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Huang Xiaotao asked me what we should do next. I told her that there was nothing else to do for the time being except wait for the reports from the others. I suggested going back to the hotel and get some needed rest to refresh our bodies and minds.
So we went back to the hotel, and I saw Dali still lying in bed. I brought the roast duck and food to him. Despite being sick, Dali actually ate very happily. While eating, he asked me about the investigation today, so I briefly summarized everything to him.
Dali listened to my speculations and asked, “Do you think that maybe the perpetrator of this case is not a human being, dude?”
“No,” I firmly denied, “No matter what, I believe that humans are always behind the crimes that happened somehow.”
At this time, there was a sound of water splashing next door. Dali suddenly became cheerful.
“Dude, listen, Xiaotao-jiejie is taking a shower!” he chirped.
“No, that’s Wang Yuanchao’s room,” I replied.
Dali instantly lost interest and lay back down in bed.
“Stupid Old Wang,” he muttered. “Taking a shower at this time of day…”
I had driven to Wuqu City overnight, so I felt incredibly sleepy. So I slept for a while and felt a lot better when I woke up. I checked my phone and found that I had a few messages.
It was all in a WeChat group specially created for the task force. One police officer said that he had found an important piece of information, and then there were messages from Luo Weiwei and Bai Yidao saying that they’d completed their tasks.
I put on my clothes and knocked on Huang Xiaotao’s and Wang Yuanchao’s rooms. After waiting for about five minutes, Wang Yuanchao appeared in front of me neatly dressed. I asked him, “Didn’t you sleep?”
“I did,” he replied plainly.
After a while, Huang Xiaotao opened the door. She wore the hotel’s bathrobe and her face was covered with a mask. She stretched out her arms and said, “I had a good sleep just now. What’s wrong? Did they find a new clue?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’ll give you ten minutes, put on your clothes quickly.”
“Ten minutes? Have you ever waited for a girl to get ready before? I’ll need at least half an hour just to wear my clothes and comb my hair! I’ll need longer if I’m going to wear makeup!”
That really was the first time I found out that girls needed so long to get ready.
“Then Old Wang and I will head to the police station first,” I said. “You can catch up with us later.”
“Roger!”
We went to the second-floor conference room. Bai Yidao, Luo Weiwei and another policeman were already waiting. Bai Yidao gave me two paper bags. I opened one and found that it contained three carved masks made of cedar wood and the other contained some herbs.
“Well done!” I praised.
“I’ve got a friend who does this kind of craftwork,” he said coolly. “Why do you want this thing anyway?”
“For something important,” I replied vaguely.
Luo Weiwei had brought the mice, and the two were put in a small iron cage.
Next, the policeman said that he investigated the husband’s bank account found a suspicious anomaly. About five million yuan had been withdrawn from the account after the husband’s death. The money was transferred into an account that belonged to a person called Yu Jun.
I asked him and Bai Yidao to investigate this Yu Jun person. As for Luo Weiwei, I had no other tasks for her. I told her she could leave work early if she wanted to.
However, Luo Weiwei insisted on investigating with Bai Yidao. As she left, I asked her for the key to the murder scene.
I then borrowed a laboratory to slowly heat up the medicinal herb mixture, and then asked the forensics officers there to give me a serum sample of both the husband and wife.
After that, I told them to inject 20 milliliters of the serum into each of the mice. At that moment, Huang Xiaotao arrived and saw the mixture of herbs in the pot simmering away and the police officers giving injections to the mice. It must’ve been an interesting scene to behold.
“Song Yang, what kind of evil experiment are you conducting here?” she jokingly asked.
“You’ll know later.”
After the serum injection, I waited quietly for a while. The two white mice were still alive and kicking, seemingly nothing had happened to them.
“There’s no effect at all,” commented Huang Xiaotao.
“Well, the test failed,” I relented with a shrug. “I originally wanted to see if they would kill each other.”
“Kill each other?” Huang Xiaotao asked.
“Yeah, if the results of the technical group are too slow, it is better to do a biological test. It seems that we can basically rule out the effects of drugs for these two murder cases...” I sighed in disappointment.
“Song Yang, that’s cruel!” Huang Xiaotao cried.
Then I told the forensics officers that there was no need to continue the test. They thought that they would be working overnight, so when they heard me say that, they all cheered and happily went home.
Once the herbs were ready, I filtered out the juice. Because there was no brush, I used a piece of paper towel to soak the juice up and applied it to the inside of the three masks.
“What is that weird smell?” asked Huang Xiaotao, scrunching up her nose.
“You’ll know soon enough,” I replied. After the masks dried, I took them and picked up the cage with the white mice inside and said, “Come on, let’s go back to the murder scene!”
“Right now?” asked Huang Xiaotao, looking at her watch. “But it’s already half past five! It’s going to be dark there!”
“It’ll be fine,” I said with a smile. “Besides, I’d planned to be there at night anyway.”
The three of us drove to the old street. Now that it was getting dark, all the residents there stayed inside to have their dinners and watch TV. We stepped over the caution tape and headed to the house where the bloody tragedy happened and opened the door with the key that Luo Weiwei gave me.
The atmosphere was even gloomier inside now that it was evening. Huang Xiaotao tried to turn on the light, but soon found that there was no electricity. I smiled wryly and joked, “Perhaps they cut off the electricity because no one paid the bills.”
We pulled out our phones and used them to illuminate the place.
There was no trace on the flour that I sprinkled all over the house during the day. We went up to the second floor. I put the white mouse on the window sill, pushed open the window, and then took three pairs of gloves from the bag and asked them to help clean up the scene. The tables and chairs were rearranged, and the debris on the ground was swept away. Our phones were placed in the center of the table to light up the room.
Once we were done with cleaning up, I pulled out the three masks and said, “Let’s reenact the murders!”
“What?” Huang Xiaotao was shocked. “Can’t you pick a better time? Besides, look at this house! It’s full of blood and the air feels sinister!”
“Trust me, I know what I’m doing,” I reassured her.
“Do I have to do this?” Huang Xiaotao asked.
“Yes!” I answered firmly.
“Fine…” Huang Xiaotao reluctantly agreed.
And so, I assigned the roles to all of us. My original plan was for me and Huang Xiaotao to play the role of the husband and wife, while Wang Yuanchao played the role of the old lady. But after coming here, I really felt that there was something eerie in the atmosphere. To be on the safe side, we would just skip the role of the old lady! Besides, there was no line for the old lady anyway, so Wang Yuanchao could just observe us on the side. If anything happened, he could immediately interrupt us before things went too far.
I handed a mask to Huang Xiaotao, and I put one on myself. The mask was very heavy. I could only look out from the two eye holes. Huang Xiaotao took it in her hand and said, “I’ve learnt of crime reenactment before in the police academy, but I have never heard of one that requires wearing such a strange mask. What exactly does this weird-smelling concoction of yours do, Song Yang?”
I explained that it was a potion of sorts that I found in the Chronicles of Grand Magistrates, called Murder Reenactment. It was invented by a Song family ancestor, inspired by a stage drama that he saw. The ancient wizards who wore ghost masks were reportedly able to travel to different dimensions, which made him wonder if he could use similar methods to be able to witness the crime himself.
So, after ten years of experimentation, he developed this technique of Murder Reenactment. By having several people play the role of the people involved in a crime, he could accurately reenact the crime, explore the criminal’s mind, and search for clues that were easily overlooked.
The characters in this ‘performance’ were divided into several categories according to gender, birth, roles, and were represented by the twelve characters in the play. These twelve masks were used to evoke the emotions of the murderer and the victim as the crime occurred.
For example, Huang Xiaotao got the character of Gou Mang, who symbolized a middle-aged woman, and I wore the mask of Chi You, which symbolized a middle-aged male murderer.
The inside of the mask was also coated with a potion that would further evoke the emotional reactions, which made the emotions and sorrows as real as if they were your own.
The mystery behind this Murder Reenactment technique was bottomless. It encompassed scientific and psychological principles and some supernatural elements that were difficult to explain.
It was recorded how someone who was in the process of using this technique suddenly fainted and woke up crying the name of the murderer in a voice that belonged to the victim, thereby solving a ten-year-old cold case!
But it was undeniable that the technique involved very high risks.
The reason why I wanted to use the technique nonetheless was because there had been no progress in this case so far. Besides, I had a speculation that I needed to verify...