A fruitless raid and half a corpse
The overwhelming public opinion, in an unprecedented way, accelerated the police operation.
Just hours after the two recordings caused a huge uproar online, the city bureau's meeting room was brightly lit, the atmosphere so tense it could drip water. High-ranking leaders personally presided over an emergency special meeting on the Ankang Hospital case. Faced with irrefutable evidence from the recordings and the completely out-of-control public opinion demanding severe punishment, all procedures and concerns were temporarily put aside.
The arrest warrant was approved with unusual speed.
The South City Branch, where Captain Li worked, was designated as the main force for this arrest operation because it was the first unit to receive the report about the Monkey and had already conducted extensive investigations beforehand. As soon as the meeting ended, Captain Li immediately returned to the branch, gathered all available mobile police forces, and began deployment.
Inside the operations room, smoke filled the air. Captain Li stood before the whiteboard, his gaze sharp as an eagle's, his voice resolute:
"Comrades, everyone is aware of the situation! Enough with the small talk, let's assign tasks!"
"First team, led by me personally!" Captain Li circled Wei Guangyuan's name heavily on the whiteboard with a Mark. "Target: Wei Guangyuan! Address: No. 18, Lakeside Villa District! He must be apprehended and brought to justice!"
"Second team, led by Deputy Captain Wang!" The pen tip moved to Deputy Director Qian's name. "Target: Qian Zhiming (Deputy Director Qian)! Address: Room 1701, Splendid Homestead Residential Community! Move quickly to prevent him from escaping!"
"Team Three, responsible for coordination and support! Immediately contact the North City Branch of the Public Security Bureau, which has jurisdiction over Ankang Hospital, and request that they deploy maximum police force to immediately seal off and control all entrances and exits of Ankang Hospital! All medical staff, administrative personnel, and security guards inside the hospital—not a single one—must be taken back to the bureau to assist in the investigation!"
He paused, his gaze sweeping across the room, before adding one last instruction, one that also weighed heavily on his heart:
"At the same time, notify the Western Suburbs Branch to immediately send someone to the Municipal Mental Health Center (the mental hospital where Qin Ming is located) to check on Qin Ming's condition! Ensure his safety! I suspect... the other side might resort to desperate measures!"
"Do you all understand?!"
"Understood!" the crowd responded in unison, their voices filled with an barely suppressed sense of urgency and tension.
"Alright! Check your gear, we're leaving in five minutes!"
Sirens pierced the night sky as police cars sped out of the South City Branch like arrows, heading towards their respective targets. The entire Jiangcheng of Jiang seemed to be on edge because of this sudden large-scale operation.
However, the first news that came back was bad.
Captain Li and their group, who were heading to the Lakeside Villa District, were the fastest to respond. They arrived at the luxurious detached villa as quickly as possible, but when they broke down the door, the house was empty. On the coffee table in the living room, there was a half-finished glass of red wine, and fresh cigarette butts in the ashtray, indicating that the owner had left in a great hurry. The wardrobe in the bedroom was open, and some valuables and clothes were missing.
Wei Guangyuan ran away.
Almost at the same time, news came from Deputy Captain Wang's side. Deputy Director Qian's house was also empty, and the house looked somewhat messy, as if he had hurriedly packed his luggage. Neighbors reported that they saw Deputy Director Qian carrying a suitcase and driving away in a hurry around dusk.
Qian Zhiming also ran away.
The two main suspects, as if they had received advance warning, had already disappeared into the darkness before they arrived.
"Damn it!" Captain Li slammed his fist against the cold wall of the villa, his face turning ashen. Although he had expected the other party to escape, the fact that he had come up empty-handed still gave him a strong sense of frustration and anger.
"Captain Li, at Ankang Hospital, the North City Branch has brought the scene under control, and all personnel are being evacuated." The report came through the walkie-talkie.
This is the only good news. At least, this den of evil has been temporarily destroyed.
Just then, Captain Li's phone rang urgently; it was a call from a colleague responsible for contacting the Western Suburbs Branch.
"Captain Li! Something's happened at the Western Suburbs Branch!" The voice on the other end of the phone trembled slightly.
Captain Li's heart sank. "What happened? Where's Qin Ming?"
"They... they found him in Qin Ming's isolation ward... but..."
"But what?! Speak!" Captain Li roared.
"But... what was found was a corpse... and... only half of it..."
Only half?
Captain Li's mind went blank for a moment; he couldn't even comprehend the meaning of the word.
The Municipal Mental Health Center, isolation ward.
The air was filled not only with the smell of disinfectant, but also with a strong, nauseating smell of rust—the distinctive odor of dried blood, mixed with the sweet, fishy smell of exposed organs and the filth of incontinence, creating a stench strong enough to make one's stomach cramp.
Leading the team was Captain Zhao of the Criminal Investigation Brigade of the Western Suburbs Branch, a veteran with over twenty years of police experience and countless crime scene investigations. At this moment, he stood at the door of that special isolation ward, his feet seemingly nailed to the spot. The muscles on his weathered face twitched slightly uncontrollably, and a mixture of shock, disgust, and rage churned in his eyes.
Inside the ward, the two young detectives who had gone in first to conduct the initial investigation had staggered out. One of them collapsed against the wall in the corridor, bent over, and made a series of heart-wrenching retching sounds. The other was ashen-faced, his eyes unfocused, and he slid down to the floor against the wall, his body trembling violently.
Captain Zhao took a deep breath, suppressing his intense physical discomfort, and stepped into the scene that resembled a painting of hell.
His gaze was instantly fixed on the scene on the hospital bed.
On the hospital bed,
Qin Ming's body was there.
But it was a corpse that had been handled in an unimaginable way.
It was vertically, precisely, and neatly cut in two from head to toe along the midline of the human body!
Like a precisely cut piece of wood, or a terrifying object perfectly replicated from a median sagittal plane diagram in an anatomy textbook. Starting from the Baihui acupoint on the top of the head, it runs straight down, passing through the center of the eyebrows, the bridge of the nose, the lips, the chin, the throat, the center of the sternum, the abdomen... all the way to the lower body.
The left half of the body was still barely attached to its original position, but all the internal organs were exposed, with a strange color and covered with congealed blood, and some areas were obviously missing.
The right side... was spread outwards at an angle that defied common sense, with a huge wound, a bloody mess, and white spurs of the spine exposed to the air. The right half of the brain, the right lung, and most of the liver that should have been there... were all gone.
On the ground, the splattered and pooled blood had turned a dark brown. The entire scene was filled with an extreme cruelty and a suffocating, inhuman sense of grotesqueness.
Captain Zhao felt as if his blood had frozen at that moment. He had handled countless cases, but the scene of "vertically split in half" before him, with its neatness and cruelty, still pushed him to the limit of his tolerance.
He turned around abruptly and rushed out of the ward almost as if fleeing. He staggered to the window at the end of the corridor, pushed open the window, and gasped for air in the cold night wind.
His hands trembled violently, and it took him several attempts to finally pull a cigarette out of the pack and put it in his mouth. The flame of the lighter flickered in front of his eyes, and he finally managed to light it. He took a greedy, deep drag.
However, the sight of this "vertical half-corpse," a scene resembling a slaughterhouse or the crime scene of a deranged killer, completely shattered any possibility of "suicide" or "simple disguise." This was not a cover-up; this was torture! It was a display! It was a mad ritual!
Thinking of the recordings circulating online, Captain Zhao was shocked to discover that the mastermind behind the scenes had used such a heinous yet obviously foolish method to deal with Qin Ming, as if mocking the police's basic judgment. An uncontrollable rage surged through him.
He slammed the cigarette, less than a third of which he'd smoked, to the ground, sparks flying. He turned, his bloodshot eyes scanning the dark corridor, and forced out a suppressed curse, a curse filled with rage and sarcasm:
"This is considered suicide?! They're treating us police officers like idiots!"