The voyeur sets a challenge for me.

I have always had a vivid imagination, so the moment I pictured Liu Qinglong’s head gnawing at the plastic wrap, a lifelike image sprang instantly to mind. His severed head suddenly opened its mouth wide, desperately tearing at the plastic. The wrap blocked his breathing, causing his flattened nostrils to exhale thick, heavy breaths. The air, trapped inside, quickly filled the plastic with a white mist, and Liu Qinglong’s scarred face, enclosed in that vapor, slowly began to rot and peel away...

At the thought, I couldn’t help but shudder. I shook my head violently to banish that ghastly scene from my mind, then turned immediately to look at the table beside me.

What I saw left me completely dumbfounded—far more horrifying than the vision of a head biting at plastic wrap. Liu Qinglong’s head had vanished!

Only moments ago, I had set it on that very table, and now, in the blink of an eye, it had disappeared. This was even more terrifying than watching that head gnaw on plastic.

Where had it gone?

With the projector’s glow, I swept my eyes across the floor around the table, but the head was nowhere to be found.

My nerves tightened to the breaking point, on the verge of collapse. Then, I recalled what Jin Ze had told me: if anything unexpected happened, I had to remain calm. Losing my composure would only land me in the enemy’s trap.

So I forced myself to calm down. Looking at it from a rational, scientific perspective, there was a logical explanation: someone must have taken Liu Qinglong’s head while I was distracted.

Whoever it was could still be hiding nearby, lurking in the shadows, secretly watching me.

Having been through so many terrifying situations, once I’d reasoned it out, my fear subsided. But what puzzled me even more was: who had taken the head?

Not long ago, I would have suspected Liu Qinglong himself—after all, he’d been caught as the recipient of the head delivery. But that was now impossible. Liu Qinglong was dead; he couldn’t have come to steal his own severed head.

Then my thoughts turned to his son, Liu She. Jin Ze had suggested earlier that father and son might have been working together.

But that didn’t seem likely either—would Liu She really have killed his own father? He wasn’t like Fang Lin, who’d suffered under an abusive foster parent.

I was caught in a web of conflicting analysis, unable to make sense of it all. One thing, however, was clear: the police had busted the head delivery operation. That’s why I’d been told not to send any more head deliveries by mail, but to deliver them in person myself...

The thought was deeply unsettling. I had no idea when or where I’d next be asked to deliver a severed head.

With no answers in sight, I decided to stop overthinking. Ultimately, I just didn’t have enough clues about these cases. I was sure Fang Qinghe and Jin Ze were still hiding things from me—I wasn’t truly one of them yet.

Suddenly, I heard a metallic clattering coming from the projection screen. Only then did I realize Liu Qinglong’s face-cutting video was still playing.

Since someone wanted me to watch it, there must be something important in that footage. I turned to focus on the video.

At this point, the video had reached the second step after Liu Qinglong pierced his own face. He used a knife to carve a long gash in his cheek, then grabbed a piece of skin at the wound with tweezers, and slowly began to peel it away. I could distinctly hear the low, raspy sound—the tearing of flesh.

The sight made my stomach churn. It was the most grotesque, disturbing video I’d ever seen, made all the worse by its reality—it wasn’t a movie. What shocked me even more was that from beginning to end, Liu Qinglong never used anesthetic. He was feeling every scrape, every cut. I couldn’t fathom what drove him, what gave him such iron will; any ordinary person would have passed out from the pain long ago.

After gripping that slice of skin, he faced the mirror, used a scooping blade to gouge out a chunk of flesh from the wound.

He picked up that piece of flesh with the tweezers and, unbelievably, put it into his mouth and began to chew.

Damn—Liu Qinglong was eating his own flesh. It was beyond depraved—how could such a monster exist?

In that moment, I finally believed what Liu Qinglong had said to me in the interrogation room: that he had cut the flesh from his own face and eaten it. He hadn’t lied!

Suddenly, a thought struck me. Wait—didn’t Jin Ze and the others say their investigation found that Liu Qinglong had angered some powerful group, and that his face had been sliced off by them? How could it have been self-inflicted?

Liu Qinglong clearly wasn’t lying; the video was right here. So nine times out of ten, Jin Ze and the others had been misled by false clues.

Now I started to worry for Jin Ze and his team. They’d gone to such lengths to investigate—would they come up empty-handed again, or worse, fall into another trap?

In the video, after eating that piece of flesh, Liu Qinglong repeated the process—lifting skin, gouging out another chunk, and eating it.

With two pieces of flesh gone, his face instantly caved in, looking disturbingly sinister—nothing but a bloody, mangled mess, his eyes bloodshot and wild.

At this point, he opened a medicine bottle, swallowed a pill, then applied ointment to his face—probably something to numb the pain and stop the bleeding. The bleeding soon lessened.

Then he continued cutting and eating his own flesh, over and over, until his face was shriveled and dry.

Perhaps I was so stunned by the gore that I lost all sense of awe, staring dumbly at the screen, barely remembering to blink, as if even breathing had been forgotten.

Just as I felt I was about to faint, the Liu Qinglong in the video suddenly spoke: “Chen Mu, pull yourself together—pay attention!”

His words crashed over me like thunder, jolting me upright. I nearly collapsed on the spot.

My heart skipped a beat. Damn, was he calling me? Was this not a video, but a live broadcast? Was Liu Qinglong somewhere, streaming his own mutilation live? Was the projection feeding me the real-time footage?

But I quickly dismissed the idea. I’d seen Liu Qinglong’s head with my own eyes—he was dead.

And his calling my name was easily explained: when he filmed this, he must have anticipated that someone like me would be terrified, and left a message to keep me focused.

It was bone-chilling. Liu Qinglong hadn’t lied—he really had cut and eaten his own face for my sake!

The more I thought about it, the more frightened I became. But then another question, the same one as before, popped into my mind.

Ten years ago, Liu Qinglong was already the faceless monster in Fang Lin’s memories. That meant this video must have been recorded a decade ago.

If that’s the case, did Liu Qinglong know me back then? Did he film this video ten years ago so that I would watch it today? It was almost beyond belief.

These tangled questions swirled in my mind, nearly driving me mad. But I forced myself to keep watching.

In the video, Liu Qinglong’s face was a bloody ruin. He picked up a sharp carving knife, faced the mirror, and shouted again: “Chen Mu, watch closely. For you, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do!”

With that, he slashed at his own nose. Blood spurted instantly, and his nose fell away.

His face collapsed, becoming truly featureless—the faceless man.

At that moment, the projection suddenly went black. From within, there was only the rustling of movement—I couldn’t tell if Liu Qinglong had passed out or if someone had dragged him away. Moments later, the footage ended.

Though the video was over, shock and horror reverberated through me. For a long time, I didn’t know what to do.

Just then, my phone rang. It was a message from the voyeur, sent from Zhang Wentong’s phone: “Chen Mu, what are your thoughts after watching? I’ll give you one hour. If you can unravel the story behind the video and understand its meaning within that time, I’ll reward you.”

Reading the voyeur’s message, I felt both fear and rage. Damn, this sick freak was making me solve riddles now!

Still fuming, my phone buzzed again, startling me so much I nearly dropped it.

I glanced down—it was a call from Jin Ze. I hurriedly answered.

I blurted out, “Damn, where are you? Why did you leave me alone? Something big has happened!”

Jin Ze didn’t respond to my question. Instead, he said directly, “Where are you? Come to the station—Liu Qinglong wants to see you.”