Chapter 75 The True Motive

Guan Ziyi’s jokes aside, he knew Li Yan must have a reason for his sudden call. This case almost got Li Yan injured at the time, with a shooting involving Queen. Guan Ziyi took pains to personally get to the bottom of it, hoping to avoid involving Li Yan. If there were any leads adverse to Li Yan, he’d sever them by erasure.

When Guan Ziyi called back, he wasn’t joking anymore and seriously asked, "I just checked, there’s no change. Why are you in such a hurry to find out? Has something happened?"

Li Yan didn’t elaborate: "Just a minor issue, give me the address of the morgue. Also, check if there are full-body photos in the file; if so, send them to my phone!"

"..." Guan Ziyi was speechless for a moment. What’s there to see? "Alright... I’ll send them over in a bit."

After hanging up the phone, Guan Ziyi repeatedly sent detailed information about the morgue to Li Yan’s phone via text.

Although her attitude was good just now, speaking nicely with no apparent murderous intent, how could one know if it wasn’t a clever disguise, or even a trap?

Once the photos of the corpse arrived, Li Yan started enlarging them one by one on his phone. The phone screen was small, not as convenient as a computer, making the viewing quite cumbersome, especially enlarging each section of the corpse—it was quite disgusting.

Sonia’s demand to find Eva’s corpse, claiming she wanted to take her back home for burial, seemed a fairly reasonable request, but Li Yan felt it wouldn’t be that simple. If they could take life and death lightly, there shouldn’t be such strong commitment to where she would be buried, right? If it’s not a trap, could there be a secret hidden on the corpse?

This was another hypothesis of his. For this guess, he could only endure the disgust and slowly examine each part of the corpse using his phone.

According to Li Yan’s reasoning, if Sonia insisted on finding Eva’s corpse because there was a secret on it, it should be related to interests, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth the trouble and the risk of clashing with King. Interests that could be hidden on a corpse would be tattoos, perhaps tattoos encoding things like account passwords.

If this were true, it certainly wouldn’t be on the face or easily visible places like the hands or feet, but their own passwords should be memorable, naturally leaving it for others, thus it might be in a place not easily seen by oneself.

After going through the photos again and again, he found nothing—they were taken from the front, with the corpse lying on its back, not flipped over for careful shots from all directions. Thus, he couldn’t ascertain if there were tattoos on the back.

...

Finding nothing, Li Yan checked the time, estimated the time to get to the morgue, and thought about the consequences, dismissing his earlier thought to check it out first.

Since she just wants the address, let her go! He’d dismiss her earlier.

After resting for a while, stowing his gun, Li Yan once again came to Sonia’s room door.

This time, after knocking, Sonia quickly came over and opened the door without retreating immediately, directly looking at him and inviting him in, thus proving she bore no ill intent and had sincerity.

"You’re not telling me you’ve news now, are you? I’d be very glad!" Sonia happily asked, seeing Li Yan return in less than an hour.

"Yes, I’ve found the location of Eva’s morgue. The police haven’t cremated her yet, probably still waiting and seeing if any missing clues match up, or if they want to solve the case." Li Yan pulled out an address he had just written on hotel stationery.

Sonia smiled apologetically: "I can speak Yun Country’s language, but understanding Yun Country’s writing isn’t easy, and I don’t know the way. Are you suggesting I hand it to a taxi driver? If you have time, could you take me there?"

Li Yan hesitated a moment, then agreed. "Okay! I’ll take you there, but I won’t go in with you. You know, the police are still monitoring the situation there. I’m the assassin; I can’t appear on camera leaving traces."

"No problem, just take me there; I’ll figure out how to get in myself." Sonia pointed to the side, gesturing to put on a coat.

Li Yan nodded and watched her put on her coat, then the two left the hotel together.

Li Yan didn’t want to drive his car to the morgue, although checking his license plate wasn’t so difficult. But as they prepared to take a taxi, he realized it’d be inconvenient to talk. He still had many doubts, and discussing them in a taxi wasn’t convenient, especially since taxis now often have cameras installed.

Helplessly, he started driving with Sonia to the morgue.

As the car moved forward, Li Yan noticed Sonia beside him in the passenger seat, her expression a bit lost—not sad but not excited to see Eva’s corpse either, making him doubt his hypothesis again.

"Excuse me if I’m blunt, but I think you just want to see Eva’s body, not really eager to take her corpse back for burial."

Hearing Li Yan cut right to the chase, Sonia snapped back, looking at him: "What do you mean?"

"Eva’s body must hold some secret, right? Perhaps tattoos hiding passwords only decipherable by you. As ’Rose,’ even if there were three of you, you’d all have substantial savings. Perhaps you planned long ago that if one of you were in trouble, you’d retrieve their money for the family, bury them or something. Am I right?" Li Yan drove while probing Sonia.

Sonia was silent a while then said softly, "You’re right... I won’t really take her back because that’s troublesome. We survive in darkness; exposure in sunlight only brings danger. So, I’ll pray for her, bless her, but just take the password from her, to prevent her savings from falling into the hands of the bank. Sorry, I didn’t speak honestly, partly fearing you’d be greedy, partly fearing you’d misunderstand, because Yun Country People value loyalty. I feared you’d find me cold and kill me!"

Li Yan digested this, succinctly saying: "I understand."

Everyone has their own ways of arranging affairs for after they’re gone. For assassins, they certainly can’t leave a will like typical wealthy folks. But there will always be some people they can rely on.

In silence, Li Yan accelerated the car towards the morgue.

Nearing the destination, Li Yan reminded, "When you go in, be careful not to let your face get clearly recorded; otherwise, it could cause you trouble."

"Thanks, I understand." Sonia was no longer absent-minded and was now prepared.

Near the morgue, Li Yan parked the car, explained the situation in detail, letting her remember before she went in herself, while he waited outside.

...

He didn’t dwell on it, trusting Sonia to handle it. He stayed outside, smoking and moving the car to a spot hard to monitor. He was still uneasy, fearing it might be a trap luring him in.

More than half an hour later, after several cigarettes, nobody came looking for trouble, no snipers targeting him. Sonia, on the other hand, was already quickly coming out, looking for where the car was parked.

"I’m here." Li Yan drove over, stopping by her side.

Sonia immediately got in the car. "Let’s head back!"

"What’s the situation? From your expression, it seems you didn’t get anything?" Li Yan casually asked. He didn’t want to get too involved but was curious.

Sonia closed her eyes, gave a bitter smile: "There’s nothing."

"What? The tattoo’s gone?"

"No... Eva’s corpse is gone!" Sonia quietly replied.

"The corpse wouldn’t run off by itself. No one knows your secret, even if they did, it’d be of no use. There’s deception here..." Li Yan murmured to himself, then accelerated to full speed, swiftly departing. (To be continued, for the rest of the story, please visit www.qidian.com. More Chapters available, support the author and legal reading!)