Qiming Chapter 42

Chapter 42

---

"Captain Gu, this is the autopsy report for the 8.19 case, Teacher Xu brought it over half an hour ago." Gu Yunfeng, holding a file bag filled with medical records in his left hand and Lin Xiangrong's suitcase in his right, directly pulled her over to take a statement first.

"This is...?" Shu Pan glanced at the plainly dressed, gentle-looking woman and blinked, asking him.

"Jiang Yang's wife."

He took the autopsy report and flipped through it page by page.

Sedatives were detected in the bodies of all four victims, and there were no signs that the bodies had been moved. Before their deaths, the murderer first administered sedatives to them, then moved the four people to the dining table in the hall. There were rope marks approximately one centimetre in diameter on the victims' wrists and ankles. The preliminary ruling is that the murderer tied the victims' wrists and ankles with hemp rope after moving them to the seats, then waited for them to wake up.

For Jiang Ronghua, his wife, and their daughter, the cause of death was a puncture to the heart, leading to cardiac tamponade and a rapid death. The murder weapon was a light spear with a sharp iron tip and a thin wooden handle, which was part of Jiang Yang's collection.

"DNA other than that of the victims was just found in the bloodstains extracted from the scene," Wen Xin said as she walked over with a new document, her face filled with disbelief.

"DNA other than the victims'?" Gu Yunfeng looked at her in astonishment. "Then it's the murderer's blood."

She reluctantly nodded and pointed to a line on the document. "This person's blood is mixed with that of the four victims. It's a woman's."

A woman?

His hand inexplicably shook, causing a few sheets of paper to fall to the ground. The air conditioning in the room was on full blast, and as he crouched to pick them up, Gu Yunfeng felt as if he had entered an ice cellar.

He confirmed again, "The murderer is a woman?"

"Yes, a detailed comparison is still ongoing, and Forensic Doctor Xu has already applied for a city-wide DNA comparison."

The spear had been inserted parallel to the ribs, without slipping into the gaps between the ribs or the costal cartilage, lightly piercing the intercostal muscles and directly puncturing the heart, killing them instantly.

The terror on their faces suggested that they had witnessed the torture and death of their family members before being murdered. This psychological terror was perhaps no less than that experienced by Jiang Yang, who had his limbs sawed off and bled to death.

This was a highly skilled killer with an extremely strong psychological endurance.

Every item at the scene had been meticulously wiped down, and the murder weapon had barely any dirt on it, aside from the blood.

The tool used to saw off Jiang Yang's limbs also came from within the villa, a sharp wire saw. Without using an electric saw and relying entirely on manual force, a strong adult male could barely manage it. Correspondingly, the amount of sedative in Jiang Yang's stomach was greater than that in the others, and the rope marks on his wrists were more pronounced due to his excessive struggling in agony.

Both the light spear and the wire saw were items from inside the villa. The spear was part of Jiang Yang's collection, usually kept in his bedroom. The wire saw was an ordinary tool kept in the third-floor utility room.

Using existing tools from the villa as weapons indicated that the murderer was quite familiar with the Jiang family. From the modus operandi of the crime, it was evident that the murderer had thought it through carefully and planned meticulously. The only flaw was that they had accidentally left a few drops of blood at the scene during the act which mixed with the victims' blood, making it difficult to distinguish.

The electricity to the Jiang family's home had been cut off by the power company, and the murderer used ice and dry ice to keep the meat fresh while handling it. Therefore, the ice must have been brought by the murderer. Knowing about the power cut in advance and preparing the weapons accordingly showed that the murderer had made thorough preparations for the murder.

The murderer was a skilled, psychologically strong adult male with a slight obsessive-compulsive disorder.

How could it possibly be a woman, as the DNA report suggested?

"Chengyue, take a look at the autopsy report too." He thrust it into Xu Chengyue's hands and beckoned Wen Xin over.

"Have you checked the neighbourhood surveillance?"

The surveillance in the Qianyuan Villa neighbourhood was very dense, with the roads in the public areas completely covered with no blind spots. Under such circumstances, everyone entering and leaving the neighbourhood would be clearly captured, revealing who had passed by the Jiang family villa and who had entered or left the Jiang family's gate, it was all exposed to the cameras.

"They've been retrieved, but..."

A total of seven or eight people had been staring at the surveillance footage for two whole hours. From two days before the crime to twelve hours after, apart from residents, delivery personnel, and couriers, no other suspicious individuals had entered the neighbourhood.

The surveillance at the gate of the Jiang family's villa was the same. Apart from people related to the Jiang family – their maids, tutor, a delivery man, and a few men claiming to be victims of illegal drugs – there were no suspicious strangers.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them with both hands. The victims had been killed between eleven o'clock at night and one o'clock in the morning, and most of the people captured by the surveillance had left the Jiang family home through the front door before the murders occurred.

"The last person to leave the Jiang family home was Jiang Shuishan's tutor. She left the villa at nine o'clock at night. When she was leaving, Jiang Yang had just driven back and stopped to greet her." Wen Xin rewound the footage to five past nine on the evening of the 19th. The tutor seemed reluctant to see Jiang Yang, stepping back a few paces when his car stopped in front of her.

Judging by her attire, she appeared to be a student from a nearby university, in her early twenties, with an ordinary appearance and wearing gold-framed glasses.

At five o'clock in the morning after the murders, a group of people claiming to be victims of illegal drugs arrived with banners. The neighbourhood let them in, and five or six people waited in front of the gate for four or five hours. When there was no response, they were about to leave when they encountered Jiang Quan, who had just returned from visiting family abroad.

As a result, they forced Jiang Quan to open the door, and faced with the blood and stench inside, they were terrified and fled.

"Bring these people in for questioning, the maid, Jiang Shuishan's tutor, the delivery man who delivered to the Jiang family on the 19th, and those who caused a scene on the 20th and were left traumatised." After saying this, he walked into his office, bent down to put the file bag into the cabinet, locked it, and tightly held the key.

"Focus the questioning on Jiang Shuishan's tutor," he told Wen Xin, then turned to close the door. He pulled out a few tissues to wipe the dust off his desk, put the key in his pocket, and threw the used tissues in the bin.

—————

He suddenly looked up and saw Xu Chengyue quietly standing by the window, holding a stack of reports and frowning in the sunlight.

"When did you come in?" Gu Yunfeng smiled, lightly jumping up to sit on his desk and looking around his empty office. On his desk were two national flags, a plaque on the wall had the words 'Serve the People' inscribed, and in the corner was a fiddle-leaf fig that hadn't been watered in a long time and was almost dead.

"Ten minutes ago." Xu Chengyue walked towards him, placing the autopsy report back on his desk.

"This morning's experience was too intense," Gu Yunfeng chuckled. "Monitored by a drone last night, and then a murder this morning. I just received an email from the technical investigation team, they helped process the footage of the drone you mentioned." He recorded the entire video call between Xu Chengyue and him. After the call, he took a few clear screenshots and sent them to the technical investigation team for processing.

"Unfortunately it's not very clear even after processing..." He pulled out a laptop from the drawer and opened his email. Inside was a highly sharpened image showing a white object next to the air conditioning unit outside the window.

"The drone you saw, what did it look like?"

"It was a multi-rotor drone specially designed for aerial photography. Currently, only DJI's Phantom series has this model." Xu Chengyue pulled out a chair and sat down. Despite the tension at the time, he had managed to identify the specific model by the length of the drone's arms and the diameter of its central frame.

"I just don't get it, what kind of secret organisation have you provoked? They're using all sorts of unconventional methods."

From Xu Chengyue's initial accidental fall, his miraculous recovery from the brink of death, the audacious murder under surveillance, to the current monitoring and eavesdropping, someone was constantly watching him, and he escaped danger time and time again.

Gu Yunfeng tossed the key in his hand into the air. With a flick of his right hand, the silver key disappeared from sight. He then spread his hand open to reveal nothing but a scar on his palm.

"Whether it's surveillance, eavesdropping, or intentional harm, the simplest and most effective methods are always the best choice for rational crimes driven by logic rather than emotion." He jumped down and leaned over the back of Xu Chengyue's shaky chair, whispering close to him, "So, the tools used to harm you are all things that are easily accessible to the murderer."

"Who around you frequently has access to these things?" After saying this, he opened his clenched fist, revealing the key lying intact in his palm again.

"Let me think... it seems like there's quite a few." For instance, his mentor, Lu Yong, other colleagues in the lab, and even some classmates working in tech companies.

They all frequently dealt with these cutting-edge technological products.

"I'm really in danger now." Xu Chengyue took off his black-framed glasses, wiped the dust off the lenses with a tissue, then quickly spun his chair around. Watching Gu Yunfeng immersed in his trivial trick, he swiftly took the key from his hand and put it into his shirt pocket.

Gu Yunfeng looked bewildered as his house key was suddenly taken away.

"My safety is threatened, I can't stay at my own place anymore." He sighed.

Gu Yunfeng: "Hmm?"

"How about I pack my things and hide out at your place?"

"Ah?" He stared blankly at Xu Chengyue's face. The last ray of sunlight shone through the window, illuminating the other party's cool and handsome profile. His long, slender fingers adjusted his tie while the other hand picked up a bottle of water that had been on the desk for who knows how long. He opened the bottle and drank half of it.

"You– hide at my place?" Gu Yunfeng pointed to himself with his right hand, then incredulously pointed at Xu Chengyue.

"Someone wants to harm you, and you're coming to my place... Isn't that just dragging me down with you?" As the sun set and the moon rose, Gu Yunfeng quickly processed the meaning of those words, immediately unable to laugh or cry from his conclusion.

Xu Chengyue: "... Are you still a police officer?"

"I can resign tomorrow."

"???" Seeing Xu Chengyue's shocked expression, Gu Yunfeng quickly changed his tune to cooperate, "Yes, yes, yes, as a righteous police officer, I must protect the lives and property of citizens." He agreed verbally, but his mind was racing with a thousand thoughts.

He couldn't show his helplessness, so he could only put his arm around Xu Chengyue's shoulder, bending slightly and almost crying, "Professor Xu, just come, we may not have been born on the same day, but let's die on the same day."

—————

The author has something to say:

Still gearing up.

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

Previous Chapter | TOC | Next Chapter

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: July 17, 2024 by Angel

Edited: September 12, 2024 by Angel