I was full of suspicion as Officer Wu ushered me onto the sofa, Wang Jue taking a seat right beside me.

"I interviewed you last time; what is your relationship to Officer He Jiaming?" Officer Wu was quite good at preemptive strikes; I had intended to ask him the same thing, but he beat me to it.

"We are his friends."

"You told the guard there was trouble at his home. Can you tell me what that trouble is?"

Ugh, the curse of lying is that it might fool people for a moment, but it requires weaving an ever-tighter net of falsehoods to cover it up. I thought, and thought again. What could qualify as a domestic issue? Ah, my older sister!

"His girlfriend is missing, and we can't reach him or her. We are very worried about them." Yes, this definitely counts as family business.

"Are you his girlfriend’s brother?"

I knew the anecdote about Sister and Old He's first love from four days ago at the hospital. How was this Officer Wu better informed than me, the actual brother?

Just as suspicion clouded my mind, Officer Wu seemed to read my thoughts, giving me a strange little smile and a wink. The image of Hou Dayong instantly flashed into my mind. In truth, I was seven or eight parts convinced he was Hou Dayong, but without concrete proof, that doubt remained suspended in mid-air.

"Do you know how we might contact him?" I decided to cut to the chase, stating my purpose directly.

Seeing my directness, Officer Wu’s smile vanished, and he adopted a serious expression. "If we could contact him, we wouldn't be seeking information from you. He hasn't shown up for work in three days. The last time we saw him was four days ago, right after he finished taking your statement. He's been out of contact with the unit ever since."

I strained to recall the events of three days prior. That morning, Old He had bought a huge bag of breakfast and shared it with me in my sister's hospital room. I was preoccupied with the note at the time, and Old He kept sneezing, spattering me. He looked mortified, said he needed to go home for medicine, and left.

Afterward, Li Xiaohao arrived at the room, threatening me with my sister, giving me a three-day deadline to hand over the stamp album. Wang Jue and I then headed to Wuzhuang to find Hua Jinlan. Before leaving, I had called Old He, begging him to make sure he contacted Li Xiaoshu. That was the last time I spoke to him before we reached Wuzhuang.

Suddenly, I realized I had overlooked the most crucial question over these past few days. The night we captured Scarface, Hua Jinlan first shifted her face to look like my sister, and then shifted again to resemble Bai Huajian. Li Xiaohao’s words from the mental hospital echoed faintly in my ears: "Do you want to see them? If you do, how about I arrange a meeting for you one day?" They were clearly working together.

So, Li Xiaohao wanted the stamp album, which was with Li Xiaoshu. By bypassing Li Xiaoshu and going after Hua Jinlan—who was basically the same as Bai Huajian—we naturally wouldn't get the curse lifted from my sister. In the end, we had been heading in completely the wrong direction!

What's more, the most damning fact was that Li Xiaohao’s entire sequence—placing the curse, threatening me at the hospital, and sending Hua Jinlan after us—had one singular objective: to acquire whatever he desired.

The terrible part was that I still knew nothing about the whereabouts of that stamp album or Li Xiaoshu. In this situation, if I wasn't being led by the nose, who was? Therefore, to solve the problem, I had to circle back to Li Xiaoshu. Perhaps she knew where my sister and Old He were.