How strange that this fellow had suddenly become so conventional, adopting the demeanor of a call girl. A sound came over the line, indistinct but hurried.

"Wait a moment, let me jot this down," Xiao Cuo's tone was grave. As he spoke, he snatched a newspaper from in front of me, grabbed a pen from the holder, and rapidly scribbled on the blank space: "Wang Li Alley, No. 215, Unit 703, Changqing Street."

After a few clipped sentences, Xiao Cuo slammed the phone down and shouted toward Zhang Jiewei in the small office, "Team Leader Zhang! Something's happened on Changqing Street, Lord Jiang wants us over there!"

Before Xiao Cuo's words had fully landed, the glass door burst open, and Zhang Jiewei was standing before him the instant the sentence finished. "What is it?"

"I don't know, Lord Jiang didn't say."

By now, Zhang Jiewei was at the office entrance, snapping at Xiao Cuo, "What are you waiting for? Move it!" He then threw a parting shot over his shoulder, "Wang Lei, if you can go, then go. No pressure."

Frankly, I had zero interest, but his words stung. What did he mean, if you can go? As if I were some cripple. If anyone else had said it, I would have gracefully collapsed and taken the honorable fall. But coming from Zhang Jiewei, it was different.

I stuffed the newspaper from the desk into my pocket and slowly pushed myself up from the chair. Zhang Jiewei and Xiao Cuo had already vanished. I walked toward the door, step by measured step. Suddenly, Gao Jianning's voice came from behind me: "Brother Lei, forget it. You stay here. If things get really bad, I'll go instead."

Feng Siyan chimed in, "Officer Wang, you really should remain here. In case of any other sudden incidents, someone needs to be on hand to handle things."

Feng Siyan and Gao Jianning were computer experts at the Municipal Bureau, carrying heavy loads of responsibility. Unless a direct order came from higher up, neither of them would undertake secondary assignments. Even matters concerning computers for the Special Operations Office were considered secondary for them. Rumor had it they were currently tracking a case involving hackers breaching secret municipal documents.

I glanced at both of them—no words, no expression—then woodenly turned and pushed the door open, walking out.

When I reached the front of the Bureau, Zhang Jiewei and Xiao Cuo were long gone. I stepped out onto the street and mindlessly made my way to the bus stop. I wasn't in a rush to get to the crime scene; I just needed to appear before Zhang Jiewei because of those words he'd spoken.

Changqing Road was a major thoroughfare in Anyin City, bustling with traffic, so I quickly found the correct bus number on the signpost. After waiting about half an hour, the bus arrived, swaying leisurely like an old auntie loaded down with eggs. I stepped into the basket of eggs and swayed toward Changqing Road.

Arriving at Changqing Road, I casually asked at a street stall for directions and soon found Wang Li Alley. It was a perfectly ordinary lane, flanked by high-rises on both sides, the passage between them perhaps four or five meters wide. After walking in over a hundred meters, I began to see a cluster of jumbled residential buildings, the house numbers appearing above the entrances.

Approaching the very end, I spotted the sign for No. 215. It was a mid-rise building, perhaps a dozen stories tall. A small tobacco stall sat by the entrance to the stairwell. Judging by the look in the vendor's eyes, this was indeed the location of the incident, and several police cars were parked in the wider area ahead.

In the past, I definitely would have stopped to chat with the tobacconist for a moment, but I lacked the inclination now. I stepped into the stairwell, and the light immediately dimmed. Being the first floor, the ceiling was relatively low, lending a suffocating atmosphere.

I quickened my pace to the elevator. The doors slid open just as I reached them, and a figure rushed out, nearly knocking me over.

I looked up, slightly surprised. It was Xiao Cuo.

Xiao Cuo saw me, froze for an instant, then broke into a wide, ingratiating smile. "Brother Lei! Sorry! Didn't bump you anywhere serious, did I?"

Xiao Cuo was the only person in the Special Operations Office, besides Gao Jianning, for whom I held genuine warmth. Though he obsessed over ghosts and spent his days buried in dusty historical files, I felt his nature was purer than Jiang Haitao's and more straightforward than Zhang Jiewei's.

I nodded, saying nothing. Xiao Cuo kept smiling. "It's mostly wrapped up upstairs. Why don't you come with me to grab something, and then we can come back."

He knew my relationship with Zhang Jiewei was perpetually adversarial, so his intention was clear. Yet, my usual suspicion detected a flaw: if things upstairs were nearly finished, Zhang Jiewei would also be leaving. Cleanup crews were always assigned separately. The fact that Zhang Jiewei was still upstairs while Xiao Cuo came down alone to fetch "something" implied that whatever he was fetching was vital for the scene processing, and he intended to return.

That was the strange part. Xiao Cuo was just an ordinary officer in the Special Operations Office. Scene processing was handled by specialized forensics and evidence recovery personnel. Why the urgent need for him to fetch something? It couldn't be that the forensic team forgot their evidence bags and sent him on an errand.

Seeing my questioning gaze, Xiao Cuo gave a mysterious smile and then firmly took my arm, leading me out of the stairwell.

The police car was parked about ten meters ahead. We got in, and Xiao Cuo released the clutch, the car moving forward.

"What are we fetching?" My curiosity finally managed to tear a small corner from my silence.

"A small thing, hard to explain quickly," Xiao Cuo replied while maneuvering through the narrow alley.

I asked no further, and Xiao Cuo offered no explanation. The police car wailed, speeding through the busy streets of Anyin City. After a while, Xiao Cuo suddenly yanked the steering wheel, turning into a side street—this was not the route back to the Bureau.

"Where are we going?" My words were as sparse as they could possibly be.

"My place." Xiao Cuo wasn't a man of many words either. I suspected he spoke more to ghosts than to people.

Xiao Cuo wasn't a local. He rented a room in a very modest housing complex; the rent was nearly eight hundred yuan a month, and I heard he also sent money home for his sister's schooling, so his lifestyle was extremely frugal.

There was no security guard at the entrance of this complex. The police car pulled up alongside an aged building, and Xiao Cuo ran upstairs. In a moment, he was back down, holding a cloth bundle that bulged with something unknown.

I was puzzled. What kind of scheme was this fellow hatching?

Xiao Cuo chuckled. "A little gadget, but maybe useful today."

I had no patience for pleasantries and snatched the bundle, pulling it open. Inside was a circular, semi-metallic object connected to a thin wire. The other end of the wire led to a meter box. It looked like a miniature satellite dish.

"Brother Lei, be careful not to mess up the coil."

I pointed to the round metal object. "This is the coil? What kind of coil?"

"A detection coil."

"Detecting what?"

"Heh heh, detecting... things the naked eye can't see."

I started to grasp the situation and pressed further, "Is the case up there caused by a ghost or a specter?"

Xiao Cuo nodded mysteriously. "It's possible."

If my foolish question were to reach the ears of those gossipy, eager-to-add-fuel-to-the-fire media outlets, I would instantly be stripped of my office under the weight of public opinion, and Xiao Cuo would be ruined, branded with every bizarre title imaginable. But that was the reality: the impossible was happening, and whether you believed it or not was irrelevant.

Suddenly, I felt that there was more than just Xiao Cuo and me in the car. I looked around. Xiao Cuo saw my unease and smiled. "When you're with me, they won't dare approach you."

My heart plummeted with cold dread: Does that mean if I'm not with you, they will come looking for me?

Fortunately, the car began moving just then, and the speed offered some measure of relief, as if what was rapidly receding outside the windows were not buildings and trees, but grinning, heart-ripping vengeful spirits.

Returning to Wang Li Alley on Changqing Road, nearly two hours had passed. I followed Xiao Cuo up to Unit 703 at No. 215. Even outside the door, a dense, overpowering stench of blood hit me—like a hog slaughterhouse. My heart filled with dark wonder; what kind of horrific massacre had unfolded inside? Pushing the door open, I instantly froze. This wasn't a room; it was a chamber of blood. The dark crimson color instantly seized every part of my vision, making me want to vomit.

But now, I was largely immune to everything. After the initial, instinctive shock, I returned to my usual blank demeanor, slowly stepping inside the blood-red room to search for any trace of Zhang Jiewei.

Only three people remained in the room. I spotted him immediately, sitting casually on a chair, doing nothing—behavior utterly out of character for him. But remembering what Xiao Cuo had said earlier, it made sense: it wasn't that he didn't want to do anything, but that there was nothing for him to do.

The focus now was on Xiao Cuo.

The moment Zhang Jiewei saw Xiao Cuo enter, he stood up immediately and asked, "Did you bring the item?"

Xiao Cuo nodded. Zhang Jiewei immediately addressed the other two men. "Old Zhang, Li, thanks for your hard work. You two head out first; we'll take it from here."

Old Zhang and Li didn't say much, just nodded, and then left.

After they left, Xiao Cuo closed the door and then took the detection coil out of the cloth bundle.

At that moment, I suddenly understood the true significance of establishing the Special Operations Office: it was Xiao Cuo. The thought seemed illogical, yet the facts suggested it was true.

In terms of criminal classification, there were fundamentally two categories: non-violent crime and violent crime. The Municipal Bureau had departments like the Economic Crime Investigation Division for the former, and the Criminal Investigation Bureau for the latter. If both types of crime were already carved up by existing departments, then the Special Operations Office was an unnecessary entity. Yet, it existed, which meant it had a purpose.

In other words, the cases it handled were neither non-violent nor violent crime, but a different form of criminality!

This form of crime could not possibly appear in textbooks, but that didn't mean it didn't exist.

Since it existed, someone needed to handle it, and among all the personnel in the Special Operations Office, I could find no one connected to it except Xiao Cuo.

He was the true protagonist?

Zhang Jiewei said, "Let's begin."

From start to finish, Zhang Jiewei did not look at me once, as if my presence or absence made no difference to him.

Xiao Cuo held the detection coil and began pacing around the entire apartment. My attention then followed his movements, focusing on the scene inside the room.

This was an ordinary three-bedroom, one-living room, one-kitchen, one-bathroom apartment. Perhaps a happy family of three once lived here, but now it was transformed into something monstrously terrifying.

The interior was stained everywhere with blood. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—all bore streaks of bright red. The red mixed with the white walls and the bright beige floor tiles made the room's entire palette bizarre and terrifying. The whole space felt like a sea of blood, visceral and raw. The white walls, divided by bloodstains, formed strange shapes, like white demons that swallowed their prey whole. Especially the hanging blood threads from the ceiling—long and not yet fully congealed, they swayed in the air like serpentine tongues, threatening to drip onto your neck if you weren't careful.

I dared not imagine what kind of savage slaughter had occurred in this utterly commonplace residence! Based on my experience, there must have been at least twenty liters of fluid splashed onto the walls, floor, and ceiling. The blood volume of a human body could never reach that quantity, unless one drained the blood of five grown men. Yet, according to Xiao Cuo, the deceased here was only one person, reported by his family upon their return.

I surmised the killer must have pulverized the victim’s flesh and bone into a slurry, mixed the fine bone fragments and viscera with the blood, and then painted it onto the walls, perhaps splashing it out, ladle by ladle.

The facts supported this, as there was no corpse found here, nor any footprints or suspicious traces. Even the Bureau's most skilled forensics expert hadn't discovered a single flaw.

I couldn't help but recall the murder case in the Jia University dormitory—the killer had made an escape through an unknown passage in mere seconds, a mystery that remained unsolved even after You Qiaolin was apprehended. I knew he would never talk, choosing instead to let us live forever in agonizing doubt, even in death.