This story features two equally strong leads and mutual salvation.
A crime investigation novel with two male leads, featuring criminal police, a forensic pathologist, multiple case arcs, two strong leads, tsundere personalities, and a one-on-one romance where both are chaste. No babyish or tearful characters, no yanderes, and no feminine personalities. If that’s not your thing, move along.
Thirteen years ago, snow fell on a winter night in Jiangcheng, carrying the smell of burning across half the city. A fire broke out at the villa of renowned philanthropist Su Mingyuan. The fire hydrants had been frozen shut in advance, and the fire engines were delayed for half an hour on the icy mountain road. By the time the flames were extinguished, all that remained in the second-floor bedroom was a charred body curled up on the floor. It was Su Mingyuan’s only daughter, Su Wan, who had just turned twenty-two.
No accelerants were found at the scene, but an electrical inspection showed “an old, shorted circuit.” Neighbors said they heard an argument before the fire, yet the security guard claimed nobody had come or gone that night. Most importantly, the ledger for a charity project that should have been in Su Wan’s room had disappeared, along with her laptop. But every suspicious detail was dismissed as an “accident.” The fire destroyed the evidence, and the case was eventually buried in a corner of the archives, leaving only a faint scorch mark on the file cover.
Thirteen years later, an explosion at Jiangcheng Central Mall shattered the peace. Nearly a hundred people were killed or injured, and chemical residue found at the scene turned out to match the composition of a batch of experimental materials that had “disappeared” from one of Su Mingyuan’s charity projects.
The “accidental fire” from all those years ago had now become the key lead in the bombing case. An old detective opened the yellowed file, his fingertips brushing over the last photograph taken of Su Wan. Behind her, on a bookshelf, half of a notebook covered in formulas seemed to be tucked away. The cover of that notebook looked just like a fragment found at the explosion site.
The truth was slowly emerging from the ashes of thirteen years ago.
