Chapter 86: Can’t you do it?
In the early morning, part of Liang Tianlu’s medical records were transmitted to the Crisis Office through an encrypted system.
“These medical records from the past ten years are missing and are being restored,” Lei Chi quickly skimmed through them and handed them to Qin Ge. “Guides suffering from mental disorders like Liang Tianlu should be under strict supervision. Why did this happen?”
“The overall social environment here is not very friendly to special humans, as you should know from what happened to Xiao Hai,” Qin Ge said, opening Liang Tianlu’s medical records. “The more oppressive the environment, the easier it is for troubled Guides and Sentinels to exploit loopholes. Liang Tianlu… I see. He was diagnosed as ‘cured’ by a local hospital.”
Liang Tianlu’s Tourette syndrome manifested during his adolescence. As a junior high school student, he suddenly started twitching his limbs and uttering a continuous stream of obscene words, which terrified the entire class.
The situation persisted for several days before the teacher confirmed that the child wasn’t being rebellious but had a medical issue.
Liang Tianlu’s parents immediately rushed to the school, took him away, and admitted him to a local psychiatric hospital.
The hospital quickly made a diagnosis, and Liang Tianlu began treatment there.
After more than a month, with his symptoms significantly reduced, Liang Tianlu returned to school. However, he relapsed after just one day at school. Returning to his dormitory at night, he heard many people whispering in the corridor and bursting into laughter upon seeing him. Liang Tianlu knew they were mocking him. Silently returning to his dorm, he found his bed piled with miscellaneous items.
His roommates explained: “We thought you weren’t coming back.”
Liang Tianlu suddenly twitched and fell, struggling to his feet by holding onto the bed. He began to scream, spouting obscenities his classmates had never heard from him before.
Liang Tianlu was readmitted to the hospital.
He spent a total of three years in the first year of junior high. By the time his peers graduated, he was still in the first-year classroom.
After another episode, Liang Tianlu’s parents finally heeded the school’s advice and took him home. He never returned to school. At 16, he started working with his father, moving between various cities. His condition was controlled, and his symptoms gradually eased with age. The psychiatric hospital diagnosed him as “cured,” and Liang Tianlu stopped taking medication and ceased regular check-ins with the hospital and the Crisis Office.
The medical records ended there.
Xie Zijing took the medical records from Qin Ge. “Does this illness make him a murderer?”
“No, his murders have nothing to do with this illness,” Qin Ge explained. “The physical symptoms of Tourette syndrome all occur within the patient. The danger arises when the patient tries to attack others, but the patient himself cannot control his bodily movements. The issue is that this illness often comes with severe personality disorders.”
“Are personality disorders the reason he killed?” Xie Zijing asked.
“He only targeted women, most of whom were se-x workers,” Qin Ge replied. “Liang Tianlu has suffered severe setbacks in relationships with women.”
Lei Chi suddenly recalled the profile expert’s opinion: “Liang Tianlu shows clear signs of se-xual impotence and frustration. He doesn’t assault women but rather tortures and kills them. It’s not that he doesn’t want to assault them; he’s incapable.”
In the surveillance footage, the young man suddenly twitched his head, his neck tilted to the side, his lips moving rapidly as he spoke words they couldn’t hear.
Qin Ge’s “sea area” patrolling of Liang Tianlu’s mind continued intermittently for three days.
Xie Zijing accompanied him the whole time. After each session, they would stay in the team leader’s office, waiting for Qin Ge to write his patrol report.
Qin Ge also needed to meet with Jiang Yong. Both he and Xie Zijing shared the same thought: to conclude the work on Liang Tianlu as soon as possible.
Due to violent resistance during his capture, Liang Tianlu sustained minor injuries to his limbs, which evidently exacerbated his symptoms. Most of the time, he was incoherent, making a normal interrogation impossible. Qin Ge became the key to breaking the deadlock.
The final report detailed Liang Tianlu’s memories of killing seven special women.
Liang Tianlu discovered he couldn’t get an ere-ction in front of women on his 18th birthday. His coworkers knew he was coming of age, so they took him out drinking, with the older ones saying they would broaden his horizons. Liang Tianlu followed them through the streets to a nightclub.
A cheap, heavily made-up woman stood at the entrance smoking. Seeing Liang Tianlu, she smiled, jiggled her brea-sts, and lifted her skirt at him.
A coworker helped him choose a pretty and innocent girl to let him try se-x. Liang Tianlu was pushed down on the bed by the woman and his pa-nts were taken off. After playing with him for a while, the woman looked up and asked: Can’t you do it?
Liang Tianlu said he could do it, but no matter what he did, his gen-italia still couldn’t get erect. The woman sat aside, watching him fumble around, sweating profusely. She eventually lit a cigarette and stared at him silently with a smirk.
Liang Tianlu fled in panic. Back at the construction site dormitory, he couldn’t sleep all night, his mind filled with the woman’s strange laughter and her questions. Near dawn, his father found him collapsed on the floor. As he helped him up, Liang Tianlu suddenly started cursing, waking everyone in the dormitory.
His illness had relapsed.
His father took him to a new construction site, tiredly and sternly warning him to control himself.
Every time Liang Tianlu got his wages, he would seek out pro-stitutes. He would cover the woman’s eyes and gag her mouth with tools to prevent her from laughing. He liked to choke their necks or brea-sts, watching them writhing on the bed in real or feigned pain.
The construction sites often changed. When Liang Tianlu was thirty, he heard people talking about some special prostitutes in the city: they were all special humans.
Liang Tianlu felt a renewed sense of hope.
Special humans! Just like him! Excited and hopeful, he took his money and, following directions, found the place.
He thought that even if he couldn’t perform with ordinary women, he might be able to with special humans. He went with this hope in mind.
He earnestly and warmly chatted with the woman in front of him, telling her that he was actually a Guide. The woman admitted that she was also a Guide, single, with a daughter, and working here at night because she desperately needed money.
Liang Tianlu even felt that they had formed a unique bond, something only fellow Guides could understand. He felt the woman was hardworking and pitiful and believed he should show her compassion and sympathy. He confided in her about his frustrations and received her gentle comfort. Just when Liang Tianlu thought everything was going smoothly, he broke down again: when they were na-ked, he still couldn’t get er-ect.
The woman didn’t laugh but told him that this was normal and that it occasionally happened.
In her eyes, Liang Tianlu saw pity.
The fragile balance in his heart completely tilted under this look of pity—the person he pitied actually pitied him in return?
That night was the first time Liang Tianlu killed. He followed the woman after her late-night shift, dragged her into a dark alley, and strangled her with her own underwear.
“…The first kill was a test, and Liang Tianlu felt satisfied,” Lei Chi said, frowning slightly at the report: during the murder, Liang Tianlu eja-culated.
Heavy rain destroyed the scene’s traces. Although the body was found, there were no clues to go on. The police even issued a reward for information, but it ultimately led nowhere.
The se-xual release during the murder gave Liang Tianlu an abnormal sense of satisfaction. He suddenly felt more confident. When his father wanted to take him to another city for work, Liang Tianlu insisted on finding a job himself. He was already thirty, and his family dared not say much more, only reminding him to take his medication regularly.
Liang Tianlu moved along the coast. He arrived in a new city, found a job guarding construction materials at a site, and started posting on local forums looking for a girl he had only seen once in a square. He had secretly taken a photo of the girl’s profile and wrote about his deep feelings and obsession in the post. The post was quickly shared on Weibo, attracting more and more attention. He soon received numerous emails. Some praised his courage, which encouraged him to continue. Others called him a pervert, but he ignored and deleted those. Among the emails, a few told him they thought they knew the girl he was looking for.
The girl never responded, but thanks to these few enthusiastic emails, Liang Tianlu tracked her down.
He followed her, quietly admiring her silhouette, and learned that she often worked late and returned home late at night. The distance from the bus stop to her neighborhood was about 500 or 600 meters, a road sparsely populated and with little traffic. Sometimes her father or brother would come to pick her up; other times, she walked alone.
Liang Tianlu was very nervous. Whenever he was nervous, his illness would flare up, but watching the girl gave him moments of peace and satisfaction.
One night, he found his chance. The girl got off the bus, and no one came to pick her up. She walked home alone.
Liang Tianlu intercepted her, holding a rose in his hand, intending to confess his love to his goddess.
But once again, he succumbed to his illness due to nerves and pressure. His twitching limbs and uncontrollable swearing frightened the girl. She began to run away and scream. Terrified, Liang Tianlu pounced on her, pressing her to the ground and tightly covering her mouth and nose.
The fresh body struggled under him, tears streaming down her face. Liang Tianlu kept her mouth and nose covered, dragging her into a roadside ditch.
Liang Tianlu always believed this death was accidental. He didn’t mean to kill her; he was just afraid of her screaming.
He strangled her with the strap of her bag, then threw the strap into the ditch, watching it flow into the sewer.
Opening the girl’s bag, Liang Tianlu found her ID card. He was shocked to see that it had a special human mark and that she was also a Guide.
This unexpected discovery thrilled Liang Tianlu. He left with her bag, remained excited on the way home, and immediately used her ID card to masturbate upon arriving at the construction site.
The body was found the next day, but there were no surveillance cameras along that stretch of road.
Liang Tianlu escaped once again. He stayed at the construction site for another month, and no one came looking for him. The case from a month ago seemed to have faded into obscurity.
“Did things change from the second victim onward? Did he find enjoyment?” Lei Chi asked.
Xie Zijing, standing behind Qin Ge, massaged his temples. Qin Ge, sitting with his eyes closed, responded, “No, the change started with the third victim.”
The third victim was Cha Lao.
