Abstinence Pei, don't be too sweet when chasing your wife

The rainstorm covered the city like a silver-gray curtain. Inside Lu Chenzhou's office, an old-fashioned projector cast distorted light and shadows on the mottled walls.

He pressed the pause button for the umpteenth time. In the surveillance footage, the mysterious man in the wide-brimmed hat had the brim pulled down very low, with only his pearly white nails drooping, reflecting a cold light under the streetlight.

The edges of the nails were marked with subtle diamond-shaped cuts, reflecting a strange rainbow in the heavy rain, like the cold light of a poisonous snake spitting out its tongue.

The news report on Zhou Mingyuan's case was circled to pieces by him with a red pen - this poisoning case that shocked the whole city had nothing to do with the case of harming Gu Fanxing commissioned by Pei Luonan.

"Zhang Qiang and Liu Meng, these two names must be dug deeper."

Lu Chenzhou pointed at the names of the two thugs and slammed the brown paper bag heavily on the mottled office desk. The metal buckle made a crisp sound when it hit the table.

In the yellowed files, 32-year-old Zhang Qiang had three imprisonment records for theft. In the latest criminal record photo, he had a new crescent-shaped scar on his neck.

29-year-old Liu Meng comes from a single-parent family. The diagnosis date of "late-stage uremia" in his mother's medical record coincides with the time when his first overseas remittance arrived.

In the bank statements of the two people, a remittance of 50,000 yuan from abroad arrived half a month ago. The remarks column always had the same symbol - a plum blossom?. On the day of the remittance, there was a three-minute signal interruption in the city's surveillance.

Lu Chenzhou turned the old-fashioned globe and his fingertips moved across the west city area on the map.

Dense red dots marked the places where the two people often appeared. When he zoomed in on a part of the map, his pupils suddenly contracted - in the night thermal imaging map, a room in the abandoned textile factory was always glowing with a strange red light.

What's even more chilling is that the surveillance camera in the underground garage captured a black Maybach whose license plate was changed every three days. The last time it appeared, half of the pearly white nail polish was exposed on the passenger seat.

The damp alley was filled with the smell of rotten alcohol, and the neon lights of the Black Panther Bar flickered in the rain.

Lu Chenzhou pushed open the iron gate covered with graffiti, and his baseball cap, which was deliberately pulled down, covered his sharp eyes.

The smell of rotten alcohol mixed with harsh electronic music hit him in the face. The one-eyed boss's movement of wiping the wine glass suddenly stiffened, and his fake eye shone with a cold glass-like light under the dim light.

"Brother Zhang and Brother Meng have been very generous recently, giving out thousands of yuan in tips. Half a month ago, they came here with a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a mask..."

He lowered his voice, his eyes scanned the surroundings vigilantly, his Adam's apple rolling up and down.

“Her nails were sharper than knives, leaving crescent-shaped scratches on the wine glasses she touched.

And after that, Brother Zhang and the others started talking in mysterious ways, always mentioning the 'Nightingale Project'."

Before he could finish his words, there was a sound of glass breaking in the corner, and the man in the baseball cap broke open the back door and ran out.

Lu Chenzhou followed him calmly. In the narrow alley, he caught a glimpse of a nightingale with outstretched wings tattooed on the back of the man's neck.

When he returned to the bar, a stranger had replaced the one-eyed boss, and there was only a note left on the bar, written in pearl white nail polish: "Mind your own business."

When Lu Chenzhou sneaked into the gangster's rental house, the hands of the old pocket watch pointed to two o'clock in the morning.

The musty room was littered with expensive cigarettes, alcohol, and overseas casino chips. In a metal box under the bed lay a tattered diary. Liu Meng's scribbled handwriting read: "2013.9.15. I took a big job. She said she'd give me three million upon completion and asked us to keep an eye on 'that woman'..."

There were scattered pearly white crumbs between the lines, and the last page was torn to shreds, with only half a line remaining: "The secret of the basement cannot..."

In the mezzanine of the wardrobe, Lu Chenzhou also found a miniature camera.

The contents of the memory card were chilling: in the picture, Zhang Qiang and Liu Meng were following Gu Fanxing, and then, pearly white nails flashed across the camera, the picture fell into darkness, and the background sound was mixed with suppressed sneers and the hum of a nail polish grinder.

When Lu Chenzhou tried to contact a gangster who had close ties with the gangster, he found that the other party's phone number was no longer in service.

After making inquiries from many sources, he found the man curled up in a corner of an unfinished building on the outskirts of the city.

"All I know is they're looking for a silver key..."

Before he could finish his words, Ma Zai suddenly convulsed violently, black blood flowed from the corner of his mouth, and he fainted.

When Lu Chenzhou rushed over to check, he found that the henchman was holding a piece of paper with a nightingale with its wings spread out drawn in blood on it.

There was a sound of nails hitting the wall in the dark. Lu Chenzhou turned around quickly and saw a dark shadow in a wide-brimmed hat disappearing around the corner.

On a rainy night, Lu Chenzhou stood alone in front of the rusty iron gate of an abandoned textile factory.

The beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness. The scratches on the wall inside the door completely matched the wound on Gu Fanxing's neck. Half of a broken nail polish piece was embedded in the crack of the wall.

As he bent down to check the ground, the sole of his shoe suddenly stepped on some sticky liquid - it was nail polish, exactly the same pearly white as the crime scene.

Following the traces of liquid, he found a secret door in the corner of the wall. The combination lock keypad on the door was covered with pearly white fingerprints.

Just as Lu Chenzhou was about to crack the password, his cell phone suddenly rang with an unfamiliar ringtone.

I picked up the phone and heard the sound of fingernails tapping on glass. Once, twice, the rhythm was as precise as a heart rate monitor. Then came the voice processed by a voice changer: "Private detective, excessive curiosity can kill you. You think that finding this is the end? How naive."

At three o'clock in the morning, Lu Chenzhou's phone suddenly vibrated.

An anonymous MMS message showed the address of "Butterfly Dance Nail Art Studio" and the note contained only four cold words: "Come and receive your gift."

When Lu Chenzhou arrived at the studio, the carved glass door was ajar and the smell of rust hit him in the face.

Seven manicure tables were neatly arranged, but on the seat in the far corner lay a dying woman in a lavender uniform.

Her ten fingers were brutally broken, and a strand of long black hair was entangled on the handle of the manicure knife stuck in her chest.

Next to her, the nail art lamp was still flickering.

Lu Chenzhou noticed that there were fresh marks on her neck, and the shape was exactly the same as the marks left by Gu Fanxing when she was attacked.

While investigating the scene, Lu Chenzhou found an encrypted USB flash drive deep in the manicurist's locker.

In the deciphered document, the latest directive of the "Nightingale Elimination Plan" clearly stated: "Zhang Ting is being targeted, deal with it immediately. Next, deal with the nosy detective."

What is even more shocking is that the surveillance screenshots attached to the document show that on the night Gu Fanxing was attacked, the mysterious man wearing a wide-brimmed hat was standing on the street corner.

The rainstorm became more and more violent, hitting the glass windows with a roar.

Lu Chenzhou stood in front of the whiteboard in the office and frantically strung all the clues together with red ropes.

The gangster's diary, the remittances received, the attack on the manicurist, all events point to the mysterious man in the wide-brimmed hat.

At this moment, his cell phone vibrated again, and a new MMS came with a video: in the dim basement, there was the back of Lu Chenzhou entering the nail salon.

At the end of the video, there is the sound of nails hitting glass, again and again, like the countdown of death.

Outside the window, a flash of lightning streaked across the night sky, illuminating the familiar figure at the end of the street.

Under the wide-brimmed hat, the pearly white fingertips were facing Lu Chenzhou and slowly raised, as if inviting him to death.

This time, Lu Chenzhou tightly grasped the pepper spray hidden in his inner pocket, his eyes burning with determination to fight the darkness to the end.

He knew that this confusing game of chasing the murderer was far from over.

In a corner of the city, a mysterious man sneered, preparing for the next round of cat-and-mouse game. In the dark surveillance camera, pearly white nails flashed again, recording this never-ending hunt.