Read Chapter 22: — TWO PROFESSOR ZOUS

The case pivoted.

Investigators reconstructed the timeline from the beginning.

Zou Shiyuan had exploited the brothers’ near-identical appearance to enter Shiming’s professional life. He could attend meetings, provoke rivals, sign off on non-operative matters and disappear whenever real surgical skill was required.

The genuine Zou Shiming emerged for operations, selected consultations and parts of the GTP5 programme that demanded his expertise.

The deception had lasted because people prefer personality explanations to impossible ones.

“He’s moody.”

“He’s brilliant but difficult.”

“He’s different in theatre.”

“He only respects surgery.”

All true enough to protect a larger lie.

The remains previously assumed to be Zou Shiming were re-examined.

Identical twins complicated biological identification. The body had also been badly damaged. Investigators therefore combined forensic findings with dental history, old injuries, medical records and the chronology of appearances.

There was no single cinematic test.

There was convergence.

A healed fracture documented years earlier.

Dental work that matched one brother’s records better than the other’s.

An old surgical scar.

A time line that no longer made sense if the dead man was Shiming.

Piece by piece, the body once mourned as Professor Zou Shiming became more consistent with Zou Shiyuan.

The consequence was absurd enough to sound comic if a man had not been murdered.

The famous surgeon the country believed dead might still be alive while hundreds of bouquets were fading outside his hospital.

Li remembered the rainy morning and felt irrational anger toward the flowers.

Then he corrected himself.

People had not mourned for nothing.

Someone had died.

They had simply mourned him under the wrong name.

Chenxi stood before the evidence board late that night.

“My father died trying to solve the wrong death.”

Li shook his head.

“No. He died trying to solve the right crime. We just didn’t know its name.”

The next question was harder.

Who killed Shiyuan?

Evidence increasingly pointed toward people connected to Gao Xingchen.

The motive appeared to be a collision of business interests, blackmail, control of GTP5 and fear that Shiyuan knew too much about too many people.

A man had spent years stealing his brother’s identity.

In the end, that stolen identity may have helped get him killed.