Chapter 85: A Terrifying New Direction

"You actually found one?!" Wu Meng's eyes went wide. He had been reluctant to help me at first, convinced my theory lacked evidence and was nothing but wild guesswork.

Only now, after hearing his men had actually found a dried-out animal carcass, was he truly convinced.

"Gao Jian, I can't figure you out. The carcass was found five hundred meters from People's Hospital—how did you know?" He clapped a hand on my shoulder. "If a security camera hadn't happened to catch the animal's death, I would've thought you drained its blood yourself and dumped it there."

"A camera caught it? Take me to see it, quick!" A jolt of excitement went through me. Having the animal's death caught on surveillance was an unexpected surprise.

Under Xiao Chen's lead, we arrived at an alley five or six hundred meters from People's Hospital.

Even from a distance, I spotted a shriveled black cat lying at the mouth of the alley. It looked like a squeezed sponge, its skin and fur crumpled together, every drop of blood wrung from its body.

"The only wound on the black cat is on its neck. It's not a knife wound... I can't really explain it, so you'd better look for yourselves." Xiao Chen stood at the street entrance holding a notebook, a short, chubby man next to him.

I pulled on a pair of gloves and turned the black cat over, finding a whole chunk of flesh missing from its neck.

"The edges of the wound are jagged, showing signs of tearing. That chunk of flesh must have been bitten off."

Wu Meng peered into the pitch-black alley. "A stray dog? In the middle of the city, only a large dog could tear off a whole chunk of meat in a single bite."

"A dog's teeth are razor-sharp and would puncture deep into the blood vessels. But look at this wound: the vein is ruptured, yet the artery is almost completely intact."

This was basic medical knowledge. Arteries usually sit deep, while veins are shallower and closer to the surface—which is why ordinary IV drips go into superficial veins.

"If it wasn't a stray dog..." Wu Meng stared at the wound, his expression suddenly turning grim. "Don't tell me a human bit it?"

"Come on, let's go check the security footage."

The black cat had died right outside a small retail shop, and the shop's security camera happened to capture the entire process.

The short, chubby man standing beside Xiao Chen was the shop manager. Getting called by the police in the dead of night had given him quite a scare.

"Officer, everyone on this street knows how much I love animals. I'd never do something like abuse a cat." Dawdling, the chubby manager turned on his computer and pulled up the footage for us.

At 12:05 a.m., the black cat appeared outside the shop. It seemed to have spotted something terrifying; it bared its fangs at the empty air above its head, its fur bristling. It crouched low to the ground with its hind legs braced, ready to lunge at any second.

"What got into that cat? Picking a fight with thin air?" The chubby manager knew how to play nice. Beaming, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered them around. "You officers have had a rough night."

"Quiet." I paused the video. From the screen, there really was nothing outside the shop except that single black cat.

I hit play again. A few seconds later, the black cat on the screen suddenly sprang into the air, swiping its claws at the empty space above its head. What happened next left us dumbfounded.

An invisible force in the air pinned the black cat to the ground. It thrashed with all its might, all four legs kicking frantically upward.

No matter how hard it fought, it couldn't break free. I could clearly see on the monitor that it was growing weaker. Its flesh and blood slowly shriveled away, until nothing was left but crumpled skin and fur.

Staring at the surveillance video on the computer screen, none of us in the room could say a word. This wasn't some doctored clip from the internet; it was raw security footage.

It was real, and it had happened right outside this very shop just hours ago.

"What is going on here? Don't tell me this place is haunted!" The chubby manager rubbed his hands together, cold sweat already beading on his forehead. "I keep this little shop open late every night—Officers, you have to give me an explanation!"

He threw out his arms to block my way as I prepared to leave. "Was someone murdered out there? I always felt this location wasn't good, being so close to the hospital..."

I looked at the chubby manager blocking my path, my brows slowly drawing together. "First, I'm not a cop. Second, you'd better pray we find more dried-out animal carcasses like this farther away, or I'll consider you a major suspect."

Hearing this, the chubby manager immediately shrank back and stepped aside. "I really don't know anything!"

"Pretend what you saw tonight never happened, and don't go running your mouth." Wu Meng pushed the manager aside and followed me out to the mouth of the alley. "Gao Jian, should we keep searching?"

"The retail shop is south of the hospital, and this alley runs north-south. Let's expand the search farther south; we should turn up more." In the video, the black cat was attacked at 12:05 a.m., and I had seen that old man's face at the hospital around 12:30 a.m. The timeline matched perfectly.

Before long, eight hundred meters from the hospital, we found several dead rats drained of blood, followed by a stray dog that had died a gruesome death.

"This matches the flying skull sorcery Blind Liu described. The black magician should be hiding south of the hospital." If the culprit was using hex sorcery from a kilometer away, my earlier theory had a flaw. "Could it not be a doctor at the hospital? But only the doctors know the passcode for the elevator to the underground morgue."

A bold guess surfaced in my mind: 'The killer really is a doctor, and he left the hospital on purpose just to manufacture an alibi?'

I doubled back to the retail shop and rewatched the surveillance footage.

"Comrade Officer, why are you back again?"

"Who's your comrade? Cut the nonsense and rewind the footage."

I focused entirely, checking the footage bit by bit, until I finally made a major discovery.

Around 11:30 p.m., a familiar figure in a white coat and black leather shoes appeared on the monitor.

"Director Li?" I called the chubby manager over. "Do you remember this man?"

"I do. He came into my shop late at night, didn't buy a thing, and just made a phone call." The chubby manager cupped his chin, striking a pose like a famous detective. "His voice was very low, and his tone was cold."

"All right. What did he actually say on the phone?"

"I couldn't hear too clearly, but he seemed to mention a psychiatric hospital—right, Henshan Psychiatric Hospital!"

I had seen that name on Jiang Shihan's medical chart. Her attending physician was a psychologist from Henshan Psychiatric Hospital.

"Why would Director Li call the psychiatric hospital?" After Jiang Shihan jumped to her death, the police had questioned Director Li, but he had been with four or five other doctors at the time, ruling him out as a suspect.

I pulled out my phone and searched for the address of Henshan Psychiatric Hospital. It was directly south of the hospital, though very far away, already considered part of the Jiangcheng Southern Suburbs.

"Could Director Li just be tipping them off, and the real black magician is hiding in Henshan Psychiatric Hospital?"

Wu Meng's shout from outside interrupted my thoughts: "No good, we lost the trail! There's a river farther south, and we can't get across."

After tracking all night, most of the officers were exhausted. As unwilling as I was, I had no choice but to leave it at that.

"Rest assured, there are too many suspicious points around Jiang Shihan's death. We will open an official investigation." Wu Meng looked at me solemnly. "We won't let the culprit get away with this!"

Dragging my exhausted body back to Ting Tang Road, I collapsed onto my wooden bed. My eyelids were heavy, and I quickly fell asleep.

While I was fast asleep, someone on the other side of the city was tossing and turning.

In a detached villa in the Jiangcheng Southern Suburbs, Jiang Fei lay on a 2.5-meter Simmons mattress, hugging her quilt and staring blankly at the ceiling.

A lingering flush still colored her cheeks as she held her right hand before her eyes. "What on earth is wrong with me? Why does his figure appear in my mind the second I close my eyes? Why do I keep wanting to know about him? Why do I care about him so much?"

"Could this be what it means to like someone?"

"Impossible. Absolutely impossible." Jiang Fei sat up in bed. The quilt slipped down, revealing her beautiful curves, and she pressed both hands to her burning cheeks. "Jiang Fei, what are you doing? You're the daughter of the Jiang family's chairman, and you're actually losing your mind over a man."

She lightly patted her face. Unable to sleep after tossing and turning, she simply slipped on a nightgown and sat down at her vanity.

She opened the window, and the night breeze blew into the room, carrying a hint of a chill.

"If he confesses to me one day, what am I supposed to do? Accept him? But he and my sister-in-law..." While Jiang Fei was fretting, she suddenly noticed the Doberman in the courtyard below let out a wail and collapse to the ground.

"Princess?" She stood up to look out the window, completely unaware that a withered old face had appeared in the vanity mirror.

It had no body—only a face that vanished in a flash.