
【No way.】
【I just searched it up. Two years ago in M Country, there was a fatal incident like this. Six years ago in G Country too, and seven years ago, a kid… And those are just the big ones that made headlines.】
Plenty of people in the live stream started citing examples. The phenomenon wasn’t common, but fatalities weren’t unheard of either.
【What’s the point of making these cars? Why not shut down the production line sooner?】
【Sure, they’re convenient and sleek, but safety comes first, right?】
“Little firecrackers, friendly reminder: if the electric button won’t open the door on this electric car, you can actually open it manually.” Xiao Fen demonstrated as he spoke. “It’s between the seat and the door, right under the door.”
He pulled the handle close to his foot by the door, and the supercar door swung open.
【What? I’ve been driving for years and had no idea? So last time when I made the firefighters smash the window and awkwardly crawled out—what was that?】
【That was you having money and stamina.】
【Bro Fen doesn’t say it, I never knew. Are all these car designers mute?】
【This is why you learn so much from Bro Fen. Just this tip alone, and all those rich folks with electric luxury cars owe him for the lifesaving knowledge.】
The moment Lu Jin got trapped in the car with no escape, several electric supercar manufacturers rushed out PR statements claiming the doors could be opened manually and that it was in the manual.
Netizens only noticed after watching Xiao Fen’s stream—the companies had indeed said so.
But before that, no one had ever heard of it.
【Useless knowledge +1.】
【Useless for us poor bastards, but for those who can afford luxury rides, this one’s gold.】
【What now? This makes President Lu look kinda dumb.】
The live stream chat filled with mockery. Xiao Fen dragged Lu Jin out of the car, slung him over his shoulder, and strode off coolly.
Wang Ze, watching this through the video feed, wanted to die.
“Have you drafted the resignation letters? I’ll hand yours in with mine tomorrow,” he said to his colleagues.
“But the viewership spiked again. For the traffic, the Lu Family and Young Master Lu must be okay with it, right?” a staffer in the car next to him replied. “It’s always hard to please everyone.”
Viewers were clamoring for Xiao Fen to “knife” Lu Jin again, and it had spawned this wild enemies-to-lovers CP where Lu Jin could only die by Xiao Fen’s hand and Xiao Fen could only kill Lu Jin—they were shipping it hard.
“But the wife isn’t happy about it,” Wang Ze said with a headache. “The first episode and warm-up aired together, so she couldn’t stop it in time. Young Master Lu got humiliated twice in a row, and on our own show. You think she’ll go easy?”
His colleagues’ faces paled in fear.
After the first episode ended, she’d stormed the TV station in a rage—Director Wang’s toupee had nearly flown off.
President Lu Chengze and old Chairman Lu Congxin were easygoing. Talk business with them, not emotions. Sky-high ratings, a little embarrassment for the son and grandson? No big deal—they weren’t really hurt.
But Madam Lu was different.
Lu Jin was her lifeline, her foundation in the Lu Family amid all the illegitimate kids.
And this crown prince was already 25, still causing endless trouble—spoiled rotten by Madam Lu into a willful, arrogant brat. Now he’d been wronged, and all the underlings like them were in for it.
Wang Ze let out a heavy sigh.
This show had been a whim to begin with, full of holes. There were no domestic precedents to reference, and then they ran into a troublemaker like Xiao Fen. The production team could only learn from early mistakes and patch the rules as they went.
The bigger the audience and fame grew, the more weirdos flooded the live stream chats.
He had a vague bad feeling in his gut.
This level of notoriety was beyond the Lu Corporation’s control.
“Wang Ze, how many viewers in my live stream now?” Xiao Fen’s voice came through soon after.
“Eight hundred million viewers, Teacher Xiao. Your stream is a landslide first—second place is Inspector Fang with just over three hundred million.”
That was why they hadn’t dared interrupt Xiao Fen while he “knifed” Lu Jin. With that many people, one pause and they’d take the blame for the traffic drop.
Even when Xiao Fen had beaten the real killer earlier, with those real punches landing, they’d only dared advise him—a, they couldn’t beat Xiao Fen; b, they worried blocking too hard would tank the views.
The production team’s stance was clear: it was the guests’ responsibility, not theirs.
————
Rewind to October 29, the day Fang Si Ting returned from Guiwu Forest.
It was market day in town.
Market day meant fixed days each month when folks from nearby villages came to town to buy daily necessities, vendors set up street stalls, and the bustle rivaled a small temple fair.
So around noon that day, they also headed to the Five Directions Temple for a vegetarian buffet, hoping for divine blessings.
The temple refectory’s uncles and aunties had arrived early that morning to prep the pot bases and ingredients.
Before they even opened the doors, they spotted wisps of smoke from the chimney and a gap in the door.
The moment the head chef pushed the door open, a stench of blood hit them. Right across from the entrance on the concrete wall, someone had scrawled a birth chart in blood.
Beneath that birth chart, they saw Lu Jin’s “corpse.”
On the first copper hotpot at the entrance, Lu Jin was hugging the yellow copper chimney where the charcoal went, his hands and feet locked around it with iron chains. A makeup artist had painted realistic flayed-skin effects on his front and back—eye-catching the second you walked in.
In just two days, Lu Jin’s emotions had swung wildly.
Trapped in the car, frantic and panicked. Realizing it was Xiao Fen, furious beyond measure. Locked up for nearly an hour, thinking he was done for—then spotting Xiao Fen before passing out, finally feeling saved.
When he woke, it was already dark. He was relieved to be alive, but then he saw the blood-soaked makeup on his body, the blood characters on the wall wailing like vengeful spirits—it nearly scared his soul right out.
Each awakening brought a new way to die. How lucky he was.
Afterward, under millions of viewers’ watchful eyes, he was forced to sit stiffly in that hotpot all night plus a morning.
Don’t ask—ask and it’s because you can’t disturb the crime scene, ruin Bro Fen’s setup, or delay Inspector Yan’s deductions.
As the “victim,” he’d lost all human rights in front of the audience.
With Fang Si Ting absent, the on-site task force investigators in town didn’t dare touch the murder scene.
In his mind, Young Master Lu tallied another grudge against the task force, especially Fang Si Ting.
He finally got his rescuers. He kept his eyes shut, posed as when he’d woken, got photographed, and ended that long, torturous “death.”
Investigators finally unchained him.
The big pot in the room had been boiling half the night; the steam wouldn’t vent, leaving Lu Jin parched and sweltering. He moved his numb, stiff limbs, too drained even to curse.
Had he come to join a show or suffer punishment?
Luckily, Xiao Fen had shown some mercy this time, padding between the hotpot and his privates with flesh-colored soft skins.
When he dismounted, his unresponsive limbs accidentally dragged one off—revealing a skin dotted with dark blue-black spots and a weird smell underneath.
“Don’t tamper with evidence—that’s human skin.” Qin Wen Su hurried over, carefully picking it up and counting: four pieces total.
Matching the four victims.
Lu Jin’s expression turned bizarre. Ignoring his numb limbs, he stumbled to the door and finally hurled—”Blech”—violently.
His face and chest had pressed against the dead victims’ skins for nearly 20 hours; his body now carried that faint corpse reek.
“Blech—”
The thought made him puke again.
But after a night and morning without food, he had nothing but bile.
Staff helped him away from the scene.
He had no more role after that.
He made another grand exit.
Fang Si Ting held the white paper peeled from his back.
Name: Lu Jin
Age: 25
Time of Death: October 28, 12 PM to 2 PM
Cause of Death: Hyperthermia Dehydration
Other Injuries: Large-area thermal burns appeared postmortem on the front chest, causing skin peeling
Besides the blood birth chart and extinguished stove, two red dotted candles and an incense burner sat before the hotpot. Newspaper clippings littered the floor around it.
Fang Si Ting picked one up—not from Y Country, but H Country.
Dated from over two years ago to now, all entertainment gossip cut into uneven squares.
Look closely: every scandal Lu Jin had stirred abroad during his studies was there—pure tabloid fodder.
Viewers in Fang Si Ting’s stream saw it too and dove into gossiping about Lu Jin’s ex-boyfriends. Pity domestic media were too tight-lipped; they dug all day without unearthing one. The hot search popped up and vanished in hours, buried by other celeb headlines.
An old-style film roll lay on the floor too. Held to the bright window light, it showed a skinny figure’s silhouette arranging the crime scene.
Like a lantern show: from dragging in the corpse, to writing the blood chart, binding the hands and feet to the hotpot, lighting the big wok nearby, filling it full of water.
All back views.
“It’s the Temple Refectory Old Lady legend,” said the chefs and helpers who first found the scene.
“What’s that?” Fang Si Ting asked.
He had a vague memory.
The old lady in the same ward as Lu Kaiyu from the clinic case had mentioned it.
“Before the management committee took over, an old couple tended the temple. They were deeply in love. Then the wife got Alzheimer’s. The husband turned cold, saw her as a burden, ditched her deliberately—she died in an accident outside.
“The old man joyfully returned to the temple. Middle of the night, toilet break—he sees the refectory light on, puzzled. Peeks through the crack: steam everywhere, an old woman boiling noodles, chuckling that ‘he’ll love these tonight.’
“Turns out, the old man often got hungry at night, and she’d get up to cook noodles for him—decades unchanged. Even dead, her spirit returned to the refectory to cook for her man. The sight scared him mad; he died days later.”
The chefs chattered on. “Didn’t expect you folks to know our local lore so well, but don’t joke with this stuff on your show—might come true. Better to steer clear of gods, Buddhas, and ghosts.”
Tang Shen walked over.
“Fingerprints compared: only workers’ prints, plus one stranger’s at key spots. Also,” he held up fresh photos, “two thumbprint butterflies on the victim’s lower back.”
Per the makeup, the killer had pried Lu Jin’s thumbs and heat-stamped them—faint impressions.
Same position and shape as the last blood butterflies, just fainter from the burns.
“It’s Xiao Fen,” Tang Shen said. “He’s really piling on the work for us. The real cases aren’t even cracked yet.”
“He’s already cracked it,” Fang Si Ting said firmly. As he moved, admiration and respect flashed in his eyes. “He got the skins. No way the killer escaped him.”
“So the town murders are solved? While we’re still hunting bodies, Xiao Fen’s nabbed the killer?”
Tang Shen shook his head with a sigh. “How on earth is his brain structured?”
They were all still troubled over the new corpse being buried too long, leaving them with no clues.
“This is Xiao Fen’s new letter of challenge to us.” With the case suddenly cracked, Fang Siting swept away the gloom of the past few days, a relaxed yet helpless smile appearing in his eyes. “From now on, he’s no longer our partner—he’s our enemy.”
“Then we’ll have no choice but to rise to the challenge.” Tang Shen brimmed with interest as he held up the evidence bag and said to Fang Siting, “There are plenty of clues here. I refuse to believe he’ll slip away this time.”
Right at that moment, Peng Xiaoxiao burst in excitedly. “I heard there’s been another murder here!”
“Fake,” Tang Shen said.
“Huh?” Peng Xiaoxiao didn’t catch on right away.
“Brother Fen caught the real killer, then set up a fake crime scene for us.”
“I thought my profile was fast enough already.” Peng Xiaoxiao gave a wry smile and pulled out the sketch paper in her hand.
“He already knows who the killer is, but we don’t. We urgently need your help.” Tang Shen took it from her, unfolded it, and took a look.
“It’s him?”
