Chapter 11: The Corpse Room 11  

Just as Luo Qi was about to explain under everyone’s gaze, a commotion erupted in the hallway outside the door.  

It turned out to be Zhang Hao leading his team into the room. The men from the Special Task Force exchanged loud, boisterous greetings, while Jiang Bing and the others couldn’t keep their expressions cold and had to awkwardly respond.  

After this first somewhat positive interaction between the Special Investigation Unit and the Special Task Force, an air of discomfort lingered in the room, with everyone’s faces clearly screaming “awkward.”  

“Team Leader Zhang, Huzi… since you’re here, let’s get started!” Ye Zhu suddenly spoke up cheerfully. As a member of the Special Task Force, she was familiar with everyone, and her round of greetings immediately eased the tension.  

The group relaxed, each pulling out a chair and sitting casually around the conference table.  

Yan Yu sat across from Zhang Hao and glanced up at him. Zhang Hao found his gaze inexplicable and naturally wore a puzzled expression before glaring back with the same intensity.  

The two men stared each other down like roosters in a standoff, silently competing over who could widen their eyes more, leaving the others exchanging bewildered looks, unsure what was happening.  

Ye Zhu had originally planned to sit at the far end of the table, but when she turned and saw this scene, her pretty face fell. She didn’t need to think hard to guess who was causing the problem.  

With no other choice, she hunched her shoulders and walked over to the empty seat beside Yan Yu. Keeping a polite smile, she leaned slightly toward him.  

Yan Yu seemed to sense her movement and immediately tilted away, putting distance between them. At the same time, he turned his head, his handsome and sharp brows furrowing slightly, his eyes clearly asking: What do you want?  

“…” Ye Zhu’s lips twitched uncontrollably. His reaction made it seem like she wasn’t a young, attractive, and well-liked woman but rather some lecherous creep obsessed with his body.  

Fine, she admitted that she might have held his hand a little too long in an unexpected moment. But couldn’t he interpret it as the deep camaraderie formed between colleagues after fighting side by side?  

Despite her internal complaints, she gritted her teeth and whispered in a voice only he could hear, “Team Leader Yan, do you know why humans are called humans?”  

Yan Yu slowly straightened his posture and gave her a sidelong glance, as if to say: Spit it out.  

“Because humans can speak,” Ye Zhu said with a forced smile. “Not everyone can understand your Sideways Glare Skill. Verbal communication is important too.”  

“…” Yan Yu showed no visible reaction to her words, but the next second, he was the first to break eye contact, ending his ‘rooster standoff’ with Zhang Hao.  

“Team Leader Zhang, since your Special Task Force handled the preliminary work on the serial disappearances, no one knows the case details better than you. Why don’t you assign someone to give us an overview?”  

His voice was cool and detached, but at least his tone wasn’t outright hostile.

Zhang Hao also let out a sigh of relief. Given the earlier tension, he had thought the head of the Special Investigation Unit had lured them here just to provoke them! Turns out it was merely a case discussion, though the atmosphere had been unnecessarily intense.

After these two encounters, he was beginning to grasp Yan Yu’s personality. While the man might excel at solving cases and pursuing suspects, his interpersonal skills were decidedly… lacking.

With this realization, the resentment that had festered in his chest since the Special Investigation Unit’s sudden arrival at the Fenghhe City Public Security Bureau dissipated. There was no point dwelling on grievances with someone so socially inept.

“Zhao Hu,” he called, signaling the man to step forward.

Zhao Hu nodded and moved to the computer. As he projected the contents of the USB drive onto the screen, he began his report: “The first disappearance occurred on April 11th. The initial report was filed at a local police station in Lushan District. The missing person, Xu Mai, was a 26-year-old female working as a supermarket cashier. After confirming her disappearance, the station issued a citywide alert. Investigators examined her call records and reviewed surveillance footage from her workplace, but found nothing unusual.”

“The second disappearance occurred over half a month later, near the end of April. Similarly, the reporting police station issued a citywide alert. The second victim, Luo Xiaolan, was a 24-year-old female working as a tutor at a cram school. Given Fenghhe City’s significant improvements in social governance in recent years, with criminal cases declining sharply, two missing persons reports within a month naturally drew the bureau’s attention.”

“Due to the victims’ similar age and gender, the bureau took no chances. The cases were temporarily merged and assigned to our Special Task Force for further investigation. However, this wasn’t made public—all inquiries were conducted discreetly. Eventually, the second victim’s body was discovered in Wenzhuang Village. Forensic analysis confirmed the body had been kept frozen after death, though the exact time of death…”

“The exact time of death was likely within a day or two after her disappearance. She didn’t survive long,” Peng Yishan interjected.

His words cast an eerie silence over the meeting room, leaving everyone visibly unsettled. If the second victim’s fate wasn’t an isolated case, then the other three missing persons might already have…

“Ahem…” Zhao Hu cleared his throat after a moment, resuming his professional demeanor as he pressed the keyboard to switch slides. The next image appeared on screen—this time showing a missing person who wasn’t female, but male.

“The third missing person is Xue Yan, male, 20 years old, an apprentice working at a barbershop. The report was filed on May 17th, but his disappearance forced us to overturn all previous criminal profiling, indicating that the suspect had no specific gender or age requirements when selecting victims. We did consider the possibility that Xue Yan’s disappearance was unrelated to the first two cases, but further investigations yielded nothing. If it were just an accidental disappearance, we would have found some clues.”

“Then, on June 5th, the fourth missing person appeared. Mei Xia, 21 years old, a third-year student at Fengho City Technical College. It wasn’t until she had been missing for a full 50 hours that her roommate and advisor noticed and reported it. That afternoon, her parents rushed over from out of town and caused a scene at the station. On the same day, the media reported on these four disappearances. As for what happened next…” Zhao Hu glanced at Yan Yu and curled his lips. “You probably already know the rest.”

“Oh, right. Not long ago, when we went to Wenzhuang Village to confiscate stolen goods, a villager mentioned that one early morning, they seemed to have seen a car parked in front of that abandoned house. But they couldn’t make out the model or anything specific. Team Leader Zhang should have passed this lead to you already.” He suddenly remembered and added this detail.

Zhang Hao, who had been twisting his thumbs together, stopped and looked at the man across from him, raising an eyebrow. “That’s the gist of it. If Team Leader Yan has no further key points to clarify, it’s your Special Investigation Unit’s turn now. But before that, I’ll indulge my curiosity and ask—why did you go to investigate the truck driver from last night?”

“Because at the accident scene, our car was searched. If Team Leader Yan hadn’t kept the investigation materials on him, who knows what might have happened.” Peng Yishan, clearly familiar with Yan Yu’s habits, stepped in to explain.

Everyone present was an experienced officer. Hearing this, they quickly grasped the reasoning behind the Special Investigation Unit’s approach. When a case hits a dead end, trying an alternative path—sometimes the least likely one—can lead to a breakthrough.

“Luo Qi?” Yan Yu spoke up.

“Yes, Team Leader Yan.” Luo Qi remained seated in front of his three computers, casually tapping a key. The content on the screen ahead switched to his display.

“I’ve conducted background checks on the four missing persons and the truck driver, Huang Jingguo. On the surface, there’s no connection among the four missing individuals. They came from different living environments, had no overlapping social circles, and no professional intersections.”

As Luo Qi spoke, the screen began displaying the profiles of each person he had investigated. The frames changed at a steady pace—neither too fast nor too slow—allowing everyone to see clearly.

“Since there’s been no discovery in the routine investigation, we’ll have to dig deeper. In the transcripts handed over by your Fenghe City Bureau, a colleague of the third victim, Xue Yan, mentioned he was late two days before his disappearance. However, this detail wasn’t reflected in the statements from relatives and friends of the other missing persons. So, I pulled up all their work attendance records or school roll calls.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the computer emitted a continuous ‘beep-beep-beep’ alert. Everyone watched as various data pages kept popping up on the large screen, overlapping the previous ones. This process lasted for over two minutes.

“These are the attendance records of all four individuals over the past six months.”

“Oh wow…” someone couldn’t help but exclaim.

Ye Zhu was also surprised as she looked at Luo Qi’s thin yet youthful face. He seemed oblivious to the others, completely absorbed in the three computers before him. It appeared that every member of the Special Investigation Unit was indeed extraordinary. Filtering through the various records of the missing persons might not be difficult, but the most impressive part was the time he spent. If every province and city had a few such technical talents, the case resolution time could achieve a qualitative leap.

“As we can see, the first three missing persons had relatively frequent absences and late attendance records in the month before their disappearances, while the fourth, university student Mei Xia, also had instances of skipping classes,” Luo Qi said, tapping the keyboard a few more times.

Soon, all records of the missing persons’ absences or tardiness were highlighted in red and listed separately.

“Due to time constraints, surveillance footage from both workplaces and streets for the first three missing persons has been overwritten, so there’s no way to retrieve it. Fortunately, Mei Xia disappeared only three days ago, so I specifically pulled up the surveillance from Fenghe Technical College. Her class attendance records show she didn’t attend classes on May 15th, 22nd, and 27th. Unfortunately, the school’s surveillance coverage is limited, with many blind spots, making it hard to determine Mei Xia’s movements on those three days.”

“So I shifted my approach, marking all locations on campus with surveillance cameras, and eventually found a route from the missing person’s dormitory to outside the school that had almost zero surveillance,” Luo Qi explained as a map of Fenghe Technical College appeared on the screen, with surveillance camera locations marked by green dots.

“As you can see, if Mei Xia left the dormitory and turned left immediately, passing between two dormitory buildings, she would enter a small grove with a stone path—the closest route to the school’s west gate. So I focused on the surveillance camera at the west gate, and look what I found.”

He then pulled up three short video clips, each only about ten seconds long. The camera angle wasn’t ideal, capturing mostly the backs of people exiting the west gate. Yet the scenes in these three clips were similar: a female figure in different outfits walked straight out the side gate and got into a car.

“Although we couldn’t clearly see the face of the person in the video, their height, build, and hairstyle match Mei Xia’s characteristics. Moreover, comparing with photos from Mei Xia’s social media accounts, two outfits are identical to those she posted herself. So this figure in the video should be Mei Xia.”

“So Mei Xia’s disappearance might be related to her frequent skipping of classes before…” Zhang Hao mused, then asked, “Any other findings?”

Luo Qi smiled slightly: “Didn’t your Special Task Force just mention that in Wenzhuang Village, a villager confirmed seeing a car near an abandoned house one day? Though they didn’t catch details like the license plate, there must be some distinguishing features?”

Zhao Hu frowned slightly, carefully recalling: “The records in the file Team Leader Zhang sent earlier mentioned it should be a black two-box sedan.”

“Look here…” Luo Qi quickly captured a screenshot from the video and enlarged the top-left corner. The initially dark area gradually revealed its contours after image enhancement – it was actually a corner of a car’s rear.

The image continued to sharpen until the rear of the vehicle became clearly visible.

“Huatai brand’s latest station wagon model from last year, dark green body, two-box design. Though the villager said it was black, it was before dawn – visual misjudgment is possible.” After saying this, Luo Qi finally relaxed, stretching with a big yawn, deep exhaustion evident in his eyes.

All members of the Special Task Force were now looking at the young man with completely different eyes. Zhang Hao especially gazed at him appreciatively for a long moment before reluctantly shifting his attention back to Yan Yu across the table: “Now that we have this new lead, Team Leader Yan, what’s our next move?”

Just as Yan Yu was about to speak, a piercing scream came through the open window from downstairs, followed by noisy commotion and the sound of gongs.

Zhao Hu, being closest to the window, was the first to rise and look outside. After just a glance, his expression changed dramatically as he turned to Zhang Hao: “Team Leader Zhang, it’s Mei Xia’s parents! They’ve put up banners outside our compound and are making a scene with gongs and drums!”

“…”

Zhang Hao cursed under his breath and hurried to the window. After confirming it was indeed Mei Xia’s family, he immediately turned to go downstairs.

Just as he and his team stepped out of the meeting room, Yan Yu’s calm instruction followed: “Team Leader Zhang, since they’re already here, bring them up for a statement before they leave.”