The meeting room of the Municipal Criminal Investigation Detachment was filled with swirling smoke.
Several crime scene photos were projected onto the screen.
The seven or eight people present were quiet.
Vansin stood in front of the whiteboard, holding an unlit cigarette in his hand.
He paced back and forth twice before speaking.
“You’ve all read the forensic report, right?”
Lao Sun, sitting in the front row, flipped his report to the third page and adjusted his reading glasses.
“I’ll emphasize a few key points for everyone again.”
He stood up and walked over to the projector.
He used a pen to point at a close-up of the wounds in the photo.
“Five parallel lacerations, evenly spaced, each between three to four millimeters wide.”
“The deepest point reaches 4.2 centimeters, directly severing the carotid artery and trachea.”
Leon raised his hand, “Brother Sun, you said before it wasn’t a blade, so what exactly caused this?”
Lao Sun took off his glasses, wiped them, and put them back on.
“I’ve been a forensic pathologist for twenty-three years, and I’ve seen wounds caused by all kinds of weapons.”
“Daggers, kitchen knives, axes, even broken glass.”
He paused.
“But for this type of wound pattern, I can only say it most closely resembles claw marks from a large feline.”
The meeting room was silent for two seconds.
A young detective couldn’t help but ask, “A tiger?”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
Vansin tossed the unlit cigarette onto the table.
“Lao Sun, continue.”
Lao Sun flipped to the next page of the report.
“The situation in the hallway is more complex; we collected a large number of blood samples.”
“After DNA analysis, it was confirmed to belong to four victims.”
“Specifically, a person surnamed Huang, nicknamed ‘Yellow Hair’, a person surnamed Zhang, a person surnamed Li, and a person surnamed Wang.”
“What about the complete bodies of these four people?” Vansin asked.
“There are no complete bodies.”
Lao Sun’s voice leveled off.
“We only found some bone fragments, a small amount of skin tissue, and several tooth fragments.”
“Based on the blood volume estimation, the majority of the body tissue of at least two victims has disappeared.”
The meeting room went completely silent.
Vansin walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and wrote a few words.
“This is what I wanted to tell you most.”
He pointed to the last page of the report.
“The technical department extracted a trace amount of organic residue from the floor and the claw marks on the wall in the hallway.”
Leon flipped through his notebook.
“Yes, the lab gave a preliminary result, saying the composition is unknown.”
“What do you mean by unknown?” An older detective next to him asked, frowning.
“Exactly what it sounds like.” Lao Sun took over, “It doesn’t belong to any known human tissue.”
“It also doesn’t belong to any animal tissue currently in our database. The protein structure is abnormal, and the molecular arrangement is unprecedented.”
“Have you sent it to a higher-level laboratory?”
“Yes, to the biological laboratory at the Provincial Public Security Department. The results aren’t back yet, but the doctor who received the sample said something to me over the phone.”
Lao Sun paused.
“He said the molecular activity of this thing is extremely high. Even 48 hours after collection, there was still a faint biological electrical signal in the petri dish.”
“Alive?” Leon’s voice rose involuntarily.
“He didn’t say that, but that’s essentially what it means.”
Vansin turned around, drew a circle on the whiteboard, and wrote two words inside.
Butcher.
He put down the marker and scanned everyone in the meeting room.
“The eldest son of the 502 resident, Haruka, is currently missing.”
“We need to find him; perhaps he knows something.”
Leon stood up and distributed printed documents to everyone present.
“Haruka, male, adopted at age three by Phillips and his wife from the municipal orphanage.”
He turned a page.
“I’ve already been to the school.”
“The counselor said Haruka has an introverted personality, average to below-average grades, and a very low presence in class.”
“Did you ask about his relationship with classmates?” Vansin asked.
“I did, the counselor said they hadn’t heard of any conflicts, but I went and talked to a few students separately.”
Leon’s expression changed.
“A girl told me that Haruka was long-term targeted by people from outside the school, who extorted protection money from him.”
“Many people in the class knew, but no one did anything.”
“People from outside the school?”
“Yes, the girl said it was a group of thugs, led by someone with dyed yellow hair, who often waited at the school gate on a motorcycle.”
Vansin looked at the list of victims in his hand.
“Person surnamed Huang, twenty-five years old, unemployed, with two records of public security penalties—one for fighting and one for causing trouble.”
He put down the list.
“That matches up. The four people who disappeared in the hallway are the same gang of thugs who were bullying Haruka.”
“Captain Van, do you mean Haruka committed revenge murder because of the bullying?”
“The motive makes sense,” Vansin sat down, “but the method does not.”
He tapped the table.
“A boy who is just over 1.7 meters tall and weighs less than 120 pounds.”
“Shattering a solid wooden door and its frame with one punch, with splinters embedded two centimeters deep into the opposite wall.”
“Subduing at least four people in the hallway simultaneously, and making their bodies largely disappear.”
“The marks left at the scene show that the claw marks on the wall were embedded into the cement mortar layer.”
“The barbed wire on top of the courtyard wall was torn open by bare hands, and the stride of the footprints on the ground exceeds two meters.”
Vansin looked at everyone present.
“Can anyone tell me how a malnourished teenager could do these things?”
No one answered.
After a long while, Lao Sun spoke up.
“Captain Van, what are you trying to say?”
Vansin didn’t answer directly but took a USB drive from his pocket and inserted it into the projector’s port.
“The surveillance at the unit entrance—the technical department spent a whole day processing it. The image quality is very poor, but you can see the general idea.”
A blurry black-and-white video appeared on the screen, with a timestamp showing 22:47 on the night of the incident.
In the footage, the unit door was pushed open from the inside, and a figure walked out.
The quality was too poor to see the facial features clearly, but the general outline was visible.
It was very tall, at least a circle wider than a normal person, and something was moving on its body, as if it were wearing some kind of flowing coat.
“Slow it down,” Vansin said.
The technician reduced the playback speed to one-quarter.
After slowing it down, more details could be seen: there were protrusions on the figure’s shoulders.
The back contour did not resemble a normal human body structure, and the walking stride was huge.
Every time a step landed, the ground seemed to vibrate slightly.
The footage only lasted less than three seconds before the figure disappeared at the edge of the screen.
The meeting room was quiet again.
“This is our suspect,” Vansin turned off the projector.
“Codename ‘Butcher’.”
“Regardless of whether it’s Haruka or something else.”
“From now on, fully investigate Haruka’s social connections, the places he has been, the people he has contacted, and his activity trajectory at school—get it all cleared up for me.”
“Captain Van.” Leon hesitated.
“What about Coal?”
“His younger brother?”
“Yes, he cried for over two hours yesterday in the police car, kept calling his brother’s name, asking if his brother might also be dead.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
Vansin stood up, picked up the unlit cigarette from the table, and twirled it between his fingers twice.
“Let his relatives take him away first, and arrange for someone to keep an eye on him; don’t let him run around.”
“What relatives does he have? I contacted one of Phillips’s relatives, but they weren’t very enthusiastic, saying they didn’t want to get involved in this kind of thing.”
“They have to get involved whether they want to or not.”
Vansin tucked the cigarette behind his ear.
“Also, find someone to keep an eye on Coal’s condition; this kid is close with Haruka.”
“If Haruka is still alive, he will sooner or later find a way to contact his brother.”
“Understood.”
Vansin looked at the clock on the wall; it was 2:15 PM.
“Dismissed. Each group follow your assignments, and report any progress immediately.”
The sound of chairs moving echoed for a while, and people started leaving one by one.
Lao Sun walked over to Vansin and lowered his voice.
“Old Zhao, you saw that footage too, the figure’s physique.”
“What about it?”
“If that really is Haruka, his body size has expanded by at least thirty percent.”
“Human bone and muscle structure does not support this kind of rapid physical change.”
Vansin glanced at him.
“What are you trying to say?”
Lao Sun opened his mouth, then closed it, and shook his head.
“Forget it, let’s wait for the test results from the Provincial Public Security Department.”
He picked up his briefcase and walked out, turning back once he reached the door.
“One thing I can be sure of: no matter what that thing is, it is not any organism within our current range of understanding.”
Vansin didn’t make a sound.
After Lao Sun left, he was the only one left in the meeting room.
He walked to the whiteboard and looked at the two words on it: Butcher.
He added a line of text and drew a heavy line underneath it with the marker: Non-human power?
Then he capped the marker and wiped the line of text away.
No, he couldn’t think in this direction; he must be going crazy too.
Vansin turned off the meeting room lights and left, closing the door behind him.
In the reception room at the other end of the hallway.
A teenager sat on a plastic chair, gripping his backpack straps with both hands, his eyes red and swollen like two walnuts.
The police officer opposite him was taking notes with a pen.
“Coal, think again, did your brother ever mention anything unusual?”
Coal shook his head, “My brother rarely told me about his affairs.”
“Then do you know about him being bullied at school?”
Coal’s fingers twisted together.
“I know, but he wouldn’t let me get involved. Every time I asked about the injuries on his body, he would say he accidentally bumped into something.”
“Did he ever tell you he wanted to take revenge on those people?”
“No, my brother is not that kind of person.”
Coal’s voice began to tremble again.
“He is not a bad person, he is my brother, he has never done anything bad.”
“Then who do you think might have done what happened to your family?”
Coal was silent for a long time.
“I don’t know, but it definitely wasn’t my brother.”
He looked up, tears falling again.
“Can you please help me find him? I just want to know if he’s there, if he’s alive.”
The police officer stopped writing, looked at him for a moment, and didn’t reply.
The reception room door opened a crack.
Vansin stood outside the door, looking through the gap at the teenager inside who was repeatedly muttering his brother’s name.
He stood at the door for over ten seconds, then turned and walked away.