We Weren’t Fated, I Just Played My Cards Right - Chapter 18
Fang Chuan and his team arrived too late. Zhan Hongye wasn’t at home or his office. He had lost contact with his family since the previous night.
No one in the Zhan household found this unusual—it happened often. It wasn’t until the police arrived that Jiang Jia, Zhan’s current wife, began to panic.
She tried calling Zhan Hongye several times but couldn’t get through. She summoned Zhan Huitian and Jenny back home, but no one could provide any further clues.
According to Jiang Jia’s recollection, Zhan Hongye had left the banquet the previous night alone, citing urgent business, and they hadn’t spoken since.
Jenny, who had been resting at home due to illness, claimed she was asleep and didn’t know if he had returned.
In the end, Zhan Hongye’s whereabouts were traced through surveillance footage.
He had indeed returned home but left again shortly after in his car.
The footage clearly showed two vehicles tailing him after his departure.
By 4 p.m., no travel records under Zhan Hongye’s name could be found in the transportation system. A search of his properties yielded no trace of him.
His phone remained switched off, making it impossible to locate him, while the two vehicles tailing him were still under investigation.
“Did Zhan Hongye flee after receiving news of his crimes, or has something happened to him?”
Fang Chuan frowned as he watched the surveillance footage.
The Special Cases Division had limited police resources—half were dispatched for field investigations while the rest stayed behind to monitor the footage.
Even Yan Xiu had been dragged over by Fang Chuan.
The prolonged, tedious inefficiency of the work had worn down even the usually composed and detached Consultant Yan. His suit jacket was casually draped over the back of his chair, his shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal the well-defined muscles of his forearms and the expensive watch on his wrist.
At Fang Chuan’s words, he pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. “Give me Zhan Hongye’s birthdate. I’ll have someone check his status.”
Without the exact time of birth, the divination results wouldn’t be precise, but it was still better than sitting around speculating.
Fang Chuan quickly sent Yan Xiu a screenshot of Zhan Hongye’s ID, which Yan Xiu forwarded to someone.
Soon, a reply came.
Diviner Su: The birthdate doesn’t match the person. The eight characters are fake—useless.
Yan Xiu turned off his phone and exhaled. “He altered his birthdate. There’s no way to divine anything.”
“Did that old bastard plan for this all along?” Fang Chuan couldn’t hide his frustration, pacing back and forth in the office with his hands on his hips.
“Whether he thought of it or not, whoever gave him the artifact certainly did.”
How would an ordinary man like Zhan Hongye obtain a cursed artifact? And how would he know how to use it? Someone must have given it to him.
A person with a falsified birthdate was nearly impossible to track through metaphysical means without direct contact—making him a safe choice in that regard.
“Captain, we’ve identified the driver of one of the cars tailing Zhan Hongye,” an officer hurried in.
Fang Chuan’s eyes lit up. “Who is it?”
“A small-time thug named Zhou Qiang. He’s already been brought to the interrogation room.”
The interrogation went quickly. For a petty criminal like Zhou Qiang, who took money for jobs and treated the police station like a second home, there was no loyalty to his employer.
The money was already spent—no reason not to sell them out.
He revealed the man who had paid them: Boss Dong.
Zhou Qiang answered every question Fang Chuan threw at him without hesitation.
Fang Chuan: “What did he have you do?”
Zhou Qiang replied: “Boss Dong told us to teach someone a lesson. We followed the guy’s car last night and waited until he parked in the old district before jumping him when no one was around.”
“Do you know who you beat up?”
“We do,” Zhou Qiang replied readily. “Some rich boss named Zhan.”
“You knew who he was and still dared to hit him? Aren’t you afraid of retaliation?”
“Eh, what’s the big deal? It was just a beating. He didn’t even get a good look at our faces. Next time he wants to teach someone a lesson, we’ll take his business again.” Zhou Qiang wasn’t particularly concerned. If he worried too much, how could he make money?
“What, did he report it? Are you cops so free these days that you’d bother investigating something like this?” Zhou Qiang had some experience—the officers arresting him weren’t ordinary beat cops, or else he wouldn’t have been so cooperative.
He found it strange. Though they’d been rough the night before, it definitely wasn’t serious. He was a professional in this regard.
“He didn’t report it. He’s missing.”
Zhou Qiang blinked, then quickly raised his hand in an oath. “Officer, that has nothing to do with us! We have professional ethics—we made sure nothing on him was broken, and he wasn’t knocked out. We didn’t touch any of his belongings. He could’ve easily called 120 himself.”
“Whether it’s related or not, we’ll find out after investigating.”
From Zhou Qiang, Fang Chuan got the last known location of Zhan Hongye the previous night. He took his team to check the area and found Zhan’s car parked by the roadside. At the alley where Zhan had been beaten, traces of bl00d remained on the ground—likely his—but there was no further evidence.
The old district’s surveillance coverage was spotty, and this area happened to be a blind spot. Nothing useful could be found.
With the trail cold, Fang Chuan discussed with Yan Xiu and decided to bring back Boss Dong, who was still drifting somewhere on a high-speed train.
By the time Dong Zhenghao was escorted back to Qingcheng, it was already 2 a.m.
Thanks to the efficiency of the railway system, even though he’d already crossed two provinces away from Qingcheng, it took only four hours from the moment the train police located him to his forced return.
The fifty-something boss was locked in an interrogation room from midnight until the next morning, leaving him in a daze.
Meanwhile, his eldest daughter had just survived a harrowing forty-eight hours and was now in high spirits, belting out songs at the top of her lungs.
Genetic inheritance had a funny way of skipping the right traits. For instance, when Boss Dong dominated the mic at KTV, no one ever tried to stop him—because he could actually sing in tune. His daughter, however, couldn’t hit a single note.
Liu Mumu’s ear-piercing singing startled the other residents of the villa awake. Dong Yue rubbed her eyes as she came downstairs, while loud curses erupted from Dong Qi’s room—his door had been left open. A moment later, he slammed it shut, probably to continue grumbling in private.
“Yue, want a fortune reading?” After screeching loud enough to scare off the neighborhood birds, Liu Mumu finally stopped.
Dong Yue nodded. Her sister had been holed up in her room for two days without a single divination session, and she’d started to miss it.
Shaking the coins and tossing them, Liu Mumu studied the result. “Hmm… something good is going to happen today.”
“What kind of good thing?”
“Dunno. What do you consider good?” Liu Mumu irresponsibly tossed the question back.
Dong Yue thought for a moment. “Dad coming home?”
Liu Mumu pursed her lips, her face twisting in disgust.
Next, it was her turn to divine for herself, and the first result made her eyes widen in shock. She cast the divination three times in a row, each outcome identical. Liu Mumu’s expression shifted from astonishment to delight.
It was… as if the heavens had dropped a pie out of nowhere, and she wasn’t even prepared to catch it.
The Red Phoenix Star had moved today!
After persistently casting divinations for five whole years, had she finally found her boyfriend today?
Liu Mumu dusted off her long-forgotten knowledge of divination, cross-referencing with her grandfather’s notebook as she calculated, eventually settling on a meeting time of 10:00 AM.
*
After eating the breakfast lovingly prepared by her younger sister and declaring that she should wait at home for her sister to bring back a brother-in-law, Liu Mumu set out an hour and a half early.
Not having a destination didn’t matter—she could divine her way there step by step.
Standing at the foot of Binjiang Tower, just half an hour from her home, Liu Mumu nodded in satisfaction. The life of a diviner was so mundane it didn’t even give her a chance to get lost.
The divination led her straight to the 23rd floor. Arriving an hour early, she wasn’t surprised to find the long hallway completely empty.
After standing in the elevator lobby for a while, she realized she might be acting too impulsively.
What if the Red Phoenix Star’s movement was just a fluke today? Even if it wasn’t, what if the person didn’t meet her aesthetic standards?
She decided to hide behind the fire exit door to observe first. If the “quality” didn’t meet expectations, she could quietly slip away as if nothing had happened and wait for the heavens’ next arrangement.
With her mind made up, she stayed in the stairwell, sitting on the steps and playing a block-matching game on her phone. Even when the hallway beyond the door suddenly grew noisy, it didn’t interrupt her rhythm—there was still an hour until ten.
*
At 9:30 AM, the Qingcheng City Police Department received a call reporting a suspected homicide in a short-term rental apartment on the 23rd floor of Binjiang Tower. The landlord revealed the apartment had previously been leased long-term to a man named Zhan Hongye.
The case was assigned to Fang Chuan, who boarded a police van headed for Binjiang Tower with Yan Xiu and other subordinates.
The door to Unit 2307 was tightly shut. After the landlord called the police, no one dared open it until officers arrived to secure the scene.
Dark red bl00d had seeped out from under the door—if anyone was inside, they’d clearly lost a significant amount.
At Fang Chuan’s order, the trembling landlord unlocked the door, revealing a shocking scene inside.
The landlord fainted after just one glance. Even Fang Chuan, accustomed to bizarre death scenes, couldn’t help but frown.
On the floor by the entrance lay a human shape—called such because it wasn’t a complete individual, merely maintaining a human form.
The body had been carved into numerous pieces, stacked together like building blocks.
The bl00d had flowed from the victim’s body, forming a large pool. If it hadn’t seeped through the door crack to the outside, it might have taken much longer to be discovered.
Fang Chuan stepped forward to examine the body. Bruises from beatings were visible on the face and exposed skin—one eye socket was blackened, and the face was somewhat swollen. However, it was undoubtedly Zhan Hongye himself.
“Lock down the entire building. Pull up the surveillance footage to see when he arrived and who brought him here.”
Unrelated personnel were escorted downstairs to give statements, while officers from the Special Cases Investigation Division methodically carried out their tasks.
After putting on shoe covers, Fang Chuan and Yan Xiu entered the crime scene.
Yan Xiu crouched beside Zhan Hongye’s corpse for a while before pulling out a pen from his pocket. He used it to probe the wound on the body.
The pen immediately crackled with electric sparks.
“Unnatural death?” Fang Chuan asked quietly.
“Mm.” Yan Xiu handed the pen to Fang Chuan, who unscrewed the cap to reveal not a pen nib but a small finger-length sword.
The blade was engraved with numerous talismanic symbols. When the tip touched the corpse, the wound immediately turned charred black.
“His manner of death resembles Qin Kai’s, though Qin Kai’s body only showed slashing marks—nothing as extreme as being completely split open. So was he backlashed by his own ritual implement?” Fang Chuan asked.
“Not necessarily. Someone might have stolen his ritual implement and used it to curse him instead.”
“But this time the effect seems more severe than before. Or did he sacrifice someone else? Yet his children are unharmed.”
Yan Xiu stood up. “During sacrificial rituals, abnormalities in the offerings often aren’t visibly apparent.”
Perhaps Zhan Hongye had indeed considered harming his own children and had even begun taking steps. But as police officers—even with special investigative methods for special cases—they couldn’t force the deceased’s children to undergo examinations.
“Captain, we’ve reviewed the surveillance footage from last night to this morning. Zhan Hongye entered the building alone. After going into room 2307, he never came out, and no one else entered or exited,” reported an officer returning from the security room.
“What about others? Any suspicious individuals?”
The officer quickly added, “There was one unusual case. About an hour ago, a young woman went up to the 23rd floor alone. We didn’t see her leave on camera—she might still be in the building.”
“Block all exits and search floor by floor from the bottom up. I refuse to believe we can’t find her!” Fang Chuan grew excited at finally having a suspect.
Seeing Yan Xiu about to leave, Fang Chuan hurriedly pulled out a pair of handcuffs from his coat. Unlike standard cuffs, these bore black patterns—special restraints for supernatural suspects, department-issued and not easily broken.
“If the consultant has no other business, perhaps you could help track her down?” Fang Chuan extended the cuffs further.
By protocol, consultants only needed to provide investigative insights and weren’t required to participate in arrests. But their department was short-staffed—they couldn’t afford to let anyone sit idle.
These days, being a captain required thicker skin than most.
Yan Xiu glanced at him and took the handcuffs. The silver-black metal rings dangled from his fingers, swaying slightly with his movements.
Without much thought, he strode directly toward the fire exit at the other end of the hallway.
At exactly ten in the morning, Liu Mumu turned off her phone screen, brushed the dust off her clothes, and pushed the fire door open just a crack. She peeked her head out cautiously, like a timid little rabbit poking out of its burrow.
This floor had seemed lively just moments ago, but now it was eerily quiet.
The only thing in her line of sight was the man walking toward her.
Dressed in a slate-gray suit, he had two silver metal rings hooked around his fingers, his thumb slowly tracing their edges as he approached with unhurried steps.
Despite the subtlety of the motion, Liu Mumu felt her cheeks grow warm. Her gaze shifted from the metal rings in his hand to his face.
His cold expression couldn’t mask his strikingly handsome features—deep, mesmerizing black eyes like an abyss that pulled you in, a tall and straight nose, and lips that were naturally thin yet sensually curved at the corners, exuding an air of aloof allure.
Liu Mumu froze for a second, then spent the next second unilaterally deciding: this man was going to be her future boyfriend!
Then, the man stopped in front of her, his dark eyes lowering slightly to meet hers.
She heard his deep, magnetic voice: “City Bureau investigation. Come with me.”
His hand lifted slightly—and there were no metal rings anymore, just handcuffs!
Liu Mumu blinked her wide, round eyes. Wait, this wasn’t part of the plan!
This was… just too sudden.
Torn between addressing him as “future boyfriend” or “Officer,” Liu Mumu quickly chose the safer option: “Officer, I—I didn’t do anything!”
Officer?
Looking down at the girl who barely reached his chest, dressed in overall shorts and a white T-shirt, her messy bun tied with a chubby cloud-shaped hair tie—she looked downright childish.
For a moment, he couldn’t tell if calling him “Officer” was her way of teasing him.
After a brief assessment, Yan Xiu’s brow twitched, and he reluctantly accepted the title.
“A homicide occurred on the 23rd floor. You’ll need to come to the station and explain what you’re doing here.”
Liu Mumu: “…”
She hadn’t done anything! She’d just wanted to catch a glimpse of her future boyfriend—that was all!
The answer made perfect sense to her, but would Officer believe it?