S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 112

The Culinary Murderer 64 – Prank

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From the surveillance footage, it was clear that Zhang Wei hesitated for a moment before he fell from the building...

Bai Ye and Zhao Jue, who were present at the scene, had both noticed this unusual detail, and later, when watching the video, Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang had also noticed it.

After Jiang Ping investigated the surrounding surveillance footage, they finally discovered the reason he had been distracted... a yellow rain poncho.

On a building opposite, a yellow poncho was swaying in the wind.

"Was there someone inside the poncho?" Zhan Zhao's face was practically pressed against the tablet. After staring for a long time, he said, "Is the poncho just really big, or is it some kind of special effect? Why does it look like there's only the poncho and no person?"

"It looks similar to what we saw in the classroom that day," Bai Yutang muttered to himself.

Zhan Zhao glanced at him. "Fang Beibei mentioned it too, it was seeing the yellow poncho that frightened her into running to Wen Xiaorou for help."

"When Tan Wen went missing, she had been wearing a yellow poncho, and when Zhu Yi was kidnapped, she was also wearing a yellow poncho..." Bai Yutang said. "But Shi Yanshuo and the others only cared about people's voices when they grabbed them... so why does the yellow poncho keep appearing again and again?"

"Let's just ask the third party directly." Zhan Zhao smiled. "They should be arriving at the station around now."

......

When Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao drove back to the police station, the main entrance was bustling with activity.

The main gate was swarmed with reporters. The news about the SWAT team and the coast guard's operation at sea, capturing a large number of people, dominated every front page.

On top of that, once the truth about Shi Yanshuo and Yu Hui, the standard wedding that had turned into a funeral, the identity fraud and impersonation were made public, the gossip-loving onlookers were shocked.

For a while, everyone was searching for what on earth "screaming oysters" were, and after finding out, they all said their three worldviews had been shattered.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang entered discreetly through the underground parking garage. The two of them suddenly thought of Zhao Jue's earlier suggestion of digging a tunnel from the dessert shop nearby, perhaps that idea was actually feasible.

When they arrived at the SCI office, only Jiang Ping and Bai Chi were there, the others were all out busy. Bao Sir and Fei Mu had taken more than half the police station to the docks.

Wen Xiaorou had come back with Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, and the moment she entered, she asked Bai Chi for snacks.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang asked Bai Chi, "Have you brought the person?"

Bai Chi nodded. "Luo Tian just went to the school, he's waiting in the interview room now."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang each grabbed a cup of milk tea and were about to head next door.

Just as they stepped out, the elevator doors opened, and Bai Ye and Su Hai came out together. The two of them seemed to have hit it off, chatting and laughing as they walked.

As soon as he stepped out, he saw Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang standing at the door with milk tea in their hands, looking at him with faintly displeased expressions – Who would have thought you were like this, Uncle Ye?!

Bai Ye still looked completely innocent as he gazed at the two of them and asked, "Have you caught everyone?"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang turned their heads away – Hmph!

Seeing the two of them turn and walk away, Su Hai was a little puzzled and asked Bai Ye, "What's the matter? Shouldn't they be happy now that the case is solved?"

Bai Ye smiled and gestured for him to follow along, there should still be some follow-up.

So Su Hai followed, and Wen Xiaorou and Bai Chi also went along to the monitoring room.

The door to the interview room opened, and Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang walked inside.

Two people were sitting in the room, one old and one young. They raised their heads to watch Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang as they came in.

Who were these two?

The two security guards from the school, Old Wang and Xiao Li.

The two sides exchanged glances. Old Wang had seen Bai Yutang before, so he nodded briefly before fixing his gaze on Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao greeted him with a warm smile, and Old Wang grew a little emotional... He also remembered Zhan Zhao. Back in school, he was a top student who was always buried in books yet perpetually forgetful, constantly losing his meal card or his student ID. Others would often pick them up and bring them to the reception office, and then Bai Yutang would come running to fetch them for him.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao walked over to the two and sat down.

Zhan Zhao played the phone recording with the sound of dripping water.

Old Wang didn't deny it but instead asked, "When did you start suspecting me?"

"Pretty early on..." Bai Yutang said with a hint of resignation. "Because the only place that can connect all of us at once is the school, and that day at school, the hints in your words were rather obvious."

Zhan Zhao nodded in agreement, then pulled up the video of the yellow poncho that had appeared when Zhang Wei jumped off the building to show him.

Old Wang smiled faintly and said in a low voice, "I didn't expect him to fall."

"So that was you?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Beside him, Xiao Li raised his hand. "It was me."

"I was wearing the poncho, but I held up a bamboo pole to prop it up," Xiao Li explained. "All the yellow ponchos that appeared around these people were me and a few friends pretending..."

At that moment, Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang's minds raced through over a hundred possibilities. Could it be that Xiao Li was like Tan Wen or Guan Xiaoyue, a past victim himself, or a family member of a victim?

And since Xiao Li mentioned a few friends, could it be that there are actually a large number of other victims? It isn't impossible. Just like Tan Wen's case, perhaps they aren't dead but have lost their memories. A victims' alliance?!

Just as Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were conjuring up an elaborate, twisting drama of revenge in their minds, Xiao Li opened his mouth and said, "The cause of everything... is actually just because of a prank."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were both stunned, as was everyone else in the monitoring room next door.

"A prank?"

"What kind of prank?"

"Doesn't every school have those kinds of ghost stories?" Xiao Li crossed his arms and explained to the two, "Like the mop in the bathroom is actually a woman stuck upside down in a bucket, or the student with an animal face who doesn't belong to any dorm, or the floor in the teaching building that you can never reach, or the teacher who disappeared thirty years ago and is hanging in the library..."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked speechlessly at the school security guard telling ghost stories, but indeed, every school more or less had similar rumours.

"Our school, of course, is most famous for the case of the missing girl that year, because the girl was seen wearing a yellow rain poncho when she disappeared, and then that night someone at the bus station saw the ghost of the girl wearing a yellow rain poncho. And later, the vice principal died in the swimming pool, there was also a yellow poncho..."

"So?" Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were both curious – What did that have to do with a prank?

"There were a few students who were especially mischievous!" Xiao Li spread his hands. "No one knows who came up with the idea, but in the middle of the night, they pulled a prank with a yellow poncho."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang exchanged a glance. "Students pulled a prank?"

Old Wang nodded, unable to laugh or cry. "Yes, at first, a few boys living on the second floor took a bamboo pole, picked up a yellow rain poncho, and poked it up to a window on the third floor in the middle of the night to scare the students upstairs. As you know, most of the students in our school have heard of the case, so they are quite sensitive to yellow rain ponchos..."

Zhan Zhao was speechless. This... even those who aren't sensitive would've been scared, right?

"The kids upstairs screamed their heads off, while the ones downstairs were having a great time. Then the kids on the third floor grabbed the bamboo pole to scare those on the fourth floor, and the fourth floor scared the fifth floor..." Xiao Li shook his head as he spoke, "Kids that age are full of energy, and they make trouble when they can't sleep. Then one day, the school administration suddenly came to the security department and asked us if the school had been haunted recently. They said one kid was so frightened that his parents came to transfer him to another school. The school was most afraid of such rumours, so they asked us to investigate, but they didn't want to make a big deal out of it, because they were afraid it would blow up into something bigger. At first, we didn't know what was going on, but when we heard about the ghost and the yellow rain poncho..."

Xiao Li pointed at Old Wang beside him. "He was startled too... And of course, once the boarders started scaring their classmates, the day students wouldn't sit still either, they joined in the mischief in the classrooms. You've seen it yourselves at the school before, right? That so-called ghost in a yellow poncho sitting at a desk, made out of a poncho and a stack of books. Though the ones you saw back then were all set up by us."

Bai Yutang nodded – That one really was over the top.

But it was from around that time that he began to suspect the two security guards had a problem, because there had clearly been issues in the school monitoring room. The ones with access to tamper with things there, the most suspicious people, were the security staff themselves.

"The two of us were watching the footage and knew right away which troublemakers were behind it. We solved it quickly and reported it to the school administration. The school gave those students a warning, and that was that. But the homeroom teacher of the student who had been so frightened they transferred happened to be a friend of mine," Xiao Li continued. "After I told him the truth, he wanted to find that student to explain the situation. Whether or not they still transferred was another matter, but he at least wanted to make things clear so the kid wouldn't be left with a psychological shadow."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both nodded – Mhmm, that teacher sounds quite responsible.

"And then something strange happened," Xiao Li said. "My friend spent three days looking, but couldn't find them. He discovered that the student's entire family had vanished into thin air."

"Oh..."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang instantly understood. This was a case of stumbling upon the truth by accident. The students had only been playing a prank, but one of them might have been an impostor, just like Yu Hui... So to that student and their ‘parents', this probably hadn't seemed like a prank at all, it had looked like an enemy closing in... So they forcibly disappeared, even erasing their identity.

"In modern society, who can just cancel a household registration overnight, right?" Xiao Li sighed. "My friend is a passionate teacher. When he realised a student was missing, he couldn't stand it, he wanted to put up missing-person posters all over the place. But when he tried to make the poster, another problem cropped up... there was no photo!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both laughed – Sometimes being too thorough can cause problems. Those people are professional. If they erased a household registration, they would have wiped away every trace of themselves, but to ordinary people, that would be too strange and suspicious.

"It doesn't make sense, right? The school archives would definitely have to keep the records on file. Even if a student transferred, their documents should still be there... But the bizarre thing was that they had been wiped away completely." Xiao Li shook his head as he spoke of it. "I thought it was fishy too, so I told Uncle Wang... and Uncle Wang suddenly told me to warn my friend to stop digging, or he'd be risking his life."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both turned to Old Wang – So you do know something?

Old Wang set down his teacup and sighed. "He wasn't the first teacher to realise a student had gone missing... Before the incident, the vice principal asked me whether I'd ever met Tan Wen's parents, whether those two who came to the school were really the same people."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were both stunned. It turns out that he had asked Old Wang.

"But the vice principal died that very night. Later, there was another teacher... she asked me a similar question. There was a student in her class who also transferred schools. She'd collected farewell notes and signatures from her classmates to give her, only to find that the entire family had vanished. She was stubborn, though, and tracked down the girl's former elementary school, yet there were no records there either. She found students who had graduated with her and looked at the graduation group photo, but the student wasn't in it. Then, after many enquiries, she actually found a family portrait with the student. At first glance, the child looked quite similar, but she wasn't the same person at all. The most important thing was that the parents were completely different... She came to me as well, asking if I had ever seen that transfer student's parents. She even said she remembered that the father of the student had a tattoo on the back of his head, something like an anchor. Just like that pattern I laid out for you with leaves by the pool that day... That very night, she died in a car accident."

"Why didn't you call the police at that time?" Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were both anxious.

"How could we?" Old Wang retorted. "The driver was driving while fatigued, and he surrendered himself at the time and was sentenced."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both sighed – The more they listened, the angrier they became!

"Did you at least tell your friend?" Zhan Zhao pressed.

"I did," Xiao Li shrugged, "but even before I said it, I knew it'd backfire. My friend's a stubborn bastard. He said he wasn't afraid, that his brother-in-law was in the criminal police team. If he ended up dying halfway for no reason, then I should go to the police."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both thought the same thing – Why didn't you call the police earlier?! Why did you have to investigate yourselves?

"There was no solid evidence!" Xiao Li protested, feeling quite wronged. "And after that, every trail just went cold, there was nothing left to follow."

"What happened later?"

"It was my idea later," Old Wang admitted. "I suggested we stop fixating on just one point. Given the circumstances, more than one person was being impersonated, and it might've been going on for years. We could try looking into other suspicious cases among the students who'd already graduated... The likeliest candidates were Tan Wen's classmates. After some checking, I found that Fang Beibei and Zhang Wei seemed a bit off. Those students before had been scared off by the ‘yellow rain poncho', so maybe it would have the same effect on them."

"My friend and I, as well as several other friends, separately kept an eye on them. We hung around the places where they appeared, wearing yellow raincoats and making ourselves visible from a distance," Xiao Li summarised, "With this kind of thing, if you have nothing to hide, you won't have any reaction when you see it, but if you have something to hide, you may reveal your own secrets."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both nodded, finally grasping the situation.

"But I never thought it would end in death," Xiao Li looked troubled. "After Zhang Wei fell from the building, I saw the news. Later, I heard his girlfriend had died too, and I realised that things had spiralled beyond our control."

"Xiao Li wanted to call the police at the time, but on the one hand, the evidence wasn't enough, and on the other, since it involved a death, I was worried those youngsters might be held responsible, especially that teacher... But I also wanted to pass the leads on to you, let your SCI investigate, so..."

"So you made those phone calls?"

Old Wang nodded. "Although Zhang Wei wasn't exactly a saint, we were the ones who killed him..."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both waved their hands. "Zhang Wei didn't fall because you scared him, he was dragged down by Guan Xiaohong. Besides, both he and Guan Xiaohong had already been poisoned by Fang Beibei. He would've died regardless of whether you were involved."

Old Wang and Xiao Li were stunned, It turns out...

Zhan Zhao then showed them the girls who had been rescued from Shi Yanshuo's grasp. "These girls were all rescued in this case."

The two of them couldn't help but feel happy.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang were also deeply moved. This so-called "third party", the unseen avengers who had scared Shi Yanshuo and Yu Hui into fleeing overnight, turned out to be nothing more than a responsible teacher and two school security guards.

The "clues" provided by Shi Yanshuo and Yu Hui themselves had interwoven with the "clues" offered by these hidden avengers, which was why they had managed to find the trail so quickly.

SCI never solved cases by relying on retribution. But here, the saying "what goes around comes around" seemed particularly fitting for this case. Such a meticulous arrangement, a seemingly "foolproof" plan, had been exposed all because of a simple student prank. From that tiny crack, it spread outward until the whole crime was finally laid bare.

"But there's still one thing I don't understand," Zhan Zhao said to Bai Yutang. "Why the yellow raincoat?"

Bai Yutang thought for a moment. "Then let's ask Shi Yanshuo. I've always felt he and that Fang Beibei... seem to be hiding something."

"By the way," Zhan Zhao turned back to Old Wang. "Uncle Wang, when you found the vice principal's body back then, did you really see the figure in the yellow raincoat?"

Old Wang nodded. "I really did see it."

Zhan Zhao stroked his chin. "The vice principal was likely silenced by that group. Which means they deliberately tied the case to the yellow raincoat... But that feels like a flaw, why leave such an obvious flaw on purpose?"

Bai Yutang thought for a moment. "In Zhu Yi's kidnapping case, weren't there also two victims before her both wearing yellow raincoats?"

Zhan Zhao understood Bai Yutang's implication, "Perhaps... these two weren't kidnapped by Shi Yanshuo?"

The thought lit up a spark in Zhan Zhao's mind. "What if... they were two completely different cases? Someone kidnapped and killed two girls wearing yellow rain ponchos, and when Shi Yanshuo found out, that's why he targeted Zhu Yi, because she happened to be in a yellow rain poncho too? Coincidentally, Tan Wen's school issued yellow rain ponchos as uniforms, and that group deliberately wove the yellow raincoat into this story! Brilliant! Like a serial killer who only targets people in yellow raincoats. If they tied the case to the rain poncho, then even if it all came to light, they could still shift the blame!"

Bai Yutang frowned, then suddenly realised. "Cat... that Wang Yong who covered up the Zhu Yi case for Shi Yanshuo... why would he take the risk to work for Shi Yanshuo? Just for money? Could it be that that group has something on him?"

"You suspect he might actually be the killer in those first two cases?" Zhan Zhao thought for a moment and felt it made sense!

Bai Yutang immediately called Zhao Hu.

After escorting Shi Yanshuo and Yu Hui back to the station, Zhao Hu and Ma Han returned to the estate to finish wrapping up the case. None of Shi Yanshuo's subordinates and relatives were allowed to leave, and their identities had to be verified one by one.

After receiving Bai Yutang's call, Zhao Hu glanced at the security guards who were arranged in the courtyard to wait for questioning, and frowned.

"Where's Wang Yong?" Zhao Hu asked.

Ma Han and the other officers looked around. Right, he was just here, how could he vanish?

One of the security guards reported that Wang Yong had just said he was going to the toilet and left with an officer.

Zhao Hu and Ma Han exchanged a look, realising immediately that something was wrong. They rushed into the estate's restroom and found an officer on the ground, his uniform stripped off.

Zhao Hu hurried forward and checked his pulse. Luckily, he was only unconscious.

"That bastard must have run away!" Zhao Hu reported to Bai Yutang.

Bai Yutang knew that something bad had happened and ordered that a city-wide wanted notice be issued immediately. This bastard wasn't simple, and he might be a hidden serial killer. They absolutely couldn't afford to let him slip away!

‿︵‿︵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: September 12, 2025 by Angel

Edited: November 14, 2025 by Angel