Yang Ping went on, "And another thing, did you notice this? In Professor Zhou's lab notebook, he wrote 'synthesis of a novel chiral organophosphorus ligand.' If A-8 is exactly that new compound he synthesized, then the whole incident might have been an accident: he created a highly toxic compound, accidentally came into contact with it during handling, suffered chronic poisoning, and ultimately died."
He paused and looked at Zhaxi. "This explanation is simpler than murder. No killer, no motive, no complicated conspiracy."
Zhaxi opened his mouth but couldn't get any words out. Yang Ping was right; accidental poisoning was indeed simpler than murder. And it didn't require explaining so many doubts: how did the killer get the keys? How did they know which books Professor Zhou would pull out? How did they get A-8 onto the books?
Yet he still felt that something was off.
