S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 4 Chapter 121

The Murderer Who Returned From Hell 20 – Image

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Gongsun ran in with a report, and behind him Ma Xin came in, holding an opened courier parcel, and it was unclear what was inside.

The crowd gathered at the conference table for a meeting.

Gongsun gave the report to Bai Yutang and said, "The small handprint on the rear window of Jintang's car has been forensically examined."

Bai Chi hurriedly asked, "Is it the same car that picked up Zhen and I that day?"

Gongsun nodded.

"Whose fingerprints were they?" Bai Yutang asked.

Gongsun looked at the crowd, "Yang Yang's."

The crowd froze.

Luo Tian was puzzled, "Yang Yang's?"

“Mhmm." Gongsun said, "I just called Yang Yang, he said that he was playing with Xiao Yi in the garage before, and the two of them had climbed up on the car."

Everyone was a little disappointed, "That means it wasn't left by the dry corpse?"

Gongsun said, "I had people from the forensics department obtain evidence from the entire car, and they didn't find any stranger's fingerprints."

Everyone frowned.

"So was the dry corpse lying on the side of the car that day an illusion?" Bai Chi asked.

“Mhmm... take a look at a few other reports." Gongsun opened another report and said, "This is the sampling results from the forensics department of Song Jiajia's institute. I told Old Wang about the situation, so he led his men and collected fingerprints and footprints from the entire floor."

Everyone listened attentively, and Zhan Zhao asked, "What was the result?"

"The result is that no footprints or fingerprints of any children were found." Gongsun said, "The floor of that institute is metal, and the hygiene of the institute is quite good. There are usually not many people going in and out, and the footprints, whether they were wearing shoes or were barefooted, would have left a residue on the metal surface. But the problem is that... Old Wang was very certain and told me that there were absolutely no young children going in and out!"

Everyone looked at Zhao Hu.

Zhao Hu scratched his head, "But I clearly saw it!"

Bai Chi and a few others present also raised their hands, "I seem to have seen the back of a little girl as well."

"Let's continue." Gongsun said, "Ma Han was outside looking at the dry corpse that disappeared."

Ma Han nodded.

"Old Wang collected evidence from the outside of the walls and the windows, there are no fingerprints, no skin flakes, and no footprints!"

Everyone looked at Gongsun, "None of that either?"

Gongsun nodded, "When you guys first saw that dry corpse, he was lying on the glass window, there's no way he didn't leave fingerprints! The strangest thing is that Old Wang said that there was a thin layer of dust on the outside of the glass windows and walls, which hadn't been touched by anyone at all. The piece of glass next to the one that was shattered by Xiao Bai's gunshot that day, Old Yang brought someone to put it together and checked it, and there's still nothing."

Zhao Hu bared his teeth and looked at Gongsun, "Gongsun ah, the more you talk, the more scary it gets, is it really a ghost?"

Gongsun raised his eyebrows at him, "There are only two possibilities left, and ghosts is one of them."

"Then if one doesn't believe that ghosts exist, isn't there only one option left?" Bai Yutang asked, "What appeared at that time, was not a human at all?"

Gongsun raised an eyebrow, "Not bad!"

The crowd felt that Bai Yutang's words were somewhat contradictory.

Luo Tian asked, "It wasn't a ghost or a person, and it didn't leave fingerprints, so what was it?"

Zhan Zhao flipped through the information of the research institute and said, "Song Jiajia mentioned before that the building opposite the history research institute is a physics and mechanical experimental building, working on mechanical arms. It says here that... there's another lab in that building."

Everyone looked over, "What kind of lab is it?"

Zhan Zhao showed them the introductory catalogue.

The crowd looked at the row of words, and couldn't help but read out, "3D stereoscopic imager?"

"Oh..." Zhao Hu understood, "It's the kind of 3D landscaping that the city engaged in a few days ago, right? A flower bed appearing out of thin air, covering the trash cans, that kind of thing?"

Gongsun nodded and snapped his fingers, "Xin Xin!"

Ma Xin placed the package that she had just brought onto the table and took out something like a remote control from inside, placing it in front of the crowd's eyes.

The crowd all came over to look at it, and Qin Ou asked, "What is this?"

"This is the world's most advanced miniature 3D stereoscopic hologram projector." Gongsun said, "This is a concept product, not for sale to the public."

Everyone tilted their faces to look at Gongsun, which meant – where did you get it from?

Ma Xin said seriously, "The twins got it, the two of them really can buy anything..."

Bai Yutang held his forehead.

"The supporting product also has a set of 3D photography equipment." Gongsun said, "I had Xiao Yi and Yang Yang do a bit of modelling and recorded an image, let's observe."

Saying that, Gongsun dimmed the lights in the office and pulled the curtains closed, asking, "Was the corridor of the research institute pretty much this much dark that day?"

Everyone nodded.

Gongsun held that remote control, and Ma Xin stepped to his side and blocked his hand, so the crowd couldn't see what Gongsun's hand was doing.

At that moment, Xiao Yi suddenly appeared in front of the crowd.

Everyone froze, then Xiao Yi threw the stuffed bear in his hand at the crowd. The crowd subconsciously looked at the ground in front of them, and there was no bear... Looking up again, Xiao Yi turned around and ran away.

Qin Ou chased him to the door, but Xiao Yi suddenly disappeared.

Looking back, Qin Ou saw Gongsun holding a micro projector that was like a remote control.

Everyone looked at each other in disbelief.

"There's one more section." Gongsun continued to press the buttons in the direction of the wall.

Everyone looked at the wall together and saw that Luo Yang had suddenly appeared and was rapidly climbing up the wall, all the way to the ceiling.

Luo Tian's mouth opened wide.

Gongsun said, "Actually, it's just a recording of a 3D image of Yang Yang crawling on flat ground, which was then processed with the computer to stand the image up, removing the green sheet that was originally spread on the floor."

Zhan Zhao stroked his chin, "No wonder there weren't any clues left behind, it was just an image."

The crowd glanced at each other, their brows furrowed.

"It's impossible for an image to turn into a real knife." Bai Yutang said, "In other words, that knife in Shen Bo's stomach was stabbed into him by another person, and the process happened right under our noses, but we were distracted by the dried corpse outside the window and the little kid who escaped."

"The only one who could do this is someone who was by Shen Bo's side at the time." Zhan Zhao said, "At that time, Shen Bo was standing in the middle, next to him was one of his assistants, Hao Nan, the other was that old foreign teaching assistant, as well as Song Jiajia."

"Song Jiajia was still a little distance away from them." Zhao Hu recalled, "She was within my line of sight, she asked that little kid a question and then screamed... but, next to Shen Bo was Hao Nan and that foreigner teaching assistant."

Zhan Zhao also recalled it, "The foreign teaching assistant supported Shen Bo, he was probably the one holding the projector, while Hao Nan was blocking Shen Bo's other side. In other words, he blocked everyone's line of sight from being able to see what that foreign teaching assistant was holding... The two of them were in cahoots. "

"Although stereoscopic projectors for moving images are already very developed, they still have a certain degree of defectiveness." Gongsun said, "The person looking at it needs to be at a certain angle and distance, and this kind of image can't be turned around."

Zhao Hu stroked his chin, "No wonder it disappeared when I chased it to the stairway, dare I say that they turned off the machine!"

"No wonder the person outside the window instantly disappeared, moved to a far away place, then suddenly disappeared again with a single movement." Ma Han frowned, "There should have been someone outside using a projector at that time as well."

Gongsun said, "There are many tech teams researching 3D information technology in the world now. This future market is huge and there are a wide variety of conceptual products. But the stage of everyone's technology should be similar, and the imaging effect that can be obtained is estimated to be this... It's evident that the other party has a premeditated plan to kill Shen Bo."

Everyone nodded.

"I have a doubt." At this time, Zhan Zhao said, "Even if the others didn't see it, Shen Bo should have seen it at that time."

Everyone nodded. Shen Bo saw the scene from a different angle than everyone else, and should have seen that it was the person beside him who stabbed him.

"He had the opportunity to explain in his last words to the two of us." Bai Yutang said, "But why didn't he say anything or point out that it was Hao Nan and his teaching assistant, instead of just apologising to F?"

Everyone was puzzled as well.

"No wonder when we went in that day to listen to his last words, both Hao Nan and that teaching assistant waited nervously at the door, probably observing the two of us for changes in expression." Zhan Zhao held his chin, "It's strange, why did Shen Bo hide his killer?"

"The report on the fingerprints probably surmises some of this." Gongsun handed another report to Bai Yutang, "This is the autopsy report."

Bai Yutang took it and looked at it, "Is it the body found in Fang You's house?"

"That’s right." Gongsun took out a photo and showed it to the crowd, “This is the image from the skull scanning imager, after adding in Asian features, as well as some thickness in the fat layer and so on set by my judgement on the condition of the corpse... Look at the results, you guys, who does it look like?"

Everyone took the photo and looked at it for a long time, frowning, "Isn't this Fang You?!"

Chen Mi also picked it up and looked at it, it did look like him.

Ma Xin nodded, "That's the one who asked for Xiao Yu's autograph that day!"

"He was alive and well a few days ago, how come this person has been dead for more than twenty years?" Zhan Zhao was puzzled.

"Twins again?" Zhao Hu was speechless.

"It's not twins." Gongsun said, "Old Wang extracted a lot of fingerprints from Fang You's house and found that someone was often inhabiting that room, and based on the uniformity of the fingerprints, it was determined to be the same person!"

"We also extracted DNA samples from cups and other items to compare with Fang You's corpse, it's not the same person at all, there's not even a semblance of a blood relationship!" Gongsun said.

"So... plastic surgery?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"Possibly." Ma Xin nodded, "That face really doesn't look too natural! So it feels scary."

"Or maybe it's not plastic surgery..." Zhan Zhao touched his chin and poked Jiang Ping, "Check if there's any world renowned special effects make-up artists, Romanian or Ukrainian-born, with an F in their name, who are about forty or fifty years old."

Everyone looked at Zhan Zhao.

Jiang Ping tapped on the keyboard, and the last piece of information popped up, "There really is!"

The crowd went over to look at it, only to see the profile, it was the face of a very distinctive, forty-something year old man. He was a famous Hollywood special effects make-up artist, as well as the world's top body painting artist. He had participated in the filming of several sci-fi and horror films, and what he was most adept at was creating zombie make-up. And his name was Vinoram F. Hirsch.

"Those dry corpse make-ups, did they come from him?" The crowd understood why there were such realistic dry corpses.

Zhan Zhao held his chin, "... It feels like there's something that doesn't line up."

Gongsun put away all the information, "That's all I've found on my side."

Just as his words finished, they heard the elevator door open with a ding, and then a doll-faced young girl in a white coat, holding a report, appeared at the office door. Seeing that everyone was in the meeting, she reached out and knocked on the glass door.

Everyone knew her, she was Old Wang's assistant in the forensics department.

This girl was called Wang Min, she was Old Wang's own daughter and a senior student in the chemistry department, but what makes her most famous in the police department is her horrible personal hobby – micro-sculpting! The young girl was known as the number one detail maniac in the police world, a master who was motivated to carve the entire Dream of Red Mansions on a grain of rice, and also Xin Xin's dining buddy in the police station, the two of them often got together for snacks.

“Captain Bai, the isotope test report for that football from last time is out." Wang Min ran in with the report and said, "We've probably surmised what was hidden inside the football."

The crowd was a little excited.

"What is it?" Bai Yutang asked.

"It should have been a small bag of dirt." Wang Min said, "That dirt is radioactive, it's nuclear contaminated dirt."

The crowd froze.

"But the amount of dirt was quite small, and there were bags wrapped around it, it's more like a sample." Wang Min said, "When it was put in and removed, there were particles left on the internal surface of the football, so there was a slight radiation reaction. We collected quite a few particles, which should be dirt."

The crowd frowned.

"The football was given to Xu Lie by Cheng Mu three years ago, and it was surprisingly filled with radioactive dirt..." Bai Yutang frowned, "Three years later, Cheng Mu went to get the football back, but he didn't attack Xu Lie, instead, he waited for Xu Lie to be out of the way to take it quietly."

"Cheng Mu is quite good. After doing so much, what was the purpose? The woman he pursued was actually one of the twin daughters of that crazy artist back then." Zhao Hu rested his chin, "Aiya, it's getting more and more confusing."

Zhan Zhao finished reading the information and closed it, "Why don't we go ask him directly."

‿︵‿︵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: December 18, 2023 by Angel

Edited: January 2, 2024 by Angel