S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 41

The Card Murderer 41 – Making Groundless Accusations

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Mingdi was originally called over by Zhan Zhao to identify a ghost, but ended up providing even more "bizarre" material himself.

That bandaged woman had actually snuck into Mingdi's home during the night and put on a full haunting performance, disassembling her own head with bare hands.

The scene was terrifying enough as it was, but the footage happened to be from a surveillance camera's night vision, which only heightened the eerie atmosphere and doubled the horror.

After performing her horror show in the living room, the bandaged woman vanished and didn't appear again until the next morning when Mingdi came out of his bedroom.

The surveillance footage had timestamps, but it wasn't a continuous recording, rather, it saved one video file every ten minutes, stored sequentially by time.

Mingdi copied the entire night's footage.

The moment Jiang Ping saw the video format, he waved his hand. "Don't panic! This type of surveillance is the easiest to tamper with!"

Mingdi let out a small sigh of relief and asked Zhan Zhao, "Do the police have any safehouses you could offer? I'd like to hide out somewhere until you've caught that ghost."

Zhan Zhao said he could arrange something for him.

Mingdi had quite a list of demands. The young master had always lived in comfort, and combined with his hypersensitive empathy issues, he said the environment couldn't be too noisy, there shouldn't be too many residents nearby, and preferably not too close to a hospital... and so on and so forth.

Zhao Hu teased him, "Why don't you ask Editor Gao if she'd take you in?"

Mingdi's eyes lit up, but he immediately shook his head. "No, no, what if I lead the ghost to Min Min's place, that wouldn't be good."

Zhan Zhao thought to himself, With Gao Min's temper, if you really managed to lure a ghost over, she might just convince it to write an autobiography.

"Why don't you stay at my place?" Zhao Jue offered.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both looked at Zhao Jue in surprise – So enthusiastic?

Mingdi looked Zhao Jue up and down, as if trying to assess whether he'd be easy to get along with. He did have a bit of a legendary aura about him...

"Why don't we call Uncle Ye and ask him?" Bai Yutang thought it best to discuss it with Bai Ye first. Mingdi's situation was a bit unusual, and there was no telling what he might end up bringing along...

Zhao Jue was displeased. "What would we ask him for? I bring someone home and he's going to throw them out?"

Zhan Zhao muttered from the side, "You're bringing a living person back to stay, shouldn't you at least check with the head of the household?"

Zhao Jue gave Zhan Zhao a sideways glance and reached out to grab his ear.

But Zhan Zhao was already prepared and dodged with a tilt of his head.

Just as the two "rookies" were about to start pecking at each other, Jiang Ping suddenly shouted from behind, "It's been replaced!"

Everyone looked over.

Jiang Ping turned around and said, "It's a very simple trick. Once the Wi-Fi password was cracked, they just logged in and replaced a segment of the footage."

"So it's not haunted?" Mingdi patted his chest.

"But someone did enter your home, right?" Bai Yutang asked.

Mingdi thought for a moment and nodded. "The sofa did feel like it had been moved."

"Wait a minute..." Jiang Ping clacked away at the keyboard. "It might be possible to recover the footage that got overwritten."

"Really?" Bai Chi leaned in curiously to watch.

"This surveillance system is the kind that looks fancy, doesn't work well, and is stupidly expensive, but the equipment itself is solid," Jiang Ping said with a wicked grin. "Spending more money is never wrong. This system has an automatic backup function. Give me a bit of time and I should be able to recover it..."

Everyone nodded in satisfaction and didn't disturb Jiang Ping, letting him get on with his typing.

Zhan Zhao was about to turn and ask Mingdi about the person who had been following him, but Mingdi's phone suddenly started vibrating...

And from the sound of it, it seemed like an information bombardment...

Mingdi stared at the phone, which was making all sorts of noises like it had gone berserk, clearly just as puzzled.

He picked it up and found that all the calls were from work contacts, Editor Lao Chen, his agent, and so on, and they were coming in two or three at a time. The screen was full of incoming call options.

Mingdi immediately felt panicked and tossed the phone to Zhan Zhao.

Seeing the way he was frowning and looking like he wanted to dive into an air-raid shelter, Zhan Zhao shook his head – People say phones are emotionless machines, but a sudden bombardment like this can cause severe anxiety. Clearly, Mingdi, this hyper-empathic emotional receiver, is already heavily affected.

Zhan Zhao looked at the options on the screen and chose to answer Lao Chen's call first.

"Hello?" Lao Chen sounded rather anxious. "Are you alright?"

Zhan Zhao, a bit puzzled, replied, "Mingdi's at the police station, what's happened?"

"Oh... good, as long as he's at the station. It's that haunted house video from his place!" Lao Chen asked, "Is it real? Or is it that stalker he mentioned, trying to spook him on purpose?"

Zhan Zhao frowned slightly and asked Lao Chen, "How do you know about the haunting at his place?"

As Zhan Zhao spoke, he glanced at Mingdi, and Bai Yutang did too – You told Lao Chen?

Mingdi shook his head. He hadn't told anyone...

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang suddenly realised something, and at that moment, Lao Chen's voice came through the phone, "It's all over the internet, it's trending!"

Zhao Hu took out his phone and, sure enough, almost every social media platform had the explosive news about the haunting at Mingdi's home right at the top of the headlines.

Because the footage was so shocking, and because, from who knew where, so many experts had started linking it to the recent homicide cases, the level of discussion had skyrocketed.

When it came to supernatural videos like this, there were usually only two schools of thought: those who believed, and those who didn't.

Of course, most people reacted just like Zhan Zhao and the others – they didn't believe it! Everyone assumed it must have been some sort of film editing trick, like in horror movies, and pulling that off wasn't difficult at all now.

The problem was, this video had been captured by the surveillance system in Mingdi's own home. So if it was fake, who had uploaded the footage? It boiled down to two possibilities: either the person trying to scare Mingdi had done it, or Mingdi himself had.

All sorts of discussions and theories, filled with speculation, were being posted online.

Some said that Mingdi might be connected to the recent murder at the campground, after all, he had stayed at the villa where the murder occurred for several days beforehand.

Others claimed that it was just hype because one of Mingdi's books was being adapted into a film.

But then came a group of real experts, who started with the bandaged woman and linked her to the urban legend of the Sparrow Tunnel.

Things got even worse when someone dug up a connection to the publishing house's president, Pei Tian. All three of his wives had died unnatural deaths, and his son also seemed to be involved in multiple murder cases. It was beginning to look like some sort of hereditary family killing gene.

In short, the rumours were becoming more and more outrageous.

With so many juicy elements, the whole thing hit all the right buttons for today's gossip-hungry spectators.

And what no one expected was that a new wave of images soon surfaced online.

They showed Zhan Zhao speaking with Mingdi in the hospital lobby, as well as shots of Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang appearing at the publishing house.

Gongsun frowned as he looked at the photos. "These photos are really clear."

Ma Xin examined them. "They were shot with a high-definition lens, definitely not taken by some random passer-by on a phone."

Bai Yutang looked closely and thought the photos were taken at a very high level. Both he and Zhan Zhao wore serious expressions, making it look as if they were there investigating a case.

And appearing alongside them were Pei Xiu and Mingdi. Just from the photos alone, it looked as if SCI were investigating Mingdi and Pei Xiu.

Zhan Zhao also felt that the camera work was quite professional...

However, Bai Yutang still found it a bit strange. If someone had taken the photos with a camera pointed directly at them, at that level of clarity, they couldn't have been standing too far away, so why hadn't they noticed anything?

The shots taken at the hospital only showed Zhan Zhao and Mingdi, if the person had been standing a bit farther away, it was indeed possible the two hadn't noticed.

But the ones taken at the publishing house had captured him as well, there was no reason he wouldn't have spotted it...

Bai Yutang carefully thought back. That day, when he and Zhan Zhao had gone to the publishing house, he had indeed noticed that several rooms had filming equipment, and there were even a few professional studios... Could it have been taken by someone on the inside?

And then there was the threatening letter Pei Tian had received, which had also been sent through the internal mail system at the publishing house. Could the culprit be one of the publishing house employees?

Mingdi's phone was still ringing nonstop.

Zhan Zhao didn't say much to Lao Chen either, he just said they were still investigating, then hung up. At that moment, two more calls came in at the same time: one from Gao Min, the other from Pei Wen.

Zhan Zhao rubbed his chin, then handed the phone to Mingdi.

As soon as Mingdi saw that it was Gao Min calling, he was excited and hurried to answer it.

From the way he picked up the phone without the slightest hesitation, Zhan Zhao concluded that little fangirl Pei Wen clearly didn't stand a chance...

Gao Min had been accompanying Liu Jing in preparation for surgery. When she had just come across the video, it had startled her, so she'd called to check on Mingdi.

Mingdi even acted coy while speaking on the phone, causing the entire SCI team to shake their heads, The style is quite similar to Xu Lie's.

Zhan Zhao was curious – Why is Mingdi so emotionally stable when facing Gao Min? Logically, with his condition, he should be the suspicious and anxious type, and it would normally be very difficult for him to trust anyone. But with Gao Min, Mingdi seemed to be in a completely trusting state, even when she was clearly annoyed with him, he showed no signs of unease during their conversation.

Zhan Zhao looked at Zhao Jue.

Zhao Jue casually scribbled a few words on a sticky note – Emotional stabiliser.

Zhan Zhao rubbed his chin. That made sense. Sometimes, a particular object or person could have a stabilising effect on someone with emotional regulation issues.

But that kind of sense of stability never came out of nowhere, there had to be a reason behind it.

It was like someone who suffered from insomnia but could only sleep using a specific pillow. That pillow must hold some special significance for them. Even if you gave them a pillow that looked exactly the same, if it wasn't the original, it still wouldn't work...

How did Gao Min become Mingdi's emotional "refuge"? Did the two of them share some kind of past connection?

But now wasn't the time to dig into their relationship, the immediate priority was still to find out the truth about that bandaged woman. Zhao Jue's suggestion wasn't bad either: for the time being, it would be safer to settle Mingdi over at his and Uncle Ye's place. Zhao Jue could also take the opportunity to study Mingdi a bit.

Bai Yutang also received a call from Pei Yun. Things on her end were in complete chaos, the publishing house had been flooded with calls, and crowds had gathered outside the building. What's more, all kinds of fabricated gossip about her family had started circulating online... And Pei Yun also wanted to know why Mingdi hadn't answered Pei Wen's calls, her sister had phoned nearly a hundred times!

Bai Yutang looked helplessly at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao gestured for him to hand it over, and Bai Yutang passed him the phone, this sort of situation required someone socially adept to handle it.

While Zhan Zhao was dealing with Pei Yun on the phone, Jiang Ping suddenly shouted, "It's recovered!"

Everyone crowded around, and even Mingdi came over, curious.

The previously covered surveillance footage had been restored. Someone had indeed entered Mingdi's living room that night, but it wasn't the bandaged woman. What was strange, though, was that Bai Yutang had seen this person before.

"Cat..." Bai Yutang beckoned to Zhan Zhao, wanting to confirm he wasn't mistaken.

Zhan Zhao ran over with the phone. When he looked at the person sitting on Mingdi's sofa in the footage, he also froze... Why was this person here?

......

At the hospital.

After finishing the call with Mingdi, Gao Min shook her head and returned to the ward, only to find Liu Jing also watching the news.

When Liu Jing saw the bandaged woman, her eyes went wide. Gao Min, afraid it would upset her, told her not to watch, the video was probably fake.

But Liu Jing still cared a lot about the discussions online, as they involved the murder case of Zhang Yuancheng.

"That bandaged woman, is she really someone from the Pei family?" Liu Jing asked Gao Min after seeing a very convincing post from a netizen claiming that the Pei family had a history of hereditary mental illness and that the bandaged woman was a family member they had imprisoned or something of the sort.

Gao Min waved it off. "Ai, that kind of baseless rumour..."

She didn't finish the sentence. All of a sudden, Gao Min froze, as if something had just occurred to her.

"Ah..." Gao Min quickly picked up the phone and called Zhan Zhao. "I just remembered where I've seen that tattoo before!"

‿︵‿︵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: May 2, 2025 by Angel

Edited: July 1, 2025 by Soojin