"My parents don't want to come with us to Songjiang," Wang Mei said with a sigh.

"Why not?" Zhang Bin pressed.

"My parents have lived here their whole lives—they're used to everything about this place. Especially now that they're getting on in years, they're even more reluctant to go live somewhere else. They have their old neighbors and friends here; they chat and drop by on each other all the time. They're afraid that if they leave, life will be terribly dull," Wang Mei explained.

Yang Xutang nodded to himself. Falling leaves return to their roots—many people, once old, long to go back to their hometown. How could Wang Mei's parents possibly leave theirs? So he said, "Try persuading them again. If it really can't be helped, then they don't have to go—just come back and visit them often."

"But Liu Jihao—" Wang Mei was clearly still worried that Liu Jihao might take revenge on them again.

Yang Hengye smiled. "Don't worry. Now that Liu Jihao has the money, he won't trouble you again." Of course, Yang Ce could not say that Liu Jihao was already dead; otherwise, not only would it be a huge hassle to explain, but his own identity as a killer might well be exposed.

"All right, I'll try talking to them again. You two go back to your room first." Wang Mei nodded and went back inside.

Zhang Bin and Yan headed up toward the rooms upstairs. As they walked, a man and a woman came toward them. The man walked along reading a newspaper, and without looking where he was going, he stepped right onto Zhang Bin's foot.

"Ah!" Zhang Bin cried out, but the man with the newspaper did not care in the least—he did not even glance at Zhang Bin and simply kept walking.

"What's the matter with you?" Annoyed, Zhang Bin grabbed the man who had stepped on him and shouted, "You step on someone's foot and you don't even have the decency to apologize?"

At that, the man with the newspaper turned his face toward them—and good Lord, it was none other than that insufferable fellow from the restaurant that morning who had been loudly proclaiming himself a "naturalized Japanese citizen."

"Apologize? You're the one who carelessly stuck your foot under mine. I was reading the paper and couldn't see you—or were you reading the paper too? Or maybe you just don't have eyes?" The insufferable man looked at Zhang Bin with a look that begged to be punched, rattling off his words as if he were in the right.

"Do you even know how to talk, you son of a bitch?" Zhang Bin was normally quite civil, but the moment he saw it was this little punk, his civility vanished on the spot. Speak to people in the language they understand—this guy thought that just because he'd taken another country's nationality he could forget his ancestors. Could you even call someone like that human?

"So low-class. The people here are just so low-class." The insufferable man twisted his mouth and said with disdain.

"Screw your ancestors—so you're the classy one, huh? I swear I'll beat you to death, believe me?" Zhang Bin jabbed a finger at the insufferable man and cursed loudly.

The corridor gradually filled with people, all drawn over by the quarrel. Some of them had taken part in the morning's mob beating of the insufferable man, and they all began to condemn him.

"Forget it. Don't stoop to his level," Yang Ce said with a shake of his head to Zhang Bin.

"Hmph. If the boss hadn't spoken, I'd have done you in today," Zhang Bin glared at the insufferable man and said viciously.

Just as Zhang Bin and Yan were about to leave, someone suddenly burst out of the crowd of onlookers and slammed hard into Zhang Bin, knocking both Zhang Bin and the insufferable man to the ground together. Zhang Bin landed right on top of the insufferable man, striking a textbook pin-down pose.

"God, that's disgusting!" Zhang Bin laughed as he scrambled up off the insufferable man, pretending to gag.

"Ah!" Suddenly a scream rang out—the woman beside the insufferable man began shrieking at the top of her lungs: "Murder! Someone's been killed!"

Killed? Zhang Bin froze for a moment, then was shocked to discover that a dagger had, at some point, appeared in the insufferable man's chest, buried right over his heart.

To be continued.

855. The Zhang Bin Murder Case

855 The Zhang Bin Murder Case "Th-this—how did this man die?" Zhang Bin's jaw dropped, and he pointed at the insufferable man on the floor, unable to speak.

"Grab him! He's a murderer!" the girlfriend of the guy who needed a beating shouted, pointing at Zhang Bin.

"I'm a murderer?" Zhang Bin was stunned, staring in disbelief at the girl yelling in front of him. "Are you out of your mind? Why would I kill him?"

"If you didn't kill him, then who did?" The girl grabbed hold of Zhang Bin's clothes and would not let go. "You said it yourself just now—you said you were going to kill my boyfriend, and then you killed him."

"Kill, kill, kill—I said it, but that doesn't mean I did it!" Zhang Bin too realized that this was getting serious. After all, this was not something he could settle just by talking. The fact was that he had fallen on top of the guy who needed a beating, and then the man had died. Even if he had nothing to do with it, in the eyes of others it looked like he had something to do with it.

"You knocked my boyfriend down, and when you got up there was a knife sticking in him—and you still say you didn't kill him?" The girlfriend of the guy who needed a beating was on the verge of tears now. "Everyone saw it. Whether you killed him or not, it's no use you saying so—it's what everyone says that counts."

Though everyone present despised the guy who needed a beating for his ungrateful face, now that a life was at stake, no one dared to speak carelessly. Had it been anything else—say, the guy who needed a beating getting a sound thrashing from Zhang Bin—so long as he did not die, probably no one would have said they saw Zhang Bin lay a hand on him.

But this was different. A life was at stake, and careless words carried legal responsibility. Still, most of the people present could not stand the guy who needed a beating, so although no one spoke up to defend Zhang Bin at this moment, neither did anyone open their mouth to testify to anything.

If someone said Zhang Bin had killed a man in a moment of impulse, Yang Ce would believe it. But if someone said Zhang Bin had killed this guy who needed a beating, Yang Ce would never believe it. First, there was no deep grudge at all between Zhang Bin and this guy who needed a beating—nowhere near the point of drawing a knife. Even when Wang Lin had once done him harm, and Zhang Bin loathed Wang Lin as much as could be, he had still kept his head and done nothing excessive. How much less so now, over nothing more than a few words of quarrel?

Second, there was simply no knife on Zhang Bin. Yang Ce had come out of Wang Mei's room together with him—how could he have missed it if Zhang Bin had taken anything? Besides, the idea of Zhang Bin having nothing better to do than wander around the hotel carrying a knife was simply absurd.

And most important of all, Yang Ce felt that the attitude the girlfriend of the guy who needed a beating was showing seemed a little too normal. By any reasonable account, when your boyfriend has been killed, seizing the murder suspect and refusing to let go was normal enough—but precisely because it was too normal, Yang Ce grew suspicious.

A woman whose boyfriend had just been killed right before her eyes could still calmly and methodically analyze how Zhang Bin was the murderer? Something seemed a bit off about that.

Yang Ce believed that if the one killed had been himself, and Chen Shutang had been standing nearby, Chen Shutang would absolutely have been overcome with grief—either holding him and weeping, or fighting to the death with the killer. How could she possibly have spoken so rationally?