With the key person identified, Shen Sixing immediately retrieved the home surveillance footage.
In the video, Shen Yi had left the house carrying a suitcase.
She exited through the side door without looking back, her silhouette swallowed by the shadows beyond the streetlight.
When she returned, it was different.
She was riding an old bicycle, not fast, wobbling slightly.
The footage was too dark to make out details—she seemed dazed, shoulders slumped, hands loose on the handlebars, utterly exhausted and listless.
Shen Sixing stared at the screen, his lips pressed silently against the back of his hand.
He didn’t fast-forward. He just watched quietly as the tiny figure appeared from the corner of the street, rode through the monitored area, and disappeared on the other side.
The whole process lasted less than forty seconds, but he watched it three times.
Wen Ya squeezed onto the same chair with him, her eyes locked on the screen.
“Is that Xiao Yi?”
“Yeah,” he murmured, his eyes fixed on the footage. “The timeline places it right after White Sparrow’s death. There’s no direct surveillance pointing at her, but from the clues, it’s clear she did it.”
“White Sparrow?” Wen Ya’s expression shifted dramatically, morphing from confusion into a complicated mix of heartache and anger. “She went after White Sparrow alone? Why didn’t she tell me?”
Then, almost talking to herself, she added, “But our Baby is amazing, she actually killed him.”
As the clip of the girl riding her bike played again, Wen Ya cupped her cheeks, her tone shifting twice within seconds:
“So cute... so pitiful.”
“Really pitiful...”
“But also so cute.”
One moment, her eyes glistened with tears, feeling how miserable her daughter must be, bullied by that despicable man. If Xiao Yi had called her along, she could have torn White Sparrow limb from limb—first cut off his fingers, then break his ribs, making his death as ugly as possible.
The next moment, she was cupping her face, charmed by Xiao Yi riding the bike, her curly hair blown back by the night breeze, swaying unsteadily, looking like a brave little kitten wandering the world with a sword.
Shen Sixing wasn’t as emotional as she was.
His gaze deepened.
“Do you remember how Little Zhizhao acted around her when he first came to the house?”
Wen Ya: “Of course!! Little Zhizhao adored Xiao Yi right away.”
Her children had always gotten along harmoniously.
Wen Ya felt proud.
Shen Sixing: “...”
Never mind.
What could he expect from his wife when it came to reading the subtleties?
If his memory served him, the time when Shen Zhizhao first came to them was very close to the point when Shen Yi had killed for the first time.
Moreover, Shen Zhizhao’s attitude toward Shen Yi was too peculiar.
An uncontrollable focus, a kind of close but careful intimacy.
All the oddities he had sensed before were being dug up again.
Shen Sixing found some old files on his son.
Shen Zhizhao had experienced two major “incidents.”
The first was a kidnapping—or more precisely, after being kidnapped, he was “taken away” by a strange teenage girl.
He was eventually returned unharmed, had suffered no injuries, and was even said to have had a good time.
The second incident: he was taken to an island. After returning from that survival-horror ordeal, his personality changed drastically. His formerly soft temperament hardened, replaced by a quietness unusual for a child.
Shen Sixing laid out both events side by side.
He prepared to retrieve all footage and photos from the two incidents involving Shen Zhizhao.
Wen Ya watched him sip his coffee, ready to spend another sleepless night searching for the past, and couldn’t help gently reminding him:
“But that was so long ago, darling. There’s no guarantee it’s been preserved.”
Shen Sixing yawned. “It exists.”
His family was rather obsessive in that regard—everything was documented: tapes, videos, photos, written records—all archived.
Nothing was absolutely impossible to find, just harder to dig up.
After two days and one night,
He combed through all the databases and found it.
Twice.
The figure captured in the footage was Shen Yi both times.
The difference was that once she was a child, and once she was a teenager.
And the teenage girl’s outfit was the same as what she had worn when she fought White Sparrow not long ago.
That meant, after killing White Sparrow, she had undergone a second time-crossing.
Shen Sixing closed those files, rubbed his aching temples, feeling his brain overloaded with data.
He had a hypothesis—one so absurd he wanted to laugh at himself.
But if he put all the fragments together, only that one explanation could reconcile everything.
Was every major event Shen Yi participated in always accompanied by some kind of... time-crossing?
Then what was the motivation behind her first crossing?
Obviously, it was for Shen Ruxu.
And the second?
What death involving White Sparrow had driven her to face a killer of that caliber alone, without hesitation?
Shen Sixing didn’t want to think about that for now.
The key issue was this time.
The inexplicable way Shen Yi was targeting an old European noble family.
There must be some connection between her and Lorenzo that he didn’t yet understand.
And that banquet—the maritime banquet that the Visconti family insisted on hosting even after experiencing such a major upheaval—might be the very center of everything.
If his speculation holds, does Shen Yi's current move mean that the third "crossing" is about to happen?
If so, where would she go?
The past?
Or a more distant past? Whose side would she end up on this time?
He poured himself a glass of ice water, trying to calm down.
"What are you thinking about?"
Wen Ya hadn't overthought all of this; she was more accustomed to understanding things through emotions. Overthinking only led to the fear of stepping into an unknown void.
She wasn't quite sure what conclusion Shen Sixing had drawn from all these events.
"I'm thinking," Shen Sixing said softly, "if a person travels through time multiple times... would she, one day, simply not come back?"
