Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Zhao Yu thought that it was the most restless night ever. It was drizzling outside and there was a cold breeze blowing against his face even though the air conditioner wasn not on. Zhao Yu was burning with rage.
After a chain of adventures, his messy mind was continuously entangled. Starting from his mother, ever since he ran away from the coffee shop, she was furious and burning with rage. She spamed him endlessly with phone calls.
Zhao Yu dared not to reject her calls, so he tried to explain to his mother that he really had an important case at hand. But his mother would not listen to him, and continued to throw a tantrum!
Then Zhao Yu lied as he panicked. “Mom, do you know why I did not want to go on a blind date? I have a chick… Oh no, I someone special, I have a girlfriend! So, why would I go on a blind date?” Zhao Yu thought he could satisfy his mother with that but what his mother said next gave him a headache.
“Son, hurry up and send me her photo. I’ll read her face via physiognomy and see if she can give birth to a son!”
“What the!” Zhao Yu was confused at first but then an interesting idea popped into his mind. He sent Miao Ying’s photo to his mother. His mother gave him a call again a minute later.
“Son, she looks fine! Straight nose bridge, full nostrils; it’s the face of the rich! The groove between her nose and lips is clear and long, and her cheekbones are prominent. This is the face of someone who has the ability to give birth! Son, push away her hair and let me see her forehead and ears. I want to see whether or not she can give birth to sons!”
“What the!” Zhao Yu exclaimed internally. Then he quickly replied, “Mom, my girlfriend is out doing fieldwork, I’ll send it to you in a few days! If there are still buses running then you can head back home first! If there aren’t, my house keys are under the shoe mat. You can go home and rest first. Go back to home tomorrow! I have work tonight and I won’t be able to head home!”
Hearing that, his mother quickly told him to be careful and to run if there was any danger, and that he should not get injured again! Although Zhao Yu could not compliment his mother’s character, every sentence she uttered revealed her love for him, and that made Zhao Yu feel warm. It was the concern from a mother and it was irreplaceable.
Moreover, what happened that day with Jin Yuanyuan made him unstable. Whenever he closed his eyes, the tragic image of Jin Yuanyuan’s corpse would appear in his mind.
Maybe there were many factors that led to her death. If she had not needed to go to that meeting so early in the morning, or maybe if she took a cab, she would not have run into the vicious criminal! Maybe the criminal wanted to sexually assault Jin Yuanyuan but did not know that she would suddenly have a heart attack and die.
But if the suspect had not tried to rape Jin Yuanyuan after poisoning her, she would not have faced such tragedy! If he was humane, he could have called for help or informed someone. Maybe Jin Yuanyuan might not have passed away! Furthermore, the lax building management and the ignorance of her colleagues in the travel agency made the entire incident even more sorrowful and pitiful.
But the case was reassigned to Ruyang Branch, and theoretically, it was not related to Zhao Yu anymore. Plus, Jin Yuanyuan’s death signified that she was not related to the Bank Hidden Corpse case.
Besides Jin Yuanyuan’s case, there was something else that made Zhao Yu anxious, which was the cake shop. Although the special task force was still investigating the criminals that killed Qu Ping, Zhao Yu felt that something was off, as if he had left something out. If he could participate in the investigation, maybe he could find some new clues.
But it needed to wait till later. Zhao Yu had other urgent tasks at hand. He needed to solve the creepy Bank Hidden Corpse Case first. If the case was not solved, he could not get his hands on anything else.
There seemed to be several clues for the Bank Hidden Corpse Case, but the mysterious and brutal murderer had yet to reveal themselves.
“Who is the murderer? Why did he choose such a method to kill someone?” Zhao Yu wondered.
“Miracle Adventure for today is complete. The completion rate is eighty-five percent. Congratulations, you are awarded one invisible device, please accept!” Just when Zhao Yu was seriously thinking about the case, the system sent an ending notification.
He got a “Ji-Li” hexagram that day. “Ji” represented family and “Li” represented friendship. Zhao Yu could totally feel familial warmth that day!
“But what about friends? I didn’t seem to have anything,” he thought. It seemed that though he had had a few encounters that day, he possibly missed out something. Hence the completion rate was below ninety percent.
Zhao Yu opened his device bar and saw that he got an invisible tracker, something that he rarely got. Although the level of tracker was not high, it was a very practical device. He had used it to solve a few cases in the past.
Zhao Yu filtered through the devices in his device bar. With his recent hard work, the number of devices increased. He had to remember their function by heart so that he could use them in crucial moments.
After that, Zhao Yu had two important tasks left. One was to get another hexagram and the second was to investigate the case.
Finally, something that made Zhao Yu excited happened. He finally got a “Gen” hexagram—a “Gen Li” hexagram. Finally getting a “Gen” hexagram, Zhao Yu was extremely delighted and immediately stood before the whiteboard and thought hard about the case.
The rain outside was getting heavier, and Li Beini closed the window. The office suddenly got stuffy and the air was moist. But Zhao Yu was drowning in his own thoughts and did not notice the change in his surroundings.
As there were many victims, there was a total of four whiteboards. On three of the whiteboards, each one had information about two of the victims, and the last whiteboard was about the situation of the safety deposit boxes.
“In seven years, there were six victims! Every year, they would kill one! From the earliest—Duan Dacheng—to the most recent—Zhang Hongran—who was killed last year, all six victims have different genders and ages. Besides the old couple, there was no connection between the others. Hence, the police presumed that the murderer killed people randomly!
“But the way the murderer killed his victims was abnormal. To starve a living person to death seemed more like getting revenge! Did the murderer take revenge randomly due to some mental illness or was it a targeted revenge? If it was a targeted revenge, why do we have yet to find out the reason?
Was the murderer alone? Would one person be able to manage the corpses?” Zhao Yu wondered.
Although the whiteboard was filled with information, the cases were old and there were not many clues that were useful! Besides the video provided by Tongchuan Bank, the police did not manage to find any information related to the suspect directly.
So the police resorted to looking at new missing people’s’ reports to see if the murderer made a move to commit the crime again.
“Do we have to wait for the murderer to get their hands on the next target before we can make progress in the case?” Zhao Yu thought to himself.
What if the murderer already knew about the corpses in the bank and decided not to commit any more crimes? If they did it again, there would be new victims!
“We can’t just bet a human life to arrest a murderer, right?” he thought.
“Duan Dacheng, sixty-seven-years-old, janitor; Tang Lingling, thirty-three-years-old, shoes wholesaler…” Zhao Yu went through the victims’ information over and over again. Just like the Lost Hand Case, he felt that there was an important clue that was hidden among the information but could not be found!
“Does this important clue exist?” he asked himself.
It had been raining the whole night and only stopped as the sun rose the next day. Zhao Yu had been thinking long and hard the entire night. Although there was not anything new, Zhao Yu felt that the murderer of the Bank Hidden Corpse Case was taking revenge instead of killing people randomly.
According to the autopsy report, the forensic scientist described that the process of the victims starving to death was extremely tortuous. They went through muscular atrophy, organ prostration, their hair and nails falling out, and all of them had had terrifying expressions on their face. They had also probably experienced unimaginable fear throughout the lengthy process of their death!
Similar to the Lost Hand Case, Zhao Yu felt that the murderer of the Bank Hidden Corpse Case seemed to want the victims to atone for their sins.
“Then…what kind of beef do they have?” he wondered.
Suddenly, Zhao Yu recalled a question that he had thought of before. He had a feeling that there were many victims in the Bank Hidden Corpse case, but the the victims’ family members seemed quite unresponsive.
“Is that the crucial problem?!”