Klasse 0 der 10

Kapitel 28

Chapter 18

A young man traveled a long way from another province to this city because a fellow villager told him he could make a fortune here. The young man failed his college entrance exam and stayed at home for a year, trying to start a small business, but lost money. He was worried about how to repay the 20,000 yuan he had borrowed when he received a call from his fellow villager. Without hesitation, he took his only few thousand yuan and came to this city to seek his fortune.

As soon as he got off the train, his fellow villager came to pick him up. After they went to a restaurant and had some drinks, his villager took him to a small apartment in an old building. The apartment wasn't big, just an old-fashioned two-bedroom, one-living-room house, but it housed more than ten people, men and women, all crammed together. When they saw the young man arrive, everyone was very welcoming, like family.

The young man was a bit confused, feeling that all of this seemed familiar. Later, his fellow villager took him to a room downstairs for a class, and he finally realized that he had been tricked – the get-rich-quick scheme his fellow villager had told him about was actually a pyramid scheme.

It was too late when he realized what was happening. As is often the case with pirate ships, it's hard to get off. The moment he hinted at wanting to leave to his fellow villager, the villager turned hostile. Soon, the young man found himself without his freedom.

At night, he slept on the floor with a group of people. During the day, they ate together, and the group took turns "educating" him, trying to recruit him into a pyramid scheme, painting a bright future for him. The young man was sensible; he knew exactly what a pyramid scheme was. He had planned to pretend to agree in exchange for his freedom and then find a way to escape, but agreeing meant paying over three thousand yuan—his entire life savings. Luckily, he had deposited the money in a bank before coming and only carried one card with him; otherwise, those people would definitely have robbed him.

The young man had been detained for half a month, and with the Chinese New Year just around the corner, he finally got a chance to escape.

Even those involved in pyramid schemes have to go home for the Lunar New Year. The once bustling house suddenly became deserted, leaving only the young man and two other people. The other two didn't plan to go home, so the task of watching over the young man fell to them. These two were quite meticulous; no matter what, one of them always had to stay and watch the young man, not giving him a chance to escape. That evening, the two finally made a big mistake: they went out together for a few drinks—it was the Lunar New Year, after all, they had to treat themselves. These pyramid scheme members lived together, spending their days picking up cabbage stalks at the market, and their stomachs were severely lacking in oil and fat.

The two went out for drinks, but couldn't bring the young man along. After thinking for a long time, they decided to lock him in the house.

After they left, the young man started to climb off the balcony. But what seemed simple in movies and TV shows turned out to be incredibly difficult for him. He climbed from the fourth floor to the third. There was a crack in the balcony window; he struggled to open it and landed on the third-floor balcony. Looking down, the third floor wasn't that high, but the young man was completely disoriented. He didn't know if he had a fear of heights, but at that moment, he'd rather be taken back by the pyramid scheme members than climb down again.

The young man knew that the third floor was also the territory of those pyramid scheme members, and that their leader, or upline, lived there; she was a rather pretty woman. The female upline was extremely busy; besides the group upstairs, she seemed to have several other lines of recruits outside, so she was always moving around. The young man had been there for half a month and had only seen her three times.

The room was quiet and the lights were off. The young man, feeling a bit bolder, guessed that no one was home. He slowly made his way from the balcony into the house. When he got to the living room, he saw that the bedroom door was closed, but he didn't pay any attention to it. He was only thinking about opening the door and escaping as quickly as possible.

When the young man opened the door, he was dumbfounded. There was another security door outside, and it was locked from the outside.

The young man was as anxious as an ant on a hot pan. If he stayed here any longer, it would be troublesome if the woman returned. But the security door was locked from the inside, and he couldn't find it. He stood there for a while, first thinking about whether he could find the key inside the house. He searched around haphazardly for a while but couldn't find it. Finally, his eyes fell on the bedroom door.

The door was locked. The young man pushed it twice, but couldn't open it, so he had to give up.

Finally, he noticed a telephone on the coffee table in the living room. The young man beamed with joy. With a telephone, he could call the police; and if the police came, what was there to fear from those pyramid scheme operators?

He dialed 110, and although he couldn't clearly explain where he was, the police quickly found his address and said they would send someone over soon. The young man felt relieved and began to stroll around the house. But after a while, his heart skipped a beat. Staring at the tightly closed bedroom door, he instinctively took a step back.

The police arrived quickly, patrol officers. It didn't take long to open the security door; a few minutes were all it took to successfully rescue the young man. Finally free, the young man was pale-faced. He hesitated for a moment, then told the police what he had discovered.

The house's decor is clearly quite old, so the door locks in the rooms are now quite rare. These locks are commonly known as "through-door locks," and some people still use them, but mostly in kitchens and bathrooms. Through-door locks don't have keys; there's only a rotating knob on the inside. Turning it locks the door. In other words, this type of lock can only be locked from the inside, and once locked, it's impossible for someone on the outside to open it.

The bedroom door was locked, but it was quiet inside, and no one was there.

That young man has quite a vivid imagination. The more he thought about it in the room, the more frightened he became, and the colder he felt.

The patrol officers, a group of young men, found the young man's words strange. But for them, the solution was much simpler; opening a door with a through lock was extremely easy.

A tall, imposing policeman kicked the door open, and a strong smell of blood wafted out.

The curtains were drawn, making the room dark, but a person could still be vaguely seen lying on the bed. A woman. Turning on the light, the first thing that caught the eye was the dried bloodstains on the floor, followed by the woman lying face up on the bed. She was wearing cotton pajamas, soaked in blood and turned a dark purple.

The young man mustered his courage and looked over, recognizing her at a glance as the leader of the pyramid scheme group.

Her name is Xu Wen.

The patrol officers explained the events to Qin Ge and the others in detail. The scene had been cordoned off, and they were planning to notify the criminal investigation team if Qin Ge hadn't come. The deceased, Xu Wen, was the person Qin Ge was looking for, and her address was the same one the Ba people had given Ma Nan.

The forensic doctor arrived shortly afterward, and Xu Wen's cause of death was quickly determined. Inside her cotton pajamas, there was a long incision running from her chest down to her lower abdomen. The incision was very deep, cutting open her entire abdominal cavity; if she hadn't been lying on her back, her internal organs might have spilled out. Given the depth of the incision, the amount of bleeding was unimaginable; her body, the bed, and even the floor were covered in blood.

If the murderer only wanted to kill, there was no need to use such a cruel method. His only purpose in doing so was to correspond with the methods used in the previous two murders.

"This is disembowelment, which, along with beheading and strangulation shown on the DVD, are ancient punishments. In the novel *Investiture of the Gods*, King Zhou was tyrannical, and Bi Gan remonstrated with him, resulting in King Zhou disemboweling him and taking his heart," Ma Nan said. "There were quite a few emperors in history who liked to cut open people's stomachs. Liu Yu, the deposed emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, was also a tyrant like King Zhou. Once, he smelled garlic on a minister's breath, so he cut open his stomach just to see if there was garlic inside; when he saw a pregnant woman, he also ordered her stomach to be cut open to find out if the child in her womb was a boy or a girl."

Qin Ge made no attempt to hide his disgust: "Those emperors were just as perverted."

The on-site evidence collection is still ongoing. The only discovery is the video file of the online torture and murder found on the victim's computer. Additionally, the computer had CuteFTP installed, a tool used to remotely upload and download content from servers. The computer was immediately removed, and network technicians will collect evidence later.

Ma Nan had helped the criminal investigation team solve cases several times and was nominally an assistant investigator, thus having access to crime scenes. He watched as Xu Wen's body was carried away, frowned, and walked to Qin Ge's side: "Now I understand the meaning behind what Ba Ren said to me last night."

Qin Ge also seemed to be thinking: "This is the third corpse the Ba people were talking about?"

Ma Nan nodded: "The Ba people told me that I would see the third victim today. If I am careful enough, I can solve the mystery of the death and find clues about Chu Yan."

Qin Ge immediately realized what the mystery was.

The killer of Xu Wen is undoubtedly the executioner, a member of the Ba ethnic group. The method of killing Xu Wen was disembowelment, corresponding to the hanging and beheading in the previous two murders. The biggest difference between Xu Wen's death and the previous two is that she died in her own home, specifically in her bedroom, which was locked from the inside.

Qin Ge had already checked; the bedroom windows were made of common PVC material and were all locked from the inside without any gaps. The door lock had been kicked open, but both the patrol officer and the young man could confirm that the door was locked from the inside. Therefore, this constitutes a locked room mystery in classic detective fiction.

Without a doubt, finding the method by which the murderer set up the locked room is the mystery of the death that the Ba people are talking about.

Locked-room murders are common in detective novels, but this was the first time Qin Ge had encountered one in all his years as a police officer. Therefore, although Xu Wen's death was still vivid in his mind, he couldn't help but feel a little excited. Some police officers would never encounter a locked-room murder in their entire lives, and to encounter and solve it was such a tempting challenge for a criminal investigator.

It was late at night, and the police left one after another after cordoning off the scene.

Ma Nan and Qin Ge found a small tavern on this street.

"This time, you absolutely mustn't leave me behind like you did in Shanghai last time, and go looking for clues on your own," Qin Ge said.

Ma Nan smiled bitterly. That time, he abandoned Qin Ge to go find Chu Yan, which resulted in Qin Ge spending several months in the hospital. Qin Ge's opponent that time was Yu Lei, who was an asthenic patient. Even when Qin Ge subdued him, Yu Lei was able to grab the muzzle of Qin Ge's gun, and the bullet passed through his palm without him feeling any pain.

“The Ba tribe has long lived in seclusion, and it is said that they are descendants of the Fuxi clan of the divine kingdom. There must be some highly skilled individuals within the tribe. Although the elites of the Ba tribe have all been brought out by Batu and died on Peach Blossom Mountain, no one can guarantee that there won't be any formidable figures among those who remain in the tribe’s territory,” Ma Nan said.

“We know very little about the Ba people, we don’t even know where they live.” Qin Ge thought for a moment and then said, “That Ba assassin Yu Lei is still in the detention center. Why don’t we go there tomorrow and interrogate him again?”

Ma Nan shook his head: "If Yu Lei doesn't want to talk, I guess there's nothing anyone can do."

"We'll try anything, even if it's just a last resort," Qin Ge sighed. "I'm a policeman. No matter what grudges you have against the Ba people, you have to cooperate with the police in this matter. You can't act alone like last time."

Ma Nan remained silent. The result of his last solo action was that he became a pawn of his adoptive father, Ba Rong, and indirectly killed so many Ba people.

"Alright, let's figure out what the Ba people are up to." Qin Ge clearly didn't want to bring up the past. "The Ba people used these extreme methods to kill so many people, they must have their own purpose."