Chapter 102 - 100: A... Dwarf?

The cuteness threshold—it’s a phenomenon produced by the body’s self-regulating systems.

Though it’s a protective mechanism, its outward manifestation can make a person seem demonic.

"When the threshold is reached, it triggers a paradoxical psychological reaction. But there are many reasons why that might happen."

"The killer is clearly filled with hatred, yet they only targeted the victim’s most beautiful body parts. In other words, their hatred was born from the beauty of those parts."

Xu Huo muttered, looking down at the rotting corpse on the ground.

Though the October weather was already cool, there were still some maggots.

The corpse’s face had been smashed to a pulp, which, under the circumstances, had become a perfect breeding ground for maggots.

A few maggot casings were visible, along with some maggots that had frozen to death.

And just a few days ago, this now-revolting face had appeared before the camera like a graceful swan, adored by countless people.

"Yes. This relates to what I was saying about the third cause for the cuteness threshold’s protective mechanism to trigger: striking a nerve, causing the person a certain amount of pain."

Xu Huo added.

For example, when people are arguing, ordinary insults just make someone annoyed or angry. Even if two people are just slinging mud at each other, there aren’t many other emotions involved.

But if a particular insult suddenly hits its mark—like calling someone a cuckold... then the anger will undergo a qualitative leap.

That’s what you call true rage. Their subsequent actions will become much more extreme.

The key takeaway is this: the reason for the rage is that the insult matched the person’s own experience.

"You can think of it as a formula. The reason the killer had such a strong reaction to the parts they attacked is that it related to them personally—it struck a nerve."

"It could have been a word or a fact, but ultimately, it had to be something personal."

"But no matter what it was, if it leads to murder, it needs time to fester. Only time can make a person anxious, anxiety can make them think, and only then do they dare to kill."

Drifting for a moment, Xu Huo brought the topic back to his earlier point.

"So, here’s the question: How could a killer with the identity and age we’ve predicted have experienced so much?"

He used Song Si as an example.

At first, he was resentful toward his boss, but his attitude was weak. He was angry but felt helpless.

It wasn’t until the passage of time had tortured him, little by little, letting the emotions build up inside him, that he finally exploded, resulting in a gruesome, bloody tragedy.

"Experienced so much?"

"The killer targeted her appearance, so their experiences were probably related to appearance as well."

Li Jianye’s brow furrowed.

Honestly, for someone in that age group, experiences related to appearance might involve things like choosing friends based on looks or giving someone the cold shoulder, but it would hardly lead to such an extreme reaction.

The time frame is too short. Issues of appearance don’t typically cause such a massive eruption of negative emotion in a brief period.

It’s something that builds up over time, an accumulation of small, malicious feelings that eventually warps the psyche.

It can’t inflict the same kind of massive, short-term psychological trauma as, say, a broken leg or a severed hand.

"So our information is wrong again?"

Qian Hua took a shallow breath, his brow knitting together.

"The results of our deduction conflict with the information from the first crime scene, specifically regarding the physical profile and information we constructed for the killer," Wang Hu said after a moment’s thought, organizing his ideas.

"But it’s not all wrong."

"Which part is right?"

Previously, the profile we constructed set the killer as being one-point-three meters tall, under ten years old, and having experienced precocious puberty.

But now, our deductions tell us the killer needed time—time to absorb a great deal of external negativity before their psyche could be twisted into that of a psychopath.

Psychopaths... have prerequisites, too!

An ordinary deviant might be born that way, but an extreme, twisted psychopath must have endured a long period of internal struggle before finally breaking.

Is the killer psychopathic enough?

Psychopathic? In Wang Hu’s decades of experience, few cases involved a killer who could surpass this one in sheer depravity.

To think they would rape someone and then slice open their thigh...

"Let’s make a comparison."

"Find the parts that match, and then use that as a basis to filter out the conflicting, incorrect information."

Xu Huo thought for a moment and offered a method.

"In our two lines of reasoning, what points of information match?"

Li Jianye paused, his brow furrowed. "Appearance?"

"Exactly. Appearance."

Xu Huo nodded.

"In the first deduction, we determined the killer’s external characteristics: a height of one-point-three meters."

"In the second deduction, we derived the psychological factor: that the killer targeted the victim’s more beautiful features because of their own appearance."

"The former is a physical defect, and the latter is an action resulting from that physical defect!"

It was a closed logical loop.

The second point closed the loop for the first, and the first became the prerequisite for the second.

"We can’t be certain that all our information is true. But when two separate lines of reasoning lead to the same conclusion, its credibility is bound to be higher than the rest."

"So let’s take these two pieces of information as our foundation. For now, we’ll treat them as completely correct and use them to filter the other clues."

Xu Huo began to speak, then paused, thought for a moment, and continued:

"First, the age. The killer’s presumed age doesn’t align with the second deduction—the psychological factor. So, let’s cross that out for now."

"If we cross that out, then..."

Qian Hua’s brow tightened. "We cross out precocious puberty too?"

The earlier conclusion was that the killer could leave behind fluid at that age because of precocious puberty.

But now that the prerequisite for that piece of information has been overturned, the conclusion must be overturned as well.

"Correct. What we’re facing now is not a young, precocious child."

Xu Huo nodded.

"But rather, a psychopath of unknown age with an extremely warped mind!"

"What about the school?"

Li Jianye, standing behind Qian Hua, looked at Xu Huo upon hearing this. "Cross out the school too?"

The school was full of younger children, and when they were guessing the killer’s age and physique, they had suspected the killer might be hiding among them.

Furthermore, the first crime scene was not far from the school.

And since the victim was lured ’voluntarily’ into the boys’ restroom, the school became even more suspicious.

Li Jianye had been investigating the school. If they were to cross off this lead now, then he...

"The school..."

Xu Huo pondered for a moment, then shook his head. "Keep it for now. Continue investigating."

He thought of a disease, a very particular one. If the perpetrator met its criteria...

Then the killer could absolutely be hiding in the school.

"If that’s the case, then the killer is an adult? An adult less than one-point-three meters tall?"

Qian Hua couldn’t help but stare at the others in astonishment.

One-point-three meters was their conservative guess.

The killer was quite possibly one-point-two meters, or maybe not even that tall.

An adult who isn’t even one-point-two meters tall?

"What kind of person is that!?"

Wang Hu, however, wasn’t so bewildered. He looked down at the base of the victim’s thigh on the ground, his brow furrowed.

"A dwarf?"

He offered a guess.

"A dwarf? What’s a dwarf?" Qian Hua paused slightly.

Xu Huo was taken aback and instinctively glanced at him, then he understood.

Qian Hua was a retired soldier. When he’d enlisted, he had been completely illiterate; he only learned to read a little during a literacy campaign.

Besides, in this era of limited information, ordinary people rarely knew about things beyond their immediate experience.

Things like dwarfism or other obscure topics—unless someone had explained it to Qian Hua or he had seen a person with the condition himself, he would never know.

For example, in ancient times, when information was scarce, an ordinary person seeing a dwarf might have dropped to their knees in fear, thinking they were seeing a monster.

It was the same for ordinary people in this period. The reason the older generation was often ignorant and stubborn was that the information you told them exceeded the scope of what they had seen and heard in their entire lives. Coupled with their pride as elders, they simply wouldn’t believe you.

It could be said that, in his previous life, the greatest blessing the internet brought to ordinary people was the exchange of information.

"It’s a disease, one that keeps the body from growing tall."

Xu Huo picked up a twig and drew a picture on the ground.

"This is the body of a normal person—normal proportions, normal height."

He sketched a normally proportioned human figure. The drawing wasn’t good, but it was easy to understand.

"And this is a dwarf."

He drew another figure, this one only as tall as the first one’s thigh.

"There are five main causes for the condition: genetics, endocrine disorders, nutritional deficiencies in infancy, intrauterine development issues, and other factors, like psychological ones."

"Any one of them could result in a person with disproportionately slender limbs, a short stature, but a normal-sized head."

The appearance of a dwarf is not conventionally attractive.

It’s like putting an adult’s head on an elementary schooler’s body, with the limbs of a kindergartener.

"So you’re saying, a person with this disease..."

The corner of Qian Hua’s eye twitched.

Some of the police officers who were searching the woods, swinging flashlights that looked like lightsabers, turned their heads slightly to look over.

"...would have the soul of an adult in the body of a child!?"

Xu Huo nodded. "That’s right."

Qian Hua’s reaction wasn’t surprising. It was just a sudden influx of information shattering his worldview.

For example.

Could you describe the life of a rich heir?

Cars? Alcohol? Houses? Fine dining? Women?

You can’t imagine it, because you’ve never seen it or heard of it.

And even those things, the cars and whatnot, you can only imagine them because you’ve seen them on the internet.

So if people like that, with some of their deviant pastimes, suddenly appeared before you... few would react much better than Qian Hua.

"What about the woman, then?"

Wang Hu wasn’t surprised. His position was high enough that he was privy to such information, far beyond what a typical captain might know.

He didn’t waste any time. His thoughts moved quickly, and his gaze locked onto another point.

"If the killer is someone with dwarfism, then..."

"The woman who was at the crime scene—what is her relationship to him?"

The dwarfism theory fit the information that remained after their filtering, the closed logical loop.

And this information, in turn, complemented the detail about the female accomplice!

Unlike ordinary men, dwarfs are physically weaker. It would be impossible for one to overpower two victims.

Therefore, the need for an accomplice—the woman they’d speculated about—becomes clear.

"The information is messy, and their relationship is hard to deduce. For now, let’s turn our attention elsewhere..."

Xu Huo shifted the topic to another point. He narrowed his eyes and posed a question.

"The killer..."

"How did he know the victim existed?"