Everyone has secrets at the bottom of their heart.
Chi Qing got out of the car. The security guard responsible for the entrance and exit at the residential area’s gate had a kind face. Wearing an army green overcoat, he greeted people with a smile and opened the access gate for residents: “Hello, be careful on your way, stay safe.”
He had a very harmonious relationship with most of the residents in the neighborhood: “—Walking the dog again? Wangcai looks much more energetic today than he did a few days ago.”
Everyone praised him for being a positive, exceptionally optimistic person.
Only Chi Qing knew that he actually suffered from severe depression. The smile hanging on his face was just a mask. At night, he would lie with his eyes open, staring blankly at the ceiling all night: [What exactly am I doing every day… What am I even still alive for?]
Beep— The access gate unlocked.
Chi Qing raised his eyes slightly. The familiar smile still hung on the security guard’s face.
The roads inside the residential area were wide, with numerous buildings standing tall.
As Chi Qing walked in from the entrance, a cleaner wearing a windproof hat pushed a cart past him on the road. The cleaner’s back was hunched, and excessive overwork made him look far older than his actual age. Several tools and a full load of trash were arranged in the cleaning cart.
His wife had just passed away last month.
Kind-hearted residents would save up empty plastic bottles to give to him, silently saying “My condolences” before leaving.
He truly looked very sorrowful; his eyes had been red for a whole month.
Until one time, when taking out the trash, Chi Qing accidentally touched his hand and found him panting like a drowning man surfacing on the shore, secretly rejoicing in his heart: [I don’t have that much money to pay for her medical treatments anymore. All these years, having to work and take care of her… she finally let me go…]
Chi Qing lived in Building 16.
He brushed past the cleaner and pushed open the unit door to enter.
The elevator displayed “8”, currently descending from the eighth floor.
Ding.
The elevator doors had just opened a crack. Before seeing the person, he first heard the lively voice of a little girl.
A girl with twin ponytails held an adult’s hand, currently looking up and asking, “Mommy, is Daddy coming back tonight?”
The woman holding her hand wore a camel-colored sweater, saying gently and softly: “Daddy is working overtime today… Alright, we’re here. Watch your step, don’t trip again.”
They were residents of this building, a family of three. The husband and wife were famously known as a model couple in the neighborhood.
A few years ago, on the first day Chi Qing moved into this building, the woman came up to deliver a box of cookies she had baked herself: “I heard you just moved in. I happened to bake some cookies. If you don’t mind, please accept them.”
The woman smiled shyly again: “I don’t know if they suit your taste, but my husband really loves eating them.”
[…He still thinks the child is truly his.
If it weren’t for him having good conditions and owning an apartment locally…]
The woman walked out of the elevator and glanced at Chi Qing.
Chi Qing didn’t respond. He pressed the floor button and watched the little girl’s bouncing back figure. The girl urged innocently: “Mommy, hurry up.”
The elevator doors slowly closed.
Everyone has secrets at the bottom of their heart.
He had never encountered a person he couldn’t read.
Many people had unmentionable thoughts, deeply hidden guilts known to no one, and desires that absolutely could not be spoken aloud at the bottom of their hearts. These were like a massive abyss; the pitch-black, profound opening capable of swallowing almost everything.
The elevator shot upward through the pitch-black shaft.
During the ascent, carrying a slight sensation of weightlessness, Chi Qing thought of the way that psycho sitting in the office chair removed the book from his face, suspecting that the moment earlier when he read absolutely nothing might have just been a coincidence.
Inside the house, the curtains were tightly drawn, completely blocking out the sunlight from outside. The lights weren’t turned on either, but Chi Qing was very well-adapted to this darkness.
He didn’t like environments that were too bright.
When Ji Mingrui called with a video chat, he was sitting with one leg crossed, curled up on the sofa flipping through TV channels. The TV emitted a cold blue fluorescence. The dim blue light shone on him, outlining parts of his facial features.
Ji Mingrui managed to make out half of his side profile from this light: “…Big bro, are you a vampire reincarnated? It’s pitch black in there.”
Chi Qing used practical actions to express that he did not want to cooperate: “Hanging up if there’s nothing else.”
“Don’t be impatient. I’m telling you, doing this affects your eyesight…”
Chi Qing: “Hanging up.”
“Wait a sec,” Ji Mingrui’s side was exceptionally bright. The two video frames on the phone looked like one was daytime and the other was nighttime. Even though they were clearly in the same time zone, they forcefully created a sense of jet lag. “You haven’t replied to me yet. What did the doctor say when you went to the hospital?”
Chi Qing changed the channel, the cold blue light flashing over him: “The doctor said he isn’t very confident either.”
Ji Mingrui: “That is the honest truth, but aren’t doctors speaking a bit too bluntly nowadays?”
Ji Mingrui continued to ask: “And what kind of psycho did you run into?”
Upon mentioning the “psycho”, Ji Mingrui suddenly felt that Chi Qing’s face was outlined even colder by the cold blue light.
Chi Qing: “He’s sick in the head. Nothing much to say.”
“…”
Ji Mingrui wanted to say, Actually, you’re not very normal yourself either.
But he didn’t dare.
“Alright then, as long as you’re fine.” As he spoke, Ji Mingrui held his phone and got into his car. Starting the engine, he said, “I have to head out for a case, we’ll talk later.”
Chi Qing didn’t think much of it. That meal last time had given him a profound understanding of the nature of Ji Mingrui’s work. He set down the remote control, and the TV channel finally stopped on an emotional relationship program: “Which family is getting a divorce again?”
Listening to the TV dialogue coming from Chi Qing’s end—“Although the age difference between us is thirty years, I truly love him. I love his maturity, I love the lines that time has carved onto his face”—Ji Mingrui’s temple throbbed fiercely. He didn’t know what kind of messy nonsense Chi Qing usually watched.
He said earnestly and seriously: “You might have some misunderstandings about my job. This time it’s not some petty squabble, Comrade Chi Qing.” He emphasized, “This time it’s a bloody case, the kind where blood flows like a river.”
Chi Qing spared a bit of attention from the TV program, glancing at him through the phone screen, signaling him to continue.
“Seven killed in one night—”
Chi Qing: “Seven people?”
Ji Mingrui: “…Seven cats.”
Chi Qing mercilessly shifted his gaze away: “Oh.”
Ji Mingrui knew that Chi Qing didn’t really like those furry little animals.
Rather than saying he didn’t like them, it was more accurate to say he seemed to have zero feelings toward pets whatsoever.
Back when they were in school, a girl brought a stray cat back from the small woods on campus and secretly kept it in the classroom. Every day after class, the whole class would crowd around to look at the cat, but only Chi Qing remained completely unmoving.
“You’re not going to take a look?”
“What’s there to look at?”
At that time, Ji Mingrui was much shorter than he was now, secretly wearing height-increasing shoes every day to boost his momentum and confidence to run for physical education representative: “It’s… it’s cute, don’t you think?”
Chi Qing, however, was pretty much the same as he was now, beautiful and gloomy. He pointed at the blackboard with his pen: “Are you done talking? Move aside, you’re blocking me from writing the questions.”
Ji Mingrui shook his head. Before hanging up the video call, he pinched his throat and said, “Cats are so cute, how can there be people who don’t like cats.”
Facts proved that the lethality of using repeating words was truly massive. This time, Chi Qing didn’t even say the two words “hanging up,” straightforwardly cutting off the video.
“Haimao Residential Area” was located in the old town district. Inside the district, there were white walls and black tiles, and narrow, long alleyways. Short bicycle bells and the sound of rolling wheels weaved through the streets and alleys. With elementary and middle schools nearby, it was a place with a very strong atmosphere of daily life.
Ji Mingrui parked his car. Before he even walked into the residential area, he saw a crowd of people gathered at the entrance.
Although the accumulated rainwater had evaporated, large patches of dried bloodstains that had been washed apart by the rain still stuck to the street, glaring and eye-catching under the sunlight. The bloodstains flowed down along the lawn. One dead cat might not be unusual—but a full seven cat corpses were densely piled up inside the bushes.
Every single one had its abdomen sliced open by someone with a knife. Their internal organs had been forcefully ripped out, mixing together messily and cruelly in a tragic state of death. Every single one of them had its eyes wide open, with half of their heads exposed from black plastic bags.
Someone covered their child’s eyes and quickly walked through the crowd: “…What a sin, how could someone be so ruthless.”
In the noisy crowd, Ji Mingrui heard a familiar wail: “My Nannan—”
It was Granny Wang’s voice.
Only then did Ji Mingrui manage to reluctantly identify—through the blurry flesh and blood—a silvery-white Highland cat with a black spot on one of its ears. He had seen this cat before.
Last time when he went to Granny Wang’s house to investigate the wood carving case, that cat was lying on the balcony peeking at them.
Su Xiaolan and another male colleague had arrived at the scene earlier. She held a notebook, having finished recording the situation at the scene. Stepping back from the edge of the bushes, she lowered her voice and said, “That’s Granny Wang’s cat. Her daughter raised it before she passed away, and it accompanied her for many years… She changed the cat’s name, calling it by her daughter’s nickname, Nannan.”
Ji Mingrui: “Have there been any discoveries in other places, or are they all here?”
Su Xiaolan: “They’re all here. Residents reported that the stray cats in the neighborhood had been decreasing recently, until yesterday when even the last stray cat couldn’t be seen anymore. They had always thought that because the weather was getting colder, the stray cats had found somewhere else to live.”
Looking at the bushes, Ji Mingrui couldn’t help but frown.
Incidents of animals being abused and killed occasionally happened in residential areas. But in most cases, the probability of “poisoning” and “beating to death” was higher. The former mostly stemmed from neighborhood disputes or finding the animals too noisy; the latter stemmed from venting emotions, thereby bullying the weak.
Slicing cats open alive like this… was truly rare.
Su Xiaolan added: “Brother Bin said he’d come over to take a look later. Looking at the time, he should be arriving soon.”
“Brother Bin” wasn’t some young lad, but a veteran criminal police officer who had stepped down from a higher position. In his youth, he had participated in many major and important cases. Two years ago, he was injured while on a mission, and coupled with his age, he stepped down to guide newcomers like them.
Usually, when mealtime arrived, they loved crowding around Brother Bin to listen to him talk about cases. Brother Bin would seize the opportunity to reminisce about the past: “Back when I was catching criminals—”
After Ji Mingrui pacified Granny Wang—who was crying so hard on the side that she couldn’t stand—and helped her sit on the edge of the flower bed to calm her emotions, he was just about to stand up when he saw a black Maybach slowly approaching from the other end of the street. The car parked squarely right near the crowd.
Their “Brother Bin” got out of the passenger seat. Brother Bin’s full name was Wu Zhibin, and he sported a clean and sharp buzz cut. Due to his mobility issues, he needed to use a cane. When he got out of the car, his black cane hit the ground first: “What’s going on, so noisy.”
However, through that momentary gap, Ji Mingrui’s attention was drawn to the person sitting in the driver’s seat.
The man’s side profile was extremely outstanding. He seemed to glance over here, his eyes born exceptionally roguish and romantic. He rested his hand on the steering wheel, wearing a very thin ring on his finger.
“Brother Bin.”
Even while using a cane, Wu Zhibin walked as if there was wind under his feet: “What’s the situation?”
Ji Mingrui moved aside to make it easier for him to clearly see the situation in the bushes: “Seven dead cats. The method of torture and killing is exactly the same, so it should be the work of the same person. It rained, so many traces were washed away by the rainwater… Furthermore, the surveillance camera here has been broken for a month. We are currently pulling the surveillance footage from other parts of the neighborhood.”
Wu Zhibin: “It’s all useless information. You might as well say you’ve investigated the scene for so long and found absolutely nothing.”
Ji Mingrui: “…”
Using his cane, Wu Zhibin laboriously squatted down. After looking at the seven cat corpses for a while, he suddenly asked a question: “What do you think?”
Standing behind him, Ji Mingrui and Su Xiaolan couldn’t understand what he meant for a moment.
Ji Mingrui glanced at Su Xiaolan, hinting: I’ve already finished my report, is he calling you?
Su Xiaolan returned an innocent look.
Just as Su Xiaolan opened her mouth, about to try and squeeze out a bit more information, she heard someone behind her say: “Judging from the footprints, the suspect is an adult male, but his physical fitness is likely not very good, and his strength is very small.”
She turned her head, meeting a pair of slightly lifted eyes.
They had investigated the scene for over half an hour and only saw some superficial information.
But the moment this person opened his mouth, he began to sketch out the suspect’s characteristics. Even if it was just a small detail like “poor physical fitness”—many times in cases, it was precisely these small characteristics that exposed the killer.
Disregarding the fact that they didn’t know each other, Su Xiaolan asked, “Where did you see that from?”
The man didn’t feel offended. Pointing at the ground, he said: “The plastic bags.”
“The bottoms of the plastic bags have severe wear marks, indicating they were dragged on the ground for a period of time.”
After speaking, he smoothly picked up the rubber gloves that Su Xiaolan had previously set aside by the edge of the bushes.
The chests of these cat corpses all had traces of being pierced. Bloody holes were lined up in a long row, looking extremely horrifying.
“The cross-section of the wounds is not smooth; there are traces of being dragged back and forth,” the man’s hands very gently supported the cat’s corpse. After inspecting it, his hand rested on the cat’s eyes. Very lightly, he covered the cat’s wide-open eyes, closing them to make it look like it had passed away more peacefully. “This should be a small serrated knife.”
“Who is he? Someone from the General Bureau?” Ji Mingrui asked in a low voice.
Su Xiaolan said, “I don’t know. I just heard Brother Bin call him ‘brat’.”
At this time, the other male officer who hadn’t spoken the entire time finally opened his mouth in a daze, questioning: “Are you two actually in this profession or not?”
Ji Mingrui, Su Xiaolan: “?”
“He is the former consultant of the Criminal Investigation Headquarters, Xie Lin.”
After the male officer finished speaking, he very solemnly added three more words: “…My idol.”
