Chapter 28: An Unexpected Guest

Fewer than sixty seconds had passed since Forrester left.

A familiar perfume wafted over, subtle yet unmistakable.

Moments later, a dazzling and provocative figure slid gracefully into the booth beside Chen Yu.

He turned instinctively. When he saw who it was, his brow arched involuntarily.

Golden waves of hair tumbled down her shoulders like seaweed, her makeup so flawless it bordered on art. It was the same blonde beauty with whom he’d shared a fleeting, rain-soaked encounter the night before.

His heart skipped—a single, sharp beat. Trouble, he thought instantly.

A one-night stand was, to him, more than enough. There should never be a repeat. This was one of the cardinal rules he lived by as a seasoned libertine.

But the flirtatious signals he anticipated were strangely absent.

Instead, her luminous eyes shone with an almost reverent admiration—so bright it was startling.

Chen Yu was caught off guard by this unexpected expression, the lines of polite refusal he had prepared tangled awkwardly in his throat.

What on earth was this? Had he just slept with a fan?

The blonde seemed blissfully unaware of his confusion. She edged closer, her voice lowered in a conspiratorial hush, though her excitement was impossible to disguise.

“You… are you really the ‘Corpse Riser’ from ‘Old Cases Revisited’?”

Chen Yu nodded slightly, accepting the whimsical moniker.

Her eyes grew even wider, hands flying up to cover her mouth as she let out a barely suppressed shriek.

“Oh my God! I actually slept with the Corpse Riser!”

“I’m a founding member of the Corpse Riser Fan Club, you know!” she declared proudly, thrusting out her ample chest as if this were a distinction worthy of lifelong bragging rights, a glory fit for the annals of history.

“This is… this is just incredible!”

Chen Yu’s lips twitched despite himself. He took a long draught of whiskey, uncertain what to say.

Corpse Riser Fan Club? Could the name be any more ridiculous?

Yet the blonde gave him little time for inner turmoil, quickly steering the conversation to what truly interested her.

“Corpse Riser, what on earth did you and Captain Yan talk about in the car this afternoon? It’s driving everyone in our group crazy! There are already hundreds of wild theories!”

Chen Yu nearly choked on his drink. This again!

He stared at the blonde in astonishment, his mind awash with questions.

What was going on? First Lin Bing had come by his room, fishing for information. Now even a chance fan seemed obsessed with his whereabouts that afternoon. Did everyone really see him as a walking information hub?

Noticing his bewilderment, the blonde pulled out her phone, set the brightness to max, and handed it to him.

“See? It’s not just me who’s curious.”

He took the phone, frowning. The screen displayed the official streaming room for “Old Cases Revisited.” Though the show had ended at five, the chat window was still a roiling sea of comments, lively to the point of chaos.

A dense barrage of messages scrolled by at dizzying speed, fueled by restless viewers whose enthusiasm seemed only to grow.

The entire display was submerged in wild speculation and heated debate.

“I’ll bet a bag of spicy chips that Corpse Riser got a top-secret clue about the Luo Xiangdong case from Captain Yan!”

“An entire afternoon! Two men alone in a car, talking for hours—just imagine the amount of intel! You could write a million-word mystery novel!”

“What if Luo Xiangdong’s disappearance is just a smokescreen? What if they were really discussing an even bigger, more terrifying case?”

“You’re giving me chills! The more I think about it, the scarier it gets!”

For the first time, Chen Yu was struck by the sheer scale of his influence in this world, watching the barrage roll by.

He had unwittingly become the focal point of a nationwide online detective frenzy. Every subtle gesture, every fleeting glance, was magnified a hundredfold—parsed, dissected, and spun into ever more bizarre and outlandish theories by strangers across the internet.

Just as he was caught up in this surreal realization, the mood in the chat room shifted. New, unfamiliar phrases began to appear, at first sporadically, but growing steadily more frequent.

“Zhang Fu,” “daughter,” “something big happened.”

At first, these snippets were vague, almost like internet rumors—hazy and unconfirmed.

“Hey, did you hear? Something huge just happened at Jiangcheng Group!”

“My cousin’s wife’s distant neighbor’s son’s classmate works at the city hospital morgue, and he said they brought in a young woman from the East Suburb Villas this afternoon. Apparently, her identity is… Zhang Fu’s daughter…”

“No way! The daughter of Jiangcheng’s richest man? That’s even more explosive than the show itself!”

Gradually, these scattered fragments began to coalesce, fermenting at a staggering speed.

A terrifying outline emerged, growing sharper and more detailed with every passing second.

Zhang Fu, the undisputed titan of Jiangcheng’s business world, architect of the city’s commercial empire—his only daughter, his most beloved child, had been… murdered.

In that instant, Chen Yu’s pupils contracted to pinpoints.

The Zhang Luoluo murder case had leaked—right into the heart of a wildly popular true crime show’s official chatroom.

A wave of dread crashed over him, suffocating in its intensity.

As he stared at the screen, anxious, a rough male voice burst beside him, shattering the bar’s music and chatter like a clap of thunder.

“Young man, are you the legendary Corpse Riser?”

The voice was not especially loud, but its arrival silenced the entire bar.

Chen Yu looked up slowly.

A powerfully built middle-aged man stood before him, his arrival unnoticed until now. His head was shaven to a polished gleam, and he wore a fine black silk shirt, the top two buttons left undone, revealing the edge of a fierce tattoo on his chest.

A pungent blend of cigar smoke and expensive cologne invaded Chen Yu’s senses.

Chen Yu met the man’s gaze.

The blonde’s description in the hotel room last night. Captain Yan’s grave warning in the special operations car that afternoon.

Chen Yu’s heart skipped another beat.

There was no doubt—this man, radiating an aura that threatened to crush the very air, was the kingpin of Jiangcheng’s underworld.

Brother Lei.