S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 4 Chapter 76

Ghost Ship Murderer 40 – Chameleon

---

"What chameleon?" Bai Yutang turned around and asked Bai Ye.

"Hurry over." Bai Ye said, "Something might have gone wrong."

Bao Zheng sent a few police speedboats to the other ship, and after the SWAT team boarded the ship, they came back with shocking news, "They're all dead."

"What?"

Everyone was dumbfounded, and immediately switched boats to rush to that cruise ship... On board, there was a strong smell of blood, which made everyone frown.

"How could this happen?" Bai Yutang couldn't believe it, "Did anyone come close to this ship?"

"There was only one ship approaching just now in the surveillance footage, we all saw it. Could it have been infighting?" Qin Ou recalled the surveillance video just now and rewatched it… They watched from all angles, but did not find anyone suspicious onboard the ship.

But the scene in front of them was indeed puzzling – Stephen and everyone... including those black-clothed bodyguards, were all dead in the cabin, shot between the eyebrows, with no resistance!

"Just died." Gongsun inspected the bodies, "Within half an hour!"

Zhan Zhao found it hard to believe, but his mind instantly flashed to what Zhao Jue and Bai Ye had just said – Chameleon.

"What's chameleon?" Zhan Zhao went to Zhao Jue's side and asked him, "You guys aren't conducting some kind of experiment to create some kind of invisible human chameleon, right?"

Zhao Jue looked at Zhan Zhao breathlessly, "You've watched too much Harry Potter, haven't you?"

"What is it then?" Zhan Zhao was puzzled.

"It's a killer." Bai Ye said.

"Killer..." Bai Yutang frowned.

Ma Han picked up two bullets from the ground and said to Zhan Zhao, "It's a sniper rifle."

Bai Yutang walked to the edge of the boat to look into the distance. In the distance was the vast ocean, although the sky was very dark, the visibility was not too low, and you couldn't see any ships in the endless ocean. Bai Yutang said, "Everyone was killed with a single shot, right between the eyebrows, what kind of killer is so strong? Is Chameleon more powerful than Eleven?"

"Eleven can't be surpassed, but he can't compete with a large crowd." Bai Ye smiled, "Count on him to run fast."

"It seems that these boys knew quite a lot of things, so they were silenced." Zhao Jue felt bummed out.

But the ones who felt most bummed out were of course Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, as the murderers were all dead! In that case, they could only rely on deduction, as some words couldn't be heard from them, and more crucially, who killed them? There was a case within a case.

"Stephen seems to have something in his hand."

Lin Ruo, who also came onboard, was different from the crowd; he was in fact less concerned about the outcome, and more curious about the reason. The corpses lying on the ground made him feel strange in terms of the entire development of the case, and it was hard to imagine that these friends that he had spent so much time with were this kind of people. But now, squatting down to look at a cold body, it felt incomparably familiar... so many friends, all dead at once.

Lin Ruo carefully looked over one corpse after another... and found that Stephen was holding something in his hand.

Gongsun pried the corpse's hand open and found that it was a cell phone.

"Cell phone?" Gongsun was a bit puzzled and handed the cell phone to Bai Yutang.

"Trying to make a phone call before he died?" Bai Yutang turned on the phone... and frowned at the weird smartphone.

At this time, the police boat also arrived to meet up with them. Jiang Ping boarded the boat, took the phone and fiddled with it for a while, saying, "Head, there's a lot of information in this phone."

"What information?" Bai Yutang walked over to look.

Jiang Ping exported the information to the computer for everyone to see.

"There are quite a few research reports, one on Emilia, one on blue gemstones, one on personality implants, a few psychological studies, and..."

Jiang Ping clicked on the last document, "It's like a medical report, so long."

"Medical report?" Gongsun was curious and went over to look at it, just to see many anatomical diagrams of the heart.

"Huh?" Gongsun quickly skimmed through the long report and raised his head, seemingly in some kind of deep thought.

"What's the situation?" Zhan Zhao asked Gongsun.

"This medical report examines something very scary and somewhat unrealistic." Gongsun said seriously, "Bobby probably wouldn't have done this kind of crazy research back in the day."

"Then what exactly is the research?" Bai Yutang urged Gongsun to hurry up and speak.

"Well, how can I make you guys understand it..." Gongsun seemed to be organising his human language, "You guys know how cyclists and swimmers often go to the high plateaus to train in oxygen-deprived environments, right? "

Everyone nodded, this would enhance the effect of their training.

"In fact, a person's physical ability mainly depends on the cardiorespiratory function, the stronger a person's cardiorespiratory function is, the more abundant their physical ability is, and the physical limit and the explosive power they can achieve are all stronger!"

Everyone nodded, "So?"

"This report is a study on the deep sea, using drugs to improve the cardiorespiratory function, so that the physical ability can reach a certain limit." Gongsun spread his hands, "But this research experiment is quite dangerous! A person's load at the high plateau and at the bottom of the sea are not comparable at all. The drug ingredients here can be addictive and cause serious side effects, to the point of heart failure and death... hmm..."

Speaking of this, Gongsun seemed to have remembered something and asked Jiang Ping, "Are there any autopsy reports on the group of foreign explorers that drowned and then boiled before?"

Jiang Ping pulled up the autopsy report from his computer and showed it to Gongsun.

Gongsun checked it, "Sure enough, boiling the bodies was to stop us from discovering the lesions on the bodies, as well as the ingredients of the drugs in the bodies!"

"The email I received at the very beginning, about how much weight the heart could actually bear, could it have anything to do with this report?" Lin Ruo's mouth opened wide in surprise, "Those explorers were killed by Stephen and the others?"

"It's more than that." Gongsun said, "Stephen's sister, should also be a victim of an experimental activity."

"What do you mean?" Lin Ruo didn't understand.

"After Stephen's sister was attacked, most of her blood was drained away before fresh blood was introduced." Gongsun said, "Previously, Yang Fan told me about his sister's condition, the girl will be left with serious after-effects because the blood that was drained away and the blood that was fed into her contained some drugs."

The crowd was surprised.

Zhan Zhao frowned, "In other words, exchanged blood with his sister?"

"Not bad. Because there was a prolonged lack of oxygen in the organs and brain, this experiment was quite risky, and those drugs were life-enhancing. In other words, Stephen used his sister to experiment on whether or not it was possible to extend her life with drugs after a long period of blood exchange in large doses. The experiment turned out to be successful, but the side effects were obvious. Yang Fan had said before that the murderer was heartless, and he didn't know what kind of objective they had, but now it seems that what Stephen did was an eager attempt to carry out a human experiment."

"Is there a genetic problem with inferior breeds?" Zhao Jue suddenly laughed, "That's why they were so desperate to find Bruce, but it's a pity that Bruce can't even protect himself."

Everyone looked at Zhan Zhao, begging for an explanation and translation.

Zhan Zhao seemed to understand, "It was analysed before, the A type of twins are of high quality, while the B type are inferior..."

"Gongsun, what are you doing?"

Before Zhan Zhao could finish, the crowd saw Gongsun pull out a scalpel and start to dissect Stephen's body on the spot.

Everyone turned their eyes away, Lin Ruo held his forehead and turned away... How is this going to develop further?

"There are signs of organ failure." Gongsun bloodily fiddled with the body for half a day, then tilted his face up and told the crowd, "Obviously, the body couldn't handle the load."

"Load?" Zhan Zhao stroked his chin, "That's true, Bruce's experiment only controlled the person emotionally and improved their abilities, but physiologically there was no enhancement. If they work for a long period of time, they will be overloaded!"

Zhao Jue nodded, "That's right!"

"This report is very detailed. It seems that he got a special team to develop a new drug, it can indeed slow down their decline, but it can only treat the symptoms, not the root of the problem. The drug is in constant development, and it needs a lot of test subjects to provide data." Gongsun finished reading that medical report and sighed, "The special ability reduces their heartbeat to half of what it would be under normal conditions, it's similar to what it would be when diving, so to experiment with the new drug, the best candidates would be explorers and undersea operators who regularly dive."

Lin Ruo was silent for a long time, "My friends and Stephen and the others all know each other, and they have some private friendships."

"Then Lin Ruo was also drugged?" Han Wei was a little worried.

"Don't worry, how could Stephen let that happen?" Zhan Zhao waved his hand, "Those explorers were kept in the dark and used as guinea pigs until Lin Ruo found the box of bones from the Emilia shipwreck, and the serial murder case that Stephen and the others had orchestrated began."

"So, those bones I found..." Lin Ruo frowned.

"That box of bones was probably prepared by Stephen and the others beforehand for you to discover." Zhan Zhao said, "So were those letters, and all the suspicions were skilfully directed to the legendary Emilia ship."

"It's a pity that Han Wei and the others, as well as Aria, disrupted their plans." Zhao Hu asked Han Wei, "When did you wake up?"

Han Wei and Han Ling glanced at each other, and before they could say anything, Zhan Zhao said, "Five years ago, right?"

Han Ling and Han Wei both nodded.

Bai Yutang thought for a moment, "Is that when the female ghost started appearing in the hospital?"

"It was faked that time, wasn't it?" Zhan Zhao asked Han Ling.

Han Ling sighed, "It's really a coincidence. Five years ago, I went to the hospital to see a doctor, and all of a sudden there was a little nurse who stared at me for half a day before asking me if I had a relative who was in a vegetative state recuperating on the top floor. I was curious at the time and thought it couldn't be that coincidental, so I snuck up to take a look and surprisingly found Han Wei."

The crowd nodded – A coincidence indeed.

"From that day onwards I often came to visit Xiao Wei, secretly of course, and then by such a coincidence, Xiao Wei woke up." Han Ling said, "His memory returned, so he mentioned Stephen and the others to me. Afterwards, I did some secret investigations and found out that they were building the Emilia and investigating the events of that year, so I knew that they must have other plans. So we started switching identities to secretly investigate them and the events of that year, and started working inside the Emilia that was under construction to prepare for a counterattack."

Han Ling said and sighed, "I brought Xiao Wei to meet our siblings who were separated back then, and had Xiao Mi put on a show about the hospital being haunted, which was to make it easier for her to sneak in and out of the hospital to help us with our errands. But after Xiao Wei saw Xiao Mi, he discovered something."

"Discovered that she looked exactly the same as Lin Ruo's maid, Aria, and another clue appeared?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Han Ling nodded, "In the course of the investigation, we were discovered by Stephen and the others anyway... We were chased into hiding, and eventually, we remembered that the most dangerous place is the most secure!"

"So you hid inside the Emilia to continue the investigation?" Zhan Zhao nodded, "This idea is indeed brilliant."

"It's just that in the process of implementing it, apart from Xiao Mi and I, the others were discovered and killed. Ding Yuan and Ryan cleverly used their twins' corpses to get away, clearing their suspicions and disguising their identities."

"The reason why the murderer who killed Jin Liang and the others couldn't be found was because the murderers were the 'dead men', Ding Yuan and Ryan?" Bai Yutang looked at the corpses on the ground, "In the end, Nguyen Van Gao managed to be captured by us when he killed Lin Ruo, so he became the scapegoat to close the case. Without Lin Ruo and Jiang Nan's kidnapping, they would have already found the Emilia as planned and embarked on the island in search of Bruce."

"This group is actually quite naive." Bai Ye lightly chimed in, "That female ghost could have killed them all by herself."

"Not necessarily." Ma Han dragged out a huge device from the side and showed it to the crowd.

"A generator?" Bai Yutang studied the strangely modified generator and the somewhat dangerous looking wires linked to it carefully.

"They want to electrocute Emilia?" Zhao Zhen raised an eyebrow, "That's indeed a good method!"

"That's right, dolphins can be electrocuted to death, let alone people, wasn't the other twin struck to death by lightning before." Bai Jintang shook his head.

"What about that waiter?" Bai Chi asked Zhan Zhao.

"Stephen probably instructed him to throw something into the bushes, telling him to hurry and run if he was discovered... so he gave up his life for nothing." Zhan Zhao sighed, "A few extra deaths can solidify the charge of a serial killer indiscriminately killing people, and that Chen Fei, who had a crush on Lin Ruo, also lost his life because he wanted to get involved with the Emilia."

"Then Jintang's car going out of control was also their doing?" Gongsun asked.

Bai Yutang nodded, "They should have known that the one driving the car that day wasn't Lin Ruo."

Bai Jintang thought about it, "I was at the golf course, and the one who called me to talk about things was a friend from a company associated with Stephen's business, and the project also had some connections with them. It could have been a sudden schedule change arranged by Stephen."

"The only thing that went wrong was Jiang Nan." Zhan Zhao said, "Stephen and the others shouldn't have wanted Jiang Nan to be discovered originally, because then the police's attention would have been directed to the Emilia ship they were building. It's just that they didn't expect Jiang Nan to suddenly come that day and to be discovered by Zhao Zhen, and for Bai Chi to even discover the ship building report."

Everyone looked at the several corpses on the ground – It is the so called sin of one's own making, they deserve the punishment.

"We found Lin Ruo that day, because we saw his unique car at the hospital." Zhao Hu curiously asked Lin Ruo, "Why did you drive that car to the hospital that day?"

"Stephen said that a friend of his was having a wedding and wanted to borrow this car from me." Lin Ruo said, "I go to see Xiao Wei on that day every week, so I drove there on the way. I didn't expect to bump into you guys at the hospital."

"What Stephen and the others didn't expect was that Ma Han and Zhao Hu didn't follow Lin Ruo, but instead notified Yutang, who in turn found Han Wei. Han Ling, who was pretending to be in a vegetative state in place of Han Wei, noticed our arrival, woke up at that moment, and had Xiao Mi attack He Ying, alerting us about the Blue Doll plan because at that time, his companions were dead, and relying on his personal power was virtually hopeless, so he wanted to guide us toward solving the case, right?" Zhan Zhao spread his hands, "The cases were connected and solved, it's just a pity that the murderer is dead and the updated research information didn't arrive. I wonder if there's still an experimental base or something left on the island..."

Before Zhan Zhao finished speaking, he heard a loud 'boom'.

"What was that sound?" Zhao Hu was startled.

The crowd then saw that the distant island was ablaze with flames, and it seemed that a large explosion had occurred.

Zhan Zhao sighed, "One step slower again."

"Did Chameleon destroy the evidence on the island after killing Stephen and the others? It seems like the bullets weren't shot from the sea, but from the island." Bai Yutang frowned and told the marine police to prepare to extinguish the fire. Even if there was little hope, it was better to go to the island and take a look.

"That information isn't important at all." Seeing that Zhan Zhao was dishevelled, Zhao Jue opened his mouth and said, "The information that I gave you is a unique treasure, those copycat goods, there's no need to bother with them at all."

Zhan Zhao glanced at him and thought – Do you always have to be that punchable when you comfort people?

"The case is closed, write a detailed report to me." Seeing that the case was solved, Bao Zheng was ready to return.

"Head, there's a video on the phone." Jiang Ping told Bai Yutang and the others.

The crowd went over to look at it, and they saw that the file name of the video was – last words.

"Yo." Zhao Jue got interested, "It's quite interesting."

Everyone squinted at him.

Jiang Ping clicked on the video and found that it was a monologue from Stephen, addressed to Lin Ruo.

Throughout his last words, Stephen confessed his crimes, as well as his identity as a test subject, and showed his love for Lin Ruo, which made everyone watching him break out in goosebumps. The entire video was filled with a perverted sense of evil, and through his monologue, it was clear that Stephen was an extremely selfish person, completely different from the gentle and warm person he appeared to be on the surface. In addition, throughout the entirety of his last words, he did not say a word about his childhood sweetheart, who he was going to propose to and marry! Stephen's greatest regret in his life was that he did not develop a new drug that would keep him from dying. It could be seen that when recording this monologue, Stephen predicted his own cause of death to be organ failure, and absolutely did not expect himself to die in the hands of a mysterious assassin organisation.

"After killing so many people to silence them, was he himself ultimately silenced." Zhan Zhao frowned.

"They must have known something." Zhao Jue reminded Zhan Zhao, "Chameleon never goes out lightly, those bastards will only use this killer when they're in a hurry, this is considered their last lifeline."

......

On the way back, Zhan Zhao carefully studied the research report from Stephen's cell phone.

Bai Yutang was preparing to bring people to the homes of the various deceased to search for information, but just as the ship docked, he received a call saying that Stephen and the others' homes had gone up in flames, burning to the ground without a single piece of tile left.

Bai Yutang stroked his chin, "Destroying the corpses and eliminating the traces?"

"Are there any other places on fire?" Zhao Jue suddenly asked.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang glanced at each other and spoke in unison, "You mean, Stephen's medical team that developed new drugs?"

Zhao Jue looked at the sky, "Can you two stop being so smart? Would it kill you to give this old man the limelight once in a while?!"

Bai Yutang couldn't care less about messing around with him, and called the police department to search for anything, but there was nothing else tonight other than these big fires, and there was nothing in the two neighbouring cities either.

"Stephen was so afraid of death and in such a hurry, so the research lab must be near S City." Zhan Zhao muttered to himself, "If they want to destroy the bodies and eliminate the traces, that lab should be the first thing to be eradicated, but there's nothing... indicating that Stephen and their valuable discovery lies with those drugs!"

"It might be possible to get some clues by doing an autopsy, after all, Stephen and the others weren't boiled." Gongsun proposed.

However, Zhan Zhao shook his head along with Zhao Jue, "The direction is wrong."

Gongsun was puzzled.

"Even their houses were burnt down in order to destroy the bodies and eliminate the traces, how could they leave their corpses behind?" Zhan Zhao sighed, "If these corpses were really that valuable, they would have been burnt along with the boat just now."

The crowd thought about it and felt that it made sense.

In the end, Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao sent Lin Ruo home, and the Lin parents were finally able to put their hearts at ease.

Zhan Zhao and the others turned back to try to find the two brothers Han Wei and Han Ling, but they were nowhere to be found.

Zhan Zhao found the two police officers who were responsible for keeping an eye on the two brothers and Xiao Mi, and found them in a state of disarray.

"That bastard Zhao Jue!" Zhan Zhao searched all over to find Zhao Jue and Bai Ye, but there was no trace of them anywhere.

Finally, Zhan Zhao called Zhao Jue, "Baldy! Where did you take them?"

Zhao Jue was silent for a long time, "You dare to call me a baldy?!"

Before he could finish his words, Bai Ye snatched the phone away, "These few people are still useful, we'll just investigate the medical team's matter, and we'll contact you if we find anything!" Afterwards, he hung up the phone.

Zhan Zhao could hear noisy voices on the other side of the phone, and it appeared to be Zhao Jue storming around calling him a little bald cat.

The ghost ship incident that had caused uproar in the city finally came to an end. The case that was to be disclosed to the media was really difficult to make up, but it was not good to disclose those mysterious human experiments to the public, otherwise, the world would be in a big mess.

Zhan Zhao and others cleaned up the remnants of the situation and closed the case, half a month after the event.

In this half month's time, Zhan Zhao went to see Bruce, who was receiving treatment in the hospital, almost every day. He was in a state of insanity all day long, repeatedly talking about passwords, geniuses and the like...

On the eighteenth day of Bruce's stay in the hospital, he finally stopped breathing.

Yang Fan shook his head and told Zhan Zhao about the cause of his death, "This person died of old age, just like an old tree that has been infested by insects, the death was complete, his entire body was withered, withered to the point where it couldn't be withered anymore!"

"Ai... "Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang returned home, and finally, they were able to put down this time-consuming and intricate case, feeling a little emotional – Human Intelligence is definitely the key to creating prosperity, but at the same time, it could also be the Pandora's box that destroys human existence. Once certain boxes were opened, the results would be very difficult to control.

"Cat," Bai Yutang said to Zhan Zhao, "actually, the experiment has been around for a long time, and the originator was not Zhao Jue, it's just that he was too smart and too curious, and opened a door that shouldn't have been opened."

Zhan Zhao laughed, "Appropriate ah, after opening the door, there are still doors behind it, so one by one, he opened them all, without knowing whether the last door opened up heaven, or hell. Once the door is opened, if you want to close it, you won't be able to."

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

Previous Chapter | TOC | Next Chapter

Translator Notes

School has once again started up again. Luckily I got to retain my office job part time, so I still have weekends free to work on this project!

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

Translated: July 30, 2023 by Angel

Edited: August 11, 2023 by Angel