After hearing Jin Baoshan’s explanation, I asked him, “But my eyes can see through lies! How did you manage to deceive me? You didn’t have special training for it, did you?”
"Well, Mr. Detective," he chuckled, "That's where your oversight saved me. Truthfully, I was extremely unnerved by your piercing eyes when you questioned me that day. If you had asked me if I was the murderer, I would’ve blown my cover!”
So it was my own carelessness that led to my almost fatal mistake, though I wasn’t the only one who was deceived in this case. Even Xiaotao and Wang Yuanchao never expected the murderer to be the person who sold the mansion.
Cases related to real estate like this one were usually driven by interest and greed. No one had any suspicion that the real motive behind this case was a vendetta.
“Is Ren Facai your accomplice?” asked Xiaotao.
Jin Baoshan blew out a puff of smoke and answered, “No, I don’t know him at all. All I knew was that he was a member of a triad who’d been interested in buying the house at a cheap price. I thought I could use him to distract the police away from me.”
“But you sold a mansion worth three million yuan for only half a million!” remarked Xiaotao. “You must be pretty rich to do that! How did you manage to amass such wealth?”
The answer that Jin Baoshan gave next shocked all of us.
“But the house was only worth half a million yuan!” he chuckled.
“What?!”
“What did you expect?” he responded. “People had died in that house! Everyone believed that it was really haunted. No one would go anywhere near there! I put the price of the house at three million yuan, but I knew I’d never be able to sell it at that price. Nevertheless, it’s true that I paid the real estate agency twenty thousand yuan. I had to work hard for nearly a year to save up that much money.”
I realized how cunning this person was. It was fortunate that he was only interested in getting revenge and wasn’t so bloodthirsty that he would start killing indiscriminately. Otherwise, with his sly cunning and high IQ, who knew how many people would fall prey to him.
Xiaotao handed Jin Baoshan the handcuffs and said, “Put it on yourself!”
“I’m not going to jail!” he hissed.
Xiaotao’s almond-shaped eyes widened. “That’s not up to you to decide!”
Jin Baoshan smiled. “While you were paying attention to my stories, didn’t you notice any movements behind you?”
We looked behind us and saw bullet ants crawling out of the cracks and dark corners of the room like a sweeping tide. Soon enough, we were surrounded. Jin Baoshan pulled out a small glass bottle and put it on the coffee table. It contained a huge ant with a bulging abdomen that looked like a silkworm—it was the queen ant.
Jin Baoshan smashed the glass bottle with his bare fist, killing the queen ant in the process. As blood flowed down his arm, he broke into a burst of hysterical laughter.
As the queen ant died, it emitted a strong distress signal to its colony. This drove the ants around us into a frenzy.
“But you’ll die too if you killed the queen ant!” shouted Xiaotao.
“That doesn’t matter to me,” Jin Baoshan replied calmly. “The four of you will accompany me to the afterlife, so I won’t be lonely. Come to think of it, I will be in the company of a beautiful young woman like you. I’d say it’s worth it.”
“Did you really think that we’d come here unprepared?” I asked. I then pulled out a small black paw that I had been wearing around my neck like an amulet under my shirt.
At that point, Jin Baoshan noticed how the bullet ants on the ground wouldn’t come near us and was shocked.
“What is that?” he asked.
“They’re pangolin paws,” I explained. “They’re the ants’ natural predators. The ants can detect its scent and because of that, they won’t dare touch us!”
They were also a protected wildlife species which meant that ordinary citizens would have no way of procuring it legally. Fortunately, Xiaotao knew an old police officer who had just caught a poacher smuggling some pangolins from the mountains two days ago. According to legends, grave robbers in the past used to wear pangolin paws around their necks when they dug up graves in order to drive ants away from them as they did the dirty job.
All four of us wearing a paw around our necks, but we had also prepared an extra one for Jin Baoshan too. Wang Yuanchao forcefully put one around his neck and handcuffed him.
“You truly are a great young detective,” Jin Baoshan relented in a dejected voice. “I’ve lost. I wholeheartedly admit my defeat!”
“Great!” Dali yelled out. “We managed to capture the murderer without spilling a single drop of blood! Let’s go back and celebrate!”
“No!” I shouted. “We can’t open the door now! The residents are still outside. The ants will get to them!”
Xiaotao called a pest removal company to clear the ants away. Meanwhile, we sat down on the sofa waiting. It was like a scene out of a horror movie—the sea of bullet ants was all around us, but none dared to approach.
Had they been released out into the neighborhood, not only would they harm the residents around here, but they would become an invasive species that might endanger the wildlife in the area surrounding Nanjiang City. These little insects might be innocent, but there was no choice—they had to be killed.
Once the pest removal company arrived, the bullet ants were all eliminated via insecticide. Xiaotao paid the bill and told them to remove the ants at the haunted mansion tomorrow.
Now that the real murderer was captured, I could finally breathe easy again. Xiaotao spent the next two days dealing with the paperwork, then we went back to the haunted mansion together.
I burned joss paper there in honor of the boy who died there and both of his parents, hoping that all three of them would find peace in their afterlife and move on to their next reincarnation.
“Do you think what you’re doing would really help them?” asked Xiaotao.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But at least it’s a show of respect for the dead.”
As we were leaving the empty mansion, Xiaotao suddenly looked back at it and sighed.
“Because the money that Ren Facai used to buy this house had been acquired illegally,” she said, “the house is now confiscated by the court. Why don’t we buy it? I hear there are plans to build a subway line near this area in the next two years. The price of the land would definitely skyrocket by then. What do you think?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I shook my head. “Just think of what happened to its previous owners! It’s a bad omen—wait, did you say should ‘we’ buy it?”
Xiaotao’s face turned red. “It was just a slip of the tongue! It’s nothing, seriously!”
We stared at the house for a long time without speaking a word. This was the second time Xiaotao and I had gone through a near-death experience together. I suddenly realized how fickle life was, and how we could be alive today and dead tomorrow.
“You know—”
“By the way—”
We broke the silence at the same time.
“What were you going to say?”
“What were you going to say?”
I plucked up my courage and grabbed Xiaotao’s shoulders. Her cheeks blushed and her eyes glimmered. Her face was illuminated by the soft light of the setting sun, and she looked stunning.
I inched my face closer to hers. Xiaotao closed her eyes, as if in anticipation of what was to come next. At that moment, I heard a Maserati with loud electronic music booming driving towards us, and all the courage that I mustered up was shattered into a thousand tiny pieces in an instant.
The car screeched to a halt near us, and two people emerged from it—Ye Shiwen and Zhang Yan. I noticed that they were hand in hand. It seemed that the two had gotten together!
“Hey, Song Yang!” shouted Ye Shiwen. “What are you doing here?”
I scratched my head. “Well…”
“Is that policewoman your girlfriend?” asked Zhang Yan. “She’s gorgeous! She looks just like a supermodel!”
“I’m not this idiot’s girlfriend!” snapped Xiaotao. She then stomped away to her car. I called out to her but she completely ignored me. I couldn’t help but silently curse at these two idiots who just had to turn up at the worst moment.
Ye Shiwen patted me on the shoulder and comforted me. “We disturbed your special moment, didn’t we? Come on, brother, I’ll treat you to a nice meal and we’ll talk about the case.”
“Oh, yes, great idea!” nodded Zhang Yan. “It’s all over the newspapers! I never thought that there’d be a great detective among us in our college. It’s all so exciting! I must have your signature later!”
The fire of fury was raging inside me at the time, but I kept silent. I secretly thought, wouldn’t it be nice if they just died?
I would soon regret having such thoughts. I had no idea at the time, but in a few weeks, a strange and tragic case would occur right in our college.