Resumo do episódio 25 de Light to the Night
> Resumos de Light to the Night
Xiaohe confronted Qiao Suqing, accusing her of spending years crafting her "airtight" story. Qiao Suqing remained calm, arguing that since she had already confessed to the secret of pushing her mother off a cliff, she had no reason to lie about anything else. She admitted she had not been home on July 2, 1997. Instead, she had traveled to the provincial capital that morning to buy a Bauhaus-brand dress and returned it in Weiyang that afternoon.
Her goal was to erase any purchase records so the dress found at Xu Meng’s place could not be traced back to Yao Xincheng, and by extension, to herself. Xiaohe pointed out a fatal flaw in this narrative. Qiao Suqing claimed Xu Meng was killed in 1997 and that the blue shoes in question were only acquired in 2002. Xiaohe demanded an explanation for why Xu Meng’s DNA and skin cells were found inside those shoes.
Qiao Suqing dismissed the evidence, suggesting that the "perverted" Wu Shanlong might have kept the victim’s underwear and later stuffed it into the shoes out of some twisted sentimentality. She insisted that Ran Fangxu never doubted her and that she would not admit to any crimes she did not commit. He Yuanhang waited for the results of bloodstain tests while discussing the case with Xiaohe.
The search of the apartment had yielded little, as the scene had been thoroughly scrubbed, showing no positive blood reaction even with luminol. Yuanhang suspected that Qiao Suqing's confession regarding her mother was a calculated move. By framing the death as a result of hallucinations caused by hypothermia, she would at most face a charge of involuntary manslaughter, a move intended to mask her much larger crimes.
He was convinced that Qiao Suqing had stayed near the crime scenes for eighteen years to protect a deep secret. Xiaohe and Yuanhang began to analyze the patterns of the deaths surrounding Qiao Suqing. They noted that both Yao Baiyuan and Wu Shanlong had died in "accidents" involving slipping on oil or paint and falling at construction sites. Yuanhang suddenly realized that Ran Fangxu’s crash site on Jiangdong Road also had oil on the ground.
They concluded that this was the killer's signature method. Qiao Suqing had likely set a trap to silence Ran Fangxu after he discovered the truth. With only thirteen hours left before the detention limit for Qiao Suqing expired, Yuanhang tasked Xiaohe with coordinating with Zhao Jie and the traffic police to find any surveillance footage from that night twelve years ago.
Overwhelmed by guilt for sending his student into the hands of a killer, He Yuanhang's health took a turn for the worse. While reviewing interrogation tapes and searching for clues among Ran Fangxu’s belongings, he hallucinated seeing his late pupil. The combination of high blood pressure and exhaustion triggered an ischemic stroke, and he collapsed in the office.
Xiaohe rushed to the hospital, where the property manager, Manager Ma, handed her a note her father had been clutching tightly when he fell. Though her father was stable but required observation, Xiaohe decided to stay focused on the case, knowing that solving it was her father’s greatest wish. Qu Dahai worked tirelessly in the archives, searching for unresolved accident footage from New Year's Eve 2003.
He and Xiaohe hoped to find Qiao Suqing near the scene of Ran Fangxu's death. Meanwhile, Xiaohe spoke with Zhao Jie about Ran Fangxu's digital legacy. They realized that on the day he died, Ran Fangxu had rushed into the office to write a case summary email. However, there was no record of such an email in the internal system.
They eventually realized Ran Fangxu might have been using an office automation account under He Yuanhang’s name to keep his investigation discreet. The investigation hit a snag when they discovered the account had recently been deleted during a system cleanup. Xiaohe brought in a local hacker to perform data recovery on the main drive. Although the data was restored, it was encrypted.
After several failed attempts to crack the password, Xiaohe remembered a conversation with Ran Fangxu about the South Pole. He had told her that though they were both "at the bottom"—born on the final days of their respective months—the day after their birthdays always brought a brand new month. Using a combination of their birth dates (0331 and 0630), Xiaohe successfully logged into the account. In the drafts, she found a reinvestigation report for the "June 30" case.
Ran Fangxu had written it in He Yuanhang's name to ensure his mentor received the credit. The report contained a list of evidence and pointed to a specific location: Ran Fangxu’s woodcarving toolbox. Zhao Jie realized that the wooden box was currently sitting in his own home. As the truth began to surface, a memory flickered of Ran Fangxu arriving at Qiao Suqing's door years ago, asking to step inside for a talk.
