S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 161

The Wisteria Murderer 05 – The Wisteria We Found

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In the funeral home of S City's crematorium, Gui Jiali had just finished reconstructing a body. Wearing her white lab coat, she ambled out to the entrance to collect the milk tea she had ordered.

She had only just picked up the drink when she spotted a familiar car driving in through the main gate.

The beautiful woman walked forward a couple of steps, sipping her milk tea through a straw as she waited.

Sure enough, the car drove up and parked in an empty space not far from her.

When the doors opened, a pretty girl in a turtleneck sweatshirt jumped out of the back seat first. She was hugging a teddy bear in one arm and carrying a tablet computer in the other. As soon as she got out, she waved at Gui Jiali.

A smile appeared on Gui Jiali's face, and she waved back.

The front doors opened, and Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao got out, greeting Gui Jiali.

Earlier, the two of them had sent Qiu Yizi's missing person notice to the new chef duo. Unexpectedly, they had received a surprising piece of information, Mia said that Qiu Yizi was already dead.

The two drove home to pick up Mia, and Mia found the deceased's file to show to Zhan Zhao.

According to the records Mia had collected, the deceased was named Qiu Xiaoyu, twenty-one years old. She had died the previous autumn after accidentally falling from a building, and homicide had been ruled out.

Qiu Xiaoyu had no family, and no one had come forward to claim her body, so it had remained in the funeral home.

"She died last autumn?" Bai Yutang thought it sounded rather strange. "Normally, an unclaimed body is kept for at most ninety days before it's cremated... Why was this one kept for so long?"

Zhan Zhao also found it odd and asked Mia, "Was there anything unusual about the deceased?"

Mia gestured to Zhan Zhao, indicating that the funeral home had facilities for long-term frozen storage of bodies, though the service had to be paid for privately. Someone had specifically paid to preserve two bodies, and one of them was Qiu Xiaoyu's.

"Who is the other body?"

Mia brought up the details of the other body on her tablet. The deceased was Zhao Chang, male, twenty-three years old. He had also died after accidentally falling from a building last spring. The two deaths had been about six months apart, and, remarkably, both falls had occurred at the same location, an abandoned building on the outskirts of S City. The heights from which they had fallen were different, Qiu Xiaoyu had fallen from the ninth floor, while Zhao Chang had fallen from the eleventh. Both had died at the scene.

"Why would two people die in falls from the same building six months apart? What were they doing there?" Zhan Zhao asked curiously.

Mia made a hand gesture that looked rather cool.

"Parkour?" Zhan Zhao was speechless. "That’s why they fell to their deaths?"

Mia nodded repeatedly.

In fact, Mia really liked parkour. A few years ago, when she was even younger, she loved climbing and jumping about like a cat. Her mother, Kalin, had practically raised her like one too, turning an entire warehouse into a giant collection of "cat trees" for her to scramble over and race across as though scaling walls and rooftops.

But Mia's physical abilities were nothing like those of an ordinary person. For her, running across walls and rooftops was about as easy as walking on level ground. Even so, Kalin had strictly forbidden her from doing parkour in unfamiliar places, especially abandoned buildings.

After getting out of the car, Mia immediately threw herself at Gui Jiali, wrapping her arms around her neck in an affectionate embrace.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang explained why they had come.

Gui Jiali seemed to know about the body. "There aren't many bodies kept here under paid storage, only a handful."

As she spoke, she led the three of them into the funeral home.

As they walked, Gui Jiali gently held Mia's chin, examining it.

Mia's life had more or less stabilised recently, and now that she was older, she needed more social interaction. Kalin was therefore preparing to perform reconstructive surgery on the skin around her chin and neck, and had been working with Gongsun, Hao Ling, and Gui Jiali to develop a plan.

Mia's operation was a major one and would probably have to be carried out gradually. The whole family was worried about it, and even Zhao Jue had been helping to find suitable doctors.

When they reached the funeral home’s refrigerated storage area, Gui Jiali pulled Qiu Xiaoyu's body out from one of the freezer compartments.

The only information Zhan Zhao had was Qiu Yizi's details, so he compared them with the body, but he couldn’t determine whether they were the same person. The age and appearance seemed to match, but he couldn’t be completely certain. After all, she had died from a fall, and although the body had undergone reconstruction, there was still considerable damage.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang then examined Zhao Chang's body as well before asking Gui Jiali who had paid to keep both bodies in storage.

Gui Jiali took out a file. "It was an elderly person with the surname Wang. If I remember correctly, it was an old lady. There's also a contact telephone number."

"An old lady?" Bai Yutang was somewhat puzzled. "Does she have any connection with these two deceased?"

"It wasn't me who handled the arrangements, but I have a rough idea of what happened," Gui Jiali said as she closed the freezer compartment. "It had to do with the place where they died."

"That abandoned building?"

"Mhmm!" Gui Jiali nodded. "That place is pretty well known. Five years ago there was a fire there, and a lot of people died..."

Bai Yutang thought about the location of that building. "Oh... was that the fire caused by the illegal renovations to the ventilation system... There just happened to be a wedding banquet in the building that day as well, a lot of people were killed."

"That's right." Gui Jiali said she had received many of the bodies at the time. Most of them had been badly burned, so the incident had left a deep impression on her. After that, the building had been abandoned, and almost every year since then, something had happened there. There were even rumours that it was haunted, making it something of a destination for urban explorers.

Bai Yutang clicked his tongue. "Why hasn't the building been demolished?"

"The owner refuses to tear it down, and the lawsuit is still going on. Property prices for all the surrounding houses have been cut in half, and that whole area has practically become a ghost town because of that building, but there's nothing anyone can do about it.” Gui Jiali lowered her voice mysteriously. “A family with a young child living nearby told me that when they come home at night, they’d rather take a detour than walk past that building!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang exchanged a glance. This is quite unusual. Even someone who works at a funeral home is afraid of the place? Just how eerie is it?

"So this Old Mrs Wang paid to preserve those two bodies, and it has something to do with that fire?" Bai Yutang actually remembered that fire from back then. It had been an exceptionally tragic disaster. According to the news reports, the blaze had been caused by illegal renovations to the ventilation system, during which the fire barriers had been removed. A fire source had been sucked into the ventilation ducts, setting fire to the grease that had accumulated inside them. The smoke and flames had then been carried through the ductwork to various floors, igniting combustible materials throughout the building. However, there has always been controversy over the source of the fire that was drawn in. Some claim it had been a discarded cigarette butt, others blame ageing electrical wiring in an extractor fan, while still others believe a motor had malfunctioned and caught fire on its own.

At that time, Bai Yutang had glanced over the news reports and found something rather unusual. Why had all the fire barriers been removed during the ventilation system renovations? What was the purpose of doing that? Moreover, according to the news, the barriers had only been removed a few days before the fire broke out. Was it really just a coincidence?

However, Bai Yutang's suspicions had been nothing more than a police officer's instinct. He never investigated the matter in any detail, since accidents like that didn’t fall within SCI's jurisdiction.

"The fire caused a lot of casualties. Apart from those who were killed or injured, one person also disappeared.” Gui Jiali said. “I only heard about it from Xiao Yang. The missing person was Old Mrs Wang's granddaughter. She vanished without a trace, no one has seen her alive or dead."

"Who's Xiao Yang?"

"The one I mentioned just now, the kid who lives near that building." Gui Jiali sent Xiao Yang a message, asking him to come over. "He knows Old Mrs Wang too, they're from the same area."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang asked whether they could perform an autopsy on Qiu Xiaoyu.

Gui Jiali said that they would need either consent from the deceased's family or official police authorisation. Otherwise, they would need permission from Old Mrs Wang, who had paid to keep the body in storage. There was no way they could simply take the body away for examination.

Bai Yutang thought it would be a good idea to discuss it with Old Mrs Wang and, while they were at it, help her look for her missing granddaughter. Zhan Zhao could naturally guess what Bai Yutang was thinking. He estimated that they would eventually uncover the truth behind the fire all those years ago... He had a feeling Bao Sir was going to give them an earful.

At that moment, Zhan Zhao's "wisteria syndrome" flared up again, and he asked Gui Jiali, "Does any of this have anything to do with wisteria?"

Gui Jiali looked at Zhan Zhao in confusion, "Wisteria?"

Seeing her reaction, Zhan Zhao felt rather disheartened...

Just then, a voice came from the doorway. "The place that burned the worst, where the most people died, was a hotel that was holding a wedding. Everyone in our village called it the Wisteria Hotel."

When Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang heard the words "Wisteria Hotel", their eyes lit up and they both turned towards the door. At the same time, both of them were puzzled – Jiang Ping had been investigating for so long, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed a hotel like that ...

A young man walked in through the door. He looked to be in his early twenties, tall and lean, dressed in a dark green tracksuit and white trainers. He was holding a badminton racket bag in one hand and fiddling with a keychain in the other.

Gui Jiali introduced him. "His name's Yang Xiaogao. You can call him Xiao Yang or Xiaogao. He works here at the funeral home."

Xiao Yang waved a hand dismissively. "Sister Jiali's putting it politely, I'm the one in charge of moving the bodies."

Zhan Zhao noticed he was wearing a string of Buddhist prayer beads and a crystal bracelet on one wrist, a cross around his neck, and even had a talisman for warding off evil hanging from his key ring. His beliefs were certainly an eclectic mix...

Zhan Zhao asked him to elaborate on the Wisteria Hotel first.

Xiao Yang told them, "That whole area used to be a village called Yanggao Village, with loads of people with the surnames Yang and Gao. Later, the area was redeveloped and the residents were relocated, and it became part of the city. That building was a mixed-use complex, and a lot of the shops from the old Yanggao Village moved into it. The hotel was called the Yanggao Hotel, but that wasn't the original name. Originally, it had been an old hotel that had been operating in Yanggao Village for more than twenty years, called the Wisteria Hotel... So everyone from our village still called it that. The entire family who owned the hotel died in the fire..."

After saying that, Xiao Yang shook his head. "It was awful... Afterwards, a lot of the relocated residents moved away."

"Why was it called the Wisteria Hotel?" Zhan Zhao asked. "Was there a wisteria tree nearby?"

Xiao Yang nodded. "Originally, it was called the Wisteria Restaurant. It started out as just a small eatery, there was a huge wisteria tree nearby, and they began by setting up tables underneath it and serving home-style dishes."

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao exchanged a glance, feeling the need to digest and analyse the situation...

They had spent so many days searching for wisteria, and now they had actually found it. Strangely, instead of feeling relieved, they felt rather at a loss. It felt a bit far-fetched...

"Is that wisteria tree still there?" Zhan Zhao asked.

Xiao Yang nodded. "It is... However, that whole area has pretty much been abandoned."

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang spoke in unison, "Take us there!"

‿︵‿︵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: July 21, 2026 by Angel

Edited: July 22, 2026 by Angel