[If you have a boyfriend of four years who is handsome, has a great body, and treats you well, but is extremely cold and indifferent by nature, and the two of you have almost no communication outside of sex, would you break up with him?]
Liang Lie was sitting on the toilet, scrolling through his phone. He was the one who had posted the question. He had a boyfriend of four years named Chu Xuanyi, a surgical genius, a gentle and charming man, and an absolute heartthrob.
The problem was that Chu Xuanyi was far too cold and aloof by nature. Although he treated Liang Lie very well, he never showed any interest in what Liang Lie did every day, whether he was happy or upset, or what was going on in his life. Even when Liang Lie took the initiative to tell him about things, Chu Xuanyi would always respond perfunctorily, brushing the conversation aside with a few casual words.
When they were together, there was nothing but silence or sex. Moreover, every time they had sex, it was unusually passionate and lasted far longer than what most people could manage. Liang Lie was beginning to find it difficult to take, and he really wanted to break up.
But Chu Xuanyi genuinely treated him very well. They had moved in together in the second month after officially becoming a couple, and throughout their four years together, Chu Xuanyi had taken care of him in every possible way. As long as Liang Lie came home, there would always be a hot meal waiting for him. No matter how busy Chu Xuanyi was, he would still make time to tidy up the house. He even hand-washed Liang Lie’s underwear and socks for him.
On top of that, Chu Xuanyi had been a straight man before Liang Lie had turned him gay. Although Liang Lie thought it was a little ridiculous that a supposedly straight man could be turned in just half a month, the fact remained that Chu Xuanyi genuinely hadn’t known how two men were supposed to be together back then. Liang Lie had practically taught him everything himself, step by step, from their very first kiss to their first time in bed.
Liang Lie let out a long, deep sigh and scrolled down to read the comments beneath his question.
Netizen 1: “Seriously? You two have absolutely nothing to talk about apart from sex? Does he treat you like an inflatable doll? Even a prostitute can spare a few minutes to chat with you. Why the hell are you still holding on to this relationship? Are you planning to keep him around until Chinese New Year?”
Netizen 2: “He’s handsome, has a great body, and treats you well. If he doesn’t talk much, that just means there’s no unnecessary drama. You get someone who’s good in bed and can double as your personal housekeeper, and you don’t even have to pay him a salary. If the original poster doesn’t want this kind of boyfriend, give him to me!”
Netizen 3: “If he treats you well, that means he still has feelings for you. I’d suggest sitting down and having a proper conversation with him. Maybe he’s just distant because the two of you haven’t communicated enough.”
The netizens clearly couldn’t agree on a single answer. Liang Lie was about to keep scrolling to see what else people had to say when a voice suddenly called out to him from outside the restroom.
“Captain Liang, have you fallen asleep on the toilet? Hurry up and get out! We’ve got another case.”
Liang Lie hurriedly put his phone away and pretended to flush the toilet before stepping outside. He quickly gathered all his equipment and headed to the crime scene.
The reported incident had taken place in the old district in the city center. Although the area was conveniently located and had good transport links, the buildings were old, and the facilities were badly outdated. The roads were so narrow that they couldn’t drive their vehicle directly into the neighborhood. They had no choice but to park at the entrance and make their way inside on foot, following the cramped, winding alleys between the buildings.
The alleys rarely saw sunlight, and even at noon in June, stepping into one brought a distinctly chilly, almost oppressive feeling. Liang Lie took the lead, walking at the front of the group until they reached an old-fashioned apartment building, where he stopped.
The rusty iron gate stood wide open, and a strong smell of blood rushed toward them. Instinctively, Liang Lie held his breath for a moment before breaking into a run and heading straight up to the third floor.
A police officer standing at the doorway looked as though he had just seen his savior when he spotted their arrival. “Captain Liang, you’re finally here, ”
Before the officer could finish speaking, he suddenly doubled over and began retching. He forced himself to suppress the urge to vomit, then turned to Liang Lie and apologized. “I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s really…”
He couldn’t bring himself to explain what was inside. Liang Lie turned his head and looked through the doorway. The moment he saw what lay within, he understood.
The incident had been reported as a murder. The front door of the apartment opened directly into the living room, where the deceased was hanging from an old-fashioned ceiling fan in the middle of the room. A plastic stool stood beneath his feet, making him look like a pillar planted rigidly in the center of the living room.
At first glance, it looked like a case of hanging. But a closer look revealed that the deceased had been disemboweled. His internal organs and blood had spilled out of his abdomen, with some of the organs lying completely on the floor while others still dangled in midair, seemingly suspended between falling and remaining in place.
The weather in June was already unbearably hot. As though someone had been afraid that the body would not be discovered soon enough, the heating had even been switched on inside the apartment. The stench of blood mingled with an indescribable, nauseating odor that rushed straight into their nostrils.
“T-This is just too… cruel!”
A colleague following behind them covered his nose as he spoke. Liang Lie instructed the forensic and crime scene investigation teams to enter first, then turned to the police officer who had been waiting outside and asked, “Where’s the person who reported it?”
“They were so frightened that they fainted and had to be taken to the hospital.”
The officer’s expression was complicated as he answered, as though he, too, desperately wanted to faint and be taken to the hospital. After barely managing to compose himself, he continued, “According to the person who reported it, the deceased was a tenant who worked as a sales assistant at a nearby shopping mall. He noticed the smell of blood last night, but assumed someone was preparing some elaborate dish, so he didn’t think much of it. However, the smell grew stronger and stronger today. He finally realized something was wrong and called the police.”
After listening to the explanation, Liang Lie instructed the officer to hand over the details to the new recruits on his team. He put on his protective equipment and entered the apartment. Once he reached the living room, he swept his gaze around the entire space.
There were no signs of a struggle or resistance, nor was there anything else that appeared particularly unusual.
Don’t tell me this is another suicide!
Liang Lie couldn’t stop the thought from surfacing in his mind. It wasn’t that he was being unnecessarily suspicious. His team had already received three consecutive suicide cases over the past few days.
In one case, the victim had tied an iron wire around his waist before jumping from a building, and the force had literally torn his body into two halves. In another, the victim had swallowed 182 fragments of utility knife blades, shredding his internal organs from the inside. In the third, the victim had used a hammer to smash his own head to pieces, leaving fragments of brain matter scattered all over the floor.
In all his years on the job, Liang Lie had never encountered suicide scenes like those before. They had been so bloody and horrifying that there was something downright sinister about them.
After the body had been photographed, the forensic team took it down and laid it on the floor. The deceased’s eyes remained wide open, staring fixedly ahead. When Liang Lie glanced over, his gaze happened to meet the dead man’s eyes, making it seem as though the deceased were staring directly at him.
He instinctively averted his gaze, only to notice that the dead man’s mouth had moved. A strange sound emerged from it, resembling air leaking through a damaged windpipe.
“When are you coming home?”
Liang Lie stumbled backward in shock, taking two steps away from the body. When he looked again, all he saw was a blood-soaked corpse lying on the floor. None of the people around him had reacted in the slightest. Even the forensic examiner standing right beside the deceased showed no sign that anything unusual had happened.
It was as though Liang Lie had suddenly experienced a hallucination.
Was it a hallucination?
Liang Lie wasn’t entirely sure. He had been busy dealing with cases over the past few days and hadn’t gone home at all, so it was true that he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. Even so, he shouldn’t have been so exhausted that he was seeing things that weren’t there.
Besides, the main reason he hadn’t gone home wasn’t that he was so busy he couldn’t even spare the time to return for a while. It was because he didn’t want to go home and face Chu Xuanyi, the man with whom he could barely exchange a few words.
“Captain Liang!”
A colleague suddenly called out beside him, startling him so badly that his nerves seemed to jolt all over again. He turned his head and saw that it really was his colleague calling him. Only then did the tension in his body ease.
“There’s a phone here that’s recording a video.”
His colleague pointed toward a phone resting on the cabinet opposite the deceased. Liang Lie hurried over and rewound the video to the beginning.
The first thing that appeared on the screen was the deceased himself. His expression looked perfectly ordinary, as though he were simply preparing to record a short video. After positioning the phone, he walked into the middle of the living room and faced the television wall, which had nothing unusual about it, before beginning to speak.
The phone had been placed some distance away, and the deceased’s speech was indistinct and muffled. It was impossible to make out what he was saying. Then, it seemed as though someone was responding to him, even though no other voice could be heard in the recording.
After that, the deceased stood completely still and remained silent for a short while. Then, as though he had received some kind of instruction, he suddenly turned around, climbed onto the stool, and slipped his neck into a rope that had already been prepared beforehand. He took out a knife and, without the slightest hesitation, plunged it into his own abdomen before cutting downward, slicing his stomach open.
Liang Lie felt a phantom pain in his own abdomen. He had never personally cut open anyone’s stomach like that, but even without having done so, he could imagine how much strength such an action would require. Not to mention the fact that the pain alone should have made it almost impossible for someone to bring themselves to do it.
Yet the deceased’s movements were so smooth and fluid that there wasn’t even the slightest pause. It was as though he couldn’t feel any pain at all. He made the entire process look ridiculously easy, almost as if he weren’t cutting open his own abdomen but slicing into a piece of fluffy dough. He appeared to exert hardly any strength before completing the gruesome act.
As the flesh split open and his intestines spilled out, the deceased showed no sign of pain or suffering. Instead, a satisfied smile spread across his face, giving him an indescribably frenzied and almost deranged appearance.
“Can a normal person really do something like that?”
Unable to hold back any longer, Liang Lie’s colleague spoke up. Goosebumps had risen all over his body, and he could feel a chill creeping through him.
Liang Lie also found it impossible to believe that an ordinary person could do such a thing. He couldn’t help wondering whether the deceased had taken some kind of anesthetic. However, with injuries of that severity, the dosage required to eliminate the pain would have been so high that it was hard to imagine the victim still being capable of cutting himself open.
He thought about the several suicide cases they had dealt with previously and began to worry that this one would also end up being classified as a suicide.
As things turned out, reality unfolded exactly as Liang Lie had feared. After spending the entire afternoon searching the scene, they failed to find a single clue suggesting that the deceased had been murdered by someone else. By the time they finally wrapped up the investigation and returned to the station, the sky was already beginning to darken.
On the way back to the station, Liang Lie gave two of his colleagues a ride in his car. Both had only joined the team recently, and this was the first time either of them had witnessed a crime scene of such a horrifying nature. They were both slumped in their seats, looking as wilted and lifeless as cabbages left out in the sun.
Liang Lie casually switched on the radio, hoping to lift their spirits a little and help them recover from the shock.
“…A traffic accident has just occurred on the Fuhai Road section. The entire stretch is now congested, so drivers in the surrounding area are advised to, When are you coming home?”
The radio announcer had barely finished speaking a couple of sentences when the broadcast abruptly shifted in tone, interrupting the traffic report with a completely unrelated question.
Liang Lie initially assumed that the radio had somehow picked up interference from another frequency. Just as he was about to adjust the volume, however, the broadcast immediately returned to normal. He turned his head toward the radio, puzzled.
Modern radios were electronic devices, unlike the old-fashioned models that relied on antennas to receive signals. The possibility of accidentally picking up another frequency was practically nonexistent. He couldn’t help remembering the moment he had first arrived at the crime scene, when he had seemingly heard the corpse ask him the exact same question.
“When are you coming home?”
The colleague sitting in the front passenger seat suddenly straightened up, transforming from a wilted cabbage into a tall, upright poplar tree. He abruptly turned around and, without any warning, asked Liang Lie the very same question.
For a moment, Liang Lie wondered whether his colleague had been playing a prank on him earlier, too. However, the young man had only recently joined the team and acted as though Liang Lie might eat him alive every time they met. There was no way someone like him would have the nerve to pull a prank on his captain.
Uncertain of what was happening, Liang Lie stared at his colleague and asked, “What did you say? What do you mean, coming home?”
The colleague’s previously rigid back suddenly slumped again. Looking even more confused than Liang Lie, he asked, “Captain Liang, what did you just say?”
Liang Lie grew even more bewildered. While continuing to drive, he carefully studied his colleague out of the corner of his eye, trying to spot anything unusual about him. Seeing nothing that appeared to be wrong, he asked, “Didn’t you just ask me when I was coming home?”
“No, I didn’t! I didn’t say anything! Are you sure you’re not just too tired and hearing things?”
His colleague looked absolutely certain that he hadn’t said a word. Liang Lie hurriedly turned toward the other colleague sitting in the back seat and sought confirmation. “Xiao Yang, you heard it too, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything, Captain Liang. Are you really that exhausted? Haven’t you been home for three days, ever since the last case?”
Liang Lie was certain that he hadn’t misheard anything. However, seeing how firmly both of them denied having said a word, he couldn’t help beginning to doubt himself.
Just then, his phone rang. When he saw that the caller was Chu Xuanyi, he disconnected the call from the car’s hands-free system before answering it directly.
“Liang Lie, when are you coming home?”
Chu Xuanyi’s voice was gentle and deep, with a magnetic quality that seemed to carry affection naturally, even when he wasn’t trying to express any. Yet the very first thing he said was that same question. Liang Lie’s immediate reaction was to wonder whether he had misheard again.
When Chu Xuanyi received no answer, he asked, “Is it inconvenient for you to talk right now?”
Liang Lie took a deep breath and reassured himself that it was nothing more than a coincidence. Perhaps he really was just too tired. After calming himself down, he replied, “No, it’s fine. We’ve had a lot of cases lately, so I probably won’t be coming home tonight either. You don’t need to wait for me to have dinner.”
“Okay.”
Chu Xuanyi replied with just a single word. As soon as his voice fell silent, the call ended.
Liang Lie held his phone in his hand, his brows furrowing tightly. A moment later, he tossed it onto the dashboard in annoyance and fell silent, concentrating on driving.
From the back seat, Xiao Yang asked curiously, “Captain Liang, do you have a girlfriend?”
“What girlfriend?! When have I ever had a girlfriend?! It’s… it’s the old man who lives next door to me!”
Xiao Yang didn’t believe him. That had clearly sounded like a call in which someone was telling his girlfriend he wouldn’t be coming home for dinner, only for her to get angry and hang up on him. He couldn’t help sighing sentimentally. “And just like that, our team’s most handsome man has been snatched away by someone. I wonder how many of our senior female colleagues are going to be heartbroken.”
Liang Lie hurriedly tried to explain himself. “She’s really not my girlfriend. Actually, he’s my… uncle.”
His sudden change of explanation only made Xiao Yang even less convinced. Everyone on the team knew about Liang Lie’s background. He had been an orphan since childhood and had been adopted by a married couple who were both professors. When he was eighteen, his adoptive parents had suddenly disappeared, and he had been living alone ever since.
However, since Liang Lie had already gone so far as to explain that the person on the phone was his uncle, Xiao Yang couldn’t very well ask him outright how he could possibly have an uncle when his parents were both gone. In the end, he could only fall silent.
As soon as they returned to the station, they went straight into a meeting.
Including the case they had investigated that day, a total of five bizarre deaths had occurred within their jurisdiction in just a few short days. The first three cases had already been confirmed as suicides. As for the incident that had occurred around midnight the previous night and the one they had investigated that day, neither appeared to involve the possibility of murder.
However, for so many suicides to occur within such a short period, all of them so brutal and horrifying, and all within their own jurisdiction, there was no way the situation could be considered normal.
After a long silence during the meeting, someone finally spoke up. “Could all these people have been involved in some kind of cult?”
“If they had been involved in a cult, there should have been some traces of it left in their homes. It’s impossible that we wouldn’t find anything at all.”
That was indeed the case. At the very least, a cult would usually have some kind of religious idol, an object of worship, or other items related to its beliefs somewhere. Yet in all these cases, they hadn’t found a single trace that could be linked to any cult.
Moreover, the five deceased had nothing in common in terms of age, gender, occupation, or social relationships. There were no connections between them, nor were there any obvious similarities. It was impossible that all five had separately joined five different cults, only to have each of them commit suicide in such extreme ways at almost exactly the same time.
Even more strangely, no drugs or anesthetic substances had been detected in any of the deceased’s bodies. But without taking anything, what kind of person could possibly be ruthless enough to cut out their own internal organs while wearing a smile?
Liang Lie pondered the matter for a moment before turning to the forensic examiner and asking, “Is it possible that some kind of drug or virus that we haven’t discovered yet caused the deceased to develop a mental abnormality, leading them to commit suicide?”
“Impossible. Even if it were an undiscovered drug or virus, the deceased’s body would still have to react to it in some way, leaving traces behind. However, apart from abnormally elevated adrenaline levels, there was nothing else unusual about their bodies. And we haven’t detected any substances in their systems that could have stimulated the production of adrenaline either.”
“Could it be that-”
A colleague suddenly picked up the conversation. “…I mean, is it possible that they were actually possessed by something evil? I’ve only ever seen people die in ways like these in horror movies.”
After he finished speaking, the conference room fell silent.
When the first case had occurred, everyone had dismissed the idea of possession or supernatural interference as utter nonsense. But after dealing with several consecutive cases, they had all begun to feel that something was seriously wrong.
A normal person simply couldn’t commit suicide in such horrifying ways. Yet despite investigating each case thoroughly, they hadn’t found even the slightest indication that any of the deaths could have been anything other than suicide.
“There’s no point in continuing this discussion. We won’t get anywhere tonight, so let’s call it a day. Everyone has been away from home for several days now. Liang Lie in particular needs to go home and get some proper rest early tonight.”
Their captain, who had led the team to investigate the fourth case around midnight the previous night and had only returned when it was almost dark, abruptly stood up and announced the end of the meeting. He was truly dedicated to his work, but his sudden decision to send everyone home still caught Liang Lie off guard.
Liang Lie looked at him in surprise. “Boss, are you joking?”
“Who’s joking with you? You’ve been away from home for several days. Don’t you want to go back?”
Although none of the individual cases had revealed any suspicious clues, looking at all of them together, every single one was abnormal. Liang Lie hurriedly glanced at the colleagues sitting beside him, expecting everyone to object to the decision to stop investigating for the night. Instead, no one seemed to think there was anything wrong with it. One after another, they began gathering their belongings, preparing to leave work.
He stared at them in confusion. “You’re all just going to leave like this?”
“What else are we supposed to do? No matter how much more we investigate, they’ll still turn out to be suicides! Captain Liang, is it because there’s really no one at home who misses you that you refuse to go back?”
Liang Lie was momentarily at a loss for words.
Before long, everyone in the conference room had left. Even so, he still had no intention of going home. He planned to return to his office and continue investigating the cases on his own.
However, before he had even managed to sit down, their station chief came over to lecture him as well.
“I knew you weren’t planning to go home. Young people shouldn’t treat their health as though it doesn’t matter. How many days has it been since you last went home? This won’t do. Your family will be worried about you.”
An indescribable sense of strangeness suddenly rose within Liang Lie.
Everyone on the team knew that his adoptive parents had disappeared and that he lived alone. So why would the station chief say that his family was worried about him?
He stared at the man in bewilderment and asked, “Chief Zheng, these cases are so abnormal that there could be some kind of sinister organization controlling what happens behind the scenes. What if, ”
“Even if there is something going on, it’s not going to happen tonight. Stop being so stubborn. You can investigate it tomorrow just as well.”
The station chief interrupted him in a firm, certain tone. But no one could say for sure whether there would be another victim. Chief Zheng wasn’t some inexperienced rookie who had only just graduated. There was no way he would make such a statement without any reason.
The question escaped Liang Lie’s mouth before he could stop himself. “Chief Zheng, how can you be so sure?”
“Don’t concern yourself with all that. If anything goes wrong, I’ll take responsibility. Now hurry up and go home! This office isn’t your house, so stop hanging around here and refusing to leave!”
Just then, another colleague came over. The moment he saw Liang Lie, he grabbed him by the arm and began dragging him along. “Captain Liang, why are you still here? Come on, let’s go! It’s time to get off work and go home!”
Home. Home. Home.
Liang Lie felt as though the words go home had somehow become his sworn enemy today. No matter where he went, there was always someone, or something, popping up to remind him to go home.
He was practically dragged into the elevator by his colleague. In the end, he finally gave up on the idea of working overtime and resigned himself to going home.
It was already nearly eleven at night. At some point, a torrential downpour had begun, and there wasn’t a single car on the road outside the special police detachment.
Liang Lie had barely driven out through the station’s garage entrance when he spotted Chu Xuanyi standing alone by the roadside ahead, an isolated figure against the darkness of the night.
Chu Xuanyi was dressed entirely in black. With an expressionless gaze, he stood motionless by the roadside, holding a black umbrella in the pouring rain. His stillness in the midst of the downpour made him look somewhat eerie. Even a single glance at him was enough to send a chill down one’s spine.
And yet, he was simply too handsome. With a face and physique so perfectly proportioned that not a single flaw could be found, he was the kind of man who could make someone feel that dying after getting just one look at him would be worth it.
Liang Lie pulled the car up in front of him. Chu Xuanyi naturally folded his umbrella, got into the front passenger seat, and fastened his seat belt without saying a word.
Liang Lie had long since grown accustomed to his behavior. He drove away from the station and took the initiative to break the silence. “What are you doing here at the station?”
“Picking you up.”
Chu Xuanyi’s voice was still so gentle that it made one’s heart tremble, but his tone was so indifferent that he sounded as though he were nothing more than a ride-hailing driver.
Liang Lie stole a sideways glance at Chu Xuanyi’s face. He had never believed in love at first sight, nor had he even believed that genuine feelings could exist between people. Yet the first time he had laid eyes on Chu Xuanyi, it had felt as though he had been bewitched. He had fallen helplessly for that face.
Even now, looking at him still stirred the same feelings Liang Lie had experienced back then. Chu Xuanyi was like the moon hanging high above a cliff, naturally alluring yet standing alone in an untouchable, lofty solitude.
Not wanting the atmosphere inside the car to grow any colder, Liang Lie racked his brains for something to talk about. “Have you seen the trending news over the past few days? All the deceased were from our district… We still don’t know whether there’s some underlying reason connecting these cases, so be careful when you’re out and about. If you run into any suspicious people, it’s best not to get involved with them.”
That last sentence was actually rather unnecessary. It wasn’t just Liang Lie with whom Chu Xuanyi had nothing to talk about. Chu Xuanyi was equally silent and distant with everyone, treating every single person around him with the same indifference.
At that moment, Chu Xuanyi finally deigned to give him a response.
“Okay.”
Liang Lie couldn’t help stealing another glance at him. Chu Xuanyi’s reaction was so indifferent that he might as well have been talking about a mosquito that someone had just swatted to death rather than a series of murder cases. An indescribable feeling of suffocation rose in Liang Lie’s chest once again. Every time he tried to have a conversation with Chu Xuanyi, getting a response longer than two words already counted as an unusually free-flowing exchange.
Liang Lie fell silent for two seconds before making another attempt to find something to talk about. “Did anything happen at the hospital today?”
“No.”
Once again, he received two perfunctory words.
Liang Lie finally couldn’t think of anything else to say. He gave up on trying to continue the conversation and simply drove home in silence.
They lived in a residential building that belonged to the older generation of high-rise apartments, located beside a well-established university. The property had been left behind by Liang Lie’s adoptive parents. The surroundings were pleasant, and the neighborhood was quiet and peaceful.
After parking the car, Liang Lie and Chu Xuanyi got out from their respective sides. Neither of them said a single word as they entered the elevator. When they reached their floor, they stepped out one after the other, still without speaking.
At this hour, no one would be coming out into the corridor. As they reached their front door, Liang Lie stepped forward to unlock it. Suddenly, Chu Xuanyi wrapped his arms around him from behind and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck.
“Let go! We’re outside!”
Liang Lie pushed Chu Xuanyi away. As soon as he opened the door, however, Chu Xuanyi became even more impatient. He urged Liang Lie inside, pushed him through the doorway, and pinned him against the door after it swung shut behind them. Tightening his hold around Liang Lie’s neck, he leaned in and kissed him without giving him any chance to refuse.
Liang Lie pushed away the man whose mind seemed to revolve around nothing but this one thing. “Dr. Chu, what are you doing?”
Chu Xuanyi answered with complete seriousness, “You haven’t been home for three days. We haven’t grown any closer in those three days, so we need to make up for it.”