Chapter 95 - 95 93 The Evil Fruit

Words : 1171 Updated : Sep 12th, 2025

95: Chapter 93: The Evil Fruit 95: Chapter 93: The Evil Fruit Night fell. Dark clouds blanketed the sky, with neither moon nor stars to be seen. The wind grew colder, and the half of his body leaning against the car door soon started to feel the ache in his bones. Cao Chujun shifted his body, his spine crackling with creaking sounds. His apprentice, seeing this, whispered, “Master, why don’t you go back to the hotel and rest for a while? I’ll call you if anything comes up.” “I’m not that delicate. I’m just old, not dying,” Cao Chujun said as he moved his body around. “Let’s just wait. Once it’s time to act, if we can succeed in one go, we won’t have to suffer here anymore.” He felt quite miserable, but it hadn’t reached the point where he couldn’t bear it. In his younger days, he would stake out suspects for up to a month at a time, living out of a car. Cao Chujun was the captain of the third team of the Changyang City Criminal Police Detachment, and retirement was just around the corner. A new fingerprint identified by Doctor Jiang from Qinghe had pulled Cao Chujun out of his warm office building and brought him all the way to the grasslands. At this moment, he was too focused on the case to care about any physical discomfort. His heart was full of eagerness! “I know... Master, rest assured, the three men we’ve brought along are all good at making arrests, and one of them is even a retired soldier,” his apprentice, an old detective himself, reassured. He understood that this case was a thorn in his master’s side and now that there was a chance, he didn’t want to make any mistakes. Cao Chujun nodded slightly, knowing he was getting a bit anxious, and tried to suppress it as much as possible. Being a detective usually means having one or two cases that are always on your mind. It’s not always clear why those cases stick, but they just do. You always hope to solve them. The longer such cases linger, the more anxiety they often cause. Because everyone knows that the longer a case drags on, the harder it usually becomes to solve. And once a detective gets old, retires, and goes home, the cases leave with him. New officers will have a hard time investing themselves in the case as he did and won’t have the same context to understand the specifics. As a result, these cases become much harder to crack. And when all the participants in a case, from the victims to the victim’s relatives, from the perpetrator to the investigators, have all gone, the case itself virtually ceases to exist. Cao Chujun had seen many an old detective leave with regrets; the more he saw, the less he wanted to leave with regrets of his own. However, the case remained unsolved due to a lack of clues, and he could do nothing about it. Who would have thought, just as he was about to give up hope, hope suddenly emerged. A fingerprint challenge organized by the provincial department revealed a remarkably young forensic doctor from Qinghe City Ningtai County. He had managed to match the fingerprint that Cao Chujun had given up hope on. When the call for assistance arrived from the provincial department, Cao Chujun felt the urge to cry. He didn’t know how many experts had looked at this fingerprint. It had been in the provincial fingerprint database for many years. Cao Chujun had always believed this fingerprint would never be matched. But now, as he approached the end of his career, on the brink of retirement, he was surprised to have his wish fulfilled. Cao Chujun looked out the window at the bright lights, feeling as calm inside as a drunkard. His heart was beating fast. “He’s out,” the apprentice called out softly. Cao Chujun immediately sat up, alert. Across the street, from the KTV’s glass observation elevator, a staggering figure emerged. “It’s this guy!” Cao Chujun had seen the photo and memorized the face in it. The man was dressed rather well—an old fellow in a shirt and vest with slicked hair, staggering but seemingly just a normal old man. This was the man who, thirteen years ago on a rainy night, had robbed a single mother and, due to her resistance, beat her to death. To this day, Cao Chujun still remembered the victim’s only son, a ninth grader about to take the middle school exams, who was utterly bewildered upon hearing the news. The boy’s grades were said to be good, but he did poorly on the exams and later entered the workforce... No one could understand why someone would kill another person for a few tens of dollars. At the time, the case remained unsolved. There was no motive for revenge, no dispute of interest, and no surveillance on that rainy night. Only after the fingerprint was matched did Cao Chujun begin to glimpse the truth. The brutality of an old thug had caused many to suffer the consequences. “Act cautiously,” Cao Chujun advised his apprentice in a low voice. He feared that if they spooked the prey this time, the old thug might vanish for good. Such a creature, without home, job, affection, or ties, had simply disappeared back then, leading the police to overlook him as a suspect. And Cao Chujun did not want to endure another round of waiting. The apprentice nodded slightly, quietly opened the car door, and along with several officers, they moved in. “Old Qian!” the apprentice called out, drawing the attention of the old thug. Four officers, from four different directions, quietly pounced. The drunk old thug hardly had time to react before he was pinned down by the officers. “Police, don’t move.” It was then that the familiar phrase was shouted. The apprentice looked back at his master, finally allowing himself to relax. If there had been any slip-ups this time, he would never have forgiven himself. “I... what are you arresting me for?” the old thug writhed. By now, Cao Chujun had approached, and upon hearing his question, he couldn’t help but twitch the corners of his mouth and said, “Don’t you remember the woman from Gongyuan Alley?” The old thug was stunned, and his whole body went limp! Cao Chujun’s grip on the thug’s arm trembled as he struggled to control the tears welling up in his reddened eyes. He often dreamt of the boy, who could have done well on his exams under his mother’s watchful eye. He could have gone to high school, The Great Learning, and gotten a good job after graduation, married, taken care of his mother, possibly had some minor conflicts with his daughter-in-law, but the smart son could handle them... He looked up at the sky, and as the clouds dispersed, the stars twinkled faintly. ...

Chapter 95 - 95 93 The Evil Fruit

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