Officer Han slumped back against his chair.
He had been in the business for many years and had seen all kinds of murders and all kinds of bizarre, inexplicable cases.
No matter how strange a case looked on the surface, once they peeled back the layers and uncovered the truth, it always turned out to follow the laws of science.
But not a single thing that had happened today made any sense.
No matter how airtight the logic, there was no way to reason out:
Why a patient in a deep coma in the ICU had suddenly been able to leap into action and pry open a hospital room window;
Why someone could jump from the eighteenth floor without leaving a single drop of blood, then vanish without a trace;
Why a perfectly healthy person could suddenly age by twenty or thirty years.
A hundred thousand questions couldn't sort out the chaos in Officer Han's head.
At one point, Officer Han had even let his imagination run wild, thinking of a zombie apocalypse. Could the patient have turned into a bloodthirsty zombie? The zombies in movies and TV shows could do that.
But zombies were ravenous for blood. When they encountered so many fresh, living people, shouldn't they have feasted to their hearts' content? Why had the patient vanished so strangely?
Of course, that was only his imagination. His scientific approach to police work told him that zombies didn't exist.
At first glance, the fall from the building and the sudden aging seemed to have no connection at all.
But his instincts kept reminding him that bizarre events were often very likely to have some underlying connection.
"Little Jiang, what do you think..."
"I'll say the same thing as before: first, investigate those details and piece together a timeline. If we can find a location where the events overlap, the clues will become much clearer."
"Mm. We've already sent someone to check the surveillance footage. We should have some preliminary leads soon."
"Little Jiang, until then, I may have to ask you to stick around a little longer. But don't get the wrong idea. We're not forcing you to stay; we're asking you to help with the investigation."
Officer Han's words put Jiang Yue on equal footing, and his tone was exceptionally courteous.
Jiang Yue had never been one to turn away a friendly face.
Besides, Officer Han had every legal basis for what he was doing. By appealing to common decency instead, he was showing Jiang Yue respect.
No matter the circumstances, respect was always welcome.
Jiang Yue had no opinion on Officer Han's professional ability. But the man's way of speaking and conducting himself had a distinctly humane touch.
To pass the time, they chatted for quite a while.
They talked about everyday amusing incidents at the police station, among other things. Officer Han didn't hold back at all, and he and Jiang Yue chatted and laughed together. The atmosphere was remarkably congenial.
When Jiang Yue mentioned that his hometown was Panshi Ridge, Officer Han brought up Mount Dajin again, along with the landslide and the bus that had been buried.
The two of them couldn't help sighing over it.
There was a knock at the door, and an officer came in carrying a stack of documents. He glanced at Jiang Yue, clearly surprised to see the usually meticulous Captain Han chatting so amiably with a young man.
"Captain Han, here are the preliminary findings. We've put together a timeline, along with some surveillance stills. Please take a look."
Officer Han took the documents with a solemn expression. "Xiao Lu, go take care of your other work."
There weren't many pages, only about ten. More than half were surveillance stills, yet Officer Han spent a full quarter of an hour going through them.
"Little Jiang, why don't you take a look and give us your thoughts?" To Jiang Yue's surprise, Officer Han pushed the entire folder over to him.
Jiang Yue went through the documents much faster. His photographic memory meant he didn't need to flip back and forth to compare things.
The timeline was very clear.
10:50. The nurse from Star City Second Hospital left the ICU ward.
10:53. Sister He walked up the stairs from the seventeenth floor to the eighteenth floor and used the restroom there.
11:11. Ke Yunshan, the seventy-eight-year-old patient in the ICU, broke through a window and fell.
11:28. Traffic control began.
The report stated that, according to the ICU surveillance footage, the nurse had only performed routine care while in the ward. Nothing suspicious had happened.
"What do you think?" Officer Han asked.
"Doesn't the report mention the taxi driver at all? Didn't he go near the ICU?"
"If he'd gone there, the cameras would definitely have caught him. Besides, the ICU is on a separate floor, and ordinary people don't go up there. Why did your neighbor, this Ms. He, go to the ICU floor to use the restroom? That's another suspicious point."
"That's not really suspicious. Maybe she's particular about cleanliness and thought the restroom on the seventeenth floor was dirty. The restroom on the ICU floor gets less use, so it's cleaner. Knowing her, that's very possible."
"Officer Han, the connection is obvious."
"What do you mean?"
"The taxi driver never went to the ICU floor, yet he ended up in the same situation as those two people. What does that tell you? Do I really have to spell it out, Officer Han?"
"You mean..." Officer Han's expression was priceless. "The patient left in that taxi?"
"You'll have to check the surveillance footage to see when that car showed up outside the hospital. My guess is that it was sometime between 11:11 and 11:28, probably around 11:20."
"And I was his next passenger after that trip. I got in around 11:50. At the time, the driver mentioned the traffic control, and he also said he'd just picked up a fare at Second Hospital."
Traffic surveillance was under the police station's jurisdiction, so Officer Han pulled up the footage with ease.
Sure enough, the surveillance footage showed the taxi outside the hospital. At 11:22, it picked up a passenger.
In the footage, the passenger was hunched over, and his face looked as if it had been pixelated. The camera couldn't capture it at all. His entire figure flickered in and out of focus, hazy and indistinct, like a drifting cloud of mist. Only a vague outline was visible. It looked nothing like normal surveillance footage.
If the other people in the footage hadn't been acting perfectly normally, Officer Han would almost have suspected a malfunction.
What was going on here?
Was there really technology advanced enough to make someone look like a blurry cloud of mist on a surveillance camera?
"Little Jiang... this... is seriously strange, isn't it?"
For the first time, Officer Han felt that investigating a case could be so difficult, so helpless. He was dismayed to realize that his entire worldview was crumbling.
"It's strange, but there's still a logic to it."
"For example?"
"For example, the timeline fits perfectly. So we follow it and find out where the taxi took the passenger, where he got out, and where he's hiding..."
He'd already said too much.
If he went any further, it would start to sound like he was teaching the police how to investigate.
As for the deeper implications, unless Officer Han brought them up himself, Jiang Yue absolutely wasn't going to say them for him. He couldn't very well tell the man that the world had gone haywire and was crawling with demons and monsters!
Officer Han abruptly sat up straight and stared at Jiang Yue in surprise. Once again, Jiang Yue had arrived at the very same conclusion he had.
His first thought had also been to track down the bizarre patient, Ke Yunshan.
Sitting in his chair, Officer Han hesitated.
For now, everything was based on a private conversation between him and Jiang Yue. Although they had footage and documents, none of it counted as direct evidence.
For one thing, the surveillance footage hadn't captured Ke Yunshan's face at all. The existing evidence couldn't prove that the passenger the taxi had picked up was Ke Yunshan.
If he rushed off to investigate, could he end up taking the case in the wrong direction? Or even botch it?
In all his years on the job, Officer Han had never encountered such a difficult situation.
Jiang Yue didn't feel like sticking around any longer either. He thought of the pair of pants of San Gou's that he still hadn't dealt with, then of the strange, mistlike figure in the surveillance footage. It would have been a lie to say he wasn't worried.
After they exchanged contact information, Officer Han politely walked Jiang Yue to the door.
"By the way." Just as he was about to leave, Jiang Yue remembered something.
"There's another piece of evidence at my place that might help you sort out the clues, Officer Han."
"Oh?" Officer Han's eyes lit up.
"Before you see it, I should warn you again. This whole thing is genuinely bizarre. If you approach it with conventional thinking, you might end up paying for it."
Officer Han looked thoughtful but didn't respond. He started the car and waved Jiang Yue inside.
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