Chapter 242: The Genius and The Devil (1/2)

I was delighted by the turn of events. It certainly saved me the trouble of looking for her. ”Professor, shall we go out for a cup of tea?” I suggested.

The head of the archive department agreed so we found a teahouse just outside the school and ordered a pot of green tea.

She looked about 40 years old and was surnamed Gao. I was shocked at the huge age gap between her and Qi Sheng so I asked, “Madam Gao, how long were you married to Professor Qi?”

”More than 20 years. In fact, I used to be his student. Although he’s old now, he used to be a handsome and dashing man in his younger days. Back then, everyone around me objected to our teacher-student relationship but at the time, I was as stubborn as mule, my heart set on marrying only him. Alas! I wish I had listened to my family’s advice. He had the sort of paranoid personality that made it hard for him to get ahead. Then later on, he did such a terrible thing that even I couldn't believe at first. He destroyed my life. As the wife of a criminal, I was no longer allowed to teach and I was only given this job in the archives after begging repeatedly.”

Having shared as much, Madam Gao sighed deeply, her hands wiping away the tears on her face. I couldn’t help but utter a few words of consolation.

”Was Professor Qi close to any of his students?” I asked.

Without a second thought, Madam Gao replied, ”Yes!”

The student was Wang Yizhou, a boy very interested in mechanical engineering. He often met up with Qi Sheng to discuss engineering problems and attended all of his classes, even if he hadn’t signed up for them.

Wang Yizhou was a pitiful orphan who grew up tragically. Every Lunar New Year, Qi Sheng invited him home for the reunion feast, after which, they would fiddle with their little inventions together. Madam Gao used to tease Qi Sheng about their close relationship and even suggested adopting him as their son since he liked the boy so much.

The boy reciprocated Qi Sheng’s fondness for him with the same love and respect. When Qi Sheng was arrested by the police, he knelt at the school gates for a long time after the police vehicle left. After he graduated and started working, he often visited Madam Gao until she finally divorced Qi Sheng and remarried.

After listening to her narrate the past, I rummaged through a box of student files, all of which were arranged alphabetically, and found Wang Yizhou at once. The picture on his file showed a gentle-looking boy with sullen eyes behind a pair of glasses. At the sight of this face, an alarm bell went off in my head. My intuition told me that this man was the murderer!

”Officer, it’s been ten years since the case was concluded,” said Madam Gao. “Why are you suddenly investigating the case again? Did this kid do something?”

”Why would you think that? Does he seem like the kind of person who would commit a crime?” I asked in return.

”Teachers have that special sixth sense when it comes to judging people. I could tell that this kid was a bit paranoid like my ex-husband.”

”It’s not surprising that many people are paranoid after hitting the 80s and 90s,” I remarked.

But Madam Gao shook her head. ”He’s not just paranoid,” she explained. “How should I put this…. he has a history of mental illness.”

Hearing this, my suspicions about Wang Yizhou further solidified so I asked her what illness he had.

”It's not anything serious like schizophrenia. He had a contradiction with my family and in a fit of pique, slammed his head into the wall. When his family sent him into a mental hospital, he made all sorts of trouble inside. I heard he went off the rails and bit several nurses! In truth, that so-called mental hospital was of little help. It was more like a prison to isolate the mentally ill from the rest of society. The more disobedient they behaved, the more severe the torture. He was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and behavioral therapy by doctors and force-fed sedatives for more than half a year. However, I could tell that his mental state was more unstable after he left that hellhole.”

”Family? Didn't you say he was an orphan?” I asked.

”The boy’s situation was a bit complicated,” she replied. “As a child, he was an orphan but later, his father emerged out of nowhere and adopted him.”

I asked her what Wang Yizhou's father did for a living but Madam Gao was unsure. I remember that the three victims supposedly killed by Qi Sheng were the dean, a teacher who abused children, and an unscrupulous liquor dealer who made and sold fake alcohol.

I pulled out a piece of paper, wrote down their names and asked Madam Gao, ”Do you know these three people?”

”I’ve heard of them,” admitted Madam Gao. “Back then, when Qi Sheng was tried in court, I attended the hearing. They are the victims from ten years ago, aren’t they? But I only knew the first one personally, that is, the former dean of our school. Qi Sheng usually left him to his own devices even when he was up to no good. So the dean switched to more despicable means and plagiarized one of his academic papers. A big part of why Qi Sheng was so greatly stimulated was definitely due to this person.”