Ren Yi’s eyes widened. He straightened abruptly, his upper body rising from the chair until he sat bolt upright. In disbelief, he looked at Zhang Wen—no, He Xiuyu—then turned to Gong Yingxian.
He had known that, given Gong Yingxian’s level of attention to this person, the matter would not be simple. However, this development was far beyond anything he had expected. He glanced at Qiu Yan and saw that her expression remained calm. Clearly, she had known about this all along as well.
He Xiuyu, on the other hand, was slightly taken aback. “You think I’m Purple Flame?” His tone was full of surprise, mixed with bewilderment and mockery. “If I were Purple Flame…” He gave a bitter smile. “I’d actually wish I were.”
“We suspected a long time ago that Purple Flame might not exist at all. We don’t mean that the person who recorded videos, spoke to us over the phone, issued orders to others, and planned these evil deeds didn’t exist. We mean that he wasn’t an actual individual. He was merely a symbol, a false god created by your organization, a mouthpiece for the god you worship. The more mysterious and inhuman this person seemed, the better. If he seemed too human, he would inevitably lose some of his divinity.”
As Gong Yingxian spoke, he carefully observed He Xiuyu’s expression.
“That’s why he disguised his face, figure, and voice in the recordings.”
Qiu Yan nodded as well. “All the evidence indicated that Purple Flame was in this city. Yet, despite our extensive search and months of effort, everyone else was arrested, but we couldn’t catch this person. We couldn’t even find the slightest trace of him. That was practically impossible. This is the digital age. Unless you live deep in the mountains your entire life and never come out, it’s impossible to leave absolutely no trace behind. But there was no trace that Purple Flame had ever existed, even though someone by that name was unquestionably controlling all of you from behind the scenes. So there was only one possible explanation—he had been fabricated.”
The lenses of He Xiuyu’s glasses reflected the harsh lights of the interrogation room, gleaming with a cold, eerie white light.
“Fabricating such a symbol made it easier to control the organization’s members and mislead the police. It also gave you the perfect scapegoat.” Gong Yingxian’s gaze was as cold as an ice spring frozen for ten thousand years. “You knew you couldn’t escape, so you decided to turn yourself in. If your sentence could be reduced because you surrendered, and you were judged to be merely an accomplice, perhaps you could get out before you turned thirty. That was your plan, wasn’t it?”
He Xiuyu had long eyelashes. Whenever he lowered them, they concealed every emotion in his eyes.
He stammered, “They all say that when the police can’t catch someone, they just find someone else to pin the charges on. So it’s true… Do you have any evidence? Does earning some money from odd jobs and staying at nice hotels mean I’m guilty?”
Gong Yingxian clenched his fists, fury flowing between his brows. He spoke in a low voice. “He Xiuyu, you’re quite the actor. At first, none of us suspected you, because you fooled everyone, including your own followers. They regarded Purple Flame as the messenger of their god and obeyed his every command. Not a single person had ever seen you, and even lower-ranking members weren’t allowed to contact you on their own initiative. Yet that only made them worship you more.”
“Meanwhile, we kept investigating someone who had never existed in the first place. We wasted enormous amounts of police manpower and were led into countless dead ends. And while we were doing all that, you hid in the shadows, playing an insignificant, dispensable role within the organization while secretly controlling everything. You used minor crimes to conceal your greater evil, shifting all the blame onto someone we could never catch because he didn’t even exist. All you had to do was pay a small price, and you might still have the chance to continue committing crimes in the future.”
He Xiuyu shook his head and gave a bitter laugh. “Dr. Gong, people like you… You’re intelligent, come from a good family, and stand out wherever you go. You’ll never understand someone like me. I… Actually, if I really were Purple Flame, I’d be honored. If I had that kind of ability and could become the messenger of a god, that would be something. Unfortunately, I’m not. After all that talking, do you have any evidence?”
Qiu Yan took over. “Do you know when we first started suspecting you?”
He Xiuyu shook his head again.
“When Yingxian discovered that photographs of Captain He in the private hospital had been leaked online, he realized that either someone inside the hospital was an informant or someone had infiltrated the hospital. You had Qing Flame hack into the hospital’s computers and delete all the surveillance footage from that period. But what you didn’t know was that there were three additional cameras in the activity room on the first floor.”
“That rehabilitation room was where the elderly residents spent their time. For the convenience of their family members, who needed to check on them at any time, its footage had to be shared with multiple people simultaneously. So it had a separate connection, and the main recording device was located inside the rehabilitation room itself. One of the cameras there captured you.”
Qiu Yan sneered. “Of course, at the time, we only thought you were an informant. We sent you the photograph for two reasons: first, to track you and use you as bait to draw out the others; second, to pressure you into cooperating with us. But we soon caught Yellow Flame, and we thought Yellow Flame was more important than you. Then the hotel incident happened, and in that moment of carelessness, you slipped away.”
“You must have fled in a hurry and had no time to clean up your place. Perhaps you originally intended to burn the entire house down, but your desire for revenge was too strong, so you decided to plant a bomb instead. You didn’t just want to burn the house down; you also wanted revenge on the police who had come to arrest you. In the end, Cai Qiang was injured, and the house burned down, but we still managed to salvage quite a few things.”
“Those items might have seemed worthless to you by then, and you thought you wouldn’t leave behind any evidence. However, from a few inconspicuous household items, we were able to identify your spending habits. They weren’t consistent with those of someone living in a top-tier city on a monthly salary of just over five thousand yuan.”
“So after all that, all you’ve found is that I spend a little too much money?” He Xiuyu sighed. “I find this absurd. Is this really the level of the police? I think the people in the fire investigation department were all smarter than you.”
Ren Yi finally couldn’t hold back any longer. “You still have the nerve to bring up the fire investigation department!”
He Xiuyu glanced at Ren Yi fearfully, blinked, and then looked away.
“Of course, that wasn’t all,” Gong Yingxian said. “Even then, we still didn’t suspect that you were Purple Flame. After all, you had gone to such lengths to fabricate an entire person out of thin air, while playing the role of a low-ranking member who had already been exposed and wasn’t particularly clever. That was a brilliant move.”
“What truly made us suspect you were two things. First, after interrogating your other accomplices, we began to question whether Purple Flame had ever existed as a real person. Second, there were traces of deliberate ambiguity everywhere in your background—your origins, your life experiences, even your sense of identity.”
“We conduct background checks on everyone, but yours was by far the most difficult. There were even gaps in your history. The more you tried to cover things up, the more suspicious you became. None of this was consistent with what an ordinary person with nothing to their name could accomplish.”
He Xiuyu lowered his head, his shoulders trembling slightly. Even his voice had begun to sound different.
“You’re… you’re going too far! If I had a powerful background, would I be sitting here letting you arrest me and use me as a scapegoat? After the orphanage caught fire, I couldn’t afford high school and was forced to work. And now you’re saying I deliberately concealed my background and life experiences? I worked odd jobs, some of which weren’t entirely legal, so of course I didn’t pay taxes, and there were no bank transfer records. I don’t like using social media accounts, either. Is that a problem?”
He Xiuyu was trembling with anger, yet he seemed naturally timid. His fury was like the chirping and fluttering of a fledgling—at most, it could stir a few leaves.
“You simply can’t catch Purple Flame, and now you want to close the case, so you’re making me your target!”
Qiu Yan shook her head. Her long, ink-black hair swayed lightly with the movement, catching the light. It only made her expression appear even more grim.
“He Xiuyu, your acting is truly extraordinary. You fooled everyone during our previous encounters. If we hadn’t found the crucial evidence, it really would have been difficult to suspect you.”
“What crucial evidence? You—”
Gong Yingxian slammed another file onto the table.
The forceful slam, clearly intended to vent his anger, caught Ren Yi’s attention. He turned his head to look at Gong Yingxian and suddenly stiffened.
It was the ferocity on his face and the icy light in his eyes.
Whenever Gong Yingxian dealt with suspects, he was almost always calm and composed, decisive and ruthless. There was only one situation in which he would lose control like this: when the case was connected to his own family.
If He Xiuyu really was Purple Flame, then he must know who was responsible for the Gong family arson case. No wonder Gong Yingxian looked like this.
Gong Yingxian seemed to be struggling to suppress the hatred threatening to surge out of him. He slowly opened the file, turned it around, and pushed it toward He Xiuyu.
Ren Yi glanced at it but couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.
The moment He Xiuyu saw the document, his body froze as though he had been placed under a spell. Only the violent contraction of his pupils betrayed the turmoil raging inside him.
Gong Yingxian’s voice trembled. “Did you really think you could cover your tracks so perfectly that nothing would ever come to light? Did you really think there would never be any retribution?!”
Retribution?
Ren Yi was even more astonished. In all the time he had known Gong Yingxian, he had never heard him say anything so fatalistic. There was a powerful, deeply suppressed personal emotion behind those words.
What exactly was going on?
Ren Yi wanted to take the file and look at it himself.
He Xiuyu slowly began to recover from his stunned state. He lowered his head, and after a long while, he let out a sudden chuckle.
That single laugh contained contempt, annoyance, mockery, and impatience.
“How did you find out?” He Xiuyu raised his head. His gaze had changed completely, as though he had peeled off a layer of skin and finally revealed his true, monstrous face. “Was it through financial transactions, or did she expose herself when she got desperate and started acting recklessly?”
Gong Yingxian slammed his fist heavily onto the table, his eyes sharp as a falcon’s.
“If you don’t want people to know, don’t do it in the first place.”
He Xiuyu chuckled softly. “But even if you prove our connection, so what? I’ve never killed anyone. Do you have any evidence that I killed someone?”
Qiu Yan snapped, “You still have the nerve to deny it! You may not have been the blade, but you were the executioner wielding it!”
Ren Yi finally couldn’t resist any longer. He grabbed the file and flipped it open. He had expected to see some kind of shocking evidence, but instead, it was a DNA test report.
Yet the moment he saw the name of the person whose DNA had been compared with He Xiuyu’s, he froze as well.
“How…” Ren Yi opened his mouth, but it was as though all the air had escaped his body. “How is this possible?”
He looked at Gong Yingxian, silently seeking confirmation.
Gong Yingxian’s eyes were bloodshot. Beneath the table, he quietly caught hold of the hem of Ren Yi’s clothing and spoke softly.
“She’s here, too. We only obtained the arrest warrant early this morning.”
Ren Yi stared at him in shock. “Then the nurse at the hospital was her, too?”
Gong Yingxian nodded.
“And the one providing the organization with funds…”
“Yes.”
Ren Yi suddenly felt as though all the strength had drained from his body. The thin stack of papers in his hands felt heavier than a thousand pounds. He still couldn’t believe it.
“When did you find out?”
“I started suspecting her before the nursing home fire.” There was pain in Gong Yingxian’s eyes, but his voice ultimately remained calm. “From the day I began to suspect her, so many things started to make sense. I…”
Ren Yi’s eyes reddened, too.
During that period, he and Gong Yingxian had fallen out again. Gong Yingxian had been recovering from his injuries while enduring Ren Yi’s anger and accusations, as well as the pressure of the investigation by the higher-ups. At the same time, he had discovered that the person who might have murdered his family nineteen years ago and plunged him into a life of suffering could be his own paternal aunt—Gong Mingqing?!
Ren Yi had no idea how many breakdowns, how much blood and tears, Gong Yingxian had endured to maintain the calm and restraint he was displaying now.
Even Ren Yi could barely stand it anymore.
He glared at He Xiuyu with bloodshot eyes. His lips moved, but no words came out. He didn’t know what to say. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, all that would emerge would be the fangs of someone wanting to tear this man apart.
He Xiuyu, however, merely smiled faintly, looking somewhat tired.
“There’s no need to look at me like that. Actually, I don’t find any of this particularly interesting anymore, either. I used to enjoy myself quite a bit, but ever since she started getting involved and telling me what to do, it stopped being fun.”
“When did she start getting involved?”
He Xiuyu smiled slyly. “A very, very long time ago. I used to enjoy watching videos and posting things online, that was all. I never thought about actually hurting anyone. But she insisted that I help her conceal the things she had done.”
“You said Purple Flame wasn’t a real person, just a symbol. That’s correct. Because, in reality, she was the real Purple Flame. Purple Flame, Blue Flame—they were both her.”
Qiu Yan looked at He Xiuyu coldly. “That’s not what she said.”
“Of course not. She’ll push all the blame onto me. But nineteen years ago, I had only just learned to walk. Who’s more likely to have been the mastermind?” He Xiuyu leaned back in his chair. The timid, submissive expression he had worn earlier was gone, replaced by a hint of arrogance. He looked at Gong Yingxian. “Dr. Gong, do you think you’ve beaten me?”
“…It doesn’t matter.”
“We have roughly the same blood running through our veins, but just because I was born illegitimate and you were the legitimate eldest son of the family, our lives turned out completely differently.” He Xiuyu laughed twice. “I’m smart, too. I work hard, too. I don’t have a father or mother, either. So why was I the one who had to suffer bullying and charity in an orphanage, and why am I the one wearing handcuffs in a police station now, while you get to wear a police badge?”
By the end, his gaze had become venomous.
Gong Yingxian parted his lips and delivered a cutting reply.
“Because you have bad luck.”
He Xiuyu stared at him for a moment before bursting into loud, almost maniacal laughter.