Tear It Apart [Crime Investigation]

Sequel: The Mask Beneath [Crime Investigation], blurb at the very bottom

Blurb for this novel:

A battle-worn beauty with an icy, untouchable aura on the receiving end vs. a wild, untamable, fiercely protective attack

Yining City Police Department was suddenly saddled with a “big problem”: Qi Zhou.

He barely spoke and seemed so fragile that the next moment’s demanding workload might shatter him to pieces.

Chu Fan hated this sort of pretty vase.

The first time they met, Chu Fan leaned against the doorframe, smiling without warmth. “Is the station so short-staffed that you’ve sent us a delicate little flower as a mascot?”

Qi Zhou lowered his lashes and answered softly, “Captain, I’ll try my best… not to hold you back.”

One bizarre case followed another, and darkness silently descended over the city.

A corpse missing its organs, found in the river; ashes dug up after nightfall; a new drug seeping into every corner like blood and bone…

Every case, every incident, was trying to drag Qi Zhou into the abyss.

Chu Fan thought he was protecting a useless pretty boy. Then, on a stormy night, he saw that very pretty boy wielding a steel pipe, striking a desperate criminal without hesitation.

The moment their eyes met, Qi Zhou’s usually mild gaze lit up. He toyed with the pipe in his hand and grinned. “Captain, want to wait out the rain together?”

The secrets Qi Zhou carried were a bottomless black hole. At a crime scene, a stick figure drawing utterly devoid of artistic merit finally let Chu Fan glimpse one corner of it.

As rain poured down, Chu Fan raised his gun and aimed at him, his voice hoarse. “Who are you, really?”

Qi Zhou took hold of Chu Fan’s trembling gun hand and pressed the barrel to his own heart. “If you don’t tear the abyss apart, it will swallow you whole.”

He hadn’t come seeking protection.

He had come to find a “blade.”

Chu Fan suddenly smiled. “You’re risking your life to enter this game. I’ll be your blade.”

His gaze settled on the finger resting on the trigger.

“You’re my… blade that never retreats,” he said.

He would guard this game of chess. He would guard Qi Zhou’s life.

In Qi Zhou’s meticulously calculated life, Chu Fan was the one and only variable.

A battle-worn beauty with an icy, untouchable aura on the receiving end vs. a wild, untamable, fiercely protective attack

March 18, 2026. The blurb has been screenshotted, and may still be revised, but the plot and characters won’t change.

=Reader’s Guide: Please Read=

There are lots of completed novels in my collection.

Paragraph comments are open, and you’re welcome to bookmark the novel. The full manuscript is complete, so read with confidence.

1. I’m not a professional. If you spot a plot hole, please point it out kindly and we can discuss it together. I’m not looking for writing advice.

2. The setting is partly fictional. None of the characters or cases are based on real people or events. Any similarities in names or places are purely coincidental, so please don’t associate them with reality.

3. One-sided salvation, mutual devotion, plot-focused.

4. Both leads are police officers. First love, both sexually inexperienced, happy ending.

5. The story is set in 2021 and does not involve the pandemic.

6. Reference books: to be added

Breaking Through the Clouds by Huai Shang; Swallowing the Sea by Huai Shang; Silent Reading by Priest; Criminal Psychology by Chang Er; Hou Dali’s Crime Investigation Notes 1 by Xiao Qiao Laoshu; A Contest Between Red and Black by Li Zhaokun; Heroic Courage by Zhu Qianhua; Atlas of Postmortem Changes; Atlas of Corpse Transformation by Chen Lushi; Crime Scene Investigation; Trace Evidence Examination; Fundamentals of Public Security Knowledge (2013 edition); Regulations on the Implementation of the Supervision Law (2021 edition); Criminal Law (2021 edition); Forensic Medicine, seventh edition; Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (translated by Ru Long, Yilin Press)

Please bookmark The Mask Beneath [Crime Investigation]!

Deep in the city, crime is tangled like roots.

Drugs, violence, and death spread like bacteria.

Zhuo Fan is the head of Meihai City’s Narcotics Division, and a legend within the anti-narcotics system.

The day he reunited with Zhou Xingye, Zhou was busy catching a pickpocket and asked to borrow his handcuffs.

The next time they met was at the police station. Zhou Xingye had been appointed head of the Criminal Investigation Division, and asked to borrow five yuan for breakfast.

Just like back in school, every time they met, Zhou Xingye was asking to borrow something from him.

Zhuo Fan turned a blind eye, and everyone assumed they didn’t get along.

Cases kept cropping up.

A woman from a village, dismissed as crazy, accidentally uncovers a terrifying secret; a superstar, dazzling on the surface, hides an ugly, deranged side behind his mask; a seemingly harmless courier has a chilling identity in private…

None of these cases could be separated from a new type of drug.

The Narcotics Division and the Criminal Investigation Division team up to investigate. It is also the first time in many years that Zhuo Fan and Zhou Xingye have worked together again.

That’s when everyone realizes they understand each other better than anyone else.

At crime scenes, Zhuo Fan makes sure to bring Zhou Xingye a mask.

Zhou Xingye is always smiling when he teases him: “Working cases with you is the best.”

Whenever that happens, Zhuo Fan chooses to ignore him and says nothing.

Zhou Xingye remembers what Zhuo Fan likes to eat. After a long shift, he always orders him a bowl of his favorite wontons.

Then, when Zhuo Fan tries to pay him back, he smiles and says, “No need to worry about money between friends.”

One day, Zhuo Fan finally drops the cold mask he has worn all along, gets dead drunk, and asks Zhou Xingye, “Is there nothing to talk about except cases? How about dating?”

Everyone wears a heavy mask in life, and they’re no exception.

After taking off his mask, Zhuo Fan leaps off a cliff to catch a drug dealer.

Later, Zhuo Fan discovers that the unmasked Zhou Xingye is even crazier than he is.

Everyone goes through life wearing a mask. Can you tell whether the person beneath it is human or monster?

What kind of seeds are ignorant people planting today while pretending not to know?

Purple flowers bloom across the mountains and plains, and drugs quietly spread across the land.

When a new type of drug appears here, how can the anti-narcotics heroes who sacrificed their lives ever rest in peace?

In this smoke-filled battle, wearing a mask is the only way to survive.

With their shoulders, they hold up the skies above Meihai City.

A perfectionist, cold on the outside but actually utterly unhinged, on the receiving end X a flippant, irreverent man who is even more unhinged than he seems, on the attacking end

Theme: Faith forges the most glorious medals