Strange Investigations Team

When we arrived at the female dormitory, Supervisor Yu was once again sitting there, yawning. After I woke her up and informed her that we wanted to look at room 106 again, she complained a bit, but in the end, she still brought us to the room.

Because cla.s.s was currently in session, most of the students were in the academic building. The ones who didn’t have cla.s.s now had gone over to check out what was happening at the woods, like Yaxian and her roommates, so the dorm was very quiet. Room 106 was ever the same and nothing seemed out of place. I knew there was something wrong, but I just hadn’t discovered it yet.

After we entered the room, the lively and boisterous Miao Miao had become very quiet. And then she fainted. Thankfully Zhenzhen was beside her and able to catch her. I pinched her to wake her up and even asked her what was the matter and if she was alright. Her response nearly made me faint. “There are a lot of pigs here!”

“A lot of pigs? Are you okay? Do you have a fever?” Zhenzhen felt Miao Miao’s forehead and then said, “You don’t have a fever, so what are you talking about?”

“There are really a lot of pigs here… A lot and a lot… I can’t count how many… There are also a lot of people… Some tens of them…” Miao Miao didn’t seem quite right in her mind. Her eyes were slightly glazed over, her speech was somewhat ambiguous, though we could barely hear it.

“They seem to want to tell me…” Although Miao Miao seemed to be spouting nonsense, but my instinct was telling me that her words would give us some clues. So I asked, “What are they telling you?”

“Their voices are very quiet… They’re all circling around there…” Miao Miao seemed extremely tired. It looked like it took a lot of effort for her to raise her hand and point at a corner.

There was a large box in that corner, filled with damaged badminton rackets. Nothing strange about that. I looked through it and then turned back to look at Miao Miao with confusion, starting to suspect that perhaps she really was speaking nonsense. Her finger pointed downward at the floor under the box and said feebly, “Under…”

I pushed the box aside. The floor was cleaner and not covered in ash, but that’s because a box had been sitting there, so there was nothing strange about that. But Miao Miao kept pointing at the floor, repeating, “Under… Under…”

I knocked gently on the floor and realized that the sound was especially crisp, which made me want to pull it up. I thought I would have to exert some effort, but after sliding a key under, the floorboard popped right out.

After I pulled out the floorboard, a 30cm-wide hole appeared, the bottom not visible. Inferring from the distance between the hole in the woods and the tomb, this room was about three or four meters away from the tomb. Where the two connected?

I looked over at Supervisor Yu who unconsciously avoided my gaze. She stammered out, “Why are you looking at me? I don’t know why there’s a hole in here.”

Supervisor Yu obviously had a guilty conscience, but finding a hole in the dorm didn’t prove anything. Thankfully, Miao Miao’s ‘nonsense’ pointed me to another box. She pointed at a very inconspicuous box and said, “Basketball… They’re all circling the basketball…”

Zhenzhen had previously gone through the box that Miao Miao pointed at. It was filled with a lot of old basketb.a.l.l.s. I poured out the basketb.a.l.l.s inside and took a glance at Supervisor Yu. Her complexion was very poor, as large drops of sweat started emerging from her forehead. There was nothing strange about the basketb.a.l.l.s at the top of the box. They were just old and worn. But when I pulled out an obviously cracked basketball from the bottom, I immediately felt it was strange– This old basketball was much heavier than the others.

There was obviously something stuffed inside this ball. I reached inside and there was a plastic bag of what appeared to be nut sh.e.l.ls or something. I pulled out the entire bag, but before I even saw clearly what was inside, Supervisor Yu called out nervously, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t put that in there.”

She was so nervous because I pulled out a bag of poppy seeds from the basketball, about 500g. I finally realized why her restaurant’s food was so particular and why it made people addicted to it. It was because they added addictive poppy seed powder.

“The more you try to hide it, the more obvious it is. Aside from you, who else has keys to this room?” I lifted up the bag of poppy seeds and stepped over to Supervisor Yu. I told her seriously, “Drug possession isn’t a minor offense. This amount of poppy seeds is enough to put you away for half a lifetime.”

Actually, possession, transport, trafficking, and stockpiling a small amount of poppy seeds wasn’t really a criminal offense, unless you had more than 200kg of it. The amount in my hands was at most half a kilo, which would only result in a fine of several thousand yuan. But she was obviously unaware of the rules and regulations on this regard, otherwise she wouldn’t try to scare off the students. So I used this to exaggerate the charges against her, to force her to spill the things she knew.

From Supervisor Yu’s paper white face, I suspected I was successful, so I started to get a confession. “You’d better tell me everything that you know, and maybe I won’t have seen anything. Otherwise…” I swung the plastic bag in my hands. In a serious voice, I said, “Otherwise, you can wait for your jail cell! Hurry and talk. What secrets are hiding in this room? How are you related to the female ghost with a baby? Why did you trick Zhenzhen into eating dinner with you yesterday? What’s your motive?!”

“Th-th-this story goes back ten years…” Supervisor Yu was frightened to tears. With a trembling voice, she started to tell us about the circ.u.mstances surrounding the situation—

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Ten years ago, there was a girl named Ye Xiaolou who lived in room 106. She was very pretty and had a lot of pursuers. Often times, boys would run over to the back of the dorm at night to play guitar and sing love songs to her through the window. But she was never moved by any of her pursuers, instead focusing on her studies.

Afterwards, her stomach gradually started to bloat up, and it was obvious that she was pregnant. It’s actually not uncommon to see students getting pregnant, but no one had ever seen her dating anyone, so everyone found it very strange. But no matter how strange it was, it didn’t have anything to do with my supervision duties, so I didn’t worry about her situation.

During the Spring Festival break that year, most of the students returned home. Only the girls in room 106 stayed here, but it wasn’t really strange for students to stay at school over holidays. I didn’t mind. I just told them to keep safe and avoid bringing me trouble. But then on the first day of the break, Prof Xiao personally came to pay me a visit. Previously, we had just been two people who worked at the same university who would occasionally run into each other. We didn’t really know each other, so I’d been very overwhelmed by it.

When he arrived, he got straight to the point and said, “Room 106’s Ye Xiaolou is my student. She’s… pregnant, and she’ll be delivering soon. I hope you can help watch after her…”

I knew that Ye Xiaolou was in the same cla.s.s as his son, and I’d seen his son pursue Xiaolou before. Now that he was coming to me with such a message, even a fool would know that the baby in her belly was his grandchild. Since he personally came to visit me, I couldn’t reject his plea. Considering his position at the school, with just a word from him to the president, I’d be out of a job.

The day that Xiaolou had the baby, he once again came over to help, but his son was nowhere to be seen. This made me suspect whether the child in her belly was his grandchild or his child.

Although he wasn’t an obstetrician, he was still somewhat familiar with those matters. I’d also given birth before, and the three girls also helped, so the delivery went very smoothly. But… But, she’d given birth to a deformed creature!

It was the most frightening baby I’d ever seen. It’s legs were stuck together. It’s mouth was larger than the average baby’s, and it also protruded somewhat. Moreover, when it was born, it already had four sharp teeth in its mouth. What was even more frightening was that it could crawl before its eyes even opened. Covered in blood, it crawled onto its mother’s body. I was terrified and didn’t know what to, so I just stayed still and stared. The others, including Prof Xiao, were the same.

The freak’s legs were stuck together, but it wasn’t slow when it crawled. It was very agile and in a moment, it crawled onto Xiaolou’s chest. It started scratching and biting until it tore her clothes and her breast was exposed, and then it started biting onto it. I originally thought it was trying drink breastmilk, but then I heard Xiaolou’s piercing scream and I saw blood flow down her breast. Then I realized it had bitten its mother’s breast and was feeding on her blood. It was just too horrifying!

After that, Prof Xiao gave me a sum of money and wanted me to cook healthy supplements for Xiaolou, and he wanted me to keep this secret; I couldn’t let anyone know that she’d given birth to a freak. At the time, my husband’s restaurant was doing well and he was planning to close it. I wanted to help my man get a job at the school cafeteria. Since the professor was requesting my help, I figured he wouldn’t reject my request.

He thought about for a moment and then told me, “Arranging for a job for your husband isn’t difficult, but the wages may not be desirable. How about this. I have several friends working in traditional medicine. Perhaps they can help acquire some poppy seeds for you…” After that, he would give me some poppy seeds every few months. After my man added the poppy seeds to his food, business got better and better each day.

Because our business was revived by Prof Xiao’s poppy seeds, I didn’t dare neglect the things he’d entrusted to me. Not only did I send Xiaolou food and soup every day, after school started, I didn’t let the other girls randomly enter her room, lest they find out about her giving birth to a freak.

That freak was really very strange. It never cried or made a fuss. Other than biting its mother’s breast to feed on blood, it spent all its other time sleeping. So none of the other girls found out about it.

But later, the freak’s appet.i.te grew, and it only sucked blood from the breast, nowhere else. It was obviously too hard for Xiaolou alone. No matter how many health supplements I sent to her, her complexion just got paler and paler each day. So then the other three girls started to feed the freak as well, which improved the situation somewhat. During that time, Prof Xiao continued to send me money each month, asking me to make the girls health supplements. Since there was a decent amount of money to be earned, I was happy to do the work. I never expected what was to come…

After Xiaolou killed Qiongzhi, the freak disappeared. At first, I thought Prof Xiao had taken it away, but the next day, Prof Xiao told me that room 106 had a hole in the floor. He told me to drop a pig’s heart into the hole every night, and then on the 15th of each (lunar) month – the full moon – he would bring me a human heart to throw in. I suspected he must be hiding the freak down in the hole, because only that freak would each such disgusting things.

Every night, I would carry a heart into the room where a murder once happened. It wasn’t anything splendid, and sometimes I had to carry in a human heart. I was worried that the girls in the dorm would discover the situation. Coincidentally, that was the time when rumors started going around about a female ghost in the camphor forest. So then, every night when I went to deliver the pig heart, I would change into white clothes and mess up my hair, scaring the girls so that they wouldn’t dare to come out…

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After listening to Supervisor Yu’s account, I said, “Since everyone suspected that there was a ghost here, if you hid the poppy seeds here, no one would discover it.”

“This… Prof Xiao gave it to me. I don’t know about it,” Supervisor Yu avoided my point.

“You really don’t know about it?” I put on a serious tone and said, “If you didn’t know that poppy seeds were an illegal substance, would you have needed to hide it?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know…” Supervisor Yu started to cry.

Zhenzhen glared at me, as if I were using some horrendous methods to bully this old woman. I shrugged and smiled helplessly at her. Then I turned back to Supervisor Yu and continued my intimidation. “Then you should at least know about last night. Why did you trick Zhenzhen into leaving the school? Are you working together with the female ghost?! You must surely know that murder is punishable with execution by firing squad!”

“I’m not involved, I’m not involved. I have no relation to the female ghost whatsoever. I didn’t kill anyone.” Supervisor Yu kept waving her hands frantically.

“Then why did you invite Zhenzhen out to your restaurant?” I snapped.

I’d frightened Supervisor Yu and she started trembling. She stuttered, “I-it was Prof Xiao who instructed me to do so. Last night, he called me and told me to find the female officer who was working on the female ghost case. Then I should bring her to the restaurant, and make sure she didn’t return before 11 o’clock. He even specified that I should bring her to a private room.”

“Why a private room?” I asked.

“Maybe because the walls of the room are soundproofed. Most phones don’t get signal inside.”

So that was it. Even if Zhenzhen had taken her phone along with her, I probably wouldn’t have been able to contact her. Looks like Prof Xiao isn’t an easy opponent. He likely discovered that Xueqing was monitoring him, so he had Supervisor Yu divert Zhenzhen and then led Xueqing and me into the woods. Then he called on the female ghost to attack us.

With the current situation, the mastermind behind the scenes would soon make an appearance. I still had to ask Supervisor Yu, “Do the other two girls from room 106, Xia Yulan and Yue Yingqing, still work at the medical university?”

“Yes, but they’ve changed their names. The library administrator, Pan Qiuxia, is Xia Yulan, and Prof Xiao’s a.s.sistant, Zeng Qianyi, is Yue Yingqing…” Supervisor Yu just revealed all I wanted to know. With the help of the policemen blockading the woods, I had Supervisor Yu escorted to the police station to make a detailed statement.

She’d unraveled all my suspicions, and now the case appeared very clear. Ten years ago, Prof Xiao got into a relationship with his student, Ye Xiaolou, which resulted in her giving birth to a freak. Perhaps because she suffered from postpartum depression, she murdered her roommate, Qin Qiongzhi. To avoid public scandal, Prof Xiao hid the freak under the depths of room 106 and had Supervisor Yu feed it. However, as the freak must eat human hearts, he would steal the hearts from bodies at the hospital after their autopsies had been performed. When there weren’t enough corpses in the medical university, he would have his son commit a crime and steal hearts from the general hospital’s morgue. Then he had Xia Yulan and Yue Yingqing pretend to be female ghosts to kill in the camphor woods, in order to feed that freak– The very one that killed the three firefighters.

The fire in the library had obviously been caused by Xia Yulan. She’d painted the page in the records that listed the residents of room 106 with white phosphorous, and then she tampered with the fire extinguishers. If anyone tried to find information from those records, the information would be burned.

Of course, these were just my speculations. As for the truth of the matter, we just had to arrest and question Prof Xiao to find out. The problem now was that Yue Yingqing, situated beside Prof Xiao, had superhuman abilities, so catching them would be difficult. Moreover, the crafty Prof Xiao was unlikely to outright confess his crimes.

When I had the officers escort Supervisor Yu to the station, I originally wanted to let Miao Miao leave with them. But when we left room 106, the seemingly half-dead girl gradually came back to life, and then she chattered on endlessly with Zhenzhen. When I offered for her to leave first and go home to rest, she just wouldn’t leave.

I suddenly thought about how Miao Miao had played a part in the supervisor’s confession. Although she had just been spouting off seeming nonsense, it did lead us to find out more details. Had the boss perhaps recruited her to the Strange Investigations Team because he knew of her superhuman ability?

Not long after we sent off Supervisor Yu, Wei ge appeared in front of me. I lifted my leg to give ‘little Wei’ a kick, but he dodged me.

“Kao, you dare to dodge?! I told you to get here within thirty minutes, but you dillydallied for an entire hour.” Like the saying goes, a newly wed wife is just like a child. You had to beat up a guy like Wei ge once in awhile so he understood why flowers were so red.

“Mu, old buddy, you have to know that it’s lunch time. The roads are jam packed right now.” Wei ge’s voice showed he was obviously aggrieved. I felt a bit bad for messing with him. After all, even if he’d arrived half an hour earlier, it wouldn’t have been much more helpful. Right now, the first matter we needed to take care of wasn’t the snake demon in the sewers, but rather the mastermind behind the scenes, Prof Xiao.

After Wei ge handed the sewer plans over to me, I let him and Miao Miao take a stroll. In any case, they didn’t currently need to be here. They just needed to make sure to stay in contact. Then Zhenzhen and I got ready to ‘invite’ Prof Xiao and company back to the police station for questioning.

Just then, the crisp sound of gunfire rang across the campus. I knew that something had happened again. And indeed, Xueqing called me with some startling news. “Prof Xiao’s dead!”