I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 61: Chapter 59: An Assist for a New Case

Shen Yanzhou kept watching her as she spoke.

After Su Miaoyi finished, she looked up and noticed Shen Yanzhou seemed to be staring at her, lost in thought. "Sorry, did I say too much?"

Shen Yanzhou snapped back to reality.

Su Miaoyi said, "I was just really curious, and since I happened to meet someone who knows him, I just..."

"Aren’t you worried I might be good friends with Jiang Junrui?" Shen Yanzhou looked ahead. "You’ve told me so much. What if I’m on his side?"

Su Miaoyi blinked.

"I’m a businessman, after all. It’s in my nature to be profit-driven," Shen Yanzhou said. "What if I have business dealings with him?"

"But you said ’what if,’ didn’t you?" Su Miaoyi replied.

Shen Yanzhou fell silent for a moment at her question before saying, "I feel like you trust me. Is it because of Zhuang Yanzheng?"

This time, it was Su Miaoyi’s turn to be silent.

’I have an answer in my heart,’ she thought. ’It’s not because of Zhuang Yanzheng.’

Her own attitude toward Shen Yanzhou felt strange, even to her.

He was a stranger, someone she had only met a few times.

But every time she was with him, she always felt an inexplicable sense of peace and security.

She didn’t know how to describe the feeling. It was like the relief of landing on solid ground after floating for too long.

Shen Yanzhou didn’t speak again. His left hand was tapping lightly on his leg.

Su Miaoyi’s gaze was quickly drawn to it.

She saw a red cord on his wrist, peeking out from his sleeve.

It was a braided red cord with three wooden beads of the same size.

Su Miaoyi had seen them before. One of the beads had fallen off Lu Jing, and it was engraved with the name "Qin Leyan."

She hadn’t asked Zhuang Yanzheng about the wooden beads.

’It seems this belonged to Qin Leyan.’

Shen Yanzhou asked, "Seen it before?"

Su Miaoyi didn’t answer.

Shen Yanzhou said, "My grandfather gave it to Le Yan when he started college."

"Here, this is a gift from Grandpa for starting school. I polished every bead myself, and each one carries my blessing."

Such a sentence suddenly rang in Su Miaoyi’s ears.

And before her brain could fully process what it was, it was followed by a ringing in her ears.

The ringing was so loud it made her ears ache.

Su Miaoyi abruptly clapped her hands over her ears, shut her eyes, and parted her lips slightly.

Shen Yanzhou frowned, asking urgently, "What’s wrong?"

After a long moment, the ringing finally faded.

Su Miaoyi felt a little dizzy, her head uncomfortably fuzzy as if it were filled with paste. The sentence she had just heard seemed to have gotten lost in that haze, now unreachable.

She leaned back, her face a little pale. "Maybe I’m a bit carsick. It’s nothing, I’ll be fine in a moment."

Shen Yanzhou watched her. After a moment, he slowly clenched his fist.

A short while later, he took a motion sickness patch from the console, tore it open, and gave it to Su Miaoyi.

...

When they arrived at the Municipal Bureau, Su Miaoyi thanked Shen Yanzhou, then hurried inside and went straight to the autopsy room at the forensic center.

After putting on a mask and gloves, she entered the autopsy room.

Zhuang Yanzheng and Qi Feng were both there.

Chu Xingrou was there too, huddled in a corner, vomiting into a trash can.

And on the autopsy table lay... pieces.

Zhuang Yanzheng and Yan Cheng both looked at her.

"Why do you look so pale? Did Shen Yanzhou give you a hard time?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"I got carsick," Su Miaoyi said.

Zhuang Yanzheng didn’t say anything, but an expression of disdain for Shen Yanzhou appeared on his face.

Su Miaoyi looked at the autopsy table. "This is..."

The time of death probably wasn’t long ago, less than twenty-four hours.

It was a whole person, but a person pieced together from parts.

Aside from the head and torso, the limbs had been severed at the joints.

And the severed parts were connected by thread, having been stitched back on later.

Male.

Although he was in pieces, all the "parts" were there; nothing was missing.

"He was found inside that thing." Zhuang Yanzheng tilted his head to the side.

Su Miaoyi followed his gaze.

It was a mascot costume.

A bear costume.

It was soaked with a lot of blood.

"Where was it found?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"A garbage dump," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "When we got there after the call, the mascot costume was lying flat on the ground. A sanitation worker had already opened it."

"We brought it back after a preliminary examination at the scene," Yan Cheng said. "It took a lot of effort to get him out of the costume."

Su Miaoyi could imagine how much work it must have been.

After all, the body had been dismembered and then stitched back together.

The thread was very fine. The slightest mistake could have snapped it, and some evidence might have been lost.

They would have had to be extremely careful to keep it intact without destroying anything.

Murder, dismemberment, and then a crude stitching.

It was like he’d been turned into a string puppet.

Su Miaoyi moved closer and examined the incisions.

They looked like they were made by something like an axe.

Post-mortem injuries.

She touched the edge of a cut with her hand but saw nothing.

"What was the cause of death?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"Fractured hyoid bone," Yan Cheng said.

Su Miaoyi moved to stand beside Yan Cheng.

She looked at the corpse’s neck.

She reached out and touched it again.

The scene before her eyes changed.

A dim place.

It wasn’t sealed.

There was a cold draft.

The area was large.

Moonlight spilled onto the floor.

The heavy smell of dust.

Hands and feet were bound.

She saw a person in a mascot costume walking toward her.

"Who are you?"

The person in the costume didn’t speak.

They just raised the axe in their hand.

Then, the person in the costume held the axe, tracing its blade over her neck, arms, legs, and ankles.

As if calculating where to strike.

"What are you doing? What? I’ll agree to anything you want, I can give you anything. My family’s rich. Do you want money? Call my mom, you can have as much as you want. Just don’t kill me, please don’t kill me!"

The costumed figure still didn’t speak.

He put the axe down and raised a hand, gently gripping her neck.

She felt tears streaming down her face. "Help! Help! Help!"

The shouts were loud.

They echoed.

"Don’t kill me, I have money! I’ll give you money, I’ll give you money!"

Finally, the person in the costume spoke.

It was a man’s voice. "You think money lets you do whatever you want? Money isn’t everything. At the very least... money can’t buy your life."

"AHHHHH!!!!"

Amidst the scream, the scene before her eyes plunged into darkness.

Su Miaoyi pulled back from the vision, her first instinct to touch her own neck.

But Yan Cheng grabbed her wrist. "Don’t touch."

Su Miaoyi looked at him.

Having just been pulled from the vision, her breathing was labored. She felt the phantom pain of being strangled still lingering on her neck.

Yan Cheng said, "There’s blood on your gloves."

He let her go after he spoke.

Su Miaoyi lowered her hand, slowly steadying her breathing.

No one rushed to ask questions.

Zhuang Yanzheng pulled a stool over to the wall and took her by the arm, guiding her to sit down.

Su Miaoyi took two deep breaths and said, "Where in Jinghai are there abandoned factories? The kind that are in the middle of nowhere, where no one would hear you scream?"

...

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