My Dearest General: It Has Always Been You

Luo Ning begrudgingly went to call the members back one by one. Everyone complained, "Why are you telling us to come back again?!" Moreover, it was the middle of the night in their previous vacation. Everyone would be irritated to be woken up like this. But none of them could match Luo Ning's vexation.

He only said, "Work comes first, seniors." Then, he hung up on the phone without explaining anything.

Well, he didn't know how to say it either. The house he had just bought and moved into coincidentally had a space underneath where a criminal executed imprisonment and homicide for years? This must be one of the top three most despairing incidents in his life.

"Hello?" Jin Renguang's deep voice entered his ears, his alert tone slightly eased Luo Ning's annoyance. "Luo Ning, do you need something?"

When faced with Jin Renguang, Luo Ning didn't dare to show his temper at all. "Sorry to bother you at this late hour, Captain Jin. Detective Qin asked me to call you. We might have found a crime scene that requires your presence here."

Old Qin's name was a compelling magic word. Instantly, the sound of the chair being pushed back was heard. "Send me the address." He didn't even ask anything and directly said that he would arrive as soon as possible.

After finishing the calls, Luo Ning heaved a sigh and approached the hole. There was a faint light flickering inside but still, the environment was too dark for him to see anything. Adding to the revolting smell, Luo Ning really didn't want to step in. He only steeled himself after remembering that Qin Weizhe was down there.

Holding his breath, Luo Ning slowly lowered his legs with his hands hanging over the edge of the hole. Only after measuring the distance between his feet and the ground did he slowly let his hands go and landed with a soft thump.

He inadvertently sucked in a breath and the foul stench assaulted his nose from all directions. It was only then that Luo Ning realized that this was the weird smell he caught when he had just entered the house for the first time with the agent. Because the smell was very faint, he had always thought that it was the distinctive smell of an uninhibited house.

"Luo Ning?" Qin Weizhe called out from a distance.

The light came closer along with the man's footsteps. "Why are you coming down?" he sounded exasperated and helpless. To Luo Ning's amazement, he didn't even care to wear a mask! How could he even breathe in this kind of foul air?!

Luo Ning shook his head, unwilling to open his mouth.

"You should have stayed up there." Sighing, Qin Weizhe beckoned to him. "Well, come on. Old Xu has already gone to see where the end of the tunnel leads to and we will search around here to find the source of the sounds we heard earlier, okay?"

Luo Ning gave him a thumbs up and flicked his flashlight on. He looked around and saw that they were currently standing on a dead end of a tunnel. The walls around him were built from bricks, its surface uneven. Moss grew on every crook and corner. Everywhere Luo Ning stepped on felt kind of sticky and slimy, he didn't even want to think further of what it was.

The damp smell was so overpowering that Luo Ning—who had worn three layers of mask—couldn't resist gagging. He almost vomited all of the beers he had just drank earlier.

He heard Qin Weizhe sighed and in the next second, his neck was pulled forward, face buried into the hollow of the man's neck. Instantly, a clean and cool fragrance filled his nose, bringing him back to life. Luo Ning almost groaned in pleasure as he hugged Qin Weizhe, pulled down his mask and placed his nose directly onto the man's skin, greedily inhaling his scent. He knew it was Detective Qin's cologne, he even knew the brand and its expensive price. Amidst this hellish place, Qin Weizhe smelled absolutely heavenly, it was almost celestial. Luo Ning secretly vowed that he would spare some of his savings to buy the same cologne.

"Better?" He chuckled.

Luo Ning's voice was muffled. "…hmm."

"If you can't bear it, just go up." 

"No!" Luo Ning distanced himself and pulled up the mask with swift movement. "I will help you, Detective Qin. Don't worry, I will get used to it soon." Honestly, it was the contrary. After inhaling Qin Weizhe's scent and then being exposed to the foul stench again in return, Luo Ning almost collapsed in despair. However, his eyes that were looking at Qin Weizhe remained firm and determined.

"Alright. Take it as training. You haven't stepped into such a gruesome crime scene before, have you?" He smiled encouragingly and turned to inspect the walls.

"No." Luo Ning trailed after Qin Weizhe. "The most I have seen is only the victim's body part from the serial murder case. How about you, Detective Qin? Have you chanced upon this kind of crime scene often?" To the point where you seem to have gotten used to it? He added inwardly.

"Not very often. Only once or twice." Luo Ning couldn't see Qin Weizhe's face but he sensed the man's voice turned colder. "But only once is enough for it to be imprinted in your mind. No matter how you try to forget it, you can't."

"You're right…" Luo Ning echoed. He also felt like he would never forget this scene for the rest of his life. The flashlight in his hand moved around. As he expected, under his feet was a layer of soft soil with puddles of black water. Mice and cockroaches ran past, there were even worms and centipedes. Goosebumps crawled along Luo Ning's arm and he hastily averted his eyes. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Before you come, I was looking at this area." Qin Weizhe gestured toward the area in front of him. There was an indented surface right in the corner of the wall. Qin Weizhe put on gloves and probed around the brick wall.

Luo Ning didn't know what he was looking for thus he could only walk around. Excluding the indented area, the walls were shaped in square. Three solid walls surrounded them while the other led elsewhere. Luo Ning directed the flashlight there and found that the path was too long to the point where his lights couldn't reach.

"Look at this." Qin Weizhe suddenly said. He pointed at the indented wall and the normal wall beside it. "Don't you think that the moss pattern on the two walls are different?"

There's even a pattern of the moss? Luo Ning's head was filled with question marks but he obediently went to Qin Weizhe and stood beside him. Only after comparing the two walls did he find out something different. So miniscule that he wouldn't have noticed it if Qin Weizhe didn't mention it.

"The moss on the wall is supposed to cover the whole area but on the indented wall, the moss is missing in some corner!" Luo Ning cried out.

"Bingo." Qin Weizhe swiped his fingers on the moss of two walls. The moss in the indented wall fell in chunks while the normal wall's moss stayed firmly. "This kind of moss should have been here for more than half a year. Yet one side of it is loose while the other side isn't." The man suddenly gave Luo Ning his flashlight. "Hold this for me."

"Oh!" Luo Ning shone two flashlights onto Qin Weizhe's hands. The gloved fingers slowly peeled on the corner of the brick where the moss was missing. A familiar scratching sound was heard. Qin Weizhe paused and deliberately used his nails to scratch the brick harder. Luo Ning cried out. "Detective Qin, it's the sound we heard earlier!"

Qin Weizhe hummed and in one swift movement, found a small opening in between bricks and pulled out a loose one. Dusts and small rocks fell from the ceiling but the two men were too shocked to react.

Luo Ning let out a suppressed scream. "Oh God…that—are those fingers?!"

The flashlight flickered unstably due to Luo Ning's tremble. But the scene in front had already been engraved in their heads. 

Beyond the brick where Qin Weizhe had just pulled out, there was a glimpse of forefinger and middle finger, stained with clunks of cement and soil. Moreover, the fingers were still tense horizontally as if the owner was still digging until a moment ago.

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A/N: Σ(°ロ°) oh God, there's a person buried behind the wall!