Chapter 25: Another Murder!

The sedan slowly came to a stop. Less than a minute later, Bai Zhu and the others’ car caught up. They saw Fang Si Ting leaning against the car door with a lit cigarette clamped between his fingers.

Most of his body was immersed in the shadows, his straight and slender legs crossed. One elbow rested on the car window while the other hand hung down limply.

A single strand of his meticulously styled hair had fallen to the corner of his eye. His sharp gaze was veiled in a layer of mist, his face still expressionless. But the downturned corners of his straight-lined mouth made him seem even more unapproachable.

“Boss, you okay?”

Fang Si Ting didn’t speak.

“Where’s Xiao Fen and his hostage?”

When the cigarette was nearly burned out, he straightened up, tossed it to the ground, crushed it underfoot, got back into the car, and continued toward the mountaintop.

Bai Zhu stared at him in a daze.

That was the first time he had seen irritation and frustration on Fang Si Ting’s face.

At the foot of the mountain on the other side, Xiao Fen finished inspecting the car. It wasn’t damaged, but he would have to drive carefully from now on—no more speeding.

He closed the hood and saw Ji Qinglin still sprawled over the roadside railing, vomiting his guts out.

“Hey, done puking?”

“This is murder!” Ji Qinglin’s eyes watered from the puking, making him look utterly pitiful.

“How much is your life worth?” Xiao Fen pulled out a check and a pen. “Pay up early, and you wouldn’t have had to take this trip.”

Ji Qinglin glanced at it. It was written for the twenty-four million he had lost to Xiao Fen that night. Anger surged through him, making his chest ache.

For this pittance, he had nearly lost his life here.

He scribbled a couple of strokes across it and signed his name grudgingly.

“Young Master Ji is generous.” Xiao Fen flicked the check fondly before tucking it away and sliding into the car.

What a money-grubber. Ji Qinglin grumbled to himself.

“Hey, I haven’t gotten in yet.” He staggered after the car, slapping at the door.

“Vice squad officers are right behind you. Let them take you home.”

The window rolled up. The white sedan sped away and vanished in the blink of an eye.

The mountain was pitch black. The roadside bushes rustled now and then.

Ji Qinglin hugged his arms and squatted on the ground. He stared boredly at the silent dark woods. It felt like he waited a whole year before Fang Si Ting’s car finally appeared.

The sedan pulled to a slow stop. Ji Qinglin climbed into the passenger seat without ceremony and ordered like a lord, “Take me home.”

They hadn’t even descended the mountain when Bai Zhu’s voice crackled from the walkie-talkie. “Boss, there’s been a murder.”

Fang Si Ting checked the time: 00:27.

“Where are we headed? Didn’t you hear about the murder?” Ji Qinglin’s fatigue vanished in an instant. Excitement flushed his pale face. “Come on, let’s go check it out.”

“Speak again and get out.”

Fang Si Ting’s aura was overwhelming. Ji Qinglin’s bravado deflated instantly. He pouted in dissatisfaction. “I’m just thinking of you vice squad officers and how hard you work. By the time you drop me home and head to the scene, it’ll be dawn after all that back-and-forth.”

Live Stream Chat.

【It’s really tough. I’ve just been watching this far and I’m already tired. Aren’t they sleepy? I want to sleep, but now there’s talk of a murder. I can’t miss the excitement.】

【This is nothing. I’m a retired vice squad officer. Back when we chased major criminals, going five days and nights without sleep was routine. If we got tired, we’d nap for ten minutes at our desks or in the car.】

【You guys are iron men.】

【Whether it’s frontline leader Bai or the vice squad officers providing technical info support from the office, none of them have rested. They’re always hunting for clues. We mostly just see the charging vice squad officers—not that they’re bad. They’re admirable for risking their lives. But the ones silently toiling in the background deserve our admiration too.】

【Salute to the vice squad officers. Their selfless risks give us the peaceful lives we have today.】

The vice squad officers’ personal streams and the main stream were flooded with messages of salute. It didn’t take flowery praise—just sharing their routine daily grind moved countless netizens.

Half an hour later, Ji Qinglin hopped out handsomely and looked up to see the four large characters: “United Building.”

“Why are we here?”

Several vice squad officers emerged from inside and arrested him without a word.

“What’s going on?”

“Mr. Ji, you’re suspected of running a casino and participating in gambling crimes. Please come with us.”

“No, hey, hey! You there!” Ji Qinglin watched Fang Si Ting walk away without so much as a backward glance.

The live stream audience burst into laughter amid a chorus of cheers.

————

02:48.

Fang Si Ting’s car pulled into Sovereign Cloud Realm Neighborhood. He didn’t rush inside right away. Instead, he asked the security guards at the gate about how they had discovered the murder that night.

“Whoa, it was terrifying. Old Zhang and I were just on routine patrol. That abandoned villa up ahead—its windows suddenly started emitting an eerie red glow from the ground. I shone my flashlight through the window. Guess what? There was a guy sitting in a chair, naked and not saying a word. Shone it on the floor—holy hell, blood everywhere, and these black wriggling things all over the place. Old Zhang’s heart is still acting up from the scare.”

“How many patrols do you do in a day? What times? Fixed schedule?”

“It’s the rules from upstairs. Otherwise, we’d just watch videos in the security booth—way better than going out. One loop tires you out.” The security guard rambled on before adding, “Normally, we patrol at 7 a.m., noon at 12, and from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. the next day, every two hours.”

“So you spotted the red light and the body during the 1 a.m. patrol, but not at 11 p.m.?”

“Exactly. Scared us half to death.” The security guard said with lingering fear.

“Anything unusual happen in those two hours?”

“Unusual? Nah.” The security guard shook his head.

Another head poked out from the security booth. “Wasn’t there a power outage around midnight? We even called maintenance.”

“Oh yeah, there was one around 7 or 8 p.m. too. Didn’t last long, but then it went out again. No idea which boss was renovating and shorted their own wiring—knocked out the whole neighborhood.”

Fang Si Ting asked a few more questions before driving off.

Following Bai Zhu’s directions, he navigated the neighborhood roads, turning left and right.

After the incident, lights had come on in many villas. A few people even stood by the roadside, whispering and watching the spectacle.

The villas were nearly row houses, separated by narrow paths wide enough for two people abreast. The main road in front had decent greenery. Judging by the lit lights and laundry on balconies, occupancy was about half.

Less than ten minutes later, he spotted the police cordon.

Bai Zhu hurriedly dispersed the gawking neighbors and cleared a path for Fang Si Ting.

He stepped over the cordon. What met his eyes was the villa’s yard—a scene of utter decay.

In the lit areas, the villa’s exterior had peeled and molded in many places.

“Boss, we’ve got a tough one.” Tang Shen said excitedly.

“Talk while we look.”

“It’s an abandoned villa, been empty for ages. When Xiaoxiao and I arrived, all the doors and windows were locked tight—only the owner has keys. We contacted them through property management. The owner had even forgotten about this property. They sent the keys over just ten minutes before you arrived.”

From outside the yard, peering through the floor-to-ceiling windows beside the main door revealed darkness interwoven with faint red light. The glow was brightest a short distance from the ground. Only up close could he make out two electronic candles placed to either side of a chair. Their light outlined the living room furnishings in fuzzy shapes—and the silhouette of a figure with its back to the window.

The figure sat in the chair, appearing tall and burly. The exposed skin looked fresh. He was naked, head bowed low with messy hair dangling along both cheeks.

Fang Si Ting had someone drape a cloth over the window to block the view from the crowd of onlookers outside. He moved to the main door, crouched down, and examined the keyhole.

Tang Shen handed him a photo. “Checked it—no signs of tampering.”

In the photo, the rust on the door was intact, exactly as if it hadn’t been opened in ages.

Peng Xiaoxiao walked over, holding a clipboard with gloved hands. “We found the first-floor bathroom window glass broken on the side of the villa. The killer could easily reach in to unlock it and climb through.”

The excitement in Tang Shen’s eyes faded at once. “Thought it was a sealed room. Turns out it’s not.”

“Just an ordinary murder case.” Peng Xiaoxiao couldn’t help snarking. “You’re so obsessed with bizarre murders you’ve gone mad, turning simple cases into complicated ones.”

“Let’s go in.”

As soon as they passed through the main door, a thick stench of blood mixed with dust and mold assaulted them, turning their stomachs.

The first thing that caught the eye on the floor was a series of black objects, streaked in the dim red light.

Only when the forensics team officers picked them up and bagged them carefully did it become clear: they were thick-backed scissors, about one and a half adult male palm-lengths, varying in size and shape, scattered sparsely across the entire living room.

In the center of the living room sat a man in shorts on a chair. His arms hung limply at his sides, head bowed, face obscured.

Two pools of black blood had congealed on the tiles beside the chair, spreading several meters out. Amid the dried bloodstains by the chair were ten faintly visible fingers marred by postmortem livor mortis.

The victim’s ten fingers had been chopped off at the base.

In front of the corpse stood a brownish-yellow incense burner with three burned-out sticks of incense. Beside it sat the electronic candles emitting red light.

A gust of wind blew in from the door. The sheer white curtains, drawn to either side of the floor-to-ceiling windows, fluttered in the distance.

Yellow paper scattered on the body and surrounding floor lifted with the breeze before settling back down.

Fang Si Ting had someone install a strong light on the ceiling at the entryway.

The white light instantly banished the eerie red glow. The dilapidated living room was lit up as bright as day.

At the same time, they spotted numerous clear, complete shoeprints on the floor amid the scattered scissors.

“Pay attention to these shoeprints—they might belong to the killer.” Tang Shen instructed.

Fang Si Ting picked up a pair of scissors and examined it under the light. Not a single fingerprint or mark—spotless.

By the time the pursuit team finished photographing and collecting evidence, clearing a path to the body, dawn was breaking.

The predawn darkness always felt murky and chaotic. Early autumn’s grayish-white mist roiled outside the yard, punctuated now and then by crisp birdsong.

Fang Si Ting and the others walked from the entryway to the center of the living room. He picked up a sheet of “underworld paper” from the corpse and examined it. It turned out to be a movie poster promo—dark yellow on the front, plain white on the back. The specific film was unknown.

As he stepped to the front of the victim, the live stream erupted in a chorus of terrified screams.

The face was slathered in fake blood and hyper-realistic prop knife wounds. From the chest down, it was covered in wounds large and small, splashed with chicken blood—more horrifying than someone fished from a blood pool.

“Lu Jin?” Once they made out the corpse’s face, everyone froze in shock.

【Unlucky bastard, Boss Lu again?】

【That dog waist, those rippling back muscles, those long legs—slurp slurp!】

【Seeing Boss Lu’s abs in my lifetime—die without regrets.】

【They even mosaiced the chest? What can’t your top big sis handle?】

【This man is so damn burly and majestic. It’s the reward I deserve for pulling an all-nighter till dawn.】

At that moment, the drugs wore off on Lu Jin. He slowly came to, limbs stiff and numb. A bad premonition hit him at once.

“Fuck—your mom—fuck—”

The live stream went silent for a full twenty seconds.

【Yup, the corpse came back to life and started cursing.】

The audience offered deep sympathy.

The program crew hurriedly handled it. When the cameras weren’t on him, they stealthily taped a strip of clear tape over his mouth.

Lu Jin: ???

This was how they treated their golden daddy?