Strange Investigations Team

When I crawled out from the sewer back into the tomb, there was a female figure in the room. Was it the female ghost?

As I was contemplating whether or not I should retreat back into the dizzying stench, the other person discovered my existence. She raised her right hand and a beam of light came at me, shining on my face. I couldn’t open my eyes.

“Ah Mu, what are you doing? Why do you look like a sewer rat?”

Kao! The one who nearly scared me to death was just Zhenzhen. If I weren’t afraid that she might beat me to death, I would’ve run to her and hugged her. To make her as dirty as myself.

I asked her why she crawled inside. She said that after waiting awhile above ground, I still hadn’t come out, so she came in to check whether I was dead or alive. I sulkily replied, “I was originally fine, but after you came in, you nearly scared me to death.”

Because we were afraid that Yuetong would worry about us, we climbed back out. In any case, we didn’t discover much inside the tomb, and because of the poor air quality in the sewage area, we couldn’t continue searching there. We decided to leave and just wait for the firefighters to take a look.

Maybe because she was embarra.s.sed, but on the way out, Zhenzhen insisted that I crawl out first. Although she had a rather exploding temper, she was still a girl. Crawling out with her a.s.s in the air as a guy followed her probably wasn’t something good. So I didn’t say much and started crawling out first.

Before I moved very far, Zhenzhen’s voice came from behind, “Ah Mu, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” I didn’t pay much attention to her question.

“I heard a hissing sound.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Then maybe I was mistaken…” After a pause, she said, “You stink. Hurry and crawl faster.”

“I didn’t make you crawl behind me.”

When the sunlight shined on me again, I felt very refreshed. Zhenzhen didn’t feel the same, and she kicked me away from her. Yuetong held her nose and kept her distance from me.

“Am I really that smelly?” I felt very helpless as I looked at my sewage covered clothes.

“Extremely. Hurry and go wash.” Zhenzhen kicked me again.

After the fire department arrived, I explained the situation to their captain, who was pinching close his nose. I told them about the sewer crawl s.p.a.ce that they should search, and then I handed it over to Yuetong to take care of. Zhenzhen and I went to find Uncle Liu.

When we arrived at the security room, Uncle Liu wasn’t there. As we were about to leave, I saw him heading over from the gynasium.

“Ah Mu, how did you end up such a poor state?” Thankfully, Uncle Liu didn’t pinch his nose as he spoke to me.

“It’s a long story. Help me find some place to wash up first!” I helplessly forced a laugh.

Uncle Liu brought us to the washroom behind the security room. There was already soap there and he also brought me a change of clothes. Although his clothes didn’t really fit me, it was better than going naked, so I could only just deal with it. Zhenzhen had also gotten her clothes a bit dirty from going into the tomb, but since didn’t smell awful, she just washed her face after I finished showering.

After we washed up, Uncle Liu asked what happened to me. As the university’s security guard, he would eventually find out about the secret tunnel in the woods, but I couldn’t just haphazardly reveal sensitive case information to outsiders. So I just joked, “We went to catch rats!”

Uncle Liu seemed to understand that it wasn’t convenient for me to explain, so he laughed and said, “It really isn’t easy being a cop. Not only do you have to catch criminals, you also have to catch rats. Hahaha…”

“Uncle Liu, where were you coming back from?” I asked casually.

“I was just at the gym for a physical exam. They suddenly announced today that they were performing physicals today. All the teachers, and even I, had to partic.i.p.ate. I thought there was going to be something about an infectious disease, but when we got there, they had us take off our clothes to examine our upper body. That was it, but I don’t know why there were a bunch of your friends there as well.”

“Ah, I’m not sure about it either. I’ll go take a look.” We said goodbye to Uncle Liu and then Zhenzhen and I headed to the gym. Actually, I wasn’t uninformed about this matter. In fact, I knew about it very well, because this physical examination was setup by Boss. The intent was to find the female ghost who had been shot. Of course, I wasn’t trying to hide this from Uncle Liu. It was just because of work. There were a lot of things I wouldn’t even be able to tell my family.

When we arrived at the gym, the physical exams were nearly complete. I spoke to the officer in charge. They didn’t find anything, not even any scars from a gunshot wound. Zhenzhen and I looked over the list of names. Nothing unusual was found on the bodies of Supervisor Yu, Prof Xiao and his a.s.sistant, Yaxian, Uncle Liu, etc. However, that didn’t mean the ghost wasn’t hiding in the school. Like Yuetong had said, it was possible the female ghost had some incredible self-healing ability.

As I was trying to figure out how to chase the ghost out, my phone rang. Yuetong was calling. “The beautiful Gui, how can this lowly one serve you?”

“Cut the c.r.a.p and get over to the woods right now. Something’s happened!” Yueong’s tone was extremely serious, and it seemed that something major had come up. We didn’t dare neglect the situation, so we rushed over to the woods.

There were four firetrucks stopped outside the woods, where there had only been one previously. We ran past the trucks, over to where I’d discovered the hole. There were three bodies lying still on the ground, and ten firefighters standing around sighing (in despair) and trembling. The captain who’d pinched his nose and spoken with me earlier was now sitting under a camphor tree, staring ahead with dull eyes, muttering, “Dead, dead, they’re all dead…”

Yuetong was currently on the phone requesting forensic support on the scene. Beside her, there was only Langping. It seemed that the other team members had collected the evidence back for further investigation. Langping was currently crouched down, swinging a piece clothing or something else that was covered in mud.

“What happened?” I asked as Yuetong hung up the phone.

“After the three firefighters entered the sewer, they were attacked by some kind of creature…” Yuetong went over the details of the events that occurred—

After you two left, the captain sent three firefighters into the hole with protective gear and oxygen tanks. The entire time up until they entered the sewer, the captain was in contact with the firefighters via radio, and they didn’t find anything significant.

But after they entered the sewer, one of the firefighters reported that there was very low oxygen content there and the methane content was increasing. Without oxygen equipment, a human wouldn’t be able to survive in there for more than five minutes. Most animals wouldn’t be able to live in such an environment either.

The sewer environment was very poor and the likelihood that it was the culprit’s route of escape was very low, but considering that the culprit may have superhuman abilities, I asked them to keep searching. I would have never expected what came next.

The firefighters continued to search, and they found what they suspected was a complete snake skin. However, despite the poor environment, the skin didn’t show any signs of decay. Even more surprising was that this snake skin had human-like arms.

After the firefighters reported in, a piercing scream came from their end of the walkie talkie. Then there was a chaotic sound of a collision, followed by a chilling silence. But if you listened carefully, you could still hear a faint hissing and the sound of food being swallowed. After awhile, there was nothing being transmitted, perhaps because the sewage water broke the walkie talkie.

When reinforcements arrived, they only found three corpses and a strange ‘snake’ skin…

Langping rolled out the so-called snake skin, and as Yuetong said, it was indeed a strange snake skin. All in all, it was about two meters in length. Although the sewage had blackened it, it was surprisingly still in one piece and complete. Aside from the long crack on the back, it didn’t appear to be damaged in any way, and there were no signs of decay. The lower body of the snake skin appeared as a thick and long tail. The upper body had the physique of a child, but its arms were somewhat long. The neck was about 40cm long, and the head was both human-like and snake-like.

I suddenly recalled the human-skinned doll that the female ghost left behind. The doll had a slightly protruding mouth and conjoined legs. Could it be…

“Seems like the true owner of the human-skinned doll has already grown up,” Yuetong voiced my thoughts aloud.

Although I felt the developments were outlandish, with what was right in front of my eyes, I couldn’t help but speculate. While Ye Xiaolou was studying at the medical university, she’d been involved with a non-human ent.i.ty and then given birth to an abnormality. And this abnormality was a strange creature, half human and half snake. Just like a snake, it would occasionally shed its skin. One of those times, perhaps the first time that it shed, its skin was turned into a doll. It was probably the one that the female ghost left behind. Taking the age into consideration, the current ‘snake demon’ skin would have come from its most recent shedding. That means, it was very likely that it was the snake demon that killed the three firefighters in that sewer!

“Now what? Should we block the hole?” Zhenzhen asked. “Otherwise, if that monster comes out, there’ll be big problems.”

“If it wants to come out, we won’t be able to stop it. The sewer connects all around and leads out to manholes. We can’t possibly block off all of them! Moreover, the connecting channel between the tomb and the sewer, as well as the tunnel into the cave, were probably dug out by that thing.” After saying that, I called the boss for his instructions on how to proceed.

After Boss listened to my explanation of the events, he was silent a moment. Then he said, “It will be impossible to conduct a ma.s.sive manhunt in the sewers. I would have to request that from the minister. I’ll immediately notify the Armed Police to cordon off the area. We’ve got to keep news of this from getting out right now though, else it will cause ma.s.s public panic, which will just be a mess.”

After speaking with Boss, I called Wei ge and asked him to get me a map of the sewer tunnels around the medical university within thirty minutes, regardless of the method.

“Getting the tunnel plans is easy. Five minutes should be enough. The problem is that I can’t drive. How can I get them to you in 25 minutes? The university is in the suburbs!” From the phone came Wei ge’s voice, along with the tapping sound of a keyboard.

“I don’t care if you have to take a plane or train. If you don’t get the plans to me in thirty minutes, I’ll let Xueqing turn you into a eunuch!” I shouted into the phone, about to hang up.

“Before you turn me into a eunuch, let me tell you something first!” Wei ge’s voice was slightly smug and flippant.

“Don’t keep me in suspense. Tell me already.” I really was in the mood to BS with him. We had deaths, three of them at once. Could I be in a good mood?

Wei ge could obviously hear from my tone that I wasn’t in a good mood, so he cut to the chase. “The poster of the school photo just replied to me. She said that not only did she know the four girls in room 106, she lived next door to them and knew them quite well. In their last semester, all four of them became very strange. They would keep their door locked all day long, and they rarely talked to or played cards with everyone else. Even stranger was that the loathsome dorm supervisor suddenly had a personality change. She would deliver food and things to them every day, and she even warned everyone else not to bother them. And so, the entire semester long, the door to room 106 was always closed. Before that, everyone had always just stopped into each others’ rooms. Everyone had jokingly asked if they’d become friends with the supervisor, but they would always avoid answering the question. This situation continued on until the end of the semester, when the murder happened.”

“As to whether or not Ye Xiaolou had a boyfriend, she said that she’d never heard Xiaolou mention having a partner. But she had once seen Xiaolou head into the camphor woods behind the dorm at night with a 40 or 50 year old man, and they seemed pretty close. But since it was nighttime and the trees blocked the light, she didn’t see what the old man looked like. And when she mentioned it to Xiaolou in conversation, she would evade the question.”

For someone with the qualifications of Ye Xiaolou, for her to be attracted to a 40 or 50 year old man, he must have been wealthy or successful. Prof Xiao fits both of those conditions. Could he have been Ye Xiaolou’s boyfriend?

“She also told me something else very important,” Wei ge’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Two of the girls who lived in room 106, Xia Yulan and Yue Yingqing, stayed at the school to work after graduation. Although she hasn’t kept in touch with them, so she’s not sure if they’re still there. I’ve already gone through the school’s personnel, even cleaning staff, but I didn’t find those names. Still, we can’t rule out that they’ve changed their names.”

After I hung up the phone, I got lost in my thoughts again. Did Prof Xiao get involved and impregnate Ye Xiaolou? Did those two girls who lived in room 106 still work at the school? If yes, then were they the two ghosts that Xueqing and I met in the woods?

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“Ah Mu, what are you thinking about so deeply?” Liunian and a.s.st Zhonggang walked over to us.

“What would I call you out for other than a dead person?” I had Liunian examine the three corpses.

The three firefighters’ bodies were covered in sewage and let off a vomit-inducing smell. As Zhonggang approached the body, he couldn’t help pinching close his nose, and then he immediately put on his mask. Liunian, on the other hand, seemed as if he couldn’t smell anything, and pulled on his rubber gloves to start examining. Perhaps it was because he’d already seen many corpses, so he’d long ago gotten used to the smell.

All three bodies were facing upwards on the floor, and there weren’t any obvious wounds. After taking photos, Liunian and Zhonggang turned a body over and immediately discovered a hole in its back. When they turned over the other two bodies, it was the same. After a bit of examination, Liunian said, “All three of them died due to their hearts being pulled out, but it’s a bit different from the student before. In the student’s case, his heart was pulled out by a right hand that was missing a middle finger, but in these cases, the hearts appear to have been dug out by a 10 year old child’s hands.”

The cause of death was just as I’d suspected, but from Liunian’s verdict, I reached a conclusion– The murderer that killed the three students was not the same one that killed the three firefighters.

As Liunan and other medical staff helped to carry the three bodies out, the Armed Police had arrived and started cordoning off the area. Yuetong and Langping took the snake skin back for examination. Zhenzhen and I had no reason to remain any longer, so we left the woods, intending on checking up on Supervisor Yu.

There were lots of students watching from outside the woods. Yaxian and her roommates were among them. When they saw me, they waved, and then when I approached them, they asked about what happened. Had another student been killed by the female ghost, and the like.

I put on a serious tone and said, “I can tell you guys, but the more you know, the more danger you’ll be in. If the female ghost takes notice of you guys, don’t blame me!”

The girls trembled in fear and all quipped up that they didn’t want to know anything. Just as we were about to leave, Yaxian suddenly pulled me to the side. She told me quietly, “I suspect that Supervisor Yu is the murderer.”

“Based on what?” I asked.

“Last night, I heard walking in the corridor again. So I mustered up my courage and opened the door a sliver to look outside. Then I saw Supervisor Yu open the door to room 106.”

“She’s the supervisor. It’s not strange for her to patrol the rooms.”

“But it was nearly 3 o’clock in the morning. If she was patrolling, she wouldn’t do it that late! Moreover, she was wearing white clothes at the time and her hair was all messed up. If not for her jade bracelet, I wouldn’t have known it was her,” Yaxian said seriously.

When we ran into the female ghost last night in the woods, Supervisor Yu had been eating with Zhenzhen. She couldn’t have been in the woods as well. But then why was she pretending to be the female ghost? Perhaps room 106 carried a secret that she couldn’t share with others, and that’s why she deceived and scared the students.

After saying goodbye to Yaxian, I saw Xueqing and Miao Miao walk towards us.

“Ah Mu ge, why are you dressed like an old man?” Miao Miao circled around me, like I was a monkey on display.

“It’s a long story!” I laughed helplessly. Then I asked Xueqing, “Any movements on Prof Xiao’s end?”

Xueqing coldly and seriously responded, “There was nothing unusual with Prof Xiao, but I found out that his a.s.sistant, Zeng Qianyi, is missing a finger…”

“What? Do you have more details?”

“I thought it was strange before. Because she always wears gloves, it stuck in my mind. She was just washing her hands at the sink outside the toilets, and when she pulled off her glove, something fell out. Looking carefully, I realized that it was a fake finger. When I looked back at her hand, she was missing half of her middle finger. The ghost that got shot last night was also missing half of her middle finger. And the autopsy report for the two dead students also reported that the killer was likely missing a middle finger.”

“So now that we’re sure she’s one of the female ghosts, we should immediately arrest her,” Zhenzhen said excitedly.

“This alone isn’t proof that she’s the female ghost. Moreover, she’s got Prof Xiao’s backing, so we can’t act prematurely. If we beat the gra.s.s and alert the snake, it will be very hard to continue investigating later.” After thinking for a moment, I added, “Xueqing, would you be able to retrieve her saliva or hair?”

“You want to test her DNA?”

“Mm, there was blood at the scene of the shooting. If we can get a sample of her saliva or hair, we’ll be able to see if she is or isn’t the female ghost.”

Xueqing nodded slightly, “Okay. Getting her hair won’t be hard, but she has long hair, so it might not be that easy to get the hair follicle. But give me some time and it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll get to work now.”

“Do you want me to come along?” Zhenzhen asked.

“More people will just be more troublesome,” Xueqing said before she turned away and walked off quickly. After she left, Zhenzhen complained to me, “Xueqing really is something, like I’m more of a nuisance than I am helpful.”

“Although Xueqing jie is a little bit odd, she treats me really well.” Miao Miao watched as Xueqing walked away, and then she suddenly pulled at my shirt. “What should I do now?”

I snapped, “Follow us then. If you get lost, that’ll be more trouble.”

“If you guys didn’t watch out for me, I really would lose my way!” Miao Miao’s words nearly knocked us out.

Xueqing was taking care of Zeng Qianyi and Wei ge hadn’t arrived yet, so I decided to check out room 106 again, hoping to find out what secret Supervisor Yu was hiding.