Without time to return to her room, Nie Jiuluo stepped through the mess and rushed to the bedside phone to call the front desk.
As soon as they answered, she fired off questions: “Did a man carrying a large canvas bag leave? A large canvas bag, a man?”
The front desk was confused: “Huh?”
“Did you see him or not?”
“No, haven’t seen anyone.”
So he hadn’t reached the lobby yet? Nie Jiuluo felt slightly relieved: “If you see him, stop him immediately, I don’t care how. He stole my things.”
To emphasize the urgency, she added: “Over a hundred… several hundred thousand.”
The front desk was shocked by such a large sum: “O-okay…”
Nie Jiuluo was about to hang up when she thought of something else: “Besides the lobby, does this hotel have any other exits?”
“Yes, three back doors.”
Nie Jiuluo’s heart sank.
With four exits total, the chances of intercepting that man were now only one in four.
The police arrived close to midnight, one older and one younger officer, both quite polite. They first examined Sun Zhou’s room and then reviewed the hotel’s surveillance footage.
Sun Zhou’s room showed property damage but no signs of physical harm.
The hotel’s cameras were mainly distributed in the lobby, elevators, and elevator entrances. Not a single camera had captured the crew-cut man with the canvas bag.
Given the current situation—no actual crime, no criminal behavior or consequences harmful to society—they couldn’t open a case based on suspicion alone. The older officer had Nie Jiuluo file a police report, asking her to explain the situation thoroughly and leave her contact information for follow-up.
This was Nie Jiuluo’s first time filing a police report, and she had no experience. Seeing it end like this, she couldn’t help asking: “Don’t you need to collect fingerprints, evidence, or something… forensics?”
The older officer smiled helplessly while the younger one responded enthusiastically: “You’ve been watching Hong Kong dramas, right? Here we don’t call it forensics, it’s the Criminal Technology Department, responsible for crime scene investigation.”
Nie Jiuluo roughly understood: they belonged to “Criminal” affairs, handling “crime scenes,” and Sun Zhou’s situation might not even qualify as a “case” yet.
While she filled out the form, the young officer explained their current considerations: Sun Zhou couldn’t even be considered “missing” yet—what if he came back tomorrow on his own? Property damage didn’t equal violent kidnapping—what if he had cooperated willingly, voluntarily climbing into the canvas bag to play “disappearing”?
There were too many possibilities. Without new developments, this would remain just a “police response record,” and they could only keep an eye on it and follow up later.
His explanation made Nie Jiuluo uncertain too: she had earlier suspected Sun Zhou was being pursued by gambling debt collectors—could he have staged this with friends to avoid his debts?
Whatever the case, she had done what she could.
After she completed the form, the older officer briefly scanned it: “You’re a sculptor? Is that part of fine arts?”
It fell under that category, so Nie Jiuluo nodded.
“Then you can draw, right? That’s a basic skill, isn’t it? The cameras didn’t catch anything, but you saw his face—could you sketch it roughly?”
This wasn’t an unreasonable request. Nie Jiuluo borrowed paper from the front desk and began sketching. As she was finishing, she heard the sound of rolling luggage wheels at the entrance.
This late at night, someone else checking in? Nie Jiuluo continued drawing but glanced up briefly toward the door.
It was Yan Tuo.
Though not surprising—the county wasn’t large, and wealthy visitors usually chose this hotel.
In the middle of the night, two uniformed police officers watching a young woman drawing in the lobby—this scene couldn’t help but draw attention. Yan Tuo glanced their way, but he seemed to have little curiosity and quickly looked away, heading straight to the front desk.
Nie Jiuluo finished the portrait with a few final strokes and handed it to the older officer.
The older officer couldn’t help but exclaim: the portrait was excellently drawn, and more importantly, the man’s features were highly distinctive—making him easy to identify. For professional reasons, he dreaded “common faces”; when wanted posters went out for those, they disappeared like mud oxen into the sea, with even the most enthusiastic community volunteers unable to identify them.
He took the drawing to the front desk, asking the hotel to make a copy and have housekeeping, kitchen staff, and security check if anyone recognized the face.
The clerk was helping Yan Tuo check in but couldn’t ignore the police, quickly taking the drawing. Like the older officer, her first reaction was admiration for the artwork: “Such talent, drawing this in less than ten minutes.”
The older officer smiled: “She’s a professional, and has real skill.”
Yan Tuo looked at the drawing. The skill was indeed good—the face was so lifelike, capturing the features and expression perfectly.
Though the police were just doing their duty, responding to calls in the middle of the night was still quite taxing. Nie Jiuluo saw them at the hotel entrance before turning back. From several meters away, she saw Yan Tuo waiting for the elevator.
Nie Jiuluo walked over and waited with him.
When the elevator arrived, out of politeness, Nie Jiuluo stepped aside to let him enter first with his luggage. When she entered and was about to press her floor, her hand had barely risen before dropping again.
He had already pressed it—he was also staying on the fourth floor.
Nie Jiuluo moved to the side, maintaining social distance, then fixed her gaze on the elevator doors, just waiting for them to open so she could step out.
Their shadowy reflections were visible in the steel elevator doors. It was clear that Yan Tuo had no interest in his fellow passenger, focused only on returning to his room.
What had he been doing in the cornfield at Xingbazi Township? Stealing corn? And what about his duck? Why not bring it up? Leaving it alone in the car overnight.
Sleepiness washed over her, and Nie Jiuluo lowered her head to cover a yawn.
At that moment, Yan Tuo turned his head quickly to glance at her.
When the elevator reached their floor, Nie Jiuluo stepped out first, with Yan Tuo following: his room was actually in the opposite direction from Nie Jiuluo’s, but he didn’t hurry to his room—he stood at the elevator, watching Nie Jiuluo until he saw clearly that she lived in the second-to-last room on the left side of the corridor.
After returning to her room, Nie Jiuluo quickly washed up and got into bed, but didn’t turn off the lights to sleep right away. She brought her pencil case to the bedside, took out a pen and a long strip of paper, pondered briefly, and then began writing.
She wrote three items:
One, Sun Zhou was bitten by dogs during the day and then carried away in a canvas bag at night, police notified.