Chapter 213: He Has a Very Ordinary Face

I pushed against the Lacquered Wooden Coffin, but the lid was sealed tight. I couldn't pry it open, and there was no telling what new changes the Fate Ghost inside had undergone.

'Forget it. I'll take it one step at a time,' I thought. 'I just hope this Fate Ghost doesn't bite the hand that feeds it.' I placed the Fate Ghost Monument directly in front of the coffin and began cultivating the Profound Truth Mental Method. After I completed two Major Heavenly Cycles, my phone rang from where I had tossed it on the corner of the bed.

"Hello?"

"Gao Jian, hurry over to the Municipal Sub-bureau. I found something interesting." It was Tie Ningxiang.

"Alright, I'll be right there." I threw on my jacket and hurried out the door. By the time I reached the Municipal Sub-bureau, Little Zhao had already been waiting at the entrance for quite a while.

"Captain Tie is in the archives room. I'll take you in," Zhao Bin said. Outsiders were strictly forbidden from entering the police archives; the room housed case files of unsolved mysteries from years past, along with highly valuable physical evidence.

Take the recent, highly publicized Baiyin serial murder case, for example. The only reason the police were able to crack it after more than twenty years was because the original evidence had been perfectly preserved, allowing modern forensic science to uncover the key clues.

Zhao Bin led me into the archives room. There, behind rows of storage shelves, I found Tie Ningxiang.

"Senior, what did you need me for?" I walked up to her. The case file she was leafing through displayed the date of the incident—five years ago.

"I didn't want to bother you, but I figured you're the only one who can give me an answer to this." Tie Ningxiang didn't even look up as she handed me the file.

"E-0101 Major Serial Homicide Case, File A." I sensed something was wrong the moment I took the folder. When I opened it, the name in the primary suspect column immediately caught my eye: Gao Jian.

I turned to look at Tie Ningxiang, my face falling. My fingers curled into a tight fist uncontrollably. "What is this?"

"The case files for the rainy night serial murders from five years ago." Tie Ningxiang gestured for me to sit on a chair by the wall. She pulled out several other files and laid them out in front of me.

"Why are you showing me this? Did you find new evidence proving I'm the killer?" I flipped through the files. They contained a detailed list of various materials: crime scene photos, fingerprint and blood test reports, and witness testimonies. While these things couldn't form a complete chain of evidence, they all vaguely pointed to one person—me.

"Gao Jian, calm down. In my eyes, you're not an impulsive person." Tie Ningxiang sat down next to me, carrying a faint, indescribable fragrance.

I slowly regained my composure. Compared to five years ago, I had become much more mature and reserved, and I knew how to disguise my emotions better. "Tell me, why exactly did you call me here?"

"After you left my house that day, my father—that stubborn old man—told me that if you aren't a killer deceiving the entire city, then you're the hero who saved all of Jiangcheng. At first, I didn't understand what he meant. But after reading these case files, I realized that the serial murders seemed to have ended because of you."

"Senior, just give it to me straight." If the archives room didn't strictly forbid open flames, I would have lit a cigarette right then and there to soothe my frayed nerves.

"Do you remember the three words Mr. Gu mentioned at the hospital?"

"Draping hemp, Mourning Guest, and mourning gate?"

Tie Ningxiang nodded. "I looked up the meanings of those three words. They represent three specific two-hour periods on the lunar calendar. According to the traditional method of calculating birth Eight Characters, anyone born during these three times is destined to have their eight characters intersect with them."

"These three words could represent three periods of time, or they could represent three different people. Assuming they refer to people, a very particular coincidence emerges."

She flipped File A open to the middle. "There were three victims in the rainy night serial murders five years ago. Take a close look at the crime scene photos and their autopsy reports."

Piqued by her words, I grew curious and carefully read through them.

The first victim was a contractor in his forties. His limbs had been pierced by rebar, and he was dressed in traditional mourning garb—literally draping hemp. Several bizarre characters had also been carved into his back with a knife.

The second victim was a twenty-year-old college student. His head had been severed and was never found. Oddly enough, the forensic examiner determined the cause of death based on abnormalities in his chest and lungs—the victim hadn't died from blunt force trauma, but from asphyxiation. This meant someone had first strangled or hanged him, and only then cut off his head.

The third victim's condition was even more horrifying. She was a female university professor who was well-liked, introverted and timid, and had never offended anyone. Yet, she was brutally dismembered. The most egregious part was that the killer had divided her body into twelve equal portions by weight and placed them inside the desks in the back rows of a study hall.

Any single one of these premeditated murders would have been a major case capable of shocking the entire city, let alone the fact that all three occurred on the same night, with less than an hour between them.

"The bizarre ways these three victims died carry a certain ritualistic feel." Tie Ningxiang stared at me, seemingly looking forward to what I would say next.

"Did you investigate their birth Eight Characters? Were these three coincidentally born during the times of draping hemp, Mourning Guest, and mourning gate?" My eyes went wide, shocked by my own words. This was entirely possible!

"Pretty much what you said." Tie Ningxiang wore a faint smile, a hint of admiration hidden in her gaze. "After I left Mr. Gu, the more I thought about it, the more I felt the two cases shared many similarities. Five years ago, Jiangcheng also experienced a sudden surge in vicious homicides within a specific time frame, much like the current situation. I tried doing a data analysis on the murders from back then. When I looked at the rainy night serial murders on the final evening, I noticed a subtle connection between the deaths of those three victims and the three terms Mr. Gu mentioned. So, I took down their birth dates and had someone calculate their birth Eight Characters. The results yielded a major discovery."

Tie Ningxiang slowed her speech. "These three victims' birth Eight Characters contained draping hemp, Mourning Guest, and mourning gate respectively. Their deaths weren't the result of random killings. They were murdered only after an extremely rigorous screening process!"

A five-year-old cold case had achieved a major breakthrough all because of a single sentence Mr. Gu said five years later. Tie Ningxiang really did have the skills to back up her position as the captain of the Criminal Investigation Brigade.

For any case, analyzing the motive was crucial. Only by establishing a clear motive could the police narrow down the pool of suspects and roughly target a demographic.

"The crime scenes were highly ritualistic, and the victims' eight characters contained the three terms found on Lu Xing's calendar. Could the rainy night serial murders from five years ago be connected to Lu Xing?"

I casually voiced my question aloud. Upon hearing this, Tie Ningxiang flipped the case file to the very end. "I should be the one asking you that question, right? At the scene of the fourth murder, you and the victim were both found inside a completely sealed locked room. In all of Jiangcheng, you are probably the only person who has seen the killer's true face!"

Her pale, slender fingers rested on the bloody forensic photos inside the file. "Gao Jian, I read your statements and transcripts from five years ago. You've always given very vague answers to a fundamental question: how did you predict the killer's location and rush to the crime scene before any of us did?"

Tie Ningxiang's question pierced my brain like a silver needle, forcing me to confront the truth of the rainy night serial murders from five years ago.

I pressed hard against my temples. "I don't remember. It feels like a segment of my memory was artificially erased."

I looked up at Tie Ningxiang. I was telling the truth, even though it sounded incredibly absurd.

"Artificially erased? If our opponents are Lu Xing and his group, deleting memories isn't impossible." Tie Ningxiang didn't show a hint of suspicion in her tone. This woman hadn't even considered the possibility that I might be lying to deceive her.

"Do you think the killer could be Lu Xing? Following a set sequence for the murders, targeting a fixed number of people, leaving behind highly ritualistic crime scenes... he's simply too similar to the killer from back then."

I looked at Tie Ningxiang, who had fallen deep into thought, and pursed my lips. "Senior, the killer from the rainy night serial murders shouldn't be Lu Xing. Even though I can't remember his exact appearance, I still have a few fragmented impressions left in my mind. The killer had a very ordinary face—so ordinary that even if you saw it once, you'd forget it in the blink of an eye."