Premier tome de la série Le Magicien Oolong Qui suis-je

Chapitre 27

"Any clues?" I asked anxiously, watching Abao fiddling with the computer.

"Don't rush!" Abao tapped the keyboard, entered a search-like interface, and uploaded the image.

"How come I didn't know this existed online?" I couldn't help but ask.

“Of course!” Abao looked at me proudly and said, “I created this search website, and only I can access it! Oh! Okay!” Abao pointed to the screen, and an old-fashioned photo and a few lines of text popped up on the screen.

I quickly looked closer and saw a group of men in suits in the photo. It looked quite old, the photo was yellowed. In the center of the photo were two very striking men; the one on the left looked handsome and refined, while the one on the right looked arrogant and unruly. But what really caught my attention was the man behind these two men. He was very short, so half of his face was obscured by the people in front of him, but even that remaining half of his face was enough for me to recognize him as the real person in the photo, the mysterious man!

"How did you find it?" I asked Abao as I looked at it. I never imagined that all our hard work in searching was less efficient than a little girl typing a few keys!

"It's my treasure!" Abao touched the computer as if it were a precious gem, saying, "I'm a computer genius. This is a website I built by gathering all the available information. You can find anything here!"

"Really?" I said, but my eyes never left the computer screen. The few lines of text next to the photo caught my attention.

"A photo of Lin Junxian, Yang Yi, the founders of St. Mary's Hospital, and investor, the renowned philanthropist Mr. Song Tian!?" I looked at the two men in the photo again. Judging from their demeanor, the one on the left should be Lin Junxian, and the one on the right should be Yang Yi! So, is Song Tian the partner Yang Yi mentioned? Then why did he tell Yang Yi about the elixir of immortality? Could such a elixir really exist?

"How about it? I found out for you!" Abao boasted from the side. I nodded, but I felt even more at a loss. What should I do now that I know who he is? How can I break that Ten Thousand Souls Locking Spirit Array?

"Wait a minute, could you zoom in on the photo a little more?" I asked, pointing at the photo, because I noticed that Song Tian seemed to be wearing something on his hand.

"Sure!" Abao clicked the mouse a few times, and the photo was immediately enlarged. The thing on Song Tian's finger was also enlarged several times and appeared clearly on the screen!

"Hey, isn't this the same ring you have now?" Abao asked in surprise as I held my hand in front of my eyes.

I didn't speak, but simply turned the ring slightly. The same black color, the same floral engraving—it was almost certain that the ring's previous owner was Song Tian. That meant the skeleton in the sewer was Song Tian! Then, why did he die there? I'd witnessed the ring's power, but did Song Tian know about it? However, judging from his behavior by the Heart Lake last time, he seemed unaware! Could there be something strange about this ring? Thinking this, I asked A Bao again, "Can you help me investigate this ring?"

Abao frowned and said, "I'm not very confident, after all, it's just a ring, but I can try." With that, Abao used a graphics tool to crop the ring from the photo and then enlarged and processed it. Soon, a 3D image of the ring appeared before my eyes. Abao then uploaded it to her website, pressed enter, and a "Please wait" dialog box immediately popped up.

The hourglass, indicating the wait, kept spinning back and forth, just like my heart was in my throat. I nervously stared at the computer screen, and before I knew it, my palms were sweating.

"Found it!" Abao exclaimed in surprise, immediately clicking the screen with the mouse. An older-looking photo appeared, and the man in the photo was also wearing the same ring on his finger! Upon closer inspection, the man actually looked somewhat similar to Song Tian.

"He's a doctor from Unit 731, named Matsuda Tamanosuke!" Abao read out the caption under the photo.

Unit 731? This infamous Japanese unit that wrote an inhumane chapter in Chinese history with its live and bacterial experiments? Judging from the timeline, this person should be much older than Song Tian, probably around the same age as Song Tian's father.

Wait a minute, I suddenly remembered something Song Tian once said that puzzled me: "You Chinese are just stupid!" Also, Song Tian looks remarkably like Matsuda Tamanosuke. And what's more, isn't Song Tian's name just a transliteration of Matsuda? Perhaps Song Tian isn't Chinese at all, but Japanese, and possibly even a descendant of Matsuda Tamanosuke. Besides, Chinese and Japanese people often look quite similar; without explicit explanation, a Japanese person could easily claim to be Chinese.

Therefore, there's a reason why Song Tian would conduct live experiments! He was very likely continuing the heinous experiments his predecessors hadn't finished. Lin Junxian's sudden decision to stop in the later stages of the experiment likely stemmed from knowing Song Tian's true nature, and his conscience as a Chinese person led him to abandon any chance to save his daughter.

Is that really the case? If my reasoning is correct, then is Lin Junxian a good person or a bad person? He deeply loves his daughter, which is why he was willing to kill so many people for live vivisection experiments. Yet, he also possesses Chinese integrity, preferring to give up the chance for his beloved to survive rather than help a Japanese person continue to harm his compatriots. Is that possible? Is that possible? I keep asking myself these questions. The nature of humanity is complex; you never truly know how a person's good and evil are defined. Everyone has their own different standards of good and evil, and the debate over whether human nature is inherently good or evil has never been resolved.

"Hey, what are you thinking about?" Abao nudged me as I was deep in thought and asked.

"I'm wondering, is human nature good or evil?" I answered, lost in thought.

"Don't be so mysterious, okay?" Abao pouted unhappily and said, "Do you want to look up anything else?"

I smiled and shook my head. So far, I still don't know what to do next. It's like being stuck in a chess game; even if you know your opponent's hand, you don't know how to play. Half the truth has surfaced, but what's truly hidden beneath the surface is even more dangerous.

"I've helped you so much, you should know the saying 'repay kindness,' right?" Abao nudged me and asked happily.

"Miss, how do you want me to repay you? With my body?" I winked at her, teasing her.

"Go away!" Abao hit me in dissatisfaction and said, "This young lady has no interest in middle-aged and elderly people!"

What? A middle-aged or elderly person? Am I that old? I touched my face, both amused and exasperated. So, even I have a day when a young girl dislikes me!

"So what do you want? Uncle will buy you candy?" I asked with a smile. Good heavens, after hanging out with Li Yang for so long, I've started talking like him. He's the perfect guy to harass a respectable woman.

"Ha, I have plenty of money myself, I don't need you to buy it!" Abao gave me a disdainful look and said, "I just wanted to know why you wanted me to find this profile picture for you!"

"What do you want to know?" I looked at her with suspicion. Are all women so fond of prying into other people's privacy?

"Oh dear!" Abao said in a coquettish tone, hands on her hips, "I've been so bored lately. Your profile picture looks really funny, so you must have something special to tell me."

"Do you think this is a game?" I patted Abao on the head like an older brother and said irritably, "Kids shouldn't get involved in such dangerous things."

"Danger?" Abao's eyes immediately lit up, looking on with longing. Oh no! It's definitely another prankster! I pressed my temples; what kind of weird things have I been running into lately?! Just as I was racking my brains for a way to get rid of this curious little devil's demands, my phone rang!

"I need to take this call!" I said to Abao, took out my phone, and immediately frowned. It was Xiao Ren calling. Usually, his calls at this time wouldn't be just to ask how my day off was. My heart pounded, and my eyes inexplicably started twitching. A familiar sense of dread washed over me. My eyes glanced at the profile picture, and I saw a mocking and smug smile on the face of the person in the photo.

"Hello, what's up?" I realized my voice was trembling, and although I was holding the phone, it was trembling so much that it was about to slip from my hand at any moment.

"Lin Xiao..." Xiao Ren's voice was also trembling. I could feel his trembling and fear on the other end of the phone, and this fear was coming to me from the other end of the phone, making me feel dizzy and weak.

"Speak!" I swallowed hard. What's meant to happen will happen; there's no stopping it.

"We...we found Cao Ying's body!" Xiao Ren's words struck me like a bolt from the blue, knocking me unconscious on the spot. I almost collapsed into a chair, gasping for breath. Was all of this really true?

"Hello...Hello...Lin Xiao! Are you there?" Xiao Ren's anxious voice came through the phone. I stared at my phone for a while before answering it again.

"I'm here!" My voice was hoarse and weak. I thought I had almost resolved the situation, that I had the situation under control, that I was capable of protecting those around me. But now? Now? I've never felt such intense self-loathing. Cao Ying just vanished before my eyes? She was so young. She said she was going back to America to continue her studies. She happily told me she would come back and work with me after she finished her studies! How could she just disappear like that? Although we hadn't known each other for long, our experience working on cases together had made me consider her a friend, a younger sister, especially since she was Old Cao's adopted daughter!

“If, if you find it difficult to handle…” Xiao Ren paused, then said, “We can have someone else perform the autopsy!”

"No, no need!" I immediately answered loudly, gripping the phone tightly. The desire to help Cao Ying perform an autopsy filled my entire body. If anyone should be examined, it should be my friend.

"I'm coming right away. Where are you now?" I stood up and unbuttoned my collar, but the suffocating feeling didn't go away.

“We’re at Heart Lake!” Xiao Ren replied.

Heart Lake? Heart Lake again? I should have guessed it sooner, shouldn't I? Staring at the profile picture, I wanted nothing more than to tear it to shreds right now, but reason told me that doing so would be pointless. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to calm down, and in the instant before hanging up, I suddenly hesitated about something: How should I tell Fang Lei and the others?

"Is something wrong?" Abao asked me cautiously from the side, clearly noticing that my expression must be terrible.

"I have work to do now, thank you for your help." I forced a smile, though I knew it looked worse than crying.

"Are you going to work? But you look terrible!" Abao asked worriedly.

"It's nothing!" I shook my head, stuffed the photo of my face into my pocket, and walked towards the door.

"Hey, I don't even know your name!" Abao called out from behind me.

I stopped and replied, "My name is Lin Xiao, Lin as in double wood, and Xiao as in carefree."

"Alright, Lin Xiao!" A Bao ran up and said, "Although I don't know what happened to you, but..." A Bao took out a pack of tissues from his pocket, handed it to me, and said, "If you have tears, please let them flow!"

********

So, you're supposed to let your tears flow freely? But why do I feel nothing right now? I just feel a tightness in my chest, as if something is pressing down on my heart. My grip on the steering wheel tightens involuntarily. I look around at the empty highway on both sides, and something bright flashes before my eyes, as if there's something there.

I accelerated, and the forest by the lake came into view. But to me, this dense and lush forest became a true hell.

"Screech!" The car screeched as it braked, the sound like a knife cutting into my heart. I jumped out of the car and saw Xiao Ren walking towards me, while the faces of my colleagues around me were extremely solemn and sorrowful.

"You're here?" Xiao Ren asked, almost choking back tears.

I nodded and looked up at the tall forest. The dense leaves blocked out most of the sky. So, God, are you blinded by this?

Following Xiao Ren into the woods, the surroundings were eerily quiet, with shadowy figures seemingly moving about in every corner behind the trees. Looking up, I saw Chen Kai standing in front, smoking. My heart tightened. Chen Kai was someone who never smoked at crime scenes; he always maintained a composure that instilled fear in everyone, professionally and authoritarianly protecting his crime scene. And now, the only thing that could make him break his rule and smoke was the murder scene of his best friend's only adopted daughter. Sniffing, I knew Chen Kai was a good person, but the pressure from above was always immense; being the team leader was truly difficult for him.

"Lin Xiao," Chen Kai said with difficulty, extinguishing his cigarette butt. He stared into my eyes and said, "I will not let the murderer get away with this!"

"Me too!" I solemnly declared, glancing at Chen Kai before turning to Xiao Ren and gesturing for him to take me to see Cao Ying's body.

Closely following behind Xiao Ren, I walked towards a large tree by the lake, where several police officers were standing in twos and threes. To my surprise, Cao Ying was not hanging from the tree like the female victims in the previous Xinhu murder cases, as I had expected. Had she been lowered by the officers who arrived earlier? Suspicious, I quickened my pace.

Book One: Tales of Three Ghosts in the City, Chapter Sixty-One: The Baby

Book One: Tales of Three Ghosts in the City, Chapter Sixty-One: The Baby

The closer I got to Cao Ying's body, the more my heart ached. Grief, anger, and fear poured over me like a torrential downpour. I clenched my fists, feeling my whole body tremble uncontrollably. Who could treat such a beautiful young woman like this? She had once been so vibrant. And now, her body lay at my feet, her lower body naked. What chilled me to the bone was the sight of her body being brutally ripped open from the abdomen, exposing her internal organs. Red blood painted grotesque patterns on her snow-white thighs. The muscle layers were turned outwards, and I could even see a layer of yellow fat underneath. Her intestines were exposed, and excrement had spilled out. I glanced at the police officers beside me; their faces were grim. I knew they must be suppressing their urge to vomit.

I stood up, a feeling of extreme discomfort rising within me that made me almost gag. Taking a deep breath, I knew this wasn't the time to act out. I took the gloves Xiao Ren offered and awkwardly slipped them on. Turning to Xiao Ren, I said, "You take the picture."

Xiao Ren hesitated for a moment, then took the camera from someone else and started taking pictures. The flash made me dizzy, and the smell of blood in the air made me even more disoriented—a feeling I had never experienced before.

"Are you done taking the photos?" I asked.

"Yes," Xiao Ren replied.

I nodded and began the initial examination. The upper body was clothed, but the lower body was naked, having been cut open from the abdomen down, yet the upper body showed almost no wounds. Judging from the extent of the cuts, there must have been significant bleeding, but apart from blood clots on the thighs, there were no signs of blood splattering around the body. This indicated that this wasn't the primary crime scene; the body was likely dumped here. Looking around carefully, I felt something was very wrong. It was far too clean, far too tidy. Even if it was a secondary crime scene, this was far too suspicious. There were no footprints, no tire tracks left by a car used to dump the body. Did they walk to dump the body? That was highly improbable; no one would walk several kilometers on a highway to dump a body. Generally, when dumping a body, the perpetrator doesn't want others to know the true location of the crime; they usually use a car to transport the body as far as possible. Another thing that puzzled me was that since the perpetrator had already cut open the victim's abdomen, why didn't they dismember the body further? Wouldn't it be easier to dispose of the body if it were cut into pieces?

As Cao Ying's friend, I know that my current thinking is too rational, even a bit cruel. But as a forensic pathologist, I like to put myself in the killer's shoes and consider things from their perspective. I think, if I were the killer, how would I handle this troublesome body? It is precisely this shift in perspective that has allowed me to think of some issues that others wouldn't consider in my previous forensic examinations.

Looking at the body again, I noticed a third problem: there wasn't a single trace of evidence—not a hair, synthetic fiber, or skin fragment. It was cleaner than if it had been washed with water, yet the blood on the thigh was still clearly there. No murderer could have done it so cleanly and perfectly. Unless… I felt my heart pound, a chill ran through me from all directions, and I immediately shivered.

"Lin Xiao, are you alright?" Chen Kai walked over and stared intently at my face.

"Lin Xiao, what's wrong?" Xiao Ren rushed over and supported me as I swayed slightly, asking with concern. I felt a warm human presence emanating from Xiao Ren, and I grabbed his hand. Xiao Ren gave me a strange look; the coldness of my hand must have startled him.

"It's nothing!" I forced myself to stand still and shook my head, but my vision kept changing from black to white. The images of Xiao Ren and Chen Kai gradually blurred, and the figures began to overlap. They seemed to have become three people, or even more.

I shook my head desperately, trying to pull myself out of the illusion before me, but the images began to overlap again. How could this be? My body froze the moment I saw those faces that should have been familiar. Where was Xiao Ren's face? Where was Chen Kai's face? How did they all turn into that damned avatar? The expressions on the avatars were slowly changing, and I saw them all grinning at me with sinister smiles.

Where were the others? I quickly turned to look at the other officers, their heads, their heads, their heads! In an instant, everyone's heads transformed into that man's head sculpture. I felt a dizzying, overwhelming sensation!

Cao Ying! When I looked down at her again, Cao Ying, who had been dead, was lying there alive, looking at me with a mournful expression. Her dissected abdomen was now perfectly intact before my eyes, her legs spread wide, her private parts completely exposed. But at that moment, I felt no pleasure whatsoever; instead, my blood ran cold. I saw her flat abdomen gradually swell and then deflate, like someone blowing up a balloon and then letting it go. Then it rapidly expanded to its limit, and just when I thought it was about to explode, it flattened again. After several repetitions, a piercing scream suddenly rang in my ears from Cao Ying, a sound so sharp it seemed otherworldly, more like it came from hell.

With a loud "splat!", a gush of blood erupted, splattering onto my face. I could still feel the warmth of the blood on my cheek, slippery as it flowed down my face and neck. Looking at Cao Ying's lower abdomen, a tiny, infantile hand was emerging from the tear, still moving.

I wanted to run away, but my body was frozen in place. I watched helplessly as that little hand viciously tore open Cao Ying's abdomen, and then another little hand followed. Two blood-red, blood-stained little hands ripped open Cao Ying's abdomen, and I could hear the sound of skin being torn apart. Then a small head began to emerge from Cao Ying's lower body; I couldn't make out its face yet.

The head turned slightly towards me—it was a portrait, a shrunken portrait! I could no longer support myself and collapsed onto the grass. The infant with the same face as the portrait was crawling towards me from Cao Ying's tattered lower body. The infant was smiling, but I couldn't sense any innocence in it. Its eyes held only ferocity and smugness.

"No!" I roared, the baby's hand already reaching for me. For the first time in my life, I felt fear towards a tiny infant. Suddenly, the ring on my finger tightened, and pain shot through my fingers, tightening more and more, the sensation of my finger bones being constricted.

A burst of red light shot from the baby's eyes, and I instinctively raised my hand to shield them. Then, the jade pendant on my chest suddenly became scalding hot, and a burst of white light shone from my chest onto the baby. Then everything went black, and I lost my last consciousness.

********

When he opened his eyes again, he was already lying in the car, with Xiao Ren's concerned gaze beside him and Chen Kai's incredulous look. He couldn't understand how the usually calm Chen Kai could have such a lapse in judgment, and act so strangely, like…like he was suddenly possessed! Thinking this, Chen Kai quickly straightened up, trying to banish the thought from his mind! But his subordinate was really acting very strangely; suddenly his eyes went blank, he kept shouting "No, no!", and finally, a white light appeared. What on earth was going on?

"What happened to you just now? Are you sick?" Chen Kai asked.

"Yeah, yeah! Do you know how scary you looked just now?" Xiao Ren chimed in from the side.

I didn't speak, just stared blankly at them, still reeling from what had just happened. Everything was so sudden, so terrifying. The image was so vivid in my mind; my brain told me it was just a hallucination, but all my other senses told me it was real. Reality and illusion—for the first time, I couldn't tell the difference.

"Hey, say something!" Xiao Ren nudged me. I knew he was worried about me, but I just couldn't bring myself to speak. How could I explain? Should I really tell them everything I saw?

"Xiao Ren!" Chen Kai pulled Xiao Ren, who was still pushing me away, and shook his head at him, saying, "Lin Xiao doesn't seem to be feeling well. Let's call Fang Lei to do an autopsy."

Fang Lei? I reacted immediately upon hearing that name and quickly stopped Xiao Ren, who was about to make a call, saying, "Don't call her, I'll handle it."

"You? Are you alright?" Chen Kai looked at me suspiciously.

"Sure!" I quickly replied. No matter what, Fang Lei couldn't do this job. She liked Cao Ying so much and considered her her best friend. How could she bear this blow? Besides, Cao Ying's current state was too unbearable to look at. Naturally, I should be the one to start it and bear the consequences.

"Alright!" Chen Kai readily agreed to my request.

"Then, could we not tell Fang Lei about Cao Ying's death yet?" I asked Chen Kai.