Episode 17: The Marked One

The morning wind carried a chill that stung the face. It smelled of rust and rot. Someone had called the police: an early-morning jogger had stumbled on the bloody scene and been scared out of his wits.

By the time Situ Hengyi arrived, the hounds had stopped snarling. All that was left was the rustling of the police cordon in the wind, and the lonely, howling wind itself — enough to send a chill down anyone's spine.

The place had once been an abandoned, half-finished building. Now blood wound across the ground like a river, enough to make every hair on your body stand on end.

The grass had been churned into a mess, the wooden shed torn to splinters, and several hounds locked in iron cages, blood foam on their muzzles, their eyes still glinting red and vicious.

The body hung from a sculpture in the middle of the abandoned courtyard, its clothes ripped to ribbons, a wire still tied around its wrist — the Judge's signature mark.

Situ Hengyi took one look and turned away. For a moment, he felt his stomach turn.

Wang Yuan looked at the mangled corpse and immediately ran to the side and threw up. His face was deathly pale; he simply could not bear to watch. Such a bloody, brutal method of execution was practically a torture of the ancient kind — unbearable to look at.

Lin Fan, a candy between her teeth, studied the savage hound execution — a man bitten to death alive — and felt her stomach turn. "Boss, killing someone with hounds is a form of torture too."

Situ Hengyi pulled himself together and called out, "Where's the coroner?"

"Just finished the preliminary examination," Qin Lang said, examining the area around the body. Wearing a mask, he spoke in a low voice: "Time of death between 3 and 4 a.m. The deceased: Fan Zhiqi, age 31, male…"

Another officer added, "No sign of forced entry at the scene. The surveillance was completely cut off."

Situ Hengyi asked again, "Cause of death?"

"Massive blood loss and ruptured internal organs…" Qin Lang examined the body's limbs, his face calm, his voice lowered almost to a whisper. "Bitten to death alive by hounds."

At that, Wang Yuan ran to the side and threw up violently again. Lin Fan stood beside him, patting his back, and sighed, "Wang Yuan, your nerves are far too weak. You need to toughen up — you'll be seeing plenty more scenes like this."

The air froze. Situ Hengyi crouched down, his fingertips touching a card in the grass. It bore the Judge's mark printed in red — a pair of scales, with a human head weighing down one tilted end.

"It's him again," Situ Hengyi said in a low voice. "The Judge."

An officer came running, his face uneasy. "Team Leader Situ, there's a call from above."

"What do you mean?"

"They want us to stop here."

Situ Hengyi looked up and stared coldly at him. "Whose order?"

The officer swallowed. "The National Police Agency… directly. They said this case involves high-level investors, and public discussion must not be allowed to spread."

He froze for a few seconds, then suddenly laughed — a laugh as cold as shattered ice. "So we can't even examine the body."

"They'll send someone else to take over. They call it a 'special task force from above.'"

Situ Hengyi looked at the blood-soaked lawn and slowly rose to his feet, gazing at the morning light in the distance. Mist drifted through the early sunshine, and he could hardly see the road ahead.

"A special task force?" he repeated coldly. "Or a cover-up squad?"

In the distance, the sun slowly rose, shining on the ruined wall, where a line of fresh red writing had been spray-painted —

"The ninth judgment. He wasn't the only one mauled to death by dogs."

Situ Hengyi's expression darkened. He took out his phone to contact his inside source, only to find the signal blocked. He looked up: a drone hovered in the sky, its camera pointed straight at him, and a new line of text appeared on the screen: "Officer Situ, you're next."

Lin Fan stared at the line of text on the screen, struggling to hide her excitement. "How thrilling!"

Wang Yuan looked at the words, his heart jolting, a chill running through his whole body. He stammered, "We're… probably… up against… more than just… the Judge…"

Situ Hengyi had been ordered by his superiors not to touch the case any further, but he refused to accept it. This was plainly a deliberate cover-up of the truth.

Qin Lang and a few colleagues placed the body into a body bag. He turned to look at the officer, having completed the preliminary examination. Seeing everyone's gloomy faces, he took off his rubber gloves and removed his mask, and said calmly, "I've finished examining the body. Only an autopsy can confirm it — but a corpse can talk."

Situ Hengyi said flatly, "No need. Someone else has taken over. Pack up!"

He was furious, but he had no control over the case — they had clearly stepped in.

The night was deep as a well. The lights in the police station corridor flickered, and in the distance came the sound of typing and telephones. Everything looked calm on the surface, but underneath it ran a dark current that could not be hidden.

Situ Hengyi stood outside the director's office. Light seeped through the crack of the door, a little dazzling. He thought of Qin Shaohua's warning — there was a mole inside the station — and looked up at the security camera, his face grave and calm.

He knocked on the door.

"Come in."

Su Yizhou sat on the sofa, a cigar half-burned in his hand, its ash piled up and unbroken. His brow was deeply furrowed. Seeing Situ Hengyi, he sighed. "Sit."

Situ Hengyi didn't move. The moment he opened his mouth, his voice was cold. "Director Su, I want to keep investigating Fan Zhiqi's case. This isn't a simple murder — there's an organization behind it, funding, a protection network. You know that better than I do."

Su Yizhou was silent for a moment, then slowly spoke. "I know what you're thinking, and I know what you've found. But this is not something we can touch."

"Not to be touched?" There was a hint of a smile in Situ Hengyi's voice. "The people who were murdered, the people who were judged — don't they deserve a truth?"

Su Yizhou looked up, his gaze heavy. "You think this is just the entertainment industry's dirty business? No — this has long since touched money, power, intelligence, politics, and the judiciary. Some people, you aren't even worthy of knowing their names."

Situ Hengyi clenched his fists, struggling to control his emotions. "All I know is that someone was murdered, and the whole world pretends not to see — even we are pretending to be blind."

Su Yizhou gave a bitter laugh and set down his cigar. "You're still too young, Situ. Justice isn't a sword; it's a thread — pull it tight, and it snaps."

He rose and walked to the window, the night falling across his back, and sighed. "We can't change anything. After all, they're the ones at the top of this system. It's only a few dead entertainers."

Situ Hengyi let out a cold laugh and asked, "So you've become one of them?"

Su Yizhou turned around, his face blank, and said slowly, "We can't change anything! Even if the case is solved, what then? A trusted colleague of mine once simply vanished. My home was bugged, and the media ran a 'corruption scandal' about me. Every step here is an abyss."

"So you chose silence?" Situ Hengyi's voice dropped, his eyes sharp as blades. "I won't."

Su Yizhou looked at his resolute gaze for a long moment, then said slowly, "If you investigate this case, you're not fighting one murderer — you're fighting the entire system. That's not courage; that's self-destruction. Yu Mengge's case was ruled an 'accident' long ago. All the files are sealed. Pulling them out is the same as declaring war on the entire upper echelon."

The room fell into dead silence.

Outside, the wind beat against the window like countless fingertips scraping across the glass, its howling sounding almost like someone weeping.

Su Yizhou added one more sentence, so low it was almost inaudible: "Take my advice — the truth isn't worth your life."

Situ Hengyi didn't answer. He simply stood up and walked to the door.

His hand on the doorknob, he said without looking back, "Maybe. But sometimes, silence is more terrifying than death."

The door swung open, and cold wind rushed in.

Su Yizhou watched the retreating figure, his eyes complicated. He picked up the cigar from the desk and took a drag, then turned and looked at the file bag on the desk, sealed with a red stamp. Its label read clearly: "Classification: Top Secret."

"Codename: The Yu Mengge Incident."

And at that moment, no one outside noticed —

Across the street, a drone hovered silently, its camera aimed at the third-floor window of the police station.

The familiar red words appeared on the screen again: "The judgment begins from within."

After leaving the director's office, Situ Hengyi went alone to the forensics room. Just sitting in the station made him feel suffocated, and right now he felt powerless. He nervously pulled out a cigarette and put it between his lips. He had quit smoking long ago, but he could not forget the oath he had sworn when he first joined the police — so it turned out that everything could be crushed by power.

Qin Lang finished his work and came out of the autopsy room. Seeing him sitting on the examination table, he was nearly scared to death. "Running to my place in the middle of the night — I thought you'd brought me another corpse."

Situ Hengyi, the cigarette between his lips, said coldly, "Why do the living lie?"

Qin Lang glanced at him, picked up the cold coffee on the desk and took a sip, then opened a box of candy, took one, and popped it into his mouth, relaxed and cheerful. "Because the living have desires. They're never satisfied with the present. When a person reaches the peak of power, money, wealth, status… they want even more. Human desire keeps growing until it turns a person into a monster."

Situ Hengyi stared blankly at the clock on the wall and said coldly, "I'm starting not to understand humans anymore."

Qin Lang clapped him on the shoulder, his tone stiff, a look of sorrow on his face. "Then just understand the dead."

Lin Fan had searched the whole station for Situ Hengyi. She had found an important clue, and she had heard from Wang Yuan that he had stormed out, seemingly after a row with Su Yizhou. She burst into the forensics room and shouted, "Boss, I've found a clue!"

Qin Lang shushed her. "Don't disturb my ghost friends!"

Situ Hengyi pulled himself together and composed his feelings. Seeing Lin Fan's excitement, he said in a low voice, "What clue?"

Lin Fan held a stack of documents, brimming with excitement. "You asked me to compile all the celebrity suicides in the entertainment industry. I found them all. Over these nine years, seventeen celebrities died of depression — falls, suicides, drug overdoses, all kinds. In the three years after Yu Mengge's death, quite a few celebrities took their own lives too, all officially ruled depression suicides. And three months ago — the week before Fang Jin was murdered — a third-tier celebrity died of alcohol poisoning in a bar!" She took out a report and continued, "This is a file from another precinct. This male star is called Han Huailin, a singer and actor who used to be an eighteenth-tier nobody. After the Yu case, he suddenly got a lot of resources. He also wrote a song, 'The Seventh Shadow' —" She took out her phone and played the song:

Whose voice whispers in slumber,

Saying the seventh shadow is the real you?

The dream mirror shatters, and reality rewinds with it.

At the end of the darkness, I see someone weeping for me.

The red carpet reflects a face that is not mine.

Flashbulbs pierce the lies like bullets.

Memory is edited into broken fragments,

Who is behind the curtain, rewriting me over and over?

I walk into that night's art gallery,

Every painting hides an answer I dare not look at.

Whose signature is on the altar, imitating my handwriting?

Or is the "me" asleep in my heart the one weeping?

If you can solve this riddle:

Who died once in a dream?

My mind will speak my true name for me,

But reality wipes it away.

Whose shadow breathes behind the light?

Saying only on the seventh waking can I see myself clearly.

Pain repeats like a ritual, disordered like a judgment,

I've forgotten which room holds the door out.

The internet's gun barrels are aimed at me,

A thousand pairs of eyes take turns pushing me toward the abyss.

Some smile, some stay silent,

Some bear it for me in the dark.

If a dream is an escape,

Could reality be another funeral?

The seventh shadow says: "The day you meet me is where the story truly begins."

Listening to the song, Situ Hengyi had a premonition — this was not a song a third-tier artist could have written. He said in a low voice, "This is a song Yu Mengge wrote. How did it become Han Huailin's song?"

Lin Fan explained, "After Yu Mengge died, all the copyrights to his work became Tianze Entertainment's property. This song had only lyrics written, no melody, so Tianze Entertainment gave it to Han Huailin, and he shot to fame on it — but he never wrote another song after that." She took out another document, her expression grave, and pointed at the meaning in the lyrics. "These lyrics are strange. I had a lyricist check them. The song feels very oppressive, but it also seems to be passing on some kind of message — the places Yu Mengge went before his death, the art gallery… which place is it?"

Qin Lang handed a candy to Lin Fan, looked at the lyrics, thought for a moment, and said calmly, "This song feels strange. It's trying to convey some information."

Lin Fan took a candy and popped it into her mouth, then continued her analysis. "Boss, I found something else strange. Han Huailin died of alcohol poisoning in a bar. His life story isn't clean — he was tangled up in several scandals. His agency is Jiang Yanzhou's company." She laid out the files of several other celebrities. "These celebrities also died in 'accidents.' According to colleagues at other precincts, they were all depression suicides — but strangely, none of them were Tianze Entertainment artists. They all belonged to another company. Their chairman is Lu Citang, though it has some cooperation with Tianze Entertainment."

Seeing no one raise a question, she took out another stack of documents and spread them across the table. "Brother Xiong found this through other colleagues — in the underground warehouse in Zone 17B, there are stacks of files on past artists, each one tagged with how the artist died."

Situ Hengyi looked at the list of names on the documents, and at the few people connected to the case. "Lin Fan, look into this Jiang Yanzhou, and this Lu Citang — are they human or ghosts?"

Qin Lang looked indifferent as he flipped through the documents, took a sip of his cold coffee, and shook his head. "The living really are exhausting!"

Situ Hengyi looked at the documents and suddenly felt hope again. He had a bold idea. This web was far too big — but if he dug deep enough and never gave up, surely one day he would find the light. And then he thought of someone — Qin Shaohua.