Before Dawn

[Updated daily. I'll take a break if something comes up.]

Crime investigation / suspense / a touch of horror / plot twists / two strong leads / romance and plot go hand in hand

-

The Jiangcheng Public Security Bureau received an anonymous tip.

It claimed that six years ago, Ji Lian of the Second Criminal Investigation Unit had gone to prison for illegally buying and selling firearms.

Liao Baiyan, the unit's captain, held on to the letter and gave a cold laugh. "He wouldn't dare, even if you gave him ten times the nerve."

The bureau chief shot him a sidelong glance. "You're that sure?"

Liao Baiyan gritted his teeth. "We went to the same school six years ago. He was at my house mooching food every day. He didn't have time to go sit in prison."

Ji Lian: Do you have any manners?

After graduating from the police academy, Ji Lian took a job at the Jiangcheng Public Security Bureau.

The reason was that crime was rare here, and nine out of ten officers had nothing to do. It was the perfect place to coast.

But after the letter arrived, murders began piling up in Jiangcheng, and panic spread through the city.

A paper airplane made of human skin.

Threatening letters recording a countdown to death.

A boy in a red dress hanging from a school's flagpole.

A suspect married a caretaker in prison, but the next day the caretaker leapt from the bureau's building.

A notebook listing thirteen people who had supposedly died by accident, with every death later marked as murder.

Knowing he couldn't avoid it, Ji Lian joined forces with Liao Baiyan to solve a string of murder cases.

Then someone offered an astronomical sum on the dark web to recover the tip letter about Ji Lian.

At last,

an underground organization called "The Lighthouse" surfaced.

-

Ji Lian*Liao Baiyan

A hidden gem who only wants to scrape by on welfare but is forced to step up as the bottom*An upright moral paragon and fiercely protective top who refuses to admit it

Reader's guide:

(1) The top is two years older.

(2) Crime-solving and romance go hand in hand. Some episodic cases have slightly unexpected endings.

(3) Both are each other's first and only. A serious story. The two-character name is the bottom.

Theme: Justice will ultimately triumph over evil.