Who's Watching You? [Criminal Investigation]

He Weiyu, head of the He Group, died an unnatural death at home. Direct evidence at the scene points to his only son, He Lan.

It’s said that He only brought this son back from abroad three years ago. He looks sunny and handsome, but in reality he’s sharp-tongued and cold. He has a serious heart condition and is a useless layabout who only knows how to coast through life.

So their relationship was less than amicable, and He Lan is a prime suspect in the murder.

Ling Tuxi responds to the call, only for the suspect in front of him to make his blood boil.

Oh no, he knows him!

Ling Tuxi wants to clear the murder suspicion from the man he once spent a night with. But gradually, he discovers that this case is unfathomably deep.

A missing family doctor, a will with extra clauses, a mysterious donor of cultural artifacts, an international phone call at dawn...

And He Lan, at the center of the whirlpool, seems to have countless secrets. Even that night the two of them spent together may have been part of his game.

Coming next: Puppet Fiend, set in the Republican era, with a younger top and strange tales.

Zhong Shen, founding master of the Puppet Sect, loved agarwood above all else.

It was said that his skills were unparalleled. He could manipulate wooden and paper puppets with ease, and even control living people as if they were in the palm of his hand. But after falling into his disciple’s trap, he lost his three souls and seven spirits and became a living puppet, fought over by the world and left at the mercy of others. His end was tragic.

Time passed, and the Puppet Sect fell apart. Its bustling past became a source of amusement for others, leaving only a room full of ancestral tablets to comfort his descendants.

By the fifteenth generation, Chen Tangjiu was so poor he couldn’t even abide by the family rules. He stole ancestral ritual implements to make money and, within a few years, became a prominent figure in Baoding City.

In private, though, he prepared lavish food and drink to worship his ancestors, then chatted to an agarwood tablet bearing the name "Zhong Shen."

"Ancestors, tell me, you invented all those puppet arts, but our Chen family never passed them down. If you won’t even let us use the ritual implements, how are your descendants supposed to survive?"

"All right, let’s not talk about surviving. If we don’t show outsiders what we’re made of, won’t our Puppet Sect disappear?"

Zhong Shen was so angry he came back to life.

The Chen family really were all rotten. They had forgotten their ancestors and defied the natural order!

Pretending to be a fellow member of the Puppet Sect, he took the alias Zhong Sanhuo and used the ritual implements to tempt the money-loving Chen Tangjiu into serving him.

From then on, he took Chen Tangjiu along to slay demons and drive out ghosts, while looking for his own "corpse," which had remained undecayed for a hundred years.

Chen Tangjiu was left utterly dumbfounded.

Zhong Sanhuo: "With low-level puppet arts, a false puppet becomes all things the moment it hits the ground. With intermediate puppet arts, all things become puppets. With advanced puppet arts, a puppet can be transformed into a soul and given a human body. At the highest level, you extract a living soul and make a living puppet. That’s called Soul Separation. What level are you at, granddisciple?"

Chen Tangjiu: "?"

What level?

Wait, what did you call me?

I’ve already prepared a token of love, and now you’re telling me you’re my ancestor?

"A question: how many levels apart can you be from your own wife... Ahem, how many years apart? Four..."

"Four years isn’t okay?"

"Then what about four hundred years?"

Theme: Please do everything in your power to save yourself from a desperate situation.