Chapter 236: So It Was You!

I put the cloth doll down. Being stared at by these marker-drawn faces made me feel a little uncomfortable. 'Even though they're just drawn with a marker, it's as if the dolls were given souls. How did he draw them?' While I was still deep in thought, the Girl in Red had walked over to the table at some point. She raised her scar-covered hand and grabbed the cloth draped over the wall.

"What are you doing?" I looked up just in time to see the girl pull down the cloth covering the wall.

"This..."

The wall in front of me was completely covered with photos of dead people!

Scene after scene of murder, victim after innocent victim—I could almost hear the anguished wails they let out as they struggled.

"Too cruel."

My heart trembled as I forced myself to look at the photos on the wall.

The victims in the photos had died in all sorts of bizarre ways. The only commonality was that at every murder scene, there was always a Clown with a bright red painted mouth.

He looked happy and smug, grinning widely, making even the teardrop at the corner of his eye look a little blurry.

It was hard to believe someone could have such a hobby. He wasn't just cold-blooded and cruel; he actually liked treating the victims' corpses as a kind of proof and memorial.

"The psychological distortion of this person ranks in the top three among all the criminals I've ever seen." I wasn't the one who said this; it came from a bullet comment in the live stream. On the other side of the screen, Socrates Paradox had witnessed the scene in the underground wax factory, as well as the massive pile of corpses disguised with plastic and plaster.

Seeing his comment, I deeply agreed.

My gaze swept across the photos one by one. In this Amusement Park built for happiness, who could have imagined such a terrifying truth would be hidden?

The photos were all stuck to the wall, sealed tight with transparent tape. They couldn't be taken down, nor were they easily damaged.

"The time span of these photos is huge." One of the photos captured the victim's phone, which showed a time from five years ago. There was another photo where the location of death wasn't in the Amusement Park; the victim had been crushed by a heavy object and lay in a pool of blood, while the shop window glass behind him reflected the shadow of the large clock in the Old Town District.

Different times, different locations, completely random methods of murder, and arrogant enough to take photos as souvenirs—this guy was a demon who treated living people as prey.

My eyes swept over them, and my gaze finally stopped at the very center of the wall.

My expression shifted rapidly. I clenched my fists until my knuckles cracked, veins bulging one after another on my arms.

In the exact center of the wall, three photos were arranged in a triangle.

In the first photo, the victim was wearing mourning clothes. Even after their body had been impaled by steel rebar, they were still kneeling on the ground, kowtowing and begging for mercy!

In the second photo, a college student wearing glasses had his eyes wide open, staring at his body as it grew further and further away. He had been decapitated, his head taken away by someone!

The third photo showed a pitch-black women's college study hall. It was perfectly tidy, but blood-red liquid was seeping out of every single drawer!

And sitting between these three photos, in the very center of the entire wall, was a photo that seared into my eyes like a red-hot branding iron.

This was the most unique photo, because there was no dead body in it. There was only a dying person tied to a chair. His tears and snot flowed uncontrollably, his face filled with terror, and continuous muffled pleas leaked from his gagged mouth.

The photograph faithfully recorded all of this. The killer was enjoying the victim's despair. The dying man's final struggles and cries had pushed the murderer to an almost orgasmic climax.

He was holding up a specially made steel needle. In the corner of the frame, the camera had just happened to capture a young, naive-looking police officer in uniform crawling out from under the bed in the room.

The camera's shutter had clicked, coincidentally documenting this scene from five years ago.

The gates of my memory were pried open. The things I least wanted to recall now appeared vividly in my mind, lingering and refusing to fade. It was only now that I realized I had never forgotten anything. Five years of numbness and self-exile hadn't made me forget a single thing that happened back then!

They were like brands seared into my heart, leaving behind deep, indelible scars.

"So, the killer from five years ago was you..."

The Clown who had bumped my shoulder when the parade began overlapped with the blurry face in my mind. Bridging a gap of five years, that sinful face slowly surfaced.

He didn't seem to have changed at all. He was just as ordinary, and just as deeply loathsome.

Before I started my first live broadcast, the world in my eyes was boring and stifling, like a rotting camel. It wasn't until I met Lu Xing that my view changed. That homicidal maniac was filled with a sick passion. His cold-blooded ruthlessness reminded me of the serial killer from five years ago.

Actually, the moment I learned of Lu Xing's existence, I immediately connected him to the serial killer from five years ago. It was just that the faint impressions remaining in my mind from five years ago told me that the killer's face was different from Lu Xing's.

Lu Xing had two faces—one handsome, the other hideous. His face was extremely distinctive, the kind you could never forget after a single glance, which was different from that killer five years ago.

But Lu Xing's modus operandi was simply too similar to that lunatic from five years ago. He seemed to kill at random, but in reality, every victim was a carefully selected sacrifice.

I had been investigating the Two-Faced Buddha and actively cooperating with the Underworld Live Show live broadcasts. A large part of the reason was to deal with Lu Xing, hoping to catch him and extract some information about what happened five years ago. The rainy night serial murders were an eternal thorn in my heart. If I didn't catch the real killer, I would never sleep in peace for the rest of my life.

And before this broadcast began, when I heard from Mr. Gu that Lu Xing had an accomplice, my heart gave a violent jolt, because some of his descriptions sounded far too much like the killer I encountered five years ago.

I had been constantly wondering why the other party would place a set of mourning clothes on Xiaofeng's bed and intentionally leave a note inside.

Thinking about it now, that must have been the killer provoking me.

"Guess who I am?"

From the moment I saw that sentence, the unresolved game between him and me from five years ago had already begun anew.

Standing in front of the wall full of victims' photos, I stood in a daze for a long time. Before the broadcast began, the three voices in the Underworld Live Show Phone had corresponded to three of the victims from five years ago. They were probably also impatient for me to help clear their grievances so they could enter reincarnation sooner.

"Five years. I've looked for you for five years..."

What the girl had pulled down just now wasn't just a normal piece of cloth, but the prelude to a life-and-death struggle.

"Five years ago, you killed randomly, framed me as the killer, and got away safely. Five years later, Lu Xing is still doing the same things you did back then. It seems you didn't get away completely without paying a price five years ago. At the very least, my interference derailed your plan and delayed it for a full five years."

Karma and reincarnation, destined by fate. With no victor decided five years ago, we were meeting on a narrow path again five years later. My opponent had become more cunning, and the situation had become more dangerous, but I was no longer that clueless rookie cop either.

"Guess who I am? Now that I know your identity, isn't it my turn to make a move?" The veins on my arms had yet to fade. A trace of ruthlessness and determination appeared on my face, a blood-red light flickering in my eyes. Dealing with completely unhinged criminals like them, I absolutely could not afford to be soft-hearted.

I gripped the iron tongs tightly and checked the talismans on my body. Once everything was ready, I picked up the Underworld Live Show Phone. Looking at the live stream channel I had named myself, I spoke in a rare, solemn tone.

"Friends, I have a five-year-old grudge to settle today. I'm afraid I won't be able to look after you all later, so I want to temporarily close the broadcast. If I start streaming again before dawn, everything will continue as usual. If... never mind. If I don't go live again, you probably won't remember me anymore anyway."

Socrates Paradox: "Streamer, it seems you already understand the whole story. Could you explain it to us livestream viewers as well, so we can help you come up with some ideas?"

Master Tieling Biao: "Brother, stop dawdling. Just give us the address."

Teletubbies Died of Murder: "Boss, no matter who you're going to fight, count me in!"

Jiangcheng Old Driver: "Streamer, don't be impulsive! Uncle is driving a taxi over to you right now. I'm risking it all today!"

"Don't turn off the stream! We're on our way!"

"What the hell is there to be scared of? The stream lives as long as you do! We swear to live and die with the stream!"

...

Half-Immortal Liu from Qingcheng Mountain: "I just woke up from meditation. Long time no see, my young friend..."