Not far away.
Two figures in black trench coats stood silently watching the concrete house ahead.
A girl's screams and sinister laughter kept pouring out, echoing through the night sky.
One of the men in black, who looked about fifty, slowly took out a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit it, then took a slow drag.
Beside him, the noticeably younger man seemed unable to stomach the horror. His expression was stricken, and he swallowed nervously.
As luck would have it.
A passerby happened to come through this deserted place, drawn by the terrifying sounds from the concrete house.
He approached the two men in black and asked in alarm, "Hey, is someone in there... attacking someone? Killing someone?"
The passerby's body trembled slightly. "I can't do anything on my own. Let's go take a look together, all three of us!"
The older man in black slowly turned his head, revealing a weathered face covered in stubble.
But he showed no intention of approaching the house. He merely eased his trench coat open, revealing a metallic glint at his waist.
The passerby froze, his eyes widening. "A police badge...?!"
The man in black spoke calmly. "We're working a case."
Looking bewildered, the passerby pointed at the distant concrete house. "But... in there..."
The man in black pulled his coat a little farther open, exposing the grip of a gun holstered at his waist.
His voice remained calm. "For your own safety, leave immediately."
The passerby stood stunned.
He had no idea what was going on.
Were they crooked cops?!
But faced with that very real gun, he dared not cause trouble. Staying alive came first!
He hurried away, stumbling every few steps.
Two minutes later.
A boy named Qin Yiguan slowly pushed open the wooden door and stepped out of the concrete house.
He held a dagger, its backward-pointing tip dripping blood.
His face and clothes were also covered in glaring bloodstains.
Under the moonlight, he stared ahead for a moment.
Then he calmly walked up to the two men in black and met their eyes.
A brief silence followed.
The older man took another drag from his cigarette and asked, "Dead?"
The boy nodded. "Dead."
At that moment, the younger man pulled an extremely thin tablet from inside his coat and studied it with a frown.
The screen displayed a photograph of the girl in the white dress, with a line of small text beneath it-Case file: Missing girl.
The older man took another drag. "I'd still been holding out hope that the girl was only missing. Now it looks like she'll never go home to her parents."
Then.
The older man waved a hand.
The younger man stepped forward and lowered his head to tap the tablet.
A strange sight unfolded.
The concrete house before them flashed blue, then lost its colors, leaving only its basic outlines. Those lines turned into code that drifted through the air like willow fluff and vanished.
The bloodstains on Qin Yiguan's face also glowed blue, then turned into code and drifted away.
The boy's face was clean again, and so was his dagger.
It was as though none of it had happened.
He held the dagger up to the moonlight, turning it over to inspect it, then slipped it into the schoolbag he carried.
Then.
The boy raised his head. "The killer is male, thirty-five, a painter. He wears glasses. You could say he has religious beliefs-he worships Western demons."
"He killed the girl nearby, in an enclosed space, then dismembered her into twenty-eight pieces."
"Head west from here. You'll find the body parts in the sewers along the way."
The boy finished speaking.
The two men in black exchanged flickering looks.
After a long while.
The younger man finally couldn't hold back his questions. "Look, I know you're that part-time detective everyone at the station talks about. Um... some people call you the 'Perversion Detective.'"
"You can use our holographic simulation technology to return to crime scenes and work out what happened."
"But..."
The younger man paused. "All we know so far is that this girl has been missing for seven days, and this area is only where she disappeared. With so little information..."
"How can you be certain she's been murdered?"
"How can you be certain the killer is that man... and thirty-five?"
"And how can you be certain the girl was dismembered, into exactly twenty-eight pieces?"
"One more thing."
"Why must the body be hidden in the sewers to the west?"
The boy remained calm. "I'm not just guessing, of course."
At this, he tilted his head slightly to glance at the older man, who had a cigarette between his lips. "It's thanks to the information Officer Wang gave me four days ago."
"He gave me sixteen suspects in total, all people who had been in contact with the victim within the past thirty days."
"I... have an ability."
The boy's voice suddenly grew low, his eyes flickering. "As long as I collect enough information, I can imitate anyone. Their every movement, their expressions, their thought processes. I can even reproduce the physical symptoms of illnesses while being monitored by medical equipment. Even doctors can't tell."
The younger man looked taken aback. "Is that... actually possible?"
"Using Officer Wang's detailed information, I imitated all sixteen suspects, one by one, and spent some time living as each of them."
"I discovered..."
The boy raised his head, a strange look in his eyes. "Suspect No. 6 has severe sadistic tendencies. His favorite kind of girl wears a white dress. He especially likes them barefoot..."
As he spoke, the boy seemed to become someone else. His features twisted, his expression turning crazed.
Even his voice grew hoarse in an instant, as though he had been hiding in a basement without sunlight or water for ages, his throat parched.
As the boy continued, his teeth ground together, and his eyes betrayed an uncontrollable desire.
It was as though he was Suspect No. 6 himself.
"But that little girl had drawn a little angel on her dress."
"I worship Western demons, and to me, that little angel embodied purity. The thing I loathe most..."
"She was barefoot, wearing a white dress with a little angel drawn on it. I just couldn't control myself..."
"I wanted to brutalize her. I wanted to cover everything pure in filth!"
"Filth covers everything!"
"That's what the world really looks like!"
"So I approached her as an art teacher and lured her to a deserted area outside the city..."
"I couldn't control the desire inside me..."
"Once I started, there was no stopping!"
"I killed her!"
"I killed her!"
"Her struggles drove my sadistic urges to their peak!"
"I cut her to pieces!"
At that moment, the boy suddenly raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. "For twelve years, I've sorted my endless painting supplies every single day. I have a compulsion to organize things. I don't like leaving clutter lying around. There are twenty-eight abandoned sewers between here and Rust City. I distributed her evenly among them!"
"And the west is where the devil lives. In the end, I offered her to the devil!"
By this point, the boy was almost growling, his clenched fists pounding wildly at the air!
The younger man's arms had begun to tremble as he held the tablet.
"That's how it happened."
The boy's expression suddenly eased, that twisted demeanor vanishing without a trace. He said calmly, "That way, when he returned to Rust City, his hands were empty. Nothing out of the ordinary."
The young officer came to his senses and hurriedly pulled up the photograph of Suspect No. 6.
It showed a thin-faced middle-aged man in glasses and a shirt, his expression perfectly calm.
"But..."
The younger man hesitated. "This person has never shown any of the symptoms you described in his daily life. And for the past twelve years, he's worked diligently at his painting to support his family..."
"Suppose he really did kill that girl..."
"What evidence do you have?"
Qin Yiguan's expression darkened again, and he reached up to adjust something on the bridge of his nose, though nothing was there.
"Glasses."
Adjusting his nonexistent glasses, the boy squinted into the air. "He has countless pairs of glasses at home. Many are stained with paint, but instead of cleaning them, he keeps buying more."
"He likes looking at a filthy world."
"When he killed the girl, a lot of blood spattered onto his glasses."
"When he got home, he used chemicals to remove the color from the blood."
"But in the dead of night, he puts on those glasses and shines the LSK Fluorescence on them, then admires the spray patterns. For him, it's a way to relive it. A pleasure."
The younger man froze for a moment.
The LSK Fluorescence was the device forensic investigators used to illuminate murder scenes and search for bloodstains.
Even after bloodstains had been washed away, they would still leave pale brown traces under the LSK Fluorescence.
Meanwhile, the boy gazed at the moon in the sky, as though he saw a world drenched in blood, where even the moon was dim and lightless.
"Whether he really is the killer..."
"Find the cleanest pair of glasses in his house. One test will tell you."
Before you continue