Ji Li Rong

Ji Li Rong, known as Moon, is a missing student whose identification helps turn the investigation’s unidentified dead into people with recoverable histories. Her bracelet leads detectives to her family, and the discovery that she had an abortion connects her case to the pattern they are trying to understand. The facts established about her life are spare, but they give the case a particular human cost: she was a student making a decision to protect her education, then disappeared, leaving her family to identify her among the recovered victims.

Identity and Background

Ji Li Rong was a second-year student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her father had given her the nickname Moon when she was a baby, because her face was round like the moon. The name therefore carried a family history quite different from the later account offered by the night watchman Jiang Baofu, who said that he had called a girl Moon because he thought her beautiful. The distinction is consequential: the nickname was not merely a vague description that could support Jiang’s story, but a detail her parents could place within their daughter’s life from infancy.

Ji disappeared about nine months before the detectives found a match for her. Her family’s account places her disappearance in the middle of an ordinary educational trajectory: she was progressing through university, with her future still oriented toward her studies. The investigation supplies no further details about her daily life, so her portrait remains bounded by the few facts her family and the case records recover.

Disappearance and Identification

A bracelet provides the first concrete link between the unidentified remains and Ji. Detective Qian tells Li Yan that he has found a match, after speaking with her parents; when asked whether the bracelet was hers, he confirms that they recognized it. The object narrows the distance between a case file and a specific missing person, though it does not by itself complete the identification.

Her parents are brought to the mortuary to examine the recovered bodies. Li Yan asks that the bodies be checked so Ji can be identified, and learns that her parents are already on their way. The scene makes identification both an investigative necessity and a painful family task: the detectives need a reliable name, while her parents must confront what happened to their daughter in order to provide it. Their recognition confirms that Ji was among the women recovered from the earth at Lujiazui. The investigation’s long list of unknown victims has, at least in her case, acquired a name and a family able to speak for her.

Education, Pregnancy, and the Case Pattern

Qian reports that Ji had an abortion halfway through her first year at university. She did not want an unwanted pregnancy to obstruct her education. The account presents this as a decision tied to her plans, not as an explanation of her character or a judgment on her choices. The book does not give further information about the pregnancy or the circumstances surrounding it.

For the detectives, the abortion is important because it places Ji within the emerging pattern among the victims. Li Yan understands that the connection between the women’s reproductive histories and their deaths is not yet fully explained; he recognizes that, in some way he cannot yet account for, the abortion had cost Ji her life. The distinction between established fact and unresolved inference matters. Her abortion is confirmed, and her death is established through identification, but the mechanism linking the two still has to be investigated.

The Bracelet and Jiang Baofu’s Account

Ji’s identification also changes the meaning of a detail in Jiang Baofu’s account. When Li Yan confronts him, he disputes the identification implied by the nickname and says that Moon was simply what he called a beautiful girl. Li Yan answers with the specific history supplied by Ji’s family: the bracelet belonged to Ji Li Rong, a student at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and her father had called her Moon since she was a baby. He also tells Jiang that her parents have identified her among the women recovered at Lujiazui.

Jiang hesitates, then suggests that he may have picked up the bracelet at the site and confused it with another girl’s. Li Yan ends the interview and says he will have Jiang formally charged with murder. The bracelet thus does more than assist in naming a victim: set against Jiang’s shifting explanation, it becomes part of the evidence that tests his account. The text records Li Yan’s decision to pursue a formal charge; it does not establish the eventual outcome of that charge.

Narrative Significance

Ji is not developed through extended scenes of her own. Instead, the reader encounters her through the work of recovery: a missing-person match, an object recognized by her parents, a nickname corrected by family history, and an abortion that sharpens the investigation’s search for a connection among the victims. This limited, evidence-led portrait suits the case’s central problem. The women first appear to the investigators as a collective whose identities are unknown; each recovered fact resists that anonymity.

Her story also exposes the difference between a clue and an explanation. The bracelet and her parents’ account establish who she was, while the abortion contributes to a pattern whose full significance remains to be solved. Ji’s identification brings the investigation closer to understanding the victims, but it does not make the loss less severe or the case complete. Her name turns an unidentified victim into a daughter and student, even as the reason her life ended remains part of the larger mystery.