Chapter 128 - 115: The Shocking Identity of the Killer

The two pieces of information left everyone reeling.

A man like that...

How were they supposed to catch him in the city!?

And they had to do it without any innocent casualties!

"When did he get out of prison?"

Xu Huo suppressed his thoughts and continued to press for information.

"A month ago," Qian Hua said.

"The police tried to contact him, but they couldn’t reach him."

’A month ago...’

It fit the case timeline perfectly.

’Well, that’s just great.’

They could be almost certain he was connected to the case. All they lacked was direct evidence to prove he was the murderer.

If he was, then...

Then what stood before the Zhaozhou City criminal police—a force of about a hundred officers of mixed quality, many of them civilian contractors—was...

...a special recon soldier who was "rigorously selected," the "king of his regiment," the "cream of the crop"; who had "endured hellish training," been "selected for a special forces unit," and undergone "over a decade of high-pressure training"; a "41-year-old man in his prime," a "recon soldier," "driven by a vendetta for his family’s annihilation," and "exceptionally gifted"!

A sense of suffocation suddenly enveloped everyone.

Even Li Jianye felt the air grow thin, as if he couldn’t get enough breath.

It couldn’t be helped. He had been a soldier, so he knew exactly what a man of this caliber represented.

It was like...

...you were watching a cutscene in a video game. The scene wasn’t over, but when you moved the camera, you saw the boss’s health bar had already appeared, even though you couldn’t see the boss itself...

"Don’t panic. Now that we have his information, we can catch him!"

Seeing the dazed looks on the faces around him, Xu Huo reassured them in a low voice.

At his words, Li Jianye and the others snapped out of it, but their expressions remained bitter.

Seeing this, Xu Huo didn’t dwell on it and asked another question.

"Is Liu Wen’s body still here?"

"Yes. Because her face was unrecognizable, the traffic police couldn’t confirm her identity, so her body has been at the crematorium and hasn’t been cremated."

Qian Hua explained.

During the "Corpse Repository" case investigation, Xu Huo had mentioned this before.

The bodies of "Jane Does"—those whose identities couldn’t be confirmed—are usually kept in the hospital morgue for a while.

If the morgue drawers are full, they are transferred to a crematorium for storage.

If no one claims the body after several months or over a year, it will be cremated, and the ashes placed in an urn.

"Give me the address!"

Xu Huo said.

"Chunquan Road, Zhaozhou City!" Qian Hua answered without hesitation.

Xu Huo didn’t hesitate either. He clipped the walkie-talkie to his chest, got into the car, and sped toward the funeral home.

Li Jianye followed behind him, while the others were dispatched to other areas.

「Eleven o’clock at night.」

SCREECH!

Along with the sound of screeching brakes, a tire mark appeared on the ground.

Xu Huo opened the car door and strode quickly toward the cold, grim-looking door ahead.

As soon as he opened the door, he saw Qian Hua, who had been waiting for him. He was sitting on a chair and quickly stood up when he heard the noise.

"It’s in the morgue."

He didn’t waste any words, pointing out the location directly before leading the way.

After a series of twists and turns, the group arrived at the morgue.

The morgue was filled with caskets of various sizes, some raised high on racks. Inside lay corpses dressed in garish funeral attire, their eyes closed, unmoving.

Xu Huo walked up to one of them and stopped.

He stopped in front of a drawer and reached out to pull it open.

The next moment, a body lying in the refrigerated drawer was pulled out.

It was a girl, nineteen years old.

She hadn’t been pretty in life. She was rail-thin and looked much older than her age. Her hands were covered in calluses, and her skin must have been rough even before she died.

Her face was a bloody, blurry mess, but after being in storage for so long, the smell of blood wasn’t strong. Thanks to the Funeral Director’s work, her original appearance could be vaguely discerned.

"Were these wounds from Cheng Yu?"

Xu Huo fell silent, his gaze suddenly shifting to her hands.

There were some old injuries on them, the kind that couldn’t be caused by a traffic accident.

"We’re not sure."

"But according to our interviews at the public school, Shen Miao was also treated this way. The method was the same."

Qian Hua said, careful not to make a definitive statement.

Xu Huo sucked in a breath.

He was getting a headache.

He could basically confirm that she was the focal point of the second part of the case—the conflict at the private school.

But that brought another problem.

If she really was the focal point, then the murderer was almost certainly her missing father, Liu Bo!

This man...

’He won’t be easy to deal with.’

Xu Huo wasn’t afraid of a one-on-one fight. Even two opponents at once wouldn’t be able to beat him.

But if the man didn’t fight one-on-one...

...then they were in big trouble.

"Notify the Armed Police and have them send people over, quickly!"

Xu Huo thought for a moment, his heart sinking further.

"Also, notify the civil police. Tell them to be ready to coordinate with the criminal police to make the arrest!"

The suspect’s killing pace was accelerating.

After seeing the file, Xu Huo suspected the man could maintain a high level of cognitive function without sleep, which made the situation even more difficult.

He could easily kill at three in the morning, the time when ordinary people are most exhausted and their guard is down!

"Damn it. When he killed the dean of discipline this afternoon, he didn’t try to hide anything."

Xu Huo suddenly remembered something, and his pupils contracted.

The dean’s crime scene was very bloody.

And there were a lot of clues!

What did clues mean to a man like him?

They meant exposure!

Before, that might not have meant much. But now, considering what they knew about his identity...

’He knows he’s going to be caught!’

Why?

For a recon soldier, exposure means capture. Hiding one’s tracks is the top priority. But he didn’t do that, which could only mean the opposite extreme...

"He’s given up on covering his tracks. He’s preparing to take everyone down with him!"

Anxiety suddenly flared in Xu Huo’s heart, a fire igniting within him.

Hearing this, the others paused. As the realization dawned on them, they were deeply shaken.

Liu Bo knew full well that the dean’s death would be the sharp knife that exposed him.

A recon soldier, prioritizing his safety, would never do this.

But he did it. Was it recklessness?

They could only hope so. If it wasn’t, then it was a calculated move.

He had sacrificed his cover, but in return, he gained a massive amount of time he would have otherwise spent hiding clues.

And what would he use that time for?

Killing!

"Are there any other people connected to Cheng Yu, at either the public or private school!?"

Xu Huo looked up at Li Jianye.

Prior to this, Li Jianye had been in charge of the school interviews.

"There are six more. They’re all at home right now, with police units assigned to protect them."

Li Jianye said in a muffled voice.

These six weren’t clean either; they were bullies at the very least. Li Jianye didn’t want to bother with them, but he had no choice. He couldn’t just let them be.

"How much manpower do we have left?"

"Not much. We can only directly mobilize about twenty more officers at the moment."

Qian Hua sighed.

This was the sad reality of a small city.

These days, there was a severe shortage of police officers, to the point that they even had "social contracts"...

To put it simply, it meant that people could apply to be police officers, and as long as they didn’t have a major stain on their record, they’d get the job. This led to some of society’s loafers and idlers becoming their colleagues.

The manpower shortage was that dire!

Although this contract system was recently abolished, it still showed how few police officers there really were.

A detachment was considered large if it had sixty or seventy officers. Zhaozhou City only had one detachment, but its force of over a hundred was considered quite large.

Normally, that was more than enough to handle one or two murder cases at the same time.

But they just couldn’t keep up with the demand for more people!

The first crime scene, the first murder scene, the second body dump site, the second murder scene, the third murder scene, interview teams, investigators, protection details...

All of these required personnel, but where were they supposed to get them from?

Would the local precinct police help?

They would. If it weren’t for the cooperation of the precinct officers, how could they possibly have even twenty-odd people left over for all these locations?

But the precinct police could only assist with low-skill, straightforward operations that didn’t require much thinking.

"Protecting people and making sure they don’t get hurt isn’t a high-skill task."

"We can contact the local precincts first."

Xu Huo thought for a moment and decided to get more civil police involved.

A single precinct didn’t have many officers, and having them coordinate with just one or two criminal investigators seemed like a stretch, but it was doable.

"Six people... We can bring them to the main detachment after sunrise."

Xu Huo frowned in thought, turning his head to look outside.

The time, without him realizing, had already crept past eleven-thirty.

"What’s the status on the Armed Police squadron?"

"They’ve received the notification and are on standby."

"What about Liu Bo’s file?"

"Still going through the proper channels."

Xu Huo wasn’t angry when he heard this.

Whether they got his file from the "training grounds" wasn’t important anymore. The file information would only confirm his capabilities, which was only relevant to how much manpower the police would commit.

As long as he chose to deploy maximum resources, he didn’t need to see that information at all.

As for what else they could do right now...

"What else do we do?" Li Jianye asked with a frown.

"Wait."

Xu Huo took a deep breath, running all the information through his mind one more time.

All their available manpower had been deployed. There were barely any officers left at the crime scenes. They simply had no one else to spare for any new actions.

In that case...

"We can only wait."

"And be ready to adapt!"