Chapter 110: The Queen An (1/2)

After hearing Jin Baoshan’s explanation, I asked him, “But my eyes can see through lies! How did you manage to deceive me? You didn’t have special training for it, did you?”

”Well, Mr. Detective,” he chuckled, ”That's where your oversight saved me. Truthfully, I was extremely unnerved by your piercing eyes when you questioned me that day. If you had asked me if I was the murderer, I would’ve blown my cover!”

So it was my own carelessness that led to my almost fatal mistake, though I wasn’t the only one who was deceived in this case. Even Xiaotao and Wang Yuanchao never expected the murderer to be the person who sold the mansion.

Cases related to real estate like this one were usually driven by interest and greed. No one had any suspicion that the real motive behind this case was a vendetta.

“Is Ren Facai your accomplice?” asked Xiaotao.

Jin Baoshan blew out a puff of smoke and answered, “No, I don’t know him at all. All I knew was that he was a member of a triad who’d been interested in buying the house at a cheap price. I thought I could use him to distract the police away from me.”

“But you sold a mansion worth three million yuan for only half a million!” remarked Xiaotao. “You must be pretty rich to do that! How did you manage to amass such wealth?”

The answer that Jin Baoshan gave next shocked all of us.

“But the house was only worth half a million yuan!” he chuckled.

“What?!”

“What did you expect?” he responded. “People had died in that house! Everyone believed that it was really haunted. No one would go anywhere near there! I put the price of the house at three million yuan, but I knew I’d never be able to sell it at that price. Nevertheless, it’s true that I paid the real estate agency twenty thousand yuan. I had to work hard for nearly a year to save up that much money.”

I realized how cunning this person was. It was fortunate that he was only interested in getting revenge and wasn’t so bloodthirsty that he would start killing indiscriminately. Otherwise, with his sly cunning and high IQ, who knew how many people would fall prey to him.

Xiaotao handed Jin Baoshan the handcuffs and said, “Put it on yourself!”

“I’m not going to jail!” he hissed.

Xiaotao’s almond-shaped eyes widened. “That’s not up to you to decide!”

Jin Baoshan smiled. “While you were paying attention to my stories, didn’t you notice any movements behind you?”

We looked behind us and saw bullet ants crawling out of the cracks and dark corners of the room like a sweeping tide. Soon enough, we were surrounded. Jin Baoshan pulled out a small glass bottle and put it on the coffee table. It contained a huge ant with a bulging abdomen that looked like a silkworm—it was the queen ant.

Jin Baoshan smashed the glass bottle with his bare fist, killing the queen ant in the process. As blood flowed down his arm, he broke into a burst of hysterical laughter.

As the queen ant died, it emitted a strong distress signal to its colony. This drove the ants around us into a frenzy.

“But you’ll die too if you killed the queen ant!” shouted Xiaotao.

“That doesn’t matter to me,” Jin Baoshan replied calmly. “The four of you will accompany me to the afterlife, so I won’t be lonely. Come to think of it, I will be in the company of a beautiful young woman like you. I’d say it’s worth it.”

“Did you really think that we’d come here unprepared?” I asked. I then pulled out a small black paw that I had been wearing around my neck like an amulet under my shirt.

At that point, Jin Baoshan noticed how the bullet ants on the ground wouldn’t come near us and was shocked.

“What is that?” he asked.

“They’re pangolin paws,” I explained. “They’re the ants’ natural predators. The ants can detect its scent and because of that, they won’t dare touch us!”

They were also a protected wildlife species which meant that ordinary citizens would have no way of procuring it legally. Fortunately, Xiaotao knew an old police officer who had just caught a poacher smuggling some pangolins from the mountains two days ago. According to legends, grave robbers in the past used to wear pangolin paws around their necks when they dug up graves in order to drive ants away from them as they did the dirty job.

All four of us wearing a paw around our necks, but we had also prepared an extra one for Jin Baoshan too. Wang Yuanchao forcefully put one around his neck and handcuffed him.

“You truly are a great young detective,” Jin Baoshan relented in a dejected voice. “I’ve lost. I wholeheartedly admit my defeat!”

“Great!” Dali yelled out. “We managed to capture the murderer without spilling a single drop of blood! Let’s go back and celebrate!”

“No!” I shouted. “We can’t open the door now! The residents are still outside. The ants will get to them!”