Inside the City Public Security Bureau, Xiao Chen, the officer on duty, was sitting at a desk in the reception hall organizing files. His two colleagues on the same shift had gone out to patrol their district, leaving him to hold down the fort. However, people rarely came to the city bureau to file a report at night, so his shift was relatively quiet.
Su Qing remained hidden, dragging the unconscious Jin Zhicheng and the tape recorder to the entrance of the City Public Security Bureau. Then, the vine wrapped around the recorder balled up and shot toward the low-headed Xiao Chen, smacking him on the left shoulder. The blow was neither light nor heavy, but it was enough to grab his attention. Having hit its mark, the vine immediately retracted.
"Ouch!" Deep in concentration as he organized files, Xiao Chen suddenly felt something strike his left shoulder. It didn’t hurt. He quickly looked up and to his left, assuming someone was playing a prank, but all he saw was the fleeting tail of a vine disappearing from view.
"Who’s there!" Xiao Chen frowned, quickly getting up and heading outside. However, there was no one in sight.
Seeing no one, Xiao Chen muttered under his breath, "Who would come all the way to the City Public Security Bureau to play a prank in the middle of the night?"
Recalling the vine tail he’d seen when he jerked his head up, he scratched his head. ’Am I so tired I’m starting to hallucinate?’
’But that’s not right. My left shoulder still aches a little. It couldn’t have been a hallucination!’
Just then, Xiao Chen turned his head and saw Jin Zhicheng lying unconscious on the ground, a tape recorder beside him.
Xiao Chen was speechless.
The bureau had been investigating the death of Jin Zhiwei for the past couple of days, and Jin Zhicheng had frequently come to the City Public Security Bureau with his family elders to ask about the case’s progress. So, Xiao Chen recognized him.
’But why would a member of the victim’s family be knocked unconscious and dumped at the entrance of the City Public Security Bureau in the middle of the night?’
Glancing again at the tape recorder beside Jin Zhicheng, Xiao Chen didn’t rush to wake him. Instead, he first carried the man into the main hall and then pressed the play button.
After listening to the recording, Xiao Chen looked at Jin Zhicheng and gasped. He then hurriedly dialed Captain Zou Ming’s home number. "Captain, we’ve found one of the killers in the Jin Zhiwei case!"
Seeing that Xiao Chen had listened to the recording and notified Zou Ming, Su Qing slipped away, her work done. She didn’t plan on getting any more involved with Jin Zhicheng. With that recording, she was confident he couldn’t escape the arm of the law. Next, she had to find that Master Zhang and settle the score. ’He tried to harm my entire family. I will absolutely not let that man go.’
However, when Su Qing covertly made her way to Room 301 of the Hongqi Hotel, she found it had been empty for some time. She couldn’t find any trace of Master Zhang anywhere in the entire hotel.
’He ran off!’
Su Qing couldn’t help but grind her teeth. She hadn’t wasted any time, but she hadn’t expected Master Zhang to be so quick on his feet. What Su Qing didn’t know was that Master Zhang had been jolted awake from a dream earlier, feeling that something was amiss. He had casually performed a divination, and the result was ’great misfortune.’ Feng Shui Masters like him put the utmost faith in such omens, so, just to be safe, he had immediately packed his things and left the Hongqi Hotel.
Master Zhang had actually gone to Jin Zhicheng’s home, intending to silence him for good. But when he got there, he discovered Jin Zhicheng was out. Growing even more flustered, he had fled Beijing that very night.
It was this intuition that allowed Master Zhang to escape, at least for the time being.
Su Qing was frustrated that she couldn’t find Master Zhang, but there was nothing to be done for the moment. The man had fled, and he was long outside the range of her perception. Finding him wouldn’t be easy. But Su Qing believed that if he had tried to harm them once, he would surely try a second time. She remained on high alert, pondering how to track him down.
Meanwhile, at the City Public Security Bureau, Jin Zhicheng’s appearance prompted Zou Ming to return to the bureau that very night to conduct an emergency interrogation.
When Jin Zhicheng regained consciousness, his first instinct was to deny everything. But upon hearing the recording, he knew instantly that he couldn’t escape. In that recording, he had laid out the entire affair in painstaking detail, even giving the name and address of his female colleague. The police only had to investigate to confirm it all. There was no way out.
Since there was no escape, Jin Zhicheng gave up all resistance, confessing everything Master Zhang had done in crystal clear detail.
However, after listening to the recording and Jin Zhicheng’s confession, Zou Ming found the story utterly incredible. He had never heard of such an unconventional way of killing someone. ’Could anyone in this world really use such an inconceivable method to commit murder?’
"Officer, everything I’m telling you is the truth! My brother was killed by that Master Zhang! He used some kind of talisman and a bell to scare my brother to death," Jin Zhicheng stressed. "I never intended to harm my brother, it was all Master Zhang! He killed my brother behind my back! I was completely shocked when it happened. If he wasn’t holding something over my head, I would’ve tried to kill him myself."
Tears streamed down Jin Zhicheng’s face as he spoke. "Now you know what he was holding over me, and I admit to all of it. I’ll take responsibility for my crimes, but you have to arrest Master Zhang and get justice for my brother! I’m begging you."
Although he still found it incredible, Zou Ming sent men to the Hongqi Hotel to make an arrest. Regardless of the details, the first step was to bring the man in for questioning.
At the same time, Zou Ming reported the case to Director Zhou. It did, after all, involve supernatural methods, and these methods happened to be eerily consistent with the evidence at the crime scene and the results of Jin Zhiwei’s autopsy.
It wasn’t just Zou Ming who was perplexed; the other officers were equally astonished.
"Hey, do you think what that Jin Zhicheng guy said is actually true?" one officer whispered to his colleague.
The colleague frowned. "It’s not settled yet. Who knows what the investigation will uncover? Maybe someone’s just trying to muddy the waters, or maybe it really is just like Jin Zhicheng said."
"But this case is just too bizarre," the officer muttered. "Aren’t we supposed to be cracking down on feudal superstitions? How did this whole thing get so weird? Do things like this really happen?"
The direction the case had taken today was seriously challenging these officers’ worldview.
"You never know," another officer chimed in. "Think about it. How many past cases have gone cold because we couldn’t find the killer? Some of them have been on the shelf for years without a single clue turning up. It’s possible they were just like this one, maybe they involved some kind of supernatural methods."
"Hey, now that you mention it... you might have a point."
After reporting the matter to Director Zhou, Zou Ming called Xiao Chen into his office. "Xiao Chen, when you found Jin Zhicheng, did you notice anything else? Think carefully."
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