S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 3 Chapter 92

Lucky Murderer 22 – Chain Snares for Big Fish

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Gongsun said something that no one could understand, and everyone's minds twisted, unable to turn around, including Zhan Zhao.

"Gongsun... what do you mean?" Zhan Zhao had a feeling of being stupid for the first time and looked at Gongsun, "Bugs?"

Gongsun smiled faintly and asked him, "For so many years, why don't people take a look at the bowl they're holding to see if there are bugs in it, but would rather believe it's psychic? Psychologist, explain!"

Zhan Zhao froze, and a look of realisation flashed across his face, "Oh... it's dependency psychology! Most of the psychic techniques are designed to communicate with dead spirits, which means that we subconsciously actually want this to be real, so we intentionally ignore the possible existence of falsification. In other words, we base our thinking on the fact that the Ouija board is real and the bug doesn't exist! That's why we come to the subsequent conclusion! In other words, the basis of thinking is wrong, it's all wrong, the target is in the east, but our starting point is in the west, and we can't find the target even if we do a good job!"

"Well, there's no point in complimenting you on your cleverness." Gongsun grinned, "One thing leads to another!"

Bai Yutang listened with a daze as well, "The basis of our consideration was the belief that the corpse was destroyed... and that's how we started thinking after that."

"Not even close to the end!" Zhan Zhao and Gongsun reminded Bai Yutang at the same time, "Whose corpse was destroyed?"

Bai Yutang froze and opened his mouth with a surprised look on his face.

"My expression at the time was much more exaggerated than yours!" Gongsun walked over to the front of the freezer and pointed to the bottom row of drawers, saying, "These three cabinets were empty and didn't contain any corpses, but just to be on the safe side, I still opened them on instinct at the time to look!" With that, he reached out and suddenly pulled open one of the drawers.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked inside – it was empty.

They both looked at Gongsun at the same time.

"A little further in..." Gongsun said, and with a clatter, pulled the drawer completely open, revealing a black body bag inside.

The rest of SCI were watching just outside the door and were a little dumbfounded as well, and Luo Tian walked in, "How?!"

"It's simple." Zhan Zhao smiled coldly, "Do you know what a squirrel will do if it finds a large amount of pine cones and can't take them all away at once?"

"Ah!" Everyone slapped their heads at the same time, "Hide them and come back for them later!"

"Played for fools!" The crowd came over and opened the other two cabinets where the bodies were hidden, “The most dangerous place is the safest place!"

"But the corpse is a bit short!" Bai Chi felt something was wrong.

"It's been cut off." Gongsun opened the body bag, "Sure enough... there's no blood coming out because of the refrigeration."

"... Did they do that to come and steal the corpse?" Bai Chi was suddenly puzzled, "Those melted corpses are a blindfold, are there secrets on Ah Mao and their corpses?"

Zhan Zhao patted the somewhat confused Bai Chi, "Xiao Chi Chi, sometimes what you want may not be problematic, but what you don't want may be problematic. The road can go forward or backward, but you are just used to going forward, so you are not used to thinking backwards."

"Mother..." Zhao Hu slapped his head, "Can you guys speak human language? I can't understand ah."

Gongsun gently waved his hand and said, "Zhan Zhao is right, the corpses that were swapped over are perfectly normal!" Saying that, he reached out and pointed to the three white bones on the autopsy table, saying, "Very normal... but don't forget guys, originally those corpses had super high bone age!"

"Oh!" Zhao Hu scratched his head, "Makes sense ah, those bastards don't want us to have those bones! Those bones are the right bones, not the wrong bones! They're also the wrong bones, but the right bones!"

Ma Han reached out and patted the excited Zhao Hu, "Hu Zi, you'd better be foolish, if you understand, others will be foolish!"

They all laughed.

"Hu Zi has hit the nail on the head!" Zhan Zhao nodded, "Originally, we could have found important clues from those bones that were older than normal, that's why they used such a trick to steal the sky and make us blind! On the surface, it was to make us think that the corpses were destroyed because there was some secret inside, so we would desperately try to examine and study these three fake corpses, thus missing out on the evidence on the real ones!"

"The bones of these fake corpses have been eroded by strong oxidising agents and there are almost no living cells left. Having no living cells is a very problematic issue, and if there are hairs from the real corpses mixed in, then the judgement might be wrong!

Bai Yutang was silent for a while, "We can't compare DNA, so we'll have to go to a more professional institution for help, and so while we are out of the forensic room, they'll find a way to get the body out! The man came in quietly, indicating that he was familiar with the inner workings of the police station. Normally in a tall building, the tighter the security on the ground floor, the more relaxed it is on the upper floors, so he entered from the top floor. To carry out such a plan means that he must have had a way to enter the SCI forensic room openly and be sure that no one else was there when he came in!"

Ma Han frowned, "How are they going to get in?"

Bai Yutang reached out and pointed to the window with a hole broken in it from above the forensic room.

"Oh!" The crowd immediately understood – The window was broken and must be repaired! And with such a big security risk, Bao Zheng would definitely find someone to install anti-theft devices, and the work would definitely be done at night, when everyone was away!

"That video..." Jiang Ping suddenly frowned at the thought and turned to go back to the office with quick steps.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked at each other with grim faces – Honestly, that video must have been faked. Jiang Ping's surveillance is an internal network, so there was a mole!

After Jiang Ping went back, he thoroughly checked the police station's security surveillance network. At first he felt humiliated that he had been fooled so easily, even though he was presumed to be the strongest hacker. But after calming down, he began to question the fact that his surveillance system was an internal network, physically insulated from the external network and monitored by its own security system, so whoever could modify it must have entered through the internal network. In addition, when Jiang Ping was building the internal network before, Bao Zheng once said to him, "At the top, not every one of them may be clean, protect yourself from others!"

This was a statement that Jiang Ping had never said to anyone, but he knew that it was a hint from Bao Zheng that there were likely to be black sheep in the top ranks, and that he should take precautions early... Jiang Ping naturally took precautions.

After a quick check of the system, Jiang Ping suddenly got excited – the fox's tail was caught by him!

Inside the forensic room, they asked Lu Fang to contact the person who would repair the glass and go through the normal procedures, and then they set everyone up to get ready for an ambush, and when the time was right, capture and arrest the person who really did it!!

After staring at the corpses of Ah Mao and the others for a long time, Zhan Zhao suddenly asked Gongsun, "Have you thought of any clues?"

"Generally, knowing the age of a person's bones isn't of any use, and since I had examined the corpses before and found no abnormalities, I wondered if the corpses' bones were diseased. So I checked it out and found a great oddity!" Gongsun said as he had Ma Xin pull up the information and handed it to Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang.

"Look." Gongsun took off his gloves and pointed at the documents, "These people's bones were on the older side, and it was said to be hereditary, but after I did a careful test, I found that apart from old age, there was also severe osteoporosis and bone disease, and it was as if the bones had experienced nuclear radiation."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both frowned, the bones were indeed in terrible condition.

"Because the bones were so old and the deceased was wearing Qing Dynasty clothes, I made a fundamental mistake – a Ouija mistake!" Gongsun smiled, "All I could think of was that it was the over-aging of the bones that caused those diseases, not that those diseases caused the ageing of the bones!"

After Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang froze for a moment, it dawned on them that all the nonsense about their ancestors working in Nanyang and being exposed to electromagnetic radiation causing their bones to age, could have been fabricated! And then there was the genetic memory of these few people, the starting point for everything, the main premise they started thinking about was wrong.

It seemed that the crowd had become superstitious people who relied on the Ouija board, and that the seemingly loyal and honest Doctor Fan could be the very worm in that bowl.

"We looked into it and got an important clue." Pointing to the information on the computer, Ma Xin continued, "This bone disease is somewhat documented in history. In the early years of Japan when the development of industry led to widespread metal pollution, there used to be all kinds of diseases, among which was this bone disease. In addition to the ageing of the skeleton, the patients also suffered from certain mental illnesses and would suffer from delusions and psychosis. That kind of pollution comes from a kind of industrial manufacturing pollution. I searched the internet for old news and found out that the village where Ah Mao and the others were, which was near that ancient tomb of the Song Dynasty that was under development, had a historic metal factory. It has since been shut down due to heavy pollution... but the water supply has been contaminated, affecting the overall health of the locals! Because the impact was really quite bad, this matter was not reported by the media."

Zhan Zhao took the skeleton report and thought about it, "This information is indeed useful, but even if all this points to the fact that Dr. Fan might be a fraud, it's not evidence that will lead to a conviction, so why would the killer go to such lengths for them?! There should be some other key clue!"

"Head!"

At that moment, they saw Jiang Ping rushing in with his laptop. He hurriedly closed the door after entering the room and said in a lowered voice, "There's a mole in our internal network!"

Everyone froze and looked at him in horror. This was no joke, if it was true, it would be an earthquake level scandal for the police department.

"I checked to see if the system on the internal network had been modified, the video was switched there! We were blindsided, an officer from another department gave my password for the internal network to a hacker who easily accessed the security system and modified the video, leading to our investigation in the wrong direction!"

"How many people know the password?" Bai Yutang frowned. Someone in the police department? Is it that easy to switch?

"Ten!" Jiang Ping put down his laptop and made a face at Bai Yutang, "The highest ranking ones!"

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked at each other, and Zhan Zhao asked, "Can you find out?"

"Ai, the reason it's so easy to modify is because of the need for fishing! It's just that I didn't think something would really happen one day!" Jiang Ping stuck his tongue out and pointed out a point of information, "That bastard must have never thought in a million years that the internal password I gave them was different for everyone! If anyone dares to give the password to anyone else, it's the same as turning himself in and saying he's a traitor"

The crowd's spirits were lifted and they came over to look at the information, and after a glance they all completely froze!

Only to see the profile of a middle-aged police officer in his forties or fifties, with grey hair, distinctive features and a very firm and cold appearance. At first glance, he was born in the military.

"Wei Ziqiang!" Zhan Zhao said in a cold voice, "The person who told Qian Jiatang to have Ma Han transferred..."

The crowd all froze and asked at the same time, "Who wants to replace Ma Han?"

Zhan Zhao flattened his mouth at Bai Yutang as he accidentally blurted out.

Ma Han was right next to him, so naturally he heard it. He had it in his mind before, what Zhao Hu had done, he knew and appreciated this brother, he just didn't expect that... there would be a mole among people so high up within the police force!

"He's on the same level as Bao Sir, right?!" Ma Xin immediately darkened her face when she heard that someone was working against her brother, "Why would he help someone steal the body?"

Zhan Zhao took two steps in place and said to Jiang Ping, "Jiang Ping, check into this medical record report, the medical examination information of the police officers, the medical examination information of the prison inmates... In short, check the entire internal security network thoroughly and see who else has this kind of problem!"

"Okay!" Jiang Ping began to check according to the information, and soon, the information was displayed. Only one person's medical examination information matched and this one really wanted to die.

That was a prison inmate, surnamed Wang, named Wang Liangyou. Forget the gentle and friendly name, this guy was a grave robber and also an antique art thief who had committed many crimes involving enough money to be shot several times, but he was sentenced to life. The reason why he was not sentenced to death was because he still had a group of his henchmen at large who had not been caught, and in addition, there were huge sums of money and national treasures that had not been recovered.

"Check if this person is related to Ah Mao and the others." Bai Yutang said to Jiang Ping with a frown.

"It's already being checked." Jiang Ping tapped his computer a few times quickly before jerking his head up, "Head! Wang Liangyou and Ah Mao are old friends! It's just that Wang Liangyou went to be a soldier at an early age... and hasn't returned to the village since!"

"As a soldier?" Bai Yutang froze and frowned in thought, "Check if there was any crossover between him and Wei Ziqiang."

"Mmm." Jiang Ping looked up again, "Oh, Head! Wei Ziqiang used to be an instructor in the army and taught three classes of new recruits in criminal investigation techniques... one of those students was Wang Liangyou!"

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao smiled, "So that's how it is..."

"Cat, should we inform Bao Sir?" Bai Yutang frowned, this matter was not trivial.

"You also know that there is no way to fool Bao Sir's eyes, so if he acts unnaturally, he will easily scare the snake! It's better for us to investigate him first and then give Bao Sir a surprise after the nail is in the coffin. Also... we still have to put in a long line to catch a big fish."

"Wow!" Zhao Hu laughed, "Dr. Zhan, this fish isn't big enough, huh?"

Zhan Zhao raised the corner of his mouth, "Not big enough!"

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao, "Cat, what did you think of?"

"I didn't think of anything, I thought of everything!" Zhan Zhao reached out and patted him on the shoulder, "Do you remember what I told you last time?"

Bai Yutang was stunned for a moment, then thought carefully and jerked his head up, "There are times when everyone is short of money!"

Zhan Zhao grabbed Bai Yutang's hair and rubbed it, "You're so smart!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: June 4, 2022 by Angel