Chapter 496: Riding Club

Qi Youxuan gleefully smiled at her as he grabbed the milk tea from her hands while pinching her fingers. Wei Muran simply glared at him since they were at work!

Qi Youxuan then proceeded to wink at her and said, "The people in Chen Yuke's dorm are hiding something from us. The only thing I'm not sure about is if they were hiding something from us or were they unaware as well. Since the murderer knew Feng Haoli's phone number and had murdered him, then the murderer will never mistake where Feng Haoli's dorm was located."

Qi Youxuan proceeded to take a sip of the milk tea and squinted his eyes in pure bliss. He said, "Mumu, you truly know how to make an amazing milk tea."

"...' Wei Muran was speechless.

Could he focus on analyzing the case?

"I believe the murderer hung Feng Haoli's body outside of room four-zero-three for the sole purpose of showing someone from that room, or perhaps a group of people," Qi Youxuan said as he held on to the mug since it was not too hot. His right hand was holding onto the handle of the mug while his index finger of his left arm was knocking on the edge of the mug.

"Look into the background and identity of the four residences in room four-zero-three to determine if there were any ties to Feng Haoli. Besides the fact that they usually played basketball and drank together, gather any other information, if there are, as well... Something else that they weren't telling us." As Qi Youxuan spoke, he calmly took another sip of his milk tea.

Zhao Yiyang gently rubbed his chin and said, "I just can't seem to understand. Since the doors to the dorm were locked, and I know for a fact from my investigation that the windows were grilled to prevent burglaries, plus there was no trace of someone attempting to break in; how did the murderer place an entire corpse in the dorm?"

"There's another possibility; the murderer is one of the students," Qi Youxuan said.

Every single person in that room was stunned.

"Jiadong, look into the details of the four students that were living in room four-zero-three; Yiyang, you can investigate who was absent in that dorm during the time of the victim's death," Jiang Yuecheng said.

Those students had a habit of going to bed extremely late at night. Even if there was a blackout or the lights of the entire dorm went out, it did not mean these students had actually gone to bed yet.

Xing Jiadong and Zhao Yiyang returned to the station at around noon.

"I've looked into the relationship between the four students of room four-zero-three and I found out that besides the occasional basketball game and poker match, they never really interacted with each other that much. I've also looked into the clubs and society these students were involved in. The victim, Feng Haoli, was only taking part in the school's track team, and the remaining three people however, other than Zhou Yubo being a member of the mathematics research team, none of the other roommates were part of any clubs. The three people who were sharing a room with Feng Haoli; one was a member of the Wushu society, another was in the drama society, and the remaining one was not a part of any societies," Xing Jiadong explained.

"Judging from that, there isn't anything that relates to the victim. What about during the semester breaks? Do they stay in contact with one another?" Jiang Yuecheng asked.

Zhao Yiyang shook his head in sorrow and frustration. "Nope, I've asked them, and there isn't much difference from what their normal lives on campus were."

He frowned. "I'm not too sure if they were just covering for one another since boys on campus take loyalty very seriously."

From the looks of things, their leads were running cold.

At this moment, Zhang Ming proceeded to enter the room. He said, "The forensics report had just been released, and it determined that the bottom of the victim's shoes had a chuck of paint, but it's not very obvious."

"I remember that the entire building had just been repainted recently." Jiang Yuecheng had a surprised and excited look on his face. He then said, "Yiyang, Jiadong. Both of you should follow me back to the campus. We need to find out exactly how the victim got stained with paint."

As the trio departed to the campus, Qi Youxuan and Wei Muran went directly to Feng Haoli's house, which looked like a middle-class house A normal middle-class home within a middle-class area. This family seemed financially stable.

Feng Haoli's parents were notified of their son's death by the cops. Hence, when both Qi Youxuan and Wei Muran visited them, they noticed Feng Haoli's father, Feng Qingzhe, looking inhumanly depressed and completely drained of life. His eyes were bloodshot and his body looked extremely shriveled—not a single hint of life could be seen from this husk of a man. His mother, Sun Zhiyuan, was still wiping away her tears as she escorted both Qi Youxuan and Wei Muran in her house. She was completely devastated.

"Feng Haoli is our only son. How could his death be so horrifyingly violent! He's now dead, what can we do now? We're already so old, and he's our only son!" Sun Zhiyuan bawled as she struggled to speak while showing Qi Youxuan and Wei Muran to their son's room.

"How often does your son return?" Wei Muran asked as she noticed the daily supplies were still placed on the table as if it had not been touched for a long while.

"Since the distance was quite close, he'll return every weekend. If he had some activities, or if he's hanging out with his friends, he wouldn't return that week," Sun Zhiyuan answered as she continued crying.

Qi Youxuan noticed a picture frame that was placed on top of the desk. It was a picture of a trip Feng Haoli had embarked on. In that picture, he was carrying a huge campers bag—it was huge with a couple of pouches strapped onto the bag, and strapped down with a paracord was a thick and long object—it was a tent.

Besides the camping picture, every other picture that was displayed was a picture of a bicycle, just like the one they saw in the corridor before they went in.

"So he tends to travel with a bike on trips quite frequently right?" Qi Youxuan asked.

"Yeah, he joined some donkey friends in some club thing that I don't know much of. It's a cycling club though. He would cycle with a huge backpack and go on frequent trips. We don't really encourage him to go on trips like that since he had to cycle from home to some secluded area in the middle of nowhere. It's just too dangerous, since there's always a risk in encountering who knows what throughout his journey. But he never seems to listen, and is always so enthusiastic and interested in extreme sports. Last summer, he and a couple of friends even cycled from B city all the way to Tibet. He even said something about going to Everest and some place called Medog. It's totally fine if he had just gone to Lhasa since people actually live and go there. But Everest and Medog... No one in their right mind would even go there, and it's not even a developed area so there has to be a whole lot of complications. Don't you think it's extremely dangerous though? To head out to a place so far and steep. Even the highlands were in the middle of nowhere. Not even a single person lives there. From what I've heard, there's not even cell reception up at the peak. If something were to happen, they had no means to call for help," Sun Zhiyuan explained as she cried harder.

"But at the very least, his trips were incredibly smooth. No accidents ever happened and he always arrived safely. The only thing is, I could've never expected, even in his dangerous trips before, he was able to safely come home. I can't believe... he.... he was...." Sun Zhiyuan cried hysterically and was unable to compose or collect herself. She held onto her face as she proceeded to bawl.

Feng Qingzhe was wiping his face as well, and he simply hugged his wife in silence without saying a word.

Qi Youxuan simply watched and did not ask any followup questions immediately after. They used this little window of time to look through his room. Thus, Qi Youxuan simply walked wherever the wall led him, as he looked at the furniture that was placed by the wall.

There were photos of Feng Haoli's cycling trips on the desk—they were of extremely difficult to get to places such as The Great Plains of Ada, and some tourist hotspots areas like the Shennongjia district and the Chang Bai Mountain. Judging from those pictures, the locations were extremely exotic and uncommon—most of them were not open to the general public, and no tour group would be willing to take any tourists to those lands. Only capable hikers and adventurers would be able to trek into those places to challenge their limits.

However, not a single photo that was placed on the desk had a picture of Tibet, that was mentioned by his mother earlier.

"So all the pictures of his trip would normally be placed here?" Qi Youxuan casually asked.

Feng Qingzhe shook his head and said, "Only the ones he feels extremely proud of and meaningful would be placed there."

Qi Youxuan nodded signaling he understood, hence he asked, "Why isn't the picture of Tibet placed there then? Not many would venture out to the land of Medog. He should feel proud to have been there right?"

"We're not sure why, but when he returned home from that trip, he seemed devastated and annoyed. Back then, he would talk about these places with us for at least a couple of days, and talk about the things he encountered on his journey. He would even post his pictures on WeChat," Feng Qingzhe explained. "However, after that trip, he seemed very discouraged and depressed; he didn't even bother to mention a single word about his trip. The pictures with his friends ended with his trip to Lhasa. He has never posted since."

Qi Youxuan had seemingly thought about something as his face lit up with life. He said, "Do you still have those pictures from those trips?"

"These... these... were all a year ago..." Feng Qingzhe answered reluctantly. However, he noticed Qi Youxuan would not budge and was simply staring at him, waiting for those pictures.

Hence, Feng Qingzhe reluctantly took out his cellphone and got ready to look for those pictures.

"His WeChat ID is all I need," Qi Youxuan replied.

Since Feng Qingzhe did not know Feng Haoli's WeChat ID, he proceeded to give Qi Youxuan his instead.

"Do you happen to know the name of the cycling club he often went to?" Wei Muran asked after taking note of Feng Qingzhe's WeChat ID.

"There's a name card." Sun Zhiyuan who was crying all this while finally spoke. "I found it when I was cleaning up his stuff," she said while sobbing uncontrollably.

Thus, she proceeded to take out a huge paper bag, and inside the bag was a mix of other stuff. She said, "These were intended to be thrown away."

As she spoke, she flipped through the contents of the bag to look for the name card and proceeded to hand it over to Wei Muran.

"Besides these activities, does he enjoy any other hobbies? Who was he close to?" Qi Youxuan questioned.

"There are a few students he knew back in high school. He's extremely close with a few of them, but he never tells us anything about high school, so regarding their names and how they contacted each other, we're completely oblivious to any of that," Feng Qingzhe explained. "Our son is all grown up already, there are plenty of things he doesn't share with us."

"If... If... If only he had told us, that would be so much better. At the very least, tell us what's going on right? So when the cops come by to investigate, we'll be of much better help. Now he's dead and I can't even tell you who he usually hung out with!" Sun Zhiyan cried as she grabbed onto Feng Qingzhe's arm. She said, "You know ma'am, our boy is an honest boy. Besides hanging out with his friends during the semester break, he would also have occasional karaoke sessions with his friends. He never went out besides those times. How deep must the grudge be to push someone to murder? To cause someone to die so violently?"

Wei Muran was focused on comforting her while Qi Youxuan spoke to the more collected Feng Qingzhe. "Has he returned home recently?"

"Last week he did." Feng Qingzhe nodded.

"How was he? Was he behaving in any way strange?" Qi Youxuan asked.

"Nothing peculiar. Since my boy is all grown up now, he no longer enjoys talking to us. He kept everything to himself and would spend most of his time with the computer in his room alone," Feng Qingzhe explained. However, as he spoke, his entire expression suddenly changed and proceeded to say, "That's right, I heard him speaking to someone through his phone. He sounded extremely on edge. He said something about asking if 'someone' had already known, and getting a lot of texts recently. I believe it's related to that event, since judging from the tone of his voice, he sounded really scared. I overheard him when I was calling him down for a meal."

"I was worried if he had met some sort of trouble since I've never heard him this frightened before. It was pure fear, since even from his voice, he sounded shaky. I was worried, so I asked him, but he denied everything. When I probed deeper, he snapped at me so we began to argue and fight. After that, he returned to his campus without even eating his meal. I was furious then, but I didn't expect..."

The seemingly calm and collected Feng Qingzhe immediately bawled. He said, "I didn't expect that was the last time I'll ever see him. If I had known this would happen, I would've never snapped at him. I'll be patient with him. I'll patiently ask what's wrong and get him to tell me everything. Maybe then, he'll never... he'll never... Our final moments together were so violent and tense, I'll regret it my entire life."

"..." Qi Youxuan took a couple of steps back as he was caught off guard and surprised by his reaction. He was never too good at comforting people.

Since whenever he was cheering anyone from his family up, he was able to act like a child and simply play dumb. However, to strangers on the other hand, he would never do something so embarrassing to his reputation.

Finally, it was up to Wei Muran to comfort the grieving parents. At the very least, they seemed a lot more stable.

After that, Qi Youxuan requested for their son's computer since there were a few social media apps installed in the computer. It should contain some clues if they were to go through the chat logs.

Feng Haoli's computer at home was a desktop, thus, Qi Youxuan carried a monitor and the CPU, and went back to the station along with Wei Muran.

However, not long after they returned to the station, Jiang Yuecheng and his team had also finished their investigation on the campus.

"So what did you find?" Zhang Ming looked toward Jiang Yuecheng excitedly hoping for any progress from their search.

"We found a couple of paint buckets on the roof of the dorm and it had been confirmed it was the same paint used for the dorm. It was temporarily stored on the roof," Zhao Yiyang explained. "We brought some paint to the forensics team to confirm if that paint matches the ones found on the bottom of Feng Haoli's shoes."