Chapter 50: Invitation

“Wait a minute, I’m confused,” Chen Dongyang frowned.
He looked at Yin Xiran and Jiang Yuxin, his tone filled with confusion.
“Zhao Haoyu… why did he do this? I mean, since he went to so much trouble to hide himself, clearing all traces of him online so that we couldn’t find him at all, then why… why did he go to the trouble of writing down such an important time and place on paper, and leaving it here in the place we finally found?”
This question made everyone ponder.
Yes, this is completely illogical.
How could a murderer who had been hiding for over a decade, a mastermind behind such a large-scale series of “suicides,” make such a low-level, fatal mistake?
This doesn’t seem like an oversight, but more like… a deliberate guidance.
“What you mean is,” Yin Xiran immediately grasped the core of his words.
Her eyes, which always sparkled with wisdom, narrowed slightly as she analyzed calmly, “Maybe this isn’t a clue he left behind accidentally, but a trap deliberately placed here, waiting for us to discover?”
As soon as the word “trap” came out of her mouth, Yin Qingle’s body trembled uncontrollably.
She subconsciously grabbed her sister’s arm, and the color on her face, which had finally faded, faded a little.
Chen Dongyang remained silent, tacitly agreeing with Yin Xiran’s explanation.
This was the only plausible explanation he could come up with.
Perhaps the so-called “Nanjiang Summit” was a trap.
Zhao Haoyu’s true purpose was to complete his “ritual” elsewhere, and this note was merely to mislead these obstructive investigators, buying him some time.
“You think too much.”
At this moment, a cold and calm voice directly denied Yin Xiran’s inference.
Jiang Yuxin had walked to the pile of photos that had been cleared out without anyone noticing.
She bent down and picked up the group photo of the choir.
Her eyes swept coldly over the face of the young, handsome man with a gentle smile in the photo, and her tone was filled with a paranoid feeling of seeing through everything.
“It wasn’t a trap. He didn’t make any mistakes.”
She raised her eyes and glanced at Chen Dongyang’s face full of confusion, Yin Xiran’s face with a bit of dissatisfaction and inquiry, and Yin Qingle’s face full of fear and anxiety.
Finally, she threw the photo back into the iron box with a light “pop” sound.
“You don’t understand what people like this are thinking.”
Her voice was not loud, but it seemed to carry some kind of magic, drawing the attention of everyone in the room to her.
“You always think he’s a meticulous criminal, a conspirator hiding in the shadows.
You use conventional logic to infer his actions, believing that everything he does is to hide his crimes and evade punishment.
Therefore, you think the appearance of this note is either an oversight or a trap.”
Jiang Yuxin paused, a cold and undisguised mockery appearing at the corner of her mouth.
“But you’re all wrong. Dead wrong.”
“He’s not a criminal at all, at least not in his own mind.
He’s an artist, a director, a paranoid man who’s devoted over a decade of his life to creating the grandest performance possible.
Everything you’ve seen, from the corpse trapped in the old school building, to that music box, to the ‘Angel Melody’ sweeping the city, is merely the prelude and foreshadowing of his grand performance.”
Jiang Yuxin slowly walked to the window with her back to the crowd.
Her voice echoed in the empty room, sounding particularly clear.
“What does a self-proclaimed artist desire most?
It’s not money, it’s not power, it’s an audience.
It’s understanding.
It’s people who can witness the birth of their work, who can cheer for their great, incomprehensible creations.”
“He’s been hiding for over a decade, not out of fear, but in preparation, brewing.
Now, his ‘work’ is almost complete, and the monster he calls ‘angel’ is about to truly descend.
This is the most glorious, most perfect moment in his life.
At such a time, how could he allow his only stage to be without an audience?”
She turned around, and her bottomless eyes were surprisingly bright in the dim light.
“So, he left this note.
It wasn’t a clue, it was an invitation.
A unique ticket to the front row VIP stands, addressed to us.
He wasn’t being negligent, nor was he setting a trap.
He was showing off, provoking us.
In this way, he was condescendingly telling us: ‘Look, you self-righteous investigators, what you’ve painstakingly found is nothing more than what I want you to see. Tomorrow at midnight, come to the top of Nanjiang to witness my greatest masterpiece. You have the honor.'”
“In his eyes, we’re not a threat at all; we’re merely his chosen audience.
He might even be enjoying the feeling of being pursued, the thrill of controlling everything and toying with us.
This is the true nature of a man as utterly conceited and arrogant as he is.”
After these words were spoken, the whole room fell into deathly silence.
Chen Dongyang stood there in a daze, his back soaked with cold sweat.
Jiang Yuxin’s words revealed a possibility far more terrifying than any trap—the criminal they were facing wasn’t a rational, logical criminal, but a complete lunatic, lost in his own world.
The confidence and composure on Yin Xiran’s face vanished.
For the first time, she realized how powerless her analytical skills, so proud of logic and strategy, were in the face of this pure, twisted humanity.
She had been trying to play chess with her opponent, but she didn’t realize that he wasn’t even sitting across from her at the chessboard.
He simply stood outside, looking down at her, the chess pieces’ futile struggles.
“Then… then we…” Yin Qingle’s voice was trembling, and she could hardly continue, “Should we still go? Since he… since he is so scary…”
“Of course I’ll go.”
Jiang Yuxin answered decisively.
“This isn’t a choice anymore.”
She looked at the crowd, her voice returning to its usual icy tone.
“This is the only and final stage he’s prepared for us.
If we don’t go, he’ll still complete his ‘ritual.’
If we go, we’ll at least have a chance to personally destroy everything he has, at the moment of his greatest pride.”
“Besides,” she said, a cold smile curling up her lips, “I don’t want to see this kind of idiot get what he wants.”