Graveyard

The news brought by Jinze plunged me into a deep state of depression. I was terrified that I would end up like my two brothers, with my internal organs rotting away from within, ultimately leading to death.

While I was still trembling with fear, Jinze spoke directly, "Chen Mu, you don't need to be so nervous. I just felt it necessary to share this news with you; it doesn't mean you will end up like them. You should be fine. Besides, various samples of your bodily fluids are already being studied by medical experts. If any virus was truly implanted, it will surely be discovered soon, allowing for targeted treatment."

I subconsciously uttered an "oh," and Jinze asked, "Chen Mu, are you sober now? You sound quite energetic. Still not asleep?"

That reminded me of Huang Feifei's case, so I immediately said to him, "Right, Jinze, I also have something to tell you. Do you know Huang Feifei? She was raped and murdered."

As soon as I finished speaking, the other end of the line went completely silent. After a silence of about a few seconds, Jinze said to me, "Are you at the police station? I'll be right there."

Then Jinze hung up. Judging by his tone, he clearly attached great importance to this. So Fatty was right; Huang Feifei must indeed be a friend of Jinze's.

Before long, Jinze arrived at the autopsy room. When he saw Huang Feifei's corpse, his body noticeably stiffened, and the expression on his face twisted briefly before quickly smoothing out.

Then I recounted all the details of Huang Feifei's case. Surprisingly, Jinze ignored me completely, staring fixedly instead at Huang Feifei's hollowed-out left eye as if utterly mesmerized, lost in his own thoughts.

I walked over to Jinze and called out to him twice, and only then did he snap out of it.

I asked Jinze if he knew Huang Feifei, mentioning that we had happened to discover they both came from the same orphanage.

Jinze nodded, simply acknowledging that he knew her.

I didn't feel it appropriate to question him further. If I asked too much, I was afraid Jinze might feel uncomfortable, thinking I was cross-examining and suspecting him.

However, Jinze didn't seem to mind. Soon, he took the initiative to tell me, "Feifei and I certainly knew each other, and we've kept in touch over the years. She's a very good friend. After I transferred to N City, I met up with her a few times as well. I truly never expected her to meet with such a sudden tragedy."

Unable to hold myself back, I asked him, "Then did you know about Huang Feifei being a mistress?"

Jinze's face showed no significant fluctuation; it seemed he already knew. He replied directly, "Feifei and I were just childhood playmates and ordinary friends. I never interfere in her romantic matters."

I nodded and continued to ask, "Jinze, will you be taking over this case?"

Jinze replied without hesitation, "No need. A case belonging to the homicide squad should be handled by you. Since this is your first case, handle it properly. Furthermore, since she is my friend, I should naturally recuse myself to avoid any conflict of interest. However, if there is anything you need my help with, just come straight to me. I will definitely help you."

With that, Jinze walked over to Huang Feifei's corpse, bowed his head, closed his eyes in brief contemplation, and finally turned to leave. Before departing, he instructed me to notify him at the very first moment if there were any breakthroughs in the case.

After Jinze left, I had a lingering feeling that something wasn't quite right, though I couldn't put my finger on it. Everything Jinze did was entirely reasonable, yet I couldn't shake the feeling that his behavior today was somewhat out of character. Logically speaking, someone as sunny and optimistic as Jinze, upon learning that a friend had been raped and murdered, should have immediately burned with righteous indignation, sought ways to solve the case, caught the real culprit, and avenged his friend—rather than deliberately evading involvement as he had just done. After all, even before I became his true friend, he had once argued with Team Leader Fang on my behalf.

So I felt something was amiss, but I couldn't bring myself to ask Jinze about it. Perhaps he had some unspeakable difficulties.

Still, I couldn't let my hesitation over Jinze delay the timing of the investigation. As soon as he left, Fatty and I set off. Our destination was the home of the man who kept Huang Feifei as his mistress. This man was named Bao Dafang, a vulgar, nouveau riche name, and he was a wealthy local businessman.

When we arrived at Bao Dafang's residence, he was not at home, presumably out carousing again. However, his wife was in. She was a woman in her late thirties, reasonably well-kept and not unattractive, but to a wealthy businessman like Bao Dafang, she was undoubtedly a faded yellow leaf—otherwise, he wouldn't have gone out to keep a canary.

Upon seeing us suddenly show up at her door, Bao Dafang's wife initially put on quite a haughty attitude, demanding to know what business we had with Bao Dafang. But when I flashed my police badge, I clearly caught a flash of panic in her reaction. Although fleeting, I captured it, convincing me that this woman was harboring a guilty conscience.

Giving her no time to collect herself, I abruptly said to Bao Dafang's wife, "Mrs. Bao, you are going to have to take responsibility for this human life."

Maintaining her composure, Mrs. Bao asked, "Ah, Officer, what human life? You must be responsible for what you say. The Bao family is a prominent and influential lineage. If you are just messing around here, I will sue you and make sure you can't remain a police officer."

Instead of backing down, I slammed my hand onto the table, stood up, and said in a deep voice, "Huang Feifei is dead, and our investigation has already linked it to you!"

In truth, I was merely using a probing intimidation tactic on Mrs. Bao. To my surprise, her complexion drained of color instantly, and she almost slid out of her chair.

She quickly stammered, "Ah, dead? How could she be dead? It has nothing to do with me! It really has nothing to do with me, Officer, truly! I didn't tell him to kill anyone!"

Hearing Mrs. Bao's words, I knew there was definitely something hidden here. I immediately demanded to know whom she had instructed.

Mrs. Bao quickly confessed. The truth of the matter was this: Mrs. Bao was well aware that her husband was keeping Huang Feifei as a mistress outside. She was quite terrified of her husband, so she could only harbor sullen resentment within herself without daring to act on it, sinking into a depressed and gloomy state day after day.

However, just yesterday, someone added her on QQ, claiming they could help her resolve the matter of Huang Feifei, make Bao Dafang lose interest in her, and bring him back to her side.

Blinded by her obsession, Mrs. Bao naturally agreed and even paid the person a deposit of twenty thousand yuan.

I checked Mrs. Bao's chat logs, and the records were indeed there, so she likely wasn't lying. Still, the possibility that she had prepared those chat logs beforehand could not be ruled out, so we decided to bring her back to the police station for temporary detention.

Following that, Fatty and I rushed immediately to the technical division, asking them to help trace the login activity of the QQ account that had communicated with Mrs. Bao. The provincial bureau's technical experts were truly brilliant; even in the middle of the night, they worked with incredible efficiency. Within a short while, they tracked the specific login locations of the QQ account. Most of them originated from the exact same spot, which naturally included the location from which it was operated during the chat with Mrs. Bao.

Once we pinned down those coordinates, Fatty and I hurried over in a rush. Following the coordinates, the road grew increasingly remote, eventually leading us out of the city and straight into the suburbs.

When we finally arrived near our destination, we froze in our tracks. We had come right up to the edge of a graveyard.

This was a genuine graveyard, not the sort of modern cemetery we had seen previously, but an ancient rural burial ground—the kind featuring towering mounds of earth with the dead buried beneath them.

Fatty was not particularly brave. He shivered and said to me, "Chen Mu, why are we in a place like this? Could it really be a ghost that made a deal with Mrs. Bao? Was the one who raped Huang Feifei a ghost as well?"

Fatty's words instantly brought back what Miaomiao had said earlier—that the person who raped Huang Feifei might not have possessed true sexual capability and instead used an instrument. This made me shiver as well; after all, with Jinze absent, my atheism wasn't entirely ironclad.

Nevertheless, I quickly quoted Jinze's famous maxim to Fatty: "There are no ghosts in this world; ghosts are merely the malice hidden within the human heart."

Fatty gave me a thumbs-up and said, "Impressive. You certainly know how to talk."

We then continued walking deeper into the graveyard. Since our coordinates weren't extremely precise and we only knew the general area, combined with the fact that we were in a graveyard, we momentarily found ourselves without a clear path to follow. It was entirely possible that the killer had merely brought a mobile device here to chat and had left afterward.

Just at that moment, however, we suddenly heard a muffled "mm-mm-mm" sound coming from the depths of the graveyard, as if someone's mouth had been covered, making them desperate to speak yet unable to produce a clear voice.

Following the sound, we soon spotted someone in the distance—or to be precise, we only saw a human head.

This head was resting right atop the summit of a grave mound, appearing from afar as the head of a man.

As we drew closer, I found the face looking strangely familiar, and I quickly realized from a photograph I had seen not long ago that he was none other than Bao Dafang, the man keeping Huang Feifei.

At that moment, Bao Dafang's head was protruding from the burial mound, looking rather terrifying. I figured his body must have been buried beneath the mound, leaving only his head exposed.

Mustering my courage, I stepped forward, pulled the cloth stuffing his mouth out, and asked him, "You're Bao Dafang, aren't you? How on earth did you end up here?"

Before I even finished speaking, Bao Dafang frantically blurted out, "Save me! Save me!"

I reached out and patted his chubby face, trying to calm him down. But the moment my hand made contact with his cheek, a horrifying thing happened.

In that very instant, Bao Dafang's head suddenly rolled down from the top of the grave mound—the head that had been speaking just a second before had suddenly detached...

In a flash, my scalp went entirely numb, and my whole body crawled with horror. Damn it, if it was just a detached head... how could it still talk?!