S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 1 Chapter 95

Shadow Murderer 04 – The Other World

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Zhan Zhao rarely saw such a serious expression on Bai Yutang's face, he saw him tilting his head and looking at the high walls around him. After a moment, he shook his head and said in a cold voice, "It's impossible to get up there!"

"It's impossible to go up there..." Zhan Zhao looked at the ground and the two spoke in unison – "Down there!"

Bai Yutang looked down and examined the ground, and saw that it was a stone floor that was seldom seen, and the square concrete slab throughout had many potholes and cracks that had flaked off. As he stepped on the ground, he soon stopped at a slab and crouched down, stretching out his fingers to slowly trace the cracks along the edge of the slab.

Zhan Zhao also walked over. "How is it?" He asked as he crouched down.

"There's wind." Bai Yutang said as he stuck his finger into a hole along the middle section of the crack. With a snap of his index finger and a violent lift, the concrete slab was lifted up with the wind blowing through it fully. When the two men settled down to look, they saw a dark passage below. There were many pipes running across it and the passage was almost two metres deep – an old-fashioned underground passage of the S city.

"Looks like that's how we let him get away last time too." Zhan Zhao said as he looked at the underground passage.

Bai Yutang nodded and said, "I'll go down and take a look, you..."

Zhan Zhao didn't wait for him to finish before glaring, "I'm going too!"

There was no time to argue. Bai Yutang nodded and jumped down first, reaching out to catch Zhan Zhao who jumped down after him.

The two of them entered the tunnel and found that one end was blocked, so they headed for the other end. Bai Yutang took out his mobile phone and turned on the flashlight, and the two of them walked ahead through the faint light.

The tunnel was so quiet that even the faint sound of their breathing became clear due to the enclosed structure's sound insulation. Every now and then a grey rat or two would scurry away, startled by the light. The air was filled with the smell of mould and decay, and Zhan Zhao saw Bai Yutang frowning, and knew that for someone with a mild cleanliness addiction like him, being in this environment was torture. 

After the two of them had walked for about five minutes, they saw a relatively large space open up in front of them, and two divergent junctions had also appeared.

Bai Yutang turned his face to look at Zhan Zhao: "Cat, which side?"

Zhan Zhao took a look at the two passageways with the faint light and suddenly gave a soft "Huh".

"What?" Bai Yutang asked.

"It seems that people walk around here quite often, and there are quite a few of them!" Zhan Zhao looked at a junction in confusion and pointed to the ground, "Look, there are still quite a few footprints."

Bai Yutang nodded and walked deeper into the passage, and after about ten more minutes or so, they suddenly saw a bright light coming from ahead – an exit so soon?!

The two looked at each other and quickened their steps towards the light, and soon the view at the end of the passage became clear as the light intensified.

When they reached the exit, they found that there was still a corner to be rounded, and as they were about to turn the corner, a pile of things in the corner caught the attention of the two men. They saw that on the floor of the corner were some plastic sheeting and some worn out clothes with many dirty toys, mostly worn out dolls and plastic robots on top...

Bai Yutang walked up and leaned down to look at the pile of toys on the floor.

"Xiao Bai, this was made a long time ago!" Zhan Zhao pointed to a white, dirty, plush kitten and said, "Do you remember when we had one as kids?"

Bai Yutang nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a napkin. Using it, he held up an old pistol, "Cat, does this one look like the others?"

"Yes!" Zhan Zhao nodded, "It's very similar to those toy guns from the murder scene!"

As the two were talking, they heard a messy sound of footsteps and laughter coming from around the corner. Turning their faces, they saw a few small dark figures appear at the exit – a few messy little children. They were running around happily, but when they saw Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, they all stood still, looking at them with some fear and curiosity.

Zhan Zhao walked towards those few children. When the children saw him coming, they all turned and ran. Zhan Zhao hastily stopped and shouted, "Wait a minute..."

But unfortunately none of them listened to him and continued to run out. At that moment, they heard Bai Yutang yell in a cold voice: "Stop!"

The two little ones running at the end instinctively stopped and turned back somewhat timidly, looking back at Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao.

"Don't be afraid, let me ask you a few questions." While saying that, he walked over and saw that the two kids still seemed to be scared, so he took out two ten yuan notes from his pocket. The two children's eyes lit up and they reached out to take them, but Bai Yutang raised his hand gently and put it out of reach of the two, saying, "Be good and answer my questions."

"En!" The two little ones nodded their heads vigorously, with a look of cooperation.

"Is this where you guys often come to play?" Bai Yutang pointed to the toys in the corner, "Where did those toys come from?"

"They’re from the dump!" One of them replied.

"Where's the dump?"

"Quite far away, at the junction." The other kid said, pointing into the distance.

Bai Yutang nodded, "Ever seen a man in black clothes with a big beard?"

"A big beard?" Both children nodded excitedly at the same time, "Yes, I've seen him, he's a strange man!"

"What's strange about him?" Zhan Zhao also came up and asked.

"He's so grown up yet he still wants to play with us!" One child asked the other, "Right? Look at his big beard, he should be called grandpa!"

"Do you know where I can find him?" Bai Yutang then asked.

The two children scratched their heads and thought about it, shaking their heads, "I don't know, it's usually when we're playing that we see him hanging around..."

Bai Yutang nodded and asked the two again, "Do you want to make more money?"

"Yes!" The children nodded their heads together.

"Cat, do you have a pen?" Bai Yutang turned back to Zhan Zhao and asked him. Zhan Zhao nodded, took a pen out of his pocket and handed it over.

Giving the money to the two kids, Bai Yutang wrote his mobile phone number on one of the kid's hands, "If you see that man next time, take advantage of his inattention and call me, I'll give you twice the money."

"Okay!" The two kids received the money and ran away happily.

Bai Yutang handed the pen back to Zhan Zhao.

"How did you know I had a pen?" Zhan Zhao asked as he took the pen.

"Usually nerds carry one on them." Bai Yutang replied with a smile.

Zhan Zhao glared at him, "Why didn't they run away when you were so fierce with them just now, but they turned around and ran away when I spoke calmly?" Zhan Zhao was a bit depressed, "This is not quite in line with psychology!"

"Heh~~" Bai Yutang was amused by him. He carefully wrapped the gun with a napkin and stuffed it into his pocket, "These children, probably have never heard any soft words in their lives, they are always being yelled at, so if you are mean to them, they will not resist. "

"If they resist, will they be beaten?" Zhan Zhao walked further out with Bai Yutang, noticing that all around them were dilapidated houses and rubbish piled up everywhere.

Bai Yutang didn't say anything, just nodded and looked around as if he was discerning the direction.

As the two walked for a while along an alleyway, they saw that there were gradually more people and the premises were not so dilapidated. There were many young men with dyed hair and strange clothes on the road, in groups, either smoking or flirting and chatting. As Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang walked by, the crowd looked at the two curiously, obviously noticing that these two people did not belong here.

Gradually, Zhan Zhao noticed that a few young men were trailing them and tugged on Bai Yutang's sleeve, "Xiao Bai?"

Bai Yutang shook his head, "Don't mind them, there will probably be more later."

Sure enough, as the two of them walked further on, five or six people were already following behind them, and they were getting closer and closer.

"Ah~~" Zhan Zhao was suddenly startled. Someone patted him on the butt just now~~

Turning back, he saw several people behind him laughing at him, and one of them walked ahead of him. Just when he wanted to speak, he saw a flash of white shadow in front of him… Bai Yutang walked over at some point, reached out and grabbed the man by the collar of his coat and threw him hard against the wall. He reached out and clasped his right hand and pressed it against the wall, casually picked up an empty wine bottle on the floor and smashed it against his hand.

Not only Zhan Zhao, but also the several other people were stunned and backed up in fear.

‘Clang, clang’ came the sound of a bottle breaking. The man who was being held down closed his eyes in fear, but there was no sharp pain in his hand. When he opened his eyes, he saw Bai Yutang looking at him and smiling coldly, and the bottle was smashed to pieces less than a centimetre away from his finger.

"Ah~~" The man turned and ran in fear, and the few people with him all fled as well.

Bai Yutang threw away the broken bottle in his hand, turned around and pulled Zhan Zhao over, walking out with him. Soon after turning through a few alleyways and seeing the road, he saw that not far ahead was the bank from earlier, where Bai Yutang's car was parked.

"What was that just now?" Zhan Zhao was puzzled, feeling like he had taken a trip to another world, Bai Yutang was relaxed in dealing with the situation, but he was a bit bewildered and had his pride hurt.

Bai Yutang laughed and reached out to scratch Zhan Zhao's nose, saying, "A domestic cat broke into a pile of wild rats and got its tail stepped on, so I came to the rescue as a hero." After saying that, he was beaten!

While taking the beating, Bai Yutang took out his phone and called Jiang Ping, asking him to find the floor plans of all the underground tunnels in S City and then investigate the situation in this area.

He hung up the phone, subdued a certain fur-fried cat, stuffed it into the car and headed back to the police station.

Eugene drove up to the door of a villa on the outskirts of S City. When he got out of the car, an underling came up and told him, "Mr. Zhao is painting in the greenhouse."

"Painting?" Eugene shrugged, "How can a gangster be so elegant these days? What kind of person has Big Brother introduced me to?" As he muttered to himself, he walked down the stone path towards a glass house deep in the courtyard, surrounded by greenery.

The door to the greenhouse was not closed. Eugene stepped in freely and raised his eyes – and was momentarily frozen.

The sunlight was reflected by the glass roof of the greenhouse, giving it a strange look. The light was voluminous and poured down, giving a light honey colour to the lilies spread all over the greenhouse.

In the middle, in an empty space, on a white chair sat a man dressed in black, painting. Eugene could see the side of his face and couldn't help but whistle, what a beauty! If the boss hadn't told him that this was the person he would be taking orders from next, he would have thought that the boss had found him a lover – a man, not a very young one at that, but that line running down to the corner of his mouth was so damned sexy.

The man took no notice of Eugene's whistle and just continued to concentrate on his drawing. It was then that Eugene saw what he was drawing and became even more shocked. He saw that not only the canvas the man was painting, but also the other canvases on the floor, were all painted with the same person, the very same Zhan Zhao he had just seen. No matter how he looked, it looked exactly the same, just like him!

After five minutes of silent observation, Eugene, who had been treated like air, finally couldn't help himself and said, "Did you ask me to take a look at him before I came here so that you could prove that your drawing looked like him?"

The man still ignored him and stared intently at the canvas in front of him, as if the human being next to him was not even worth a hair of the portrait on the canvas.

After waiting for a while longer and getting no answer, Eugene simply moved a chair from the side and sat down, "The boss told me to listen to you on everything, you are Zhao Jue, right?"

Finally finishing the last stroke of his painting and examining it with satisfaction, he put down his brush, turned his face to look Eugene up and down, and gave him a light smile.

Eugene's eyes widened as he stared at the smile on that face for a long time before he tried to wipe his mouth and thought, ‘Boy, what is this man's relationship to his big brother?’

In front of Eugene's eyes was none other than Zhao Jue, who slowly stood up and whispered, "You are indeed the right person for the job."

"Big Brother says you can help him reclaim all the territory here, how do we do that?" Eugene stood up too and walked over to Zhao Jue – Wow! What a beautiful neck! What's that light red mark on it?

"Should we start with him?" Eugene gestured to Zhan Zhao on the canvas. As soon as the words left his mouth, he saw Zhao Jue suddenly turn around and stare at him without any expression on his face.

"... What, what?" Eugene said in his heart: ‘You are so concerned about him, you are not going to deal with him?’

Zhao Jue stared at Eugene's eyes for a moment, then opened his mouth and spoke slowly and quietly, "Remember this face and stay away from him! Or I'll make you disappear from the world completely." After saying that, a brighter smile appeared on his face and he turned to leave.

It took Eugene a long time to come back to his senses, swallowing and taking a deep breath. What was that feeling he had just had? The sound was like it went straight into his head... If he had just said ‘suicide’, maybe he would have really died... After half a day of silence, he squatted down and held his head, rubbing his hair. He said to himself, "Damn, a demon, it's scary~~"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Translated: by Turtle

Edited: September 22, 2022 by Angel