S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 143

Special Files – Collector 28 – Warehouse

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Zhan Zhao was reading that AI report. The trail of that "Three Flowers" had been recorded clearly by the surveillance cameras, and they had even deduced its current location, right in the area of that gulley.

As Zhan Zhao was pondering, Zhao Jue pinched his arm.

"Hiss!" Zhan Zhao bared his teeth in pain and looked up, only to see Zhao Jue signalling with his eyes, telling him to look behind him.

Zhan Zhao glanced back. Only Gongsun and Bai Chi remained behind him, also reading the report, everyone else had disappeared. Where are Xiao Bai and Uncle Ye?

"Where is everyone?" Zhan Zhao wondered.

Gongsun gestured towards the outside.

Zhan Zhao ran out and saw that the SWAT team had put on their heavy gear, and that the SCI members had also put on bulletproof vests.

Bao Sir seemed to be discussing something with Bai Ye.

Zhan Zhao went over to Bai Yutang and asked, "Where are you going?"

Bai Yutang said they were going to make an arrest. Wasn't the target said to be in the gulley?

Zhan Zhao pulled him aside. "Didn't Zhao Jue say it was dangerous and not to let Uncle Ye go?"

Bai Yutang looked to the other side and lowered his voice. "Uncle Ye said he wants to go, and since everyone knows that the person is there, we have to go look for Laughing Bird! Dead or alive, we have to find him!"

Zhan Zhao said that he wanted to go as well.

Bai Yutang casually picked up a bulletproof vest and handed it to him.

Zhan Zhao put it on, surprised that Bai Yutang hadn't stopped him this time.

Bai Yutang gestured towards the SWAT team. "Aside from the robot dogs and the drones, there's also an unmanned armoured vehicle. All of them can be controlled through Jiang Ping's AI system. The machines go in first to eliminate danger, then we go in."

Zhan Zhao thought it over and felt it was fair, it wasn't just him who had his job stolen.

"Dr Zhan, you're going in too?"

At that moment, Wen Xiaorou walked over holding a rubber wristband.

Zhan Zhao nodded.

Wen Xiaorou handed him the wristband.

Zhan Zhao noticed that all the team members were wearing wristbands of the same style. As soon as he put it on... the wristband activated automatically, and Mwah Mwah's avatar appeared on the screen.

Zhan Zhao blinked. "Got You?"

Mwah Mwah on the wristband immediately blinked.

Zhan Zhao was speechless. "Who designed this tasteless thing?"

Bai Yutang laughed. "Isn't it quite cute?"

Zhan Zhao said with disdain, "Not as cute as Luban!"

As soon as he finished speaking, the avatar on the wristband turned into a rotating white circle. A few seconds later, it became Luban's avatar, and there was even an option to choose images, taken directly from the Luban album on Zhan Zhao's phone...

Zhan Zhao gasped and pointed at the wristband to complain to Bai Yutang. "It's peeking at my phone's photo album!"

Bai Yutang turned his wrist over and saw a string of numbers beneath the wristband, showing his name, blood type, heartbeat, and blood pressure.

Zhan Zhao blinked. "How does it know who I am?"

"It scanned your face," Bai Yutang said. "The parameters of all action personnel are displayed on the monitoring screen, and if anything abnormal happens to your physical condition, it'll sound an alarm."

"Oh..." Zhan Zhao felt that was quite practical. "But how did it peek at my photo album?"

"Once it confirms your identity, it connects to the electronic devices on you. If you want to make a call or anything, just tell it..."

"I see..." Zhan Zhao stared at the wristband for a while before asking, "Why doesn't it speak?"

"It might suddenly make noise and affect the operation, so it isn't allowed to make sound." Wen Xiaorou handed a helmet to Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao held the helmet and put it on. On the wristband, the avatar of Luban acquired a cartoon helmet.

Zhan Zhao was amused. "Quite cheeky."

"Can I take this wristband home?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Wen Xiaorou nodded and told him to file a request later.

Bai Yutang asked him to take out his phone and have a look.

Zhan Zhao took out his phone, and sure enough, he found that an app with Luban's avatar had appeared on the screen.

"It really invaded my phone!" Zhan Zhao complained.

Just as Zhan Zhao was complaining about the AI, he noticed Bai Yutang and Wen Xiaorou's gazes shifting towards something behind him.

Zhan Zhao turned around and saw Zhao Jue putting on a bulletproof vest, sniffing a helmet with a disdainful expression.

Zhan Zhao stared at him for a moment, then he and Bai Yutang both smiled – Oh? Are you worried about Uncle Ye?

Zhao Jue rolled his eyes at them.

Wen Xiaorou held up a wristband and asked if he wanted one.

Zhao Jue thought for a moment, then reached out and put it on.

Zhan Zhao, curious to see what words appeared on his wristband, went over to have a look, but Zhao Jue wouldn't let him see.

Fully armed, the group split into two teams. The SWAT officers had equipment, so they drove around to the gulley entrance, while Bai Yutang led the SCI members and a few external support personnel down the mountain path to meet in the gulley.

Han Li followed as well.

Zhao Hu had geared up and was teasing a robot dog. Ma Han quietly observed Han Li and noticed she showed almost no emotional reaction.

This "Three Flowers" Bai Ye mentioned might very well be the real killer of her father, and her father's severed head was likely "collected" in that warehouse...

Yet Han Li now seemed no different from earlier...

The group followed the same small path from earlier and smoothly reached the upper edge of the gulley.

At that moment, two SWAT vehicles approached from ahead, and one stopped directly below them.

Several officers set up a ladder for them, and everyone descended safely to the gulley floor.

As expected, opposite the wall with the graffiti on one side of the valley, there was a cave.

The entrance to the cave was quite large, with two big iron doors, and it looked like a small hangar.

The iron doors were painted sky blue, but the paint looked extremely old, patchy and mottled, and the exposed areas were rusty.

To be fair, it really did look like a warehouse.

The warehouse doors had two handles, were secured only by an iron chain and a padlock... It was very basic.

The chain was casually looped around one of the handles, and the door was even slightly ajar, not locked at all.

The robot dog and the vehicle reached the entrance, and two SWAT officers pulled the doors open to both sides...

The moment the warehouse doors opened, everyone at the entrance tilted their heads back...

Inside the warehouse were two rows of display racks, arranged similarly to the ones in the underground storage of the manor earlier, but that wasn't the main point...

Everyone's attention was drawn to the body hanging behind the doors in front of them.

A middle-aged man had a rope tied around his neck and was hanging in mid-air.

This scene... reminded Zhan Zhao of the electronic ticket they had received.

Bai Yutang was still holding the AI rendering of Three Flowers. Although the corpse looked like it had been dead for a long time, it was clearly not strangled, it had been hung up after death, so the face wasn't especially distorted... It was almost instantly recognisable as Three Flowers.

To confirm, Bai Yutang glanced at Bai Ye.

Bai Ye frowned as he looked at the corpse.

Zhan Zhao's thoughts were more complicated, and he asked, "Could it be fake? Something like the cicada shedding its shell?"

Bai Yutang nodded – Indeed... Given how easily they had exposed themselves to surveillance and been located, it was suspicious.

At that moment, a shout came from up the mountain: "Hey!"

Everyone looked up and saw Bai Jintang running over with Gongsun and Ma Xin.

The forensics team had been in the command vehicle earlier, and the moment the doors opened to reveal a corpse hanging there, Gongsun and Ma Xin grabbed their cases and charged down the mountain, with Bai Jintang chasing after them the whole way. Big Brother Bai was also a little puzzled, Since when did Gongsun have such good stamina...

At that moment, the robot dog that had entered the warehouse first had already come out. There was no sign of anything alive inside.

Wen Xiaorou used a thermal imaging detector to check, and indeed, there were no living people in the warehouse.

Zhan Zhao looked up at a drone hovering above them. When they had returned earlier, the drone had stayed to keep watch, and no one else had gone in or out, so the body must have been dead for quite some time, and also...

Zhan Zhao looked at the ground. "There's no blood on the ground..."

Everyone nodded... This was very strange, they had followed bloodstains and the smell of blood all the way down the mountain to this place. If the killer had carried the severed head here, down into the gulley, there should have been blood on the ground. Why wasn't there any?

"He probably brought a plastic bag or something, maybe he did it on purpose," Gongsun told them to take the body down so he could examine it and determine the time of death.

Bai Yutang led the SCI members into the warehouse to see what was placed on the shelves.

Bai Ye and Zhao Jue did not go in. Uncle Ye was still looking at the corpse, a trace of doubt in his eyes.

Zhao Jue glanced at Bai Ye's expression and felt that Bai Ye seemed to have concluded that the body was real...

The body was successfully taken down and placed on a stretcher.

Gongsun performed a preliminary examination. "Dead less than twenty-four hours. The cause of death isn't very clear, but it might be..."

"My lord, did he die of illness?" Ma Xin asked.

Gongsun nodded. "It looks like... something triggered a cardiac episode. Sudden cardiac death is very likely."

"What triggered it?" Bai Ye asked in confusion.

"There are many possibilities, such as overly strenuous activity, a blood clot, complications from chronic illness, drug overdose, or some sort of external stimulus... For example, excessive fright, or even excessive joy."

"But his expression is very strange." Gongsun pointed at the man's face. "His eyes are open, but there's no expression of pain. They're just wide open, as though..."

"As though he saw something terrifying?" Zhao Jue glanced at the corpse with slight distaste. It indeed looked like he'd been scared to death.

"That's possible, but we'll need to do pharmacological tests after we get back," Gongsun said. "It may have been caused by something he ingested..."

Before he could finish speaking, they heard Zhao Hu on the other side shout, "Holy shit!"

Everyone looked up and saw Zhao Hu running out from behind the last shelving unit, shouting to Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, who were examining a glass jar on the front row of racks, "Chief! Laughing Bird!"

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao exchanged a glance and quickly ran to the last row of shelves.

The rack had four levels in total, each level holding a glass jar and some miscellaneous items.

Earlier, the SCI team and several SWAT officers had already been shocked, because every shelving unit had four levels, one glass jar per level. There were eight rows of shelving in total, four on the left, four on the right, meaning thirty-two glass jars were displayed. And inside every glass jar, a human head was preserved in formalin.

In other words, there were thirty-two human heads here, plus the one hanging at the entrance, thirty-three murders in total.

Bai Yutang had only taken one look on entering before pressing a hand to his forehead – It's over, the worst holiday in history!

"Yutang!" Zhan Zhao suddenly grabbed him and pointed at one of the glass jars. "Look!"

Bai Yutang glanced at the head in the jar. He didn't want to look at it too much, and felt a little nauseous...

"I've seen this person before!" Zhan Zhao said.

Bai Yutang was startled. "You know him?"

Zhan Zhao waved his hands. "I've seen his wanted notice! He's a wanted criminal! Isn't he?"

Bai Yutang saw Zhan Zhao raise his wristband towards the glass jar.

A reply appeared on the wristband: "Yes," along with an email-sending emoji.

Zhan Zhao took out his phone, tapped Luban's avatar... and a wanted notice appeared.

Zhan Zhao showed it to Bai Yutang.

Sure enough, the man in the jar had been on the run for over ten years. His crime was murdering a neighbouring family of four, with no clear motive.

"So vicious?" Bai Yutang was reading the notice when another email arrived, another wanted notice.

Zhan Zhao was holding up his wristband and "scanning" the jars one by one, and the wristband kept sending emails.

"These heads, are they all fugitive criminals?"

Just as Bai Yutang asked, Zhao Hu called to them from behind, saying they had found Laughing Bird.

The two of them ran over, and sure enough, inside a glass jar was Laughing Bird's head, looking rather fresh.

Ma Han and Zhao Hu looked at Laughing Bird, who had been alive and kicking just yesterday and was now bottled in a jar, shaking their heads... But apparently, the kid had lives on his hands too, as the warehouse contained only murderers' heads.

At that moment, Zhan Zhao noticed Han Li standing in front of the row of shelves at the front, staring at one particular glass jar.

Wen Xiaorou walked over to her side and also took a look. Inside the glass jar, a severed male head had clearly been soaking for a very long time. His eyes were closed, and his expression was rather peaceful.

Xiaofei also came in, walked up to the two of them, took a look, and frowned... This was Han Li's father, looking exactly as he did in her memory.

Wen Xiaorou patted Han Li and asked her, "Do you drink?"

Han Li froze for a moment, then nodded. "I do."

Wen Xiaorou dragged her along as she walked. "Let's go for drinks after work, we have a holiday tomorrow!"

Xiaofei followed them out. "I want to go too."

......

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang watched the SWAT team finish their preparations and head back, feeling a bit envious – Those people were beginning their holiday, while their own holiday had just been ruined...

At the entrance, Gongsun was on the phone, calling the forensic team. "Old Wang! Holiday? What holiday! We have enough work here to keep you working overtime until next year!"

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao walked out of the warehouse and saw that Bai Ye and Zhao Jue were also getting ready to leave.

"Uncle Ye!" Zhan Zhao hurried after them to ask, "Was that thing about Three Flowers true?"

Bai Ye nodded. "It should be true."

"Are you sure?" Bai Yutang had originally assumed that the person who made Zhao Jue so tense must be someone significant. That he died so easily left him unsure what to say.

Zhao Jue and Bai Ye removed their gear.

"Ai, you two are leaving?" Zhan Zhao pointed at Three Flowers, whose body was now being carried away in a body bag – Aren't you going to investigate how it died?

Bai Ye said he didn't care much, it was fine as long as he was dead, he still had to go back to participate in the competition.

Zhan Zhao pointed at the white marker on the wall and looked at Zhao Jue – You're not going to reclaim it? This is a remnant of the organisation!

Zhao Jue spread his hands – They're not in any of the records, so what is there to reclaim?

The two of them left just like that.

Zhan Zhao muttered, "They actually bailed halfway..."

Bai Yutang also took off his bulletproof vest and pointed at Zhan Zhao's wristband.

Zhan Zhao raised his hand and saw that a ring had appeared on the wristband, indicating a location change.

"A location change?" Zhan Zhao took out his phone and tapped it open. Bai Yutang leaned in to look, and both of them froze...

"The location just given by the AI for Three Flowers was in this mountainous area, right here at the warehouse. But now it shows that the location has changed to the city."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at each other and turned to the forensic department's corpse transport vehicle driving in front of them. Three Flowers' body had just been loaded onto it, how had it moved to the city already?

‿︵‿︵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 27, 2025 by Angel

Edited: December 4, 2025 by Angel