There Was Something Wrong with His Head

Of course, that wasn't all Gu Jianlin's profile revealed.

For example, after completing his initial profile, when he looked at the woman again, he saw a sexy pole dancer under the dazzling lights of a nightclub, with an excited crowd cheering below the stage. He could even hear the pounding music.

Countless threads of evidence wove together into the illusion of the past.

Like a ghostly spectator, he slipped silently into someone's past and watched her life unfold.

It seemed unreal, yet felt so real.

This was the woman's truest self.

Twenty-four years old. Pole dancer.

She'd married well.

His father had once said that as long as someone existed, they would inevitably leave traces behind.

Piece those traces together, and you would see another face—their truest self, as naked as the day they were born.

If Gu Jianlin kept observing, he could put together an even more complete profile.

The problem was, he couldn't explain to anyone what he was seeing.

Because it was a scene he'd imagined based on tiny clues and a powerful sixth sense. It could easily be dismissed as a hallucination.

No one would believe him if he said it aloud. They'd only think he was crazy.

"Little Gu, are you hallucinating again?"

Zhou Ze's words broke into the boy's thoughts.

Gu Jianlin came to his senses. The wind and rain fell on him once more, carrying a faint chill.

The dazzling nightclub had vanished. The pole onstage, the woman, and the audience had all disappeared without a trace.

The woman was still crying in front of the tombstone. She was certainly putting on a show—her acting was first-rate.

"No, I was just saying whatever came to mind."

Gu Jianlin smiled faintly.

Unlike that hypocritical woman, the three officers before him seemed genuinely sincere. Grief and regret showed on their faces.

They might think he had something wrong with his head, but they were all dedicated, dependable public servants. They were busy with work, yet still made time to pay their respects. That showed they truly cared.

"You're sure it wasn't a hallucination?"

Zhou Ze studied him suspiciously for a moment, then reminded him, "Listen to your doctor and take your medicine on time. Post-traumatic stress disorder is no small matter... especially with your college entrance exam only two months away."

"Don't worry, Uncle Zhou. I'm much better now."

Gu Jianlin didn't know how to explain, so he took out a wet wipe and started cleaning the tombstone, changing the subject.

Sometimes the gap between two people was greater than the gap between a person and a pig.

They were both people, but his father's profiles were authoritative—a major aid to solving cases.

His son's profiles, on the other hand, were just post-traumatic stress. People only told him to go see a doctor.

His father had studied psychology. He was an honorary professor at Fengcheng University and a profiler specially employed by the police. His greatest pride in life was probably his achievements in that field.

Back then, his father had made a name for himself with his profiling. Fresh out of university, he helped the police solve several major cases in a row. They said that even at a crime scene someone had deliberately covered up, he could reconstruct it on his own and simulate the killer's line of thinking. Sometimes, without a coroner's help, he could look at a corpse and tell you the cause of death and what the victim had been doing recently.

The wildest rumor was that his father could talk to corpses, imagine himself as the deceased, and use that to get close to the killer.

When Gu Jianlin was little, he thought that was cool. He'd pestered his father to teach him, too. But perhaps he was just too stupid. His father died before he ever learned how to profile.

Yet after the car accident four months ago, he suddenly found that he could do it.

From then on, the real world appeared before his eyes in every last detail.

At first, Gu Jianlin thought the accident had injured his brain and inadvertently stimulated its evolution. But when he told the adults that, they all suggested he see a psychiatrist.

Gu Jianlin didn't know if his father experienced those vivid, almost hallucinatory scenes when he profiled people.

He still felt that the car accident had caused some kind of mutation in his brain.

And that it had strengthened his profiling ability.

He didn't know how to explain it to other people, or even what to call this ability. For now, he simply called it profiling.

"All right, I've still got a case to handle, so I should get going."

Zhou Ze was quiet for a moment, then said, "Don't dwell on what happened to your dad. I know you did everything you could. But people have to learn to look ahead. The case will be closed tomorrow. Remember to come to the Public Security Office and sign the paperwork."

Gu Jianlin paused in the middle of wiping the tombstone, then scrubbed even harder. "Got it, Uncle Zhou."

Zhou Ze seemed surprised that the boy had agreed so readily this time. "Want me to drive you home?"

"No, thanks."

Gu Jianlin forced a smile. "It's not far. I can walk back and clear my head."

The polished tombstone reflected the boy's pale, weary profile.

The black Mercedes drove along a fog-shrouded highway.

"That kid's had it rough."

The young officer behind the wheel sighed. "I thought he was about to fall apart. He looked like a paper doll... Are you sure he'll be okay going home like that?"

"Don't worry, Xiao Zhang. He's not as fragile as you think. When he first got out of the hospital, he came to the police station every other day. His teachers said he even climbed over the school wall to get out. It's three and a half meters high. I'd struggle to climb it myself."

Xiao Zhang shrugged and muttered, "That's not the same thing, is it? Back then, he was still running on sheer willpower. But he seemed more stable today than before."

Zhou Ze sat in the back with his eyes closed, resting. He sighed.

"His parents divorced when he was little, and he grew up with Professor Gu. Who could've expected something like this? Still, after such a terrible car accident, it's a blessing he survived."

He took a tablet from his briefcase and opened an image.

It showed the scene of the highway accident. A truck had collided with a car, which had been crushed almost flat and was billowing smoke.

He thought for a moment, then opened a video.

A pale boy sat on a hospital bed like a ghost, his eyes vacant.

An officer sat in front of him and asked gently, "Do you remember what happened that day?"

"Dad came back from a business trip overseas. He said he was taking me to our hometown for the New Year."

"Then what? What else do you remember?"

"Um... Dad was in a hurry that day. It seemed like something was going on. I remember we got on the highway."

"Then you collided with that truck and had an accident."

"No. It wasn't an accident."

"Why do you say it wasn't an accident?"

"Because I saw the killer."

"But the surveillance footage shows no one else there. The truck driver died at the scene, too."

"No, there really was someone. I definitely saw him. You have to believe me. There was someone else."

"But..."

"Please believe me! I can profile people! I can draw his face!"

The video froze on the moment the boy suddenly growled. He looked like a furious little beast.

Zhou Ze had always thought of the boy as polite, gentle, and calm.

He'd never seen him lose control like that.

Perhaps anyone could become someone else after losing the person who mattered most to them.

"If he's willing to come to the Public Security Office and confirm the paperwork, he's probably accepted reality by now, right? The doctors said he imagined a killer because he couldn't accept that his father was dead," Xiao Zhang said casually as he drove.

"But I'm curious. What exactly did he profile back then? What if he was right?" another officer asked.

Xiao Zhang pursed his lips. "Are you questioning the surveillance footage? Or our intelligence?"

Zhou Ze took a yellowed piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it silently. "Do you think the so-called killer could have been this?"

The yellowed paper showed a contorted, deformed creature drawn in colored pencil.

It wasn't even human. It was a monstrous bird with nine heads, each bearing a hideous human face.

Zhou Ze had looked into it afterward. The creature came from the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and was known as the Ghost Cart, the Ghost Bird, or the Nine-Headed Bird.

Of course, the Ghost Cart in the actual myths didn't have human faces on its heads.

Given that, he could only conclude that the boy really was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gu Jianlin didn't like places like cemeteries. Too many people here were not what they seemed.

With an umbrella over his head and his suitcase in hand, he passed countless people.

The cemetery vanished, replaced by a jumble of scenes: a programmer dozing at his desk, a musician sobbing in front of a piano, and a young caregiver grinning at an old man's bedside.

Some people looked grief-stricken but were secretly overjoyed. Others seemed calm, though inside they had already broken down in tears.

Profiling was useful, but seeing through people too clearly wasn't always a good thing.

The woman who'd sobbed her heart out at the tombstone came out of the public restroom. She'd touched up her makeup at some point and was happily talking on her phone. "Darling, I just attended that old bastard's funeral. Once I get my share of the inheritance, we'll have money."

Gu Jianlin glanced at her, then looked away.

Ever since he learned to profile people, he hadn't been wrong once. Yet no one believed him.

By the time he woke up after the car accident, two months had passed. The investigation was nearly over, and his father's funeral had already taken place—damn it—while he'd been completely unaware.

He'd spent this whole time chasing answers about his father. He could accept that his father was dead, but he needed to know how he'd died.

So despite the doctors' and his mother's objections, he'd gone to the Public Security Office again and again, just to prove he was right.

Gu Jianlin remembered the accident. He only recalled that it had been raining heavily and a cargo truck had come hurtling toward them. His last memory was of his father unbuckling his seat belt and pulling him into his arms.

A deafening crash, and his life shattered into pieces.

Even now, remembering that moment still made him tremble with fear.

But when he remembered the sense of safety he'd felt in his father's arms, he felt a little more at ease.

In that last instant before he lost consciousness, he had truly seen someone standing in front of him.

Later, Gu Jianlin profiled that person's face.

A terrifying, monstrous face.

But the irrefutable fact was that the surveillance footage from the scene showed no fourth person.

There had only been the truck driver, his father, and him.

In the end, the accident was ruled an unfortunate car crash, and the case was closed.

The judgment of Gu Jianlin, a newly minted profiler, was buried along with his unlucky father.

Now that some time had passed, Gu Jianlin had recovered from his initial grief at losing his closest family member and regained a measure of reason. He'd begun to wonder if his profile had been wrong, because he really had been badly injured back then.

In that state, what he saw really could have been a hallucination.

At first, everyone had thought Professor Gu's son might have a talent for profiling. The result, however, had left them dumbfounded.

Lately, people at the police station had been saying behind his back and to his face: What a loser!

To the point that even Gu Jianlin thought he was a loser.

What a lousy streak.

Of course, that wasn't even the worst of it.

He still had to go home soon—to someone else's home.

His parents had divorced when he was little, but his mother still loved him very much.

Gu Jianlin was still a few months away from adulthood. Now that his father was gone, his mother had naturally become his new guardian and taken him to live in her new home.

The problem was that his mother had started a new family five years ago, and they were all living happily together.

Gu Jianlin hadn't wanted to disrupt his mother's new life, but he couldn't win against her stubbornness. In the end, he'd hauled all his bags into their new home and been forced to accept a new family.

The new home was in the south of the city. It was in the old district, but the neighborhood was close to the sea and had prime real estate. Homes there now cost over sixty thousand yuan per square meter. The coast was only fifty meters away on foot, where you could enjoy the sea breeze and sunshine.

One thing worth mentioning was that his mother's new home was on the ground floor and had a courtyard.

There were two trees in the courtyard.

One was a jujube tree, and the other was also a jujube tree.

More importantly, his mother now had two daughters.

One wasn't her biological daughter.

The other wasn't either.

Just then, Gu Jianlin's phone vibrated softly with another WeChat message.

Su Youzhu: "Come home early after visiting Uncle Gu's grave. Don't wander around. Mom asked me to make you breakfast. It's in the microwave; heat it for two minutes and remember to eat. I have something to do, so I'm heading out."

Gu Jianlin fell silent for a second. He hadn't expected the girl to take to calling her Mom so easily.

She was his mother's daughter in name. The older one already had a job, and the younger one went to the same high school as him.

The one who'd texted him was the younger one.

Gu Jianlin had been in poor health since childhood, and now he'd just been in a car accident and lost the father he'd depended on. In his mother's eyes, he'd practically reverted to being a baby. The whole family treated him like one, too.

He was grateful, but it made him uncomfortable.

Suddenly, someone called his phone. The caller ID showed Old Zhang.

He worked at the courier station downstairs from his old place.

Not the new home, but the place he and his father had rented before.

"Hello?"

Gu Jianlin answered.

"Hello, hello! Little Gu?"

Old Zhang boomed, "Are you still going to pick up your packages?"

Gu Jianlin froze. "What packages?"

"Your dad's packages! They've been sitting here for months. We'll have to start charging you for storage!"

Gu Jianlin frowned. As far as he knew, his father never ordered anything online.

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