Chapter 84: The Woman in the Surveillance Footage

"Don't move!" I reached out to grab it, but Wu Meng stopped me. He handed me a pair of plastic gloves. "This is evidence."

I took the gloves and brought the Hair-Woven Puppet from the black box closer to my eyes.

The craftsmanship was exquisite. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I never would have believed someone could weave hair into such a lifelike doll.

The hair was glossy, pitch-black, and of excellent quality. I brought it to my nose and sniffed, but I didn't smell any disinfectant.

"Captain Wu, take a small clipping for testing and see if it's Jiang Shihan's hair." I put the puppet back into the wooden box, replaced the lid, and held it in my hand.

Traces of blood still lingered on the black wooden box. Jiang Shihan had run out of her ward barefoot, and the soles of her feet had been cut by glass. Thinking about it, she must have stepped on this very box to climb over the railing.

"Captain Wu, all the surveillance footage has been pulled up!" Xiao Chen ran onto the rooftop, his expression a bit strange. "This woman probably just committed suicide..."

"Take us to see it!"

Wu Meng and I hurried to the surveillance room. Xiao Chen first pulled up the footage from inside the elevator. After watching it, everyone present turned to look at me.

Jiang Shihan was the only person in the clear surveillance footage!

She hadn't been taken hostage. She entered the elevator alone. The whole thing looked like a farce she had directed and acted out all by herself!

"Impossible!" I leaned close to the computer screen.

"Gao Jian, it's not that we don't believe you, but the facts are right in front of us." Wu Meng stood beside me. "Jiang Shihan's death is certainly strange, but she was already suffering from mental issues at the time. You have to understand, a normal person can't fathom the logic of a lunatic."

If I hadn't been there—if I hadn't experienced this bizarre night myself—I probably would have believed she went mad and killed herself, too.

That was exactly what made the mastermind behind this so terrifying. It was clearly premeditated murder, yet they had managed to fake a suicide scene!

"This modus operandi, this style of killing—it's too similar! It's almost identical to the method used to kill Huang Guanxing!" I was now certain that the culprit had used some sort of shady evil arts to control Jiang Shihan's mind, forcing her to act against her will!

"Gao Jian, this really is a suicide. If there's nothing else, we're going to notify the family..."

"Wait!" I shouted, looking at everyone in the room. "This isn't suicide. Like I said, this is one hundred percent, definitively murder!"

"Tch, do you really think you're some master detective?" Xiao Chen, who didn't know me, scoffed dismissively.

Wu Meng, however, knew of my abilities from Tie Ningxiang. Confused, he asked, "Why are you so certain this is murder?"

"Keep watching this footage." I pointed to the top-left corner of the elevator feed, which displayed the current floor. "Right there! Pause it!"

Everyone gathered around to look at the frozen frame. At that moment, the number displayed in that spot was "-3."

"-3?"

"Right! This is the third basement level!" My voice was firm and resounding, brimming with absolute confidence. "A doctor told me earlier that you need authorization to take this hospital's elevator down to the basement levels—meaning you have to enter a corresponding verification password! And as far as I know, only a small fraction of the doctors in this hospital know that password. So how could a deranged patient possibly know it?"

The entire room fell silent. Only my mind remained crystal clear. The one who had controlled Jiang Shihan's mind, driving her mad and aggravating her condition, was none other than one of the doctors in this hospital!

"Everyone present, I'm afraid you can't stay out of this. Anyone on the night shift today who knows the password could be the killer!" Jiang Shihan's death was no accident. I was going to avenge her. I was going to drag out the person who had played me for a fool and make them face justice!

"Driving a living person mad, controlling their mind, and then faking a suicide—what a trick, what a brilliant trick!" Jiang Shihan's death revealed far too much. In the final moments of her life, she truly had no control over herself, just like that little figure she had drawn in blood on the ceiling.

She had tried to call for help in her own way, but no one around her could understand it. She had been left to endure the torment all alone.

If I hadn't shown up, her ultimate fate likely still would have been suicide, only it would have happened after a complete mental collapse, losing all hope and submissively choosing death as a release.

That way, the mastermind wouldn't expose a single flaw, and Huang Guanxing's death would be perfectly covered up.

Thinking back on it now, Jiang Shihan had a very strong will to live. She clearly yearned for warmth but hadn't dared get close, ultimately plummeting from the building.

And Huang Guanxing was allergic to alcohol, yet he had drunk heavily before his death, resulting in him driving drunk and dying on the road.

Both of them had their minds forcefully controlled, compelled to carry out certain actions. I had never heard of such evil arts before. After Wu Meng began interrogating the hospital's doctors, I took out my phone and dialed Blind Liu's number.

"Old Liu, I'm really sorry to bother you so late, but it's a matter of life and death. I need to consult you about something."

On the other end of the line, Blind Liu's tone was steady. "Ask away. I already calculated that something would happen tonight, so I haven't gone to sleep yet."

"Do you know of any kind of evil arts in this world that can remotely control a person's mind, make them act up as soon as night falls, and allow them to see things ordinary people can't?"

"There are many similar evil arts. Can you be a bit more specific?"

I looked at the doll in my hand. "The casting medium for the evil arts must be the victim's hair. I found a black wooden box at the place where the deceased jumped off the building, and inside was a Hair-Woven Puppet."

"A Hair-Woven Puppet?" Blind Liu didn't speak for a long moment. The sound of flipping pages came through the phone. "It's still too vague. I can't be certain, but it sounds a bit like Xiangxi witchcraft, or a Nanyang hex."

I patiently explained everything I'd experienced that night to Blind Liu, hoping he could figure out what kind of evil arts Jiang Shihan had been hit with.

"You said you saw an old man's head flying in midair?"

"Right. It flashed by in an instant, but a little boy saw it clear as day. Do you need me to call him over?" Blind Liu was onto something, and I started getting excited, too.

"If a flying skull really appeared, then the woman who jumped was very likely hit by a Nanyang hex!"

"Hex sorcery?"

Blind Liu flipped through his books and found the relevant records. "I'm afraid it's not just simple hex sorcery, but the most vicious of them all: flying skull sorcery."

"My great-grandfather once had a magical duel with a black magician in his early years, so I'm somewhat familiar with hex sorcery."

"Hex sorcery art is virtually a household name in Nanyang. However, what ordinary people usually encounter are mostly potion hexes and gu hexes. Both of those are merely using poison and dark insects to harm people and take lives—they don't count as advanced arts."

"The truly formidable black magicians mostly specialize in ghost hex sorcery and spirit hex. They raise Little Ghosts and enslave vengeful spirits to achieve their goals."

"And the most heinous forms of hex sorcery are the blood curse and flying skull sorcery. Of those two, flying skull sorcery perfectly matches the situation you encountered tonight."

Blind Liu's words indirectly helped me prove that the one who killed Jiang Shihan wasn't the Underworld Live Show, but some other crooked practitioner playing tricks behind the scenes.

"Then if I want to catch the person casting the hex, what should I do?"

I asked urgently. As long as we caught the caster, we could naturally follow the vine to touch the melon and bring the truth to light.

"Once flying skull sorcery is mastered, it comes without a shadow and leaves without a trace, killing invisibly."

"The caster can remotely control the victim's mind from a thousand meters away. It will be very hard for you to find him." Blind Liu continued to flip through his book. "However, this evil art has a minor flaw. Once the flying skull leaves, it requires a massive amount of fresh blood to replenish itself, and it must be steaming hot blood sucked straight from a living creature. So, search the surrounding area and see which direction has a corpse that died from excessive blood loss. The black magician should be hiding nearby."

"Old Liu, you've been a massive help this time!"

Hanging up the phone, I found Wu Meng and asked him to send people to help me search for dried animal corpses within a thousand-meter radius.

He was half-skeptical but ultimately decided to follow my suggestion.

In the latter half of the night, the hair test results came back. It was undoubtedly Jiang Shihan's.

"After Jiang Shihan was admitted to the hospital, her hair gradually grew dull and lost its luster. But the hair used to weave the puppet was pitch-black and shiny. Most importantly, it didn't smell like disinfectant."

"The hair for the woven puppet must have been taken during Jiang Shihan's first two days of admission, or even before she was hospitalized!"

The scope had narrowed further. The killer knew the password for the hospital elevator leading to the underground morgue, and they had been in contact with Jiang Shihan in the few days before she was admitted.

'Who could it be?'

I was deep in thought when Xiao Chen's voice suddenly rang out from outside the door. "Captain Wu, we found a dried animal corpse!"