Episode 21: The Old Case Reopened

Situ Hengyi received a call from Qian Musheng. The other man's voice was extremely urgent, and he sounded frightened, as though he had made a major discovery — but he only got halfway through before Situ heard shouting and screaming. Had he been attacked?

He sat in the car, clutching the autopsy report, the paper creased from his grip, his thoughts unable to settle. He felt helpless, trembling, and thought: clearly the mastermind behind all this has made a move. One person, or a group — but organized, with a purpose. The deaths of those artists were probably no accident.

Qin Shaohua saw his face change and watched him sink into thought. He comforted him: “Qian Musheng is only a gossip blogger, and he loves to talk nonsense. Someone has set their sights on him.”

He stayed calm, driving steadily, and added, “It seems the other side is getting anxious!”

Situ Hengyi nodded, but did not immediately speak his mind. He believed none of this was coincidence — it had been planned long ago, and there might be even more darkness hidden behind it.

Qin Shaohua gazed out the car window at the scenery. The sun was setting, glowing a dark red, and he understood, too: the closer they came to the depths of the truth, the deeper the fear from the darkness — and what lay before them was an even darker abyss.

Late at night, police lights flashed. After the emergency call, officers rushed to the scene, and a crowd of onlookers had gathered downstairs. Everyone was talking: had Qian Musheng offended some high-ranking figure? His recent reporting had been too sharp, and he had been reporting on the Judge's murders all along. The neighbours' rumours began to spread in every direction—

Qian Musheng's apartment was on the outskirts of the city. Police had cordoned off the scene, and the corridor walls were covered in bloodstains and shattered glass.

After a long journey, Situ Hengyi and Qin Shaohua arrived at Qian Musheng's apartment. As they pushed the door open, the air still carried the smell of gunpowder and sleeping gas, and the floor was strewn with overturned chairs and torn photographs.

“No fatal wounds at the scene,” Qin Lang reported briefly. “Blunt force to the head, mild signs of suffocation, but… the attacker stopped at the last moment.”

Qin Shaohua crouched down to examine the scene, scanning every corner, when suddenly his gaze fell beneath the bed — a photograph, deliberately placed somewhere conspicuous. It was yellowed, seemingly from long ago, showing several senior executives of Tianze Entertainment in its early days.

He picked it up with a gloved hand, and his expression darkened in an instant. “This one… look at this man.”

Situ Hengyi leaned closer. In the centre of the photograph were eleven men smiling politely, one of them wearing black-framed glasses, with a gentle, refined air — but the signature on the back made his face change in an instant—

“Jiang Yanzhou — Yu Mengge's manager.”

Qin Lang looked at the photograph in their hands, tilted his head, and said listlessly, “I thought I'd get another body to pick up, but it turns out he's alive. The man's not dead!”

He had a sweet in his mouth, and went on, mumbling, “He was also Qiao Lingchuan's manager. Back then, it was he who announced Qiao Lingchuan's death to the public.”

Situ Hengyi murmured, “He was also Qiao Lingchuan's manager. They had the same manager. He was at the Tianze Entertainment press conference last time—”

A very bad feeling came over him, as though all the oxygen in his body were being drained away. His stomach churned with acid and his scalp prickled. What kind of person exactly was Jiang Yanzhou?

Qin Shaohua calmly turned the photograph over, and to his surprise, there was a line of clear handwriting on the back:

“Someone is covering up the truth for them. He is next.”

— the Judge.

The two men looked at each other, and in that moment, the air seemed to freeze.

Qin Lang packed up his instruments and, seeing their sorrowful expressions, turned and warned them, “Solving the case matters, but remember to eat. The living have to stay alive to be people.”

In the hospital, Qian Musheng lay in bed, barely conscious, his voice trembling: “He… he wore a mask, dressed all in black… He saved me. He told me to give you the photograph… and said the truth never dies in a lie.”

Qin Shaohua's gaze turned cold. “The Judge… that name appears again.”

Situ Hengyi gripped the photograph tightly and said in a low voice, “Jiang Yanzhou… Nine years ago he was Qiao Lingchuan's manager, and three years ago he signed Yu Mengge. Both of them are dead, both deaths ruled accidents — and what a coincidence, they had the same manager. He may be the key that links the two cases.”

Qian Musheng spoke again in a trembling voice: “They… they… want to cover up not the truth, but… their crimes…”

Situ Hengyi said coldly, “Tonight I'll have Wang Yuan come and keep watch.”

With that, he left the room, as though behind him an invisible net was slowly opening — and everyone drawn into the game would be caught in the final sweep—

Qin Shaohua folded his arms, keeping a cool head, and stood behind him. He glanced at the time and said gently, “Let's go get something to eat nearby. We've been rushing all day. We're run ragged.”

After dinner, the two men sat in the car without saying a word, both lost in deep thought.

Qin Shaohua took out his laptop, opened it, and looked at an email that had just arrived. The corners of his mouth lifted, and as he tapped at the keyboard, he said calmly, “Officer Situ, my informant has sent intelligence.”

Situ Hengyi took the laptop he handed over and read the email:

“All the money Tianze laundered flowed overseas to the same account, and the user of that account is Jiang Yanzhou.”

He murmured, “Jiang Yanzhou! What kind of person is he, exactly?”

He looked down at the man in the photograph, and at Tianze's senior executives. What was this photograph trying to reveal? What was the Judge trying to warn them about?

Outside the window, thunder rolled, and lightning lit up the handprints left on the glass, like some silent mark—

Rain poured down in sheets, and the city was drenched once more. The night was filled with thunder and lightning, enough to make one's heart pound with fear — and yet it also seemed like the furious roar of the victims, crying out in anger from the underworld—

Someone in the shadows was pulling the strings of fate, while “the Judge” seemed to be one step ahead of the police, beginning his reckoning.

The night was as thick as ink, like the truth hidden behind fog — pitch black, suffocating, as though it might choke the breath out of a person.

Situ Hengyi returned to the police station and sank into silence, with only the light in the records room still on. Remembering Qin Shaohua's warning that the station had already been infiltrated and no one could be trusted, he thought for a moment, looked up at the clock on the wall, and felt each tick of the second hand pierce his chest like a blade, stabbing at his heart. Then he turned toward the surveillance cameras, and the red dot blinked again. His phone received another text message: “Situ Hengyi, do you still want to keep investigating?”

Signed: the Judge.

He looked back at the camera, lowered his head, and tapped a few keys. Looking around, he saw that he was the only one left in the office — his colleagues had all gone home. He stood up, picked up a colleague's plain clothes and put them on, avoided the cameras, and opened the sealed metal door.

He knew he was crossing a line.

But if the truth could only exist inside a sealed evidence bag, then this world was already finished. He had to find those sealed-away truths.

Behind the filing cabinet hid a discarded mainframe, its label bearing an old case code. He connected his laptop and, using an offline cracking program, slowly exported the data.

Lines of code flickered across the screen, and finally a familiar phrase popped up:

[Project M-17: The Yu Mengge Incident]

The folder's files were divided into three parts—

“Internal Investigation Team Communications,” “Death List,” and “Flow of Funds.”

He opened “Internal Investigation Team Communications” first.

A dozen or so encrypted message records jumped onto the screen, the senders identified only by code names—

A-01, A-03, A-09…

One of them made his fingertip pause.

“A-03, Su YZ confirmed. The operation begins at three in the cold morning. Target code name: Meng.”

In that moment, the air itself seemed to freeze.

— Su YZ — Su Yizhou.

He could hardly believe it: the chief's name appearing in this encrypted network.

But in his experience, an abbreviation like this was almost never a coincidence.

Just then, the screen suddenly flickered, and the system popped up a warning: “External intrusion alert.”

Situ Hengyi immediately cut the connection.

But he was a step too late — the mainframe suddenly let out a piercing electrical whine, and then the whole machine began to smoke and destroy itself.

The room fell into darkness. He gazed calmly around and took some of the data with him.

He looked up, and the red light on the camera outside the door lit up again.

“They know I'm investigating.”

His breathing quickened, and he immediately tidied the scene and left the records room.

Both sides of the corridor were dead silent, with only the faint glow of screens flickering. He held his breath, and to his surprise, he felt afraid inside the police station itself.

When he reached the stairwell, his phone vibrated, and an anonymous message popped up:

“Do you think Su Yizhou is the mastermind? He is only a tool. The real one pulling the strings is right beside you.”

Signed: the Judge.

He froze, the area around him empty of anyone.

Wind seeped in from the stairwell, carrying a faint smell of blood. Following the smell, he found the door of the interrogation room downstairs slightly ajar.

Inside, the electric light flickered on and off.

On the table lay a USB drive, and beside it a sticky note bearing only five words—

“See clearly who is the dog.”

He took the USB drive and the note, and only when he reached a blind spot in the surveillance did he feel at ease, steadying his breathing.

Situ Hengyi plugged the USB drive into his computer. The screen flashed, and what appeared was surveillance footage from the police station.

In the footage was the colleague he trusted most — Luo Jin.

That night, two hours before Yu Mengge was killed, Luo Jin had also appeared at the crime scene, with an unlicensed black car behind him — and the figure in the driver's seat was Su Yizhou.

A chill ran down Situ Hengyi's spine, the veins on the back of his hand bulging, a surge of stomach acid rising as his knuckles turned white. In his mind, every clue wove itself into a net at that moment, and all the suspicion, all the lies, all the murders, pointed to one thing — infiltration from within.

He immediately pulled himself together and watched the surveillance footage carefully once more. It turned out the Yu case had been suppressed all along because the police themselves were involved in it, and from the very beginning, every direction his investigation had taken had been deliberately misled. He thought back: after Luo Jin joined the force, he had always been diligent and meticulous, never careless — and yet he turned out to be the mole—

That night he could not sleep for a long time. He sat in his office all night without closing his eyes, staring blankly at the computer screen, cigarette butts and ash scattered across the desk, his heart unable to settle.

By then, his colleagues had come in to work. Lin Fan saw him sitting there, motionless, stepped forward, and patted him on the shoulder, saying in a low voice, “Boss, what's wrong with you?”

Wang Yuan came in as well, a backpack on his back. Seeing his pale face, he stepped forward and said worriedly, “Team leader, are you all right?”

Something in Situ Hengyi shifted. His eyes moved as he watched Luo Jin come in to work as well. Doing his best to stay calm, he said coolly, “Last night, I spent the night reading files. I'm a bit tired. I'll go home and rest first. You two keep following up on the case.”

Then he went to Qin Lang's forensic room and lay down on the autopsy table. The cold metal bed sent a chill through his body. When Qin Lang walked into the morgue, he was nearly startled out of his wits. Clutching his chest, he said, “Situ, can you stop pretending to be a corpse to scare people?”

Seeing him lying motionless on the autopsy table, Qin Lang said again, “You've been rattled!”

He did not answer right away. He only stared at the ceiling, took a deep breath, and after a long while, finally spoke: “Qin Lang, how many bodies have you examined?”

Qin Lang tidied up the previous night's records and said, looking down, “Too many to count. Some with severed arms, some reduced to mincemeat, some rotted through, dismembered, and some cooked into pieces…”

He listed in one breath all the gruesome forms the bodies he had seen had taken. “Situ, what kind of bottleneck have you run into?”

Situ Hengyi asked again, “Do corpses really speak?”

Qin Lang replied, “The living lie, but corpses never lie!”

He walked over, picked up a sweet from the table, and said with a cold laugh, “Whatever troubles you, eat a sweet, and everything starts over.”

Situ Hengyi sat up from the autopsy table, took the sweet from his hand, and asked coldly, “Do you believe this world has karma?”

Qin Lang took off his jacket, put on his white coat, his cap and his mask, and turned to look at him. “I'm a forensic doctor, not a fortune-teller. Beyond science, I can't say — after all, that is an unsolved world.”

Situ Hengyi jumped down from the autopsy table, pulled himself together, and asked again, “Aren't you an expert on ‘atypical death’? What is your idea of death?”

Qin Lang took off his mask, his eyes widening as he looked at him, and shook his head, saying calmly, “Something's off. You're acting strange today!”

Situ Hengyi asked again, “You still haven't answered my question.”

Qin Lang's face turned solemn, his eyes darting, and he said with a cold laugh, “For a living person, death is a kind of release — what Buddhism calls the completion of this life's cultivation. Of course, if you have done every evil deed, you will naturally go to hell.”

Just then, Situ Hengyi's phone rang. Lin Fan called to say she had decoded the meaning of the lyrics of ‘The Seventh Shadow.’ He told Lin Fan to come to the forensic room and explain in detail, warning her that no one else must know.

About twenty minutes later, Lin Fan and Wang Yuan arrived at the forensic room together. It was their first time walking into such a grim and terrifying morgue — Lin Fan in particular was trembling — that they would discuss a case in a place like this was something only the team leader could have thought of.

Qin Lang watched them discuss the progress of the case, standing alone to one side and listening to their detailed explanations. Lin Fan took out the meaning of the lyrics she had decoded. “This is a song that hints at the last place Yu Mengge went. This seventh shadow means he went to a place where, before his death, he saw many dark things. That place is an art gallery, a place like an altar. It means his death was arranged by someone. Find that place, and you'll find the breakthrough.”

Wang Yuan stared at it for a long time without understanding, scratching his head. “Lin Fan, there's no address written on this!”

Lin Fan's face flushed with anger, and she knocked him on the head. “This is imagery. The lyricist deliberately made it hard to understand. And this is only half a song — there should be another song, one Yu Mengge never released.”

Qin Lang had understood by now from their analysis, and said with a cold laugh, “The silver needle — the killer kills with a silver needle, and that is also a hint for you. Now everything can be connected. Those dead artists were all treated as a kind of offering.”

Lin Fan turned back to look at Qin Lang, and as she looked at the timeline of the dead artists, it suddenly dawned on her. “Doctor Qin, you really are a master at solving cases.” She laid out all the names and arranged them into a timeline. “Boss, it all started nine years ago. The first was Qiao Lingchuan, then Wang Lingli, Yang Lin, Ma Yan… Every so often, an artist dies. If my guess is right, they must have a system for killing on a regular schedule.” She took out Yu Mengge's photograph. “Yu Mengge died three years ago, and in these three years, three more artists died one after another. The Judge said he would ‘judge’ seventeen people. Fan Zhiqi is the ninth, Shen Yao is the seventh, and Du Feng is the eighth — which means five died before them, and Fang Jin should be the sixth. But the strange thing is, those five weren't all celebrities, though they were all connected to this circle.” She took out another document. “These two both died in car accidents. They were investors.”

Situ Hengyi looked carefully at the list, and at the police footage he had seen before, and said coldly, “Do you still want to investigate this case?”

Lin Fan replied, “Investigate. Why not? Those victims need justice.”

Wang Yuan added, “Team leader, our job is to solve cases and give the victims the truth.”

Situ Hengyi said in a deep voice, “This case is not that simple.”

Lin Fan and Wang Yuan said in unison, “We know. There is a ghost inside the police station.”

Qin Lang leaned against the wall, his arms folded, watching their discussion, and blurted out, “From now on, you can come to my place often.”