Crazy Detective

Wu Qing Shan Interpol Brigade, Special Task Force Office. 8:00pm.

"Boss," Ran Tao said to Zhao Yu from the phone. "Both the top and bottom of the cliff, across the riverbank, and all the nearby villages and intersections are ready and guarded! I won't be going back tonight. I'll stay here and supervise everything. Tomorrow, we will continue to send technical teams to inspect the entire cliff…"

"Alright, good work, brother Tao!" Zhao Yu said politely before hanging up.

"Zhao Yu…" Miao Ying said, walking forward with a report in hand. "Forensics doctor Gao Facai just called and said he would be arriving tomorrow afternoon. He will also be coming in with several experts and professors from the Metropolitan University!"

"Okay!" Zhao Yu said, nodding. "Old Gao has really gone all out this time, even gathering all his old friends! When they're here, let the experts handle the bodies!"

"What about…" Miao Ying pointed to the yellow paper in front of Zhao Yu. "What did you find?"

"Ren Chen [1], Gui Chou [2], Bing Xu [3], Xin Mao [4]," Zhao Yu said, fanning out three pieces of yellow paper after he finished reading. They were copies.

It turned out that in addition to female corpse number one, the forensic doctor also found the same yellow paper in the shrouds of female corpses number two and number six. The written text on the yellow paper was the same across the three copies.

"This must be someone's Chinese eight characters of compatibility," Zhao Yu said. "This person was born at 6:00am on January 20th. However, the 'Renchen' written here can represent either 1952 or 2012.

"That means that this person can be sixty-six years old or six years old!"

"But whether it's sixty-six or six, the number cannot possibly be used to represent the deceased person! After all, they are young girls…" Miao Ying said. "So… what about the remaining bodies? Are there any more of these papers?"

"Yes!" Zhao Yu answered confidently, but his expression was unusually pained. "Except for female corpse number seven. Female corpses number one through number six all had the same yellow piece of paper with the same text written!"

"Wait!" Miao Ying said, giving a long sigh. An ominous shadow in her heart had become clouded. "Zhao Yu, things are not looking good!

"The person represented by these eight characters is probably the murderer!

"He killed the girls, put them inside the hanging coffin, and then put his own eight characters! There is obviously a deeper meaning behind all of this!"

"Right!" Zhao Yu said, feeling the same way. "I don't know whether this person is playing god or wants to be immortal. I have only seen things like this happen in ghost s before. Things like going against God, or extending their lifespan… but these are all s, after all!

"It's already the 21st century, how can there be anyone so stupid as to believe fengshui superstitions like this?"

"Hmm… did you find anything else on the yellow paper?" Miao Ying asked, taking a closer look at the sheets.

"No, I didn't find any fingerprints or dandruff," Zhao Yu said, shaking his head. "It seems that the murderer planned this all out very carefully!"

"The technical team said that this kind of yellow paper is too common to pinpoint its origins!" Zhao Yu said, pointing at the yellow paper. "Also, the red letters on the yellow paper are written in cinnabar. This kind of cinnabar is pretty standard as well. Fortune tellers, priests, amulet makers; they all use cinnabar too!

"It won't be easy to figure out its origins!

"Therefore, if we really want to investigate the birth date of the eight characters, there's only one way we can go about doing it!"

"We have to check who was born in 1952 or 2012, on January 20th, at 6:00am!" Miao Ying said without hesitation.

"Yes!" Zhao Yu said, nodding. His eyes showed admiration. "I think that since the murderer knew so much about the Seven Stars Hanging Coffins, the murderer is most likely a local!

"Whether the motive behind his murders was to seek immortality or to beat the heavens, if it was meant for him, then he is sixty-six years old. If it was meant for his children, then his child is six years old!"

"Okay. Zeng Ke is trying to match up the identity of the deceased. I'll do it!" Miao Ying said. "Wu Qing Shan county has less than one million people in total. I can give it a try!"

"Okay, but…" Zhao Yu nodded, then glanced at Zeng Ke in the distance. "Is there no news from Zeng Ke? Shouldn't he have something by now?"

"Hmm…" Miao Ying, too, looked in the direction of Zeng Ke.

"Leader, sister Miao!" After hearing Zhao Yu's comments, Zeng Ke quickly got up and said, "I have checked the entire database twice! Except for Geng Yaai, none of the remaining six girls have any matching information!"

"Huh? No way!" Zhao Yu and Miao Ying were both taken aback. Based on a normal situation, since finding Geng Yaai's information went so smoothly, the other people's information should have been easy to find too.

"How is that possible?" Miao Ying asked, shaking her head. "A child went missing. Did nobody report it? It can't be that nobody reported all six people, right?"

"Well… it is possible that the family did not report the case, but there are several other possibilities too!" Zeng Ke said reluctantly. "The first one being that the child was bought from other family members, so they couldn't easily report it!

"Secondly, these girls might be illegal immigrants from overseas!

"And lastly, uhm…" Zeng Ke said seriously. "I used photos to make the comparisons, but if these children have been missing for a long time, the photos used by the family members to make the missing child report may not be accurately matched!"

"Ah," Zhao Yu said, nodding. "I see. So, DNA is the most reliable!"

"Yes!" Zeng Ke said, nodding. "After the forensic doctors have collected the DNA of the deceased, I will immediately match it with DNA in the database for comparison. This will be the most accurate method!"

"Okay, make it quick!" Zhao Yu said, waving. "Since the case of the coffins has already been exposed, you should keep a cool head and think about it. By the way, the supervision…"

"There's still no news!" Zeng Ke said. "Leader, the supervising side does not look very optimistic. According to their current findings, the cliff above the hanging coffin is a dead end. On average days, even cars rarely reach there, not to mention people!

"If suspicious targets were found, someone would have already reported them!"

"I see… that means that the killer may not have descended from the top?" Zhao Yu asked.

Zhao Yu thought about this genuinely. He did not expect that things were far more complicated than he had previously imagined.

"Well, let's continue working!" Miao Ying said, gesturing. She and Zeng Ke each sat in front of a computer and began working on their respective tasks.

Tsch!

Zhao Yu pursed his lips and sat down slowly.

At that moment, the whiteboard used for analyzing the case had been prepped. Zhao Yu began adding information to the whiteboard when a knock once again came from the office door.

"Leader Zhao, Dr. Zhang asked me to bring this over to you," a colleague from the forensic team said, holding a stack of documents. "These are the preliminary reports on all seven corpses. Please take a look!"

"Oh, thank you!" Zhao Yu said, quickly taking the information and skimming through it.

However, even though he had only skimmed through it, Zhao Yu still subconsciously frowned.

Little did he know that the cause of death was utterly different from what he had predicted.

[1]: 29th year of the 60-year cycle

[2]: 50th year of the 60-year cycle

[3]: 23rd year of the 60-year cycle

[4]: 28th year of the 60-year cycle