A full moon hung in the black canopy of night, spilling down moonlight as bright as frost.
Outside the door of a boys' dormitory at Jiangnan Martial Arts Academy, which had moved into the safe zone, a large crowd of students murmured among themselves, their faces full of fear and unease.
Bones and chunks of flesh littered the dormitory. Blood nearly carpeted the floor, and the thick, pungent stench of it filled the whole floor.
The police had arrived at the scene and begun their investigation. A middle-aged officer was questioning the students. "Didn't any of you hear anything strange while you were asleep?"
"No!"
"Didn't hear a thing!"
"We train hard every day. At night, we're usually out the moment our heads hit the pillow."
The middle-aged officer furrowed his brow. "Who found them first?"
"Me!" A burly student hesitated, then stepped forward. "I woke up in the middle of the night because I needed to pee. I got up, smelled blood, and then discovered what had happened."
The middle-aged officer watched him closely. He looked a little nervous, but that was a normal reaction to facing the police and proved nothing. Besides, his jacket was open, revealing his pajamas beneath, and the officer could see no trace of blood on them.
In a grisly dismemberment like this, it was impossible not to get blood on yourself—unless he had already changed out of his pajamas. But until they found more evidence, that was all just speculation.
Just then, another officer leaned in and whispered, "We found bite marks on the bones!"
The middle-aged officer jolted in alarm, his scalp prickling. Only a few scraps of flesh remained at the scene. He had assumed the killer had carried the rest away; all too often, brutal crimes defied reason.
He had