The Notary

Yan Zhi Che indeed stood honestly at the door, waiting until all the Yuzhou city police officers in sight had left, and after confirming once more, he headed towards the back door.

After some back and forth, it was already past midnight. The hotel had high gates and grand halls, and outside, a cold wind whistled. Faintly, there was also the aroma of street food wafting by. Yan Zhi Che waited in the small alley next to the hotel for about five minutes when he saw a taxi approaching from afar.

Liang An opened the car door, then turned back to thank the driver. As he got out, he held a charging cable and a black phone with a dark screen, clearly indicating that it had run out of battery right after calling the taxi, had to be charged in the car, and paid automatically. Seeing this, Yan Zhi Che lowered his head to look at his two unread messages, only then realizing—the other party's sudden unresponsiveness wasn't due to being too dedicated to work to resist, but rather that finding a place to charge his phone or rent a power bank at a convenience store in front of the Changqing city police station seemed to be a difficult task for Captain Liang.

However, Liang An was quick-sighted. He immediately spotted Yan Zhi Che's location and walked straight towards him.

"What's the matter?" Yan Zhi Che said concisely. They weren't supposed to meet here, primarily for various reasons, to avoid the worst-case scenario of "pulling up a radish with all its mud." Even if communication was necessary, it needed to happen as quickly as possible.

"I'm not looking for 'Yan Zhi Che,' but 'The Notary'." Liang An was even more direct, "You give me the files on 'The Sorcerer'."

Yan Zhi Che was stunned: "Then according to the rules, I also have to give you..." He realized he had spoken too much halfway through, Liang An had clearly anticipated this point and deliberately sought his help, so he nodded in agreement.

"After revealing your identity, this is the first time you've done something like this." Yan Zhi Che looked deeply at him, "Have you discovered anything recently?"

Liang An waved his hand, signaling him not to ask too many questions. Finally, Yan Zhi Che drove away. Liang An reconfirmed the address and route once more, then walked straight into the hotel where all the Yuzhou police department members were staying. He didn't follow Shao Zi's instructions to get a room card at the reception, but went directly up the elevator.

Reaching the top floor of the hotel, Liang An walked straight to a room. After thinking for a moment, he deliberately knocked on the door with his knuckles. The person who opened the door was Jiang Qiu.

"Jiang Qiu, lend me a charger." Liang An finally found an opportunity to charge his dying phone. Using the 3% battery charged in the taxi, he asked Jiang Qiu to take the phone inside to continue charging.

At the same time, he also noticed that Yan Zhi Che had acted very quickly, having already sent the files. Unfortunately, there was more important information to discuss now, and he couldn't prepare anything further. It was only when he stepped out that Liang An noticed something was wrong, as Jiang Qiu was seriously evaluating him, seemingly wanting to say something. If he didn't have strong willpower, Jiang Qiu naturally wouldn't proactively ask questions, so Liang An had to let him speak: "Do you have anything you want to ask?"

"Do you have a new accomplice in Yuzhou City?"

Liang An choked a bit, feeling something was wrong but also that it seemed right everywhere, unable to refute, so he asked back: "Why do you say that?"

"During the day, you asked me to tell you the reserved room number first. This hotel's surveillance system has limited coverage; there's only one path that doesn't go through the reception desk, which is in the camera's blind spot—if no one had scouted it beforehand, you wouldn't have found this path. Moreover, your actions just now were to avoid leaving fingerprints."

Watching Jiang Qiu list each point of his plan, Liang An gave a bitter laugh: "You learn fast... If anyone else heard this conversation, they'd probably think I'm a police officer here to murder you. Bad influence aside, getting caught red-handed would be quite embarrassing."

Jiang Qiu blinked.

"So, you have nothing else to ask?" Liang An sighed, then used a tissue, which he didn't know where he got it from, to wrap the recording pen, also leaving no fingerprints, and handed it to Jiang Qiu: "Bai Chen gave this to you."

Hearing this name, Jiang Qiu frowned, took the recording pen, then asked in a declarative tone a question Liang An had already prepared for: "You've heard the contents inside."

Liang An nodded. This was considered an indirect confirmation, indicating that the information Bai Chen conveyed did not violate Liang An's personal calculations.

"His stance is very strange; I realized that after re-engaging with him. Perhaps he won't entirely become an obstacle to us—of course, this is outside the scope of a criminal investigator's responsibility, in my personal judgment." Liang An let go of his hands and continued: "As a criminal investigator, I will still do everything possible, at any cost, to find evidence of his crimes and prevent him from escaping legal punishment."

Jiang Qiu nodded: "I hope so."

Liang An felt as if he had just been mocked. But considering Jiang Qiu's unique personality, taking sincerity as a killer skill was his passive ability—he had to put that possibility out of his mind.

He chatted a few more sentences with Jiang Qiu about the situations that had occurred earlier. To ensure safety and that he left no fingerprints or recorded images, Liang An retrieved his phone, which had charged to 20% battery, from Jiang Qiu, leaving Doctor Jiang to listen to the recording and make his own reactions or judgments.

Liang An returned the way he came, pretending he had just arrived by car. He exited through the back door, circled around to the main entrance, then leisurely went to the reception to get his room card. He could finally breathe a sigh of relief, no longer needing to worry about the surveillance camera's range.

The time difference from getting out of the taxi to entering the building couldn't be completely eliminated, but if someone actually traced it to this precise moment, then something big must have already happened. Therefore, his previous actions were actually just unavoidable measures, the shallowest layer of disguise.

In fact, bothering Yan Zhi Che to take action beforehand still made Liang An feel very apologetic. Because this was completely outside the original plan. The business trip to Changqing City was not supposed to have so many complications, mainly because directly re-engaging with Bai Chen, even asking Song Qiao Yu to arrest him, and deliberately creating space for a private conversation, was truly very easy to arouse suspicion.

Fortunately, Song Qiao Yu had no hidden agenda, and Bai Chen didn't grasp any actual weaknesses. Liang An knew that from the very first time he confirmed Bai Chen's identity, this overly sensitive serial killer had relied on intuition to realize something was unusual about him. This was a suspicion almost like an instinct. In normal situations, outlaws could directly "judge" their targets; that was the normal state.

But Liang An also knew that the person both he and Bai Chen were wary of, Jiang Zhuo, was not that kind of criminal. Although Bai Chen had a cooperative relationship with Jiang Zhuo, that didn't prevent him from feeling a headache due to this characteristic.

Liang An had realized he truly needed to make a decision at the critical moment from the time he told the story on the plane, and then planned everything. He couldn't hide any longer.

Liang An finally turned his phone back on, first finding Liu Che in his contacts, asking him to, on his next visit to his "old colleague" in prison, conveniently seek help from an "old acquaintance" of his. Finally, he began to check the contents of the files Yan Zhi Che had sent—along with the request he had made, the price to pay for the true identity of "The Sorcerer."

Upon seeing it, Liang An was utterly astonished. "So it was him...?"