Vol. 11: The Instinct for Violence

As Lapis Lazuli Guards and the militia's most trusted VIP, Jun-ge is bound to assist in solving the case now that such a horrific massacre has occurred in town.

"This can be deduced from the clues collected at the crime scene."

Oscar made a resounding judgment.

"The one who killed the quartermaster and his family of three must have been a human!"

The second-in-command of the military station, who had been waiting for the results for a long time, was surprised when the VIP uttered such a nonsensical sentence.

"Then what?"

Oscar replied awkwardly, "And then... that's it."

Asking him to explore unknown lands in the Elf Holy Land, to fight monstrous beasts in the wilderness, and to survive in complex environments, this great wolf was not afraid at all—but when it came to investigating cases, this was really not the Red Stone People's forte.

Oscar didn't have much criminal investigation ability. He came to the crime scene with the militiamen to conduct the investigation, entirely to give law enforcement some confidence and prevent Saladin's outpost from falling into complete chaos and out of control.

The second-in-command looked like a deflated balloon, his face full of disappointment. This middle-aged man was balding and slightly overweight. He gripped the door frame of the quartermaster's residence with one hand and used the other to block his subordinates from coming in and disrupting the scene.

His militia identification card bore his real name— Getze Saladin.

From his surname, we can tell that this militia officer was a local of Saladin, and also belonged to the gentry class.

"Any other clues?" Getze pressed.

Faced with the bloody and horrific crime scene, Oscar still laughed it off, "Sorry, this isn't my forte."

The quartermaster's residence was covered in blood. The bodies of the three victims had been dismembered and scattered throughout the house, with various items and furniture stained with human tissue. Without professional criminal investigators, it would be impossible to reconstruct the scene. To determine the specific cause of death and find the murder weapon to reconstruct the murder method, it would definitely require consulting a highly skilled expert.

Are there any people like this in Saladin town?

It used to exist.

Now he lay on the ground, along with his wife and children, turned into a pulpy mess on the carpet, scattered pieces of their bodies.

The quartermaster was very capable in criminal investigation. He always took a hands-on approach to violent crimes in the town, which is why he was able to sit in this position. He was not only a "good mother" who managed the food, drink and toilet of the military station, but also served as the district police chief and a "good father" who punished evil and eliminated crime. But today, this official has died suddenly at home with his wife and children.

This remote town has few talented people; those with talent all want to go to the Hot Spring Market. The siphon effect of big cities makes it difficult for these remote towns to retain many talents.

"While I may not have the ability, I know who can solve this case," Oscar told Getze.

Getze's eyes lit up. "Really?"

Within five minutes, Maquire and Jiang Xueming arrived at the scene, received their credentials stamped by Mr. Getze, and began investigating the murder case.

"This surgeon is very experienced." Oscar put his arm around Getze's shoulder, telling his second-in-command to relax, "Maquire is absolutely capable of identifying the murder weapon."

Wolf Brother pointed at Jiang Xueming: "This psychologist seems to have some psychic abilities. He can do character profiling and determine the killer's personality structure—these two are my underlings, how about that? Pretty impressive, Wolf Brother? Pretty impressive, right?"

Faced with the VIP's self-praise, Getze was somewhat embarrassed. "Impressive."

Jiang Xueming and Maquire crossed the entryway, carefully avoiding the bloodstains, and squatted down next to the shoe cabinet, their movements almost identical.

"Maquire, what did you see?"

"I don't know," Maquire said, following the trail of blood. "The bloodstains on the wall are radial, pointing inwards. I don't understand why. If I could disturb the scene, I'd like to taste some of the blood here; maybe it will remind me of something."

"The suspect and the victim knew each other." Jiang Xueming made the judgment immediately, his palm tracing the dried blood on the wall towards the door, but he did not touch it directly.

"Why?" Maquire didn't understand. He needed to taste the victim's essence to make a profile analysis, but these things were as simple as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division for Zhang Congfeng.

"The suspect knocked properly before entering." Jiang Xueming was almost pressed against the floor, sniffing the carpet. "He didn't walk; he came by car. There's a smell of rubber floorboards from a vehicle. It wasn't Saint Josh Joris did it."

Maquire was so shocked he couldn't speak. He quickly looked at Oscar and said, "Brother Wolf, can I take some blood from the wall to eat?"

"Sure!" Oscar said with a smile, making the decision for Mr. Getze.

Maquire dabbed some sticky blood on his finger and put it in his mouth.

--Berloberg's spirit immediately took effect; he entered the crime scene and returned to the time of the incident.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, followed by a familiar voice calling out. He opened the door without hesitation, wanting to see the murderer's face, but he couldn't; the amount of blood was simply not enough to reconstruct the murderer's appearance.

His body involuntarily welcomed the murderer into the room. During this time, he could not hear any conversation, but could only feel the mouth opening and closing, seemingly in a friendly and approachable manner.

Immediately afterwards, the murderer suddenly pulled out a knife.

Jiang Xueming: "The suspect and the victim were colleagues, and they often gathered in this house."

He pointed to the empty space in the shoe cabinet.

"There's a size 43 shoe print here; that's where the killer was supposed to be."

"His stride after entering the room is like this, Jun-ge, take a good look."

Jiang Xueming returned to the main gate and then demonstrated how the first victim died.

He stepped in, grabbed the non-existent victim, controlled the victim's right hand, and took two steps into the entrance hallway, arriving at the spot where the bloodstains were concentrated.

Before taking a third step, in the instant the victim turned around to call his wife and children to greet the guests, Xue Ming took out a barbecue skewer from his waist, used it as a knife, and slashed the victim's throat.

"So the bloodstains you saw were radiating from this angle."

To Maquire, the suspect's figure almost completely overlapped with that of Dr. Zhang Congfeng, which greatly surprised him.

Jiang Xueming then proceeded to deduce and reconstruct the sequence.

"--The suspect was excited; he didn't deliberately avoid the blood on the victim's body."

He pressed himself against the wall, pointing to the blurry outline reflected on it.

"He realized that these outlines might provide clues for later militia members to compare their physiques, so there was a new layer of blood here."

"This isn't the quartermaster's blood; it's the blood of his wife and children. It was applied later, and there's a layer of fabric texture from blood-stained clothes wiping the wall on top. The suspect weighs over 80 kilograms and is about 186 centimeters tall."

"Let's look further inside."

Xue Ming avoided the bloodstains and body parts on the entrance path.

"After killing the quartermaster, he didn't immediately dump the body; instead, he shouted something to the other two victims in the hall."

"I suspect this is his method of luring his prey—"

He cleared his throat and stopped beside the vanity mirror in the dressing room.

"There are two very obvious clues here. The quartermaster's family has been quite relaxed lately, and the lady of the house doesn't need to go out to participate in activities often. Her woolen coat is here, along with a deerskin hat for warmth."

Xue Ming pointed to the small vanity mirror--

"--These clothes easily attract dust, and the dry winter left the bottles and jars on the dressing table covered in a layer of dust. But they didn't clump together. The suspect was right there, dragging the dying quartermaster, pleading for help from the lady of the house and the children."

What did he say? It must have been something like this.

"Help me! Help me! The quartermaster has been assassinated! Madam! Help me!"

A loud and forceful cry for help traveled through the wooden floor of the entryway to the vanity, shaking out a layer of dust that had accumulated beneath the mirror.

"The foundation and hand cream caps had a thin layer of dust on them; they should have been intact. The noise, nearly 100 decibels, shattered them."

Jiang Xueming explained.

"That righteous cry for help quickly turned into a deer whistle, attracting the remaining two prey. Then he switched weapons. He was a very cruel man, and adept at disguising himself as a righteous and honorable person."

He arrived at the junction of the entrance hall and the living room, where there was a decorative doorway.

"The quartermaster's wife died here. She didn't notice anything amiss at first and went to the suspect's side. This further convinced me that my judgment was correct; the suspect and this family were acquaintances."

"She was attacked here, helping the suspect move the quartermaster's body, trying to retrieve a first-aid kit from a storage box to give her husband first aid."

"She was half-crouched in front of the canvas bag by the doorway when she was struck hard on the back of the head. The murder weapon was an ashtray next to the TV cabinet."

Jiang Xueming was almost pressed against the wall in front of the doorway, pointing to the rough surface of the cement wall.

"There were some skin flakes and winter moisturizing cream left on the wall. The second victim suffered a blow to the back of the head and fell headfirst into the wall."

Next, you'll be faced with a room full of filth, bloodstains, and body parts.

Jiang Xueming followed them all the way, writing character profiles and providing evidence as he went.

"His waist was about 170 to 180 centimeters. The child witnessed the last scene when he attacked the quartermaster's wife."

"The child was terrified, so he started to run away."

"He chased after the TV cabinet, his obese belly bumping into the corner of the bookshelf, knocking the books out."

He chased after them to the second floor, but couldn't unlock the door to the children's room, so he went back down to the first floor.

"The quartermaster's wife hasn't woken up yet; he stayed here for a while."

Jiang Xueming paused, facing the sofa.

"He intended to molest the quartermaster's wife, but gave up. The sofa was too low; for him to bend over, take off his pants, and continue controlling the unconscious victim would be too troublesome and tiring. He probably has some chronic lumbar problems, and the impact of hitting the bookshelf earlier made him abandon the idea of rape. There was no extra human bodily fluid here."

"Meanwhile, the quartermaster did not receive timely medical attention and has died--"

"--Right here, on the sofa, this part of the leather goods has the most severe bloodstain accumulation."

"The suspect has come to the back garden."

Jiang Xueming led Maquire to open the back door of the kitchen and bathroom.

"He was very familiar with the quartermaster's family. Without taking any unnecessary steps, he went straight to the tool room, grabbed a diesel-powered chainsaw, and prepared to break the lock on the children's room door."

He returned to the quartermaster's wife's side and judged the direction of the bloodstains by their radial pattern.

Jiang Xueming, carrying the "invisible chainsaw," made a cut along the low armchair.

"He disemboweled the quartermaster's wife here and turned her over. He harbored intense hatred and possessiveness towards her, believing that the quartermaster had stolen his partner. He wanted to use this cruel method to tear off her clothes and chest, and cut open her intestines and even her uterus."

Jiang Xueming pointed to the bloodstains on the ceiling and some cooking fumes next to them.

"These are diesel smoke trails left from when the chainsaw was started. He tried pulling the chainsaw at least four or five times."

"Finally, he went up to the second floor, cut the lock on the children's room door, and entered the room, but did not find the child immediately."

Jiang Xueming, with a fierce and menacing expression, paced back and forth, carrying a non-existent murder weapon.

"He was furious because some footprints were left behind. He wanted to use the child's blood to mop the floor and destroy the evidence of the footprints. That's what he was thinking."

"He was carrying a chainsaw in one hand, rummaging through drawers and cupboards, crawling under the bed to search for the child."

"The chainsaw wasn't stopped, which is very dangerous. He almost hurt himself, right here, next to this child's desk."

Jiang Xueming squeezed against one corner of the children's desk and opened the small backpack inside. Maquire was shocked, for the child's dismembered body was inside.

"He found the quartermaster's child in the bag, dragged him out, sawed him to pieces, and then stuffed him back in."

"Next comes the step of cleaning up the crime scene."

Jiang Xueming regained his composure, his eyes cold as he stared at every bloodstained spot in the house.

"He chopped up the quartermaster and his wife's bodies and randomly dumped them in various places. There were no strange religious rituals involved, but this murderer must have had another purpose."

"The composition of the dismembered remains in the schoolbag was very complex; some of the child's organs were mixed with those of his parents."

"Judging from the amount of human tissue it contains, I believe this thing took the father's liver, the mother's heart, and part of the child's small intestine."

"The children's room contained the most excrement, which is also evidence that the murderer removed the intestines. He broke up and reassembled the organs of the three victims, trying to cover up his intention to kill and remove flesh with the broken corpses. He worked for Saint Josh. Josh Joris."

The two returned to the first floor and played the recording of the profiling session for Oscar.

Wolf felt increasingly uneasy. One second he was listening to ghost stories with Getze, the next he turned his head away.

"He's over 185 centimeters tall, overweight, with a six-foot waist, wears size 43 shoes, and has a lumbar spine problem. He's acquainted with the quartermaster, and his wife is an old friend, possibly a classmate from high school or university."

Getze was sweating profusely and didn't know what to say.

Jiang Xueming: "I can conclude that the suspect is a fat man who is extremely insecure and jealous around women. He knows that apart from the quartermaster, there are almost no reliable criminal investigators in Saladin town, so he will definitely return to the scene as soon as possible and gain some psychological satisfaction by observing the panicked expressions of the officers at the outpost."

"He was very likely the one who called the police, the first to sound the alarm and alert the public to safety. He had the authority to simultaneously activate the fire department's sirens, Saladin's Spirit Calamity, and the military post sirens."

"No chainsaw for weeding or flower cutting was found at the scene, no ashtray, and no dagger, the primary murder weapon for the burglary. Judging from the depth of the stab wound on the quartermaster's throat, the knife is a dagger, likely a militia weapon from the military post, not a survival knife belonging to the hunting party."

"The killer is very fat; we can find him through an important clue."

"He can change clothes, wash away bloodstains, clean human tissue from under fingernails, and remove all traces from the body."

"But time is of the essence, and there's one thing we can't eliminate."

Jiang Xueming grabbed Oscar's narrow mouth and nose and brought it close to Mr. Getze's nose.

"This guy inhaled the fumes from the chainsaw. His obese physique gives him a lot of skin folds, including under his armpits, on his belly, and between his throat and neck. The grime from these fumes gets trapped in his respiratory tract and the folds of skin—it's impossible to clean it off in just a few hours. Take a sniff."

As he said this, Xue Ming took out a small bottle containing No. 35 diesel oil from the tool shed, sprinkled it on the wall, and lit a small flame the size of Thumb. The smell immediately entered Oscar's nose.

Getze finally realized that something was terribly wrong.

"Don't"

Oscar's nose twitched, sniffing out evidence of guilt from the fat pig's body, and his pair of bright yellow wolf eyes widened.

"Damn it!"

The militiamen following behind Getze understood what VIP meant. They swarmed forward and pinned Getze against the door. Within a minute, they found the murder weapon in Getze's car—a standard piece of equipment from the military post, a militia dagger.

Maquire was quite surprised by the criminal investigation skills that Zhang Congfeng displayed; it seemed to be a keen sense of smell, a special talent for identifying violent instincts, which made him even more curious about the doctor's true identity.

Zhang Congfeng seemed to know nothing about the spirit of Berloberg. In the few words he uttered while talking to the scalpel, the psychiatrist acted as if he were seeing a spirit for the first time.

"We're going to find Saint Josh." Before Maquire could think further, Jiang Xueming said to the lost sheep, "He's started inciting ordinary people to commit crimes. We must stop him before other innocent people are harmed."

Maquire: "Us? The two of us? What are we supposed to do? This has nothing to do with Saint Josh. It was Getze who killed the quartermaster's family. We have no evidence, and we don't have a search warrant."

Jiang Xueming was truly enraged. He hadn't expected that in the time it took to have a barbecue, three more lives would slip away.

"Go see him. I'll wait outside. If he still wants to cook for you, catch him in the act of cannibalism. Getze also needs to reveal the whereabouts of the remaining two murder weapons. The chainsaw and ashtray are very important mediumial tools. Without these simple and easy-to-use spiritual objects, it's impossible to perform the spirit-summoning ritual. Unless we find a more effective soul-guiding lamp and incense, Qingjin can't directly question the victim through special means—these things must be in Saint Josh's hands. He's going to help Getze deal with the evidence."

Maquire: "What if this guy resists? I can't fool you psychiatrists."

Jiang Xueming didn't say much, only replying with four words.

"I have a way."