S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 131

Special Files – Collector 16 – Pattern

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When Bai Yutang and Bai Ye returned to the holiday cabin together on their newly bought mountain bikes, Zhan Zhao and the others, who had gone for a walk, had already come back.

There were quite a few people in the cabin, even Xu Lie and the others from next door had come over. The two babies were crawling about inside a playpen, and the couples were gathered in the courtyard, drinking and chatting, it all looked very relaxing.

The group from next door had actually come over to scrounge a meal. Bai Ye had just bought a lot of ingredients at the supermarket and was now preparing dinner with the new chef duo.

Bai Yutang put his things down and went inside, only to see Zhan Zhao sitting cross-legged on the sofa, leaning against Lisbon, holding a tablet and watching videos.

Bai Yutang shook his head. Watching TV during the day and videos at night, what was the point of coming on the holiday, then? You could have done that at home...

As he walked behind the sofa, Bai Yutang was just about to glance at what Zhan Zhao was watching when he heard a somewhat familiar laugh, "Hahaha..."

Bai Yutang frowned. "That guy..."

Zhan Zhao raised his head and asked, "You know him?"

"Not really, but..." Bai Yutang lifted his chin and gestured towards Zhao Hu, who was teasing Xiao Yumi in the living room. "He's had some bad blood with Hu Zi."

Zhan Zhao was a little curious and raised his hand to beckon Zhao Hu over.

Zhao Hu ran over, and when Bai Yutang signalled him to look at the screen, he leaned down for a glance.

"Ai..." Hu Zi let out a disgusted sound through his teeth, his facial features scrunching up all at once.

"Did you have a falling out with him?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Hu Zi clicked his tongue. "That guy's a real piece of work. Every time, he shows up at crime scenes and messes things up, dragging around some film crew to make a spectacle of himself. Once, when I was working with the criminal investigation team on a murder case, we'd set a trap at the scene, waiting for the killer to return. But he snuck in to shoot his video, scared the suspect off, and we still haven't caught the guy!"

Zhan Zhao frowned. "Didn't you report him for obstructing an investigation?"

"We did, but it was no use. The guy's a slippery old fox, always playing on the edge of the law, pretending he didn't know it was an active crime scene. He's infuriating." Hu Zi sounded rather annoyed. "And what's worse, he somehow always knows where a crime scene will be before anyone else. I can't shake the feeling he's got an inside source in the police department."

"But we've never run into him at a crime scene," Zhan Zhao thought back, and indeed they had never met him.

"Most of his stuff involves the criminal investigation team, or cases that are already closed. Somehow, he still knows all the details, even when nothing's been made public. Anyway, it's very strange." Hu Zi added that he'd even asked Jiang Ping to investigate the man, but they hadn't found a single lead.

Zhan Zhao touched his chin. "So that's how it is..."

Zhao Hu looked at Bai Yutang in confusion – Why did he suddenly ask about him?

Bai Yutang shrugged slightly and also asked why Zhan Zhao was watching that guy's videos.

Zhan Zhao said the man was filming videos down in the container area at the foot of the mountain, he'd just seen him, and Lan Qi also knew him.

"You're kidding, he's here?" Zhao Hu rolled his eyes towards the ceiling. "What bad luck!"

Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at him. "Bad luck?"

"That guy's a walking jinx!" Zhao Hu curled his lip.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang silently glanced at Bai Jintang, who was sitting on the nearby sofa reading through a contract – Does Big Brother Bai count as jinxed, then?

Big Brother Bai raised his head and glanced at his two younger brothers.

"He's not the same kind of jinx as Big Brother," Zhao Hu lifted Lisbon's tail, sat on the sofa, picked up Zhan Zhao's phone and searched for Laughing Bird's homepage. "He always posts teasers there, every time he's heading somewhere, he announces it in advance."

Sure enough, on his video homepage, there was a new teaser – This month's theme: Investigation into the Container Murder in the Block District.

"Isn't he just going to old crime scenes?" Zhan Zhao asked. "Then what difference does it make if he's unlucky?"

"Every time one of his videos airs, a similar case happens," Zhao Hu said, adding that Ai Hu had told him about it.

"Those imitation cases aren't perfect copies, though. They just mimic certain parts, enough that anyone with eyes can see a connection, but there's never solid evidence proving the crime happened because of his videos." Zhao Hu continued, sounding rather annoyed. "And what's more, the timing of the crimes isn't after the video's release, but before, meaning they happen while he's filming."

"The cases never made it to us, you mean they're all individual offences?" Zhan Zhao suddenly grew very interested in the case.

"Some have been solved, all single-perpetrator cases with crude methods, some looked more like accidents, and the rest remain unsolved." Zhao Hu told Zhan Zhao to pull up the records from Jiang Ping's database, there was a folder called "Idiot No. 3".

Zhan Zhao opened the database, and sure enough, among the archived files, there was a folder named "Idiot No. 3".

Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang caught on to the key point. "So there's an idiot number one and number two as well?"

Hu Zi chuckled and said that he didn't know, the number was noted by Jiang Ping, and there were probably two more idiot archives.

Zhan Zhao opened the folder and found a row of subfolders, arranged in a subtly... orderly fashion. The layout was rather pleasing to the eye, particularly for those with a touch of OCD. 

Jiang Ping had set up a clear and simple format. The cases were automatically compiled by the AI system. After each department entered its case records, the system would automatically archive them.

The titles were perfectly aligned, almost matching the number of videos posted by Laughing Bird. Each title had a small coloured symbol beside it, red, green, yellow, or blue, in the shapes of ticks, crosses, circles, and triangles.

Green tick – no similar case occurred.

Yellow circle – a similar isolated incident occurred.

Blue triangle – a similar case occurred, and the perpetrator was arrested.

Red cross – the case remained unsolved, the perpetrator still at large.

Zhan Zhao stared at the row of folders for a while, feeling that something was off.

"So tidy!"

Bai Yutang also thought something was wrong – The ratio of green ticks, yellow circles, blue triangles, and red crosses was 3:2:1:1.

"Is that even possible?" Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao was silent for a moment before saying, "It's like having rain from Monday to Wednesday, wind on Thursday and Friday, sunshine on Saturday, and clouds on Sunday, exactly the same every week..."

Bai Yutang had never encountered this kind of situation before and thought it was something entirely new...

Meanwhile, Zhan Zhao was staring at the last row...

The folders were synchronised with the release of the videos. At present, there is only a teaser title for the upcoming one, while the previous six videos were marked with three green ticks, two yellow circles, and one blue triangle. Following the same pattern, the latest video would be followed by a red cross.

"In other words, right now, while he's filming, a similar case is happening somewhere, and the perpetrator won't be caught?" Bai Yutang was intrigued.

Zhan Zhao leaned against Lisbon, staring blankly at his mobile phone as he muttered to himself, "Could it be a serial case?"

"As it stands, he releases one themed video a month, each based on a specific topic. At present, there are forty-one videos in total. Over the past three years and five months, there've been five unsolved cases, six solved ones, and, adding in the incidental incidents, more than ten cases in all..." Bai Yutang shook his head. "Forget all the flashy nonsense, five imitation cases in three and a half years, all unsolved. Which sounds more reasonable, five different murderers who happen to think alike, or one serial killer?"

"Hmm..." Zhan Zhao rubbed his chin. Suspicious... Everything about this is suspicious!

"Speaking of which..."

After reading the contract, Big Brother Bai put down the tablet and said to the two people on the sofa, "After all these years, you two still haven't noticed the pattern?"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both turned to look at him – What pattern?

"The next one to die will definitely be this person." Big Brother Bai gestured with his chin at the phone in Zhan Zhao's hand.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang lowered their heads to look at the screen. Zhan Zhao had paused the video earlier, and now the screen showed Laughing Bird's face, grinning with a mouthful of "ha-ha" teeth.

"What's the basis for that?" Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both stared at Bai Jintang in surprise. How can he be so sure the next one to die will be Laughing Bird?

Bai Jintang reached out to take the glass of wine Gongsun handed him and casually pulled Gongsun into his arms.

Gongsun put on his glasses, took the tablet from Zhan Zhao, and also looked through the list.

Big Brother Bai took a sip of his wine. "Although every time I'm the one who ends up unlucky, the people who die are always connected to your cases. In other words... my bad luck comes from you two!"

Gongsun chuckled as he held the tablet.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang wanted to argue, but after thinking about it carefully, Big Brother Bai's logic was so oddly specific that there wasn't really any room for rebuttal...

Gongsun handed the tablet back to Zhan Zhao, took Bai Jintang's wine glass for a sip, and nodded as he said, "Judging solely from those five unsolved cases... it does seem like a copycat. It's possible this is a serial killer who commits crimes by imitating famous cases. The previous killers were all specialists, this one's more of a generalist."

Zhan Zhao also made the same judgment. "And judging by the frequency of the crimes and how closely they coincide with the video releases, there is a high probability that Laughing Bird himself is the murderer."

Bai Yutang nodded. "That kid always gives extremely detailed breakdowns of the cases. Some of the information he uses, I've no idea where he gets it, and many of his filming angles are first-person views. Even if he didn't commit those crimes himself, he's almost certainly connected to the murderer somehow..."

As Bai Yutang was still complaining, Zhan Zhao noticed that Laughing Bird's account had just uploaded a new post, a live-stream link. When he opened it, there was no image, only a countdown ticking down to midnight. The title read – Tonight's Live Stream: 'Block Killing Formation, Urban Mass Graveyard'.

Zhan Zhao sounded rather unimpressed. "Isn't that just a scrapyard halfway up the mountain? What kind of over-the-top name is that..."

"This is called a clickbait title," Gongsun said, gesturing for Zhan Zhao to look at the number of people who had subscribed to the stream.

Zhan Zhao noticed that the reservation count below the video frame was rising rapidly. The post had been up for less than a minute, and already over a thousand people had subscribed.

Zhan Zhao stared at the screen for a moment, then also tapped the subscribe button.

Bai Yutang found it hard to believe. "Are there really that many people staying up in the middle of the night just to watch this kind of thing?"

"Not only do people stay up for it, some even show up in person," Zhao Hu said, having just brought over a plate of steak. While eating, he praised, "Uncle Ye's beef is perfect, so crisp on the outside, so tender inside! Absolutely bursting with flavour!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang both leaned over to look at his plate, each reaching out to grab a piece and pop it into their mouths.

Gongsun and Bai Jintang watched as the two of them suddenly closed their eyes and tilted their heads back – as if the meat were melting in their mouths...

Gongsun immediately got up to fetch some steak himself.

"Show up in person?"

Feeling somewhat better after enjoying the steak, Bai Yutang asked Zhao Hu, "What do you mean by show up in person?"

"That kid always posts his livestream links well in advance, and the locations are public, so there are always some reckless people who go to the site early to ambush him just so they can scare the film crew or the viewers during the stream, or grab a bit of attention for themselves."

"Oh, there are loads of clips like that," Zhan Zhao found a compilation video of Laughing Bird being startled by lurking fans while exploring haunted houses.

"Cat." At that moment, Bai Yutang suddenly asked, "When was his last livestream?"

Zhan Zhao checked the date. "The month before last..."

Zhan Zhao immediately understood what Bai Yutang was getting at and muttered, "To be precise, he does a livestream once every seven weeks..."

After searching quickly through the files, Zhan Zhao looked up. "The timing of his livestreams matches the red-cross pattern exactly, which means..."

"Each time he livestreams, that killer commits a crime?" Bai Yutang's professional instincts kicked in at once. "A deliberately constructed alibi!"

‿︵‿︵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: November 12, 2025 by Angel

Edited: November 27, 2025 by Angel