I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 160: Chapter 158: Spreading Rumors, Guiding...

Late at night, Xiao Xia sat in front of her computer, pulling up a piece of copy from a document.

She then used her phone to create a video.

The copy read: [I’ve met Shi Motang in private. She’s very plain in person, with a plastic surgery face. Over ninety percent of her has been worked on. She’s also super unfriendly in private, a total flirt who only hangs out with guys and has no sense of boundaries. She knowingly became the other woman. I have pictures to prove it.]

After she finished editing the copy and adding music to the video, just as she was about to hit publish, her phone rang with an incoming call from an unknown local number.

She answered the call.

It was her food delivery.

Xiao Xia opened the window and looked down.

After spotting the delivery driver, she called out to him and threw down a hemp rope.

There was an iron hook at the end of the rope. The driver attached the food to the hook, and Xiao Xia hauled it up.

Once she had the food, she opened it and took a few bites.

Then, she hit publish on the video she had just made.

While eating her spicy hot pot, she checked the video she had posted yesterday.

It was also an exposé on Shi Motang.

The comment section was quite a show.

The post had gained a lot of traction over the past few days, and it was all people cursing out Shi Motang. Xiao Xia watched and chuckled. "A bunch of idiots. They’ll believe anything you tell them."

As she was laughing, she suddenly heard the door being pushed open.

At first, she thought her boss was back.

But the person who came in was dressed in all black.

They wore black clothes, their hair was in a topknot, and they had on a black mask.

Not even their mouth or eyes were visible.

"Who are you?!" Xiao Xia jumped to her feet in terror. "Get out! I’ll call the police if you come any closer!"

Xiao Xia’s voice trembled with fear. She took a step forward, then back, wanting to jump out the window.

But the person in black was already on her. They grabbed her arm, raised a cleaver in their right hand, and struck her on the head with the back of the blade.

Xiao Xia’s body went limp, and she collapsed to the floor.

Her consciousness slowly faded as she stared at the person in black before her.

She watched them pick up the hemp rope from the floor and wrap it around her neck.

A sense of suffocation washed over her. She kicked her legs and grabbed at the rope, trying to fight back, but she had no strength.

Soon, everything went dark, and she lost consciousness.

Su Miaoyi saw these events through Xiao Xia’s eyes.

On the way back to the Municipal Bureau, only Zhuang Yanzheng, Yan Cheng, and Su Miaoyi were in the car.

Su Miaoyi recounted what she had seen to them.

"The rope Xiao Xia used to get her food delivery was the same one used to strangle her and hang her body," Su Miaoyi recalled. "The rope was originally tied to a table leg. But in my vision, the knot was very simple, not the same kind of knot we saw at the scene."

"To hang someone out a window, the killer would definitely have retied it with a more secure knot," Yan Cheng said. "The knot on her neck was a slipknot, the kind that tightens under pressure."

Su Miaoyi nodded. "The iron hook from the rope wasn’t found at the scene."

"The killer took it? What for?" Yan Cheng wondered.

Zhuang Yanzheng said, "I just spoke with the clothing store owner. She bought the paint. She wanted to repaint the exterior of the shop but bought it and then got too lazy to do it, so she just left it there."

’Paint the whole store red?’

Su Miaoyi didn’t think it matched her aesthetic sensibilities. The red was too much like blood; it made her uncomfortable.

"Where would the hands have gone?" Su Miaoyi suddenly remembered. "The head and hands found in the drainage ditch last night... those hands were also cut off..."

Sitting in the back seat, she leaned over the driver’s headrest to look at Zhuang Yanzheng.

Zhuang Yanzheng nodded. "We’ll ask them about the progress on that case when we get back."

Su Miaoyi leaned back in her seat, took out her phone, and searched for "Shi Motang." Then she searched for Xiao Xia’s ID.

Over two million followers.

Following the trail of videos Xiao Xia had posted, she found this "Shi Motang."

Her ID was Shi Rutang.

She searched for Shi Rutang.

She was a dance streamer on a short-form video app.

She currently had over thirty million followers.

She then looked at related discussion videos.

In the past week, she had lost over ten million followers.

But Su Miaoyi couldn’t immediately find out what exactly had happened.

It seemed someone had deleted things, so only fragments remained.

Some said she was a flirt who pandered to men.

Some said she was arrogant and rude in private.

Some said she wrecked the marriage of her top-gifting fan.

Others claimed she was dating five boyfriends at the same time...

All sorts of things.

Su Miaoyi watched the video on her phone, her thoughts turning to the notebook found on Xiao Xia’s bed.

The notebook was in an evidence box in the other car.

When Zhuang Yanzheng had been flipping through it, she thought she’d seen Shi Rutang’s ID.

The real name written in the notebook was: Shi Xiaoru.

Address, phone number...

Su Miaoyi frowned and immediately dialed the number.

It was already turned off.

...

「Back at the Municipal Bureau.」

This time, Su Miaoyi didn’t go to the autopsy room with Yan Cheng.

She went to find Lu Zhishen first.

Although she hadn’t seen the killer’s face, Lu Zhishen was able to sketch their build.

Height and weight.

With the sketch in hand, Su Miaoyi and Lu Zhishen went to review the surveillance footage.

Xiangyao Street was a relatively new development, but behind it was a row of old houses, and behind those was the street where the crime took place.

Every shop had surveillance cameras installed.

Yan Cheng said Xiao Xia’s time of death was between one and two in the morning.

The food order was sent out at one o’clock.

The delivery route was about twenty minutes long.

This gave them a specific timeframe to check the footage, but there was an overwhelming amount of it.

They didn’t know where the killer came from or where they went.

They had to check the footage from each camera, one by one.

They kept at it until almost three in the afternoon, when Chu Xingrou came to call them to a meeting.

Only one shop’s camera had caught a three-second glimpse of the killer’s figure.

But the killer then vanished from the camera’s view, their destination unknown.

Moreover, the person in the footage was wearing a large hat, completely obscuring their face.

...

「The conference room.」

First, the victim’s information was presented.

Then, Qi Feng stood at the front and reported their current findings. "The victim, Xiao Xia. We’ve accessed her phone and computer. Inside, we found a large number of videos and scripts used to incite cyberbullying and spread rumors. We also found the home addresses and phone numbers of several internet celebrities and stars, along with the schedules of some entertainers."

"She profited by spreading rumors online and instigating cyberbullying," Qi Feng said, displaying the content from her phone and computer on the screen and scrolling through it for everyone to see.

"Take Shi Rutang, who’s recently been at the center of a public outcry, as an example. Someone would contact Xiao Xia and pay her to fabricate stories, create videos, and post them online." Qi Feng swiped on the screen at the front. "This is all evidence of people contacting her, proof of money transfers, and some of the scripts she wrote, including the clients’ requirements for the copy."

There were many similar chat logs, all communicated through an uncommon messaging app.

Su Miaoyi had never even seen the app before.

"Here are her payment receipts and the bank card statements we’ve recovered," Qi Feng continued. "Based on what we’ve found so far, she’s been doing this for the past year. She would also sell the phone numbers, addresses, and schedules of internet celebrities and stars to certain buyers."

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