395: Chapter 395 The Ghost in the Morgue

Chen Mo stopped in his tracks and raised his right index finger.

Nightingale immediately halted her movement, her backhand gripping the two blood-stained broken blades.

Su Qingxue held her breath, her heart drumming frantically in her chest.

Chen Mo closed his eyes.

In that instant, his sense of hearing was infinitely amplified; all the background noise of the world was forcibly filtered and stripped away.

The sound of dripping water...

The rustling of rats crawling through the ventilation ducts...

And from deep within the Forensic Science Department, the low-frequency hum of the freezer's refrigeration compressor...

The only thing missing was the sound of a human heartbeat.

Aside from Su Qingxue's rapid heartbeat, which was racing at a hundred and twenty beats per minute due to nervousness, the entire corridor on the second basement floor was as deathly silent as a genuine tomb.

"No living person."

Chen Mo opened his eyes, his tone surprisingly calm.

He pushed open the heavy fire door.

Pale, voice-activated sensor lights flickered on one after another Li Ke falling dominoes, extending deep into the corridor following the friction of the door hinges.

At the end of the corridor was the Forensic Science Department's Archives Office.

The door was left ajar.

A slender yellow police line had been intentionally torn and discarded carelessly across the threshold.

"Tactical cover."

Chen Mo's voice was low.

Su Qingxue immediately pressed herself against the left side of the doorframe, her muzzle lowered at a forty-five-degree angle; Nightingale, meanwhile, clung to the right side's visual blind spot Li Ke a gecko.

Chen Mo did not pull out his gun.

He simply used the tip of his shoe to gently nudge open the half-closed wooden door.

"Creak—"

The grating sound of friction echoed through the empty basement.

A pungent odor, ten times stronger than that in the corridor, rushed toward them!

"Clear!"

Su Qingxue swept in quickly, her muzzle rapidly scanning every corner of the room.

Metal cabinets filled with yellowed files...

Dust-covered slide microscopes...

And a shabby office desk in the corner.

No one was there.

However, the old-fashioned CRT monitor on the desk emitted a piercing blue glow in the darkness.

"Chen Mo..."

Su Qingxue walked to the computer desk, but the moment she took a look, she froze in place as if struck by lightning, her stomach churning violently.

"What's wrong?"

Chen Mo walked forward slowly, his gaze falling onto the cluttered desk.

On the monitor screen, the display was stuck on a bounty posting interface on the Dark Web.

But that wasn't the point.

The point was that right in the center of the keyboard sat a transparent glass specimen jar.

The jar was filled with a pale yellow preservative fluid.

Floating within the liquid was a skinned white dove.

The dove's wings had been cruelly broken and were pinned firmly to a cross made of tangled black electrical wire with two long, rusted iron nails!

The dove's eyes were still open, its pupils dilated, staring directly at the screen.

It was as if it were accusing someone of some horrific atrocity.

Even more chillingly...

Next to the glass jar lay a sticky note meant for the Municipal Bureau's internal staff.

On it, a line of crooked English was written in crimson marker:

[Welcome home, Prophet.]

"Prophet..."

Su Qingxue's voice trembled. "He... he's greeting you? He knew you were coming?!"

"He didn't just know I was coming."

Chen Mo reached out, not to touch the nauseating glass jar, but to gently hover the back of his hand over the cooling vents of the old monitor.

"Temperature."

A chilling glint flashed deep within Chen Mo's eyes.

"CRT monitors generate a lot of heat, but the temperature of this machine's picture tube is only around body temperature."

He turned his head to look at Su Qingxue.

"This means it was woken up no more than ten minutes ago."

Su Qingxue gasped and whipped her head around to look back at the corridor they had come from.

"You mean... when we entered the building, he had only just left this computer?!"

"Not only that."

Chen Mo pointed at the glass jar on the keyboard. "Look at the bubbles in the preservative. This is a low-quality, fast-acting formaldehyde solution that evaporates extremely quickly. If it had been here for more than half an hour, the bubbles would have completely attached to the dove's muscle fibers."

"But right now, the bubbles are still floating upward."

A cold arc curled at the corner of Chen Mo's mouth.

"He didn't just leave; more likely than not, he hasn't even left this building."

Su Qingxue's breathing instantly seized.

The employer, the terrorist who had placed a ten-million-dollar bounty on Chen Mo's life, the psychopath who had skinned and crucified a dove in the Municipal Bureau's basement...

Right now, he was inside this police building, breathing the same air as them!

"Li Ke."

Chen Mo pressed his communicator, his voice carrying undisguised killing intent. "Lock down all electronic access points in the Municipal Bureau building immediately! Not even a fly is allowed to leave!"

"Mo... Brother Mo..."

Li Ke sounded Li Ke he was on the verge of tears on the other end. "I don't have enough authority! The physical gates in the main control room require a Senior Superintendent's iris scan to—"

Just then.

"Bang!"

A muffled gunshot suddenly erupted from the other end of the second basement corridor, violently tearing through the dead silence!

That was... the direction of the Morgue!

Chen Mo's pupils constricted sharply.

"Nightingale!"

Chen Mo barked the command.

The girl in black turned into an afterimage, instantly charging out of the Archives Office door.

"The game has begun."

Chen Mo looked at the dead dove on the desk, its eyes refusing to close, his own gaze as dark as an abyss.

"Since you love playing at sacrifices so much... then I'll dig your soul out bit by bit, right here in this Morgue!"

...

The muffled gunshot was Li Ke a heavy hammer slamming into the load-bearing walls of the Municipal Bureau's second basement.

The echo reverberated back and forth in the narrow corridor, causing the flickering cold lights overhead—already suffering from poor contact—to flash violently.

"Move!"

Chen Mo barked coldly.

Nightingale's figure was Li Ke an elongated black phantom, instantly melting into the flickering shadows without even the sound of her clothes rustling against the air.

Su Qingxue gripped her sidearm tightly with both hands, her knuckles pale from the excessive force, as she followed closely at Chen Mo's side.

The closer they got to the Morgue at the end of the corridor, the lower the air temperature dropped.

"Li Ke!"

Chen Mo pressed his earpiece, speaking rapidly, yet his voice remained devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

"Has the independent surveillance circuit in the Morgue been cut?"

"Mo... Brother Mo..."

The sound of Li Ke frantically tapping on his keyboard came through the earpiece, accompanied by his cracking, near-breakdown voice.

"It's black! Everything's black! The physical fiber optic cables for the Morgue were cut directly from the distribution box thirty seconds ago! I can't even connect to the temperature sensors there now!"

"Cutting the physical lines..."

Chen Mo took a deep breath of the cold air mixed with the scent of preservatives, a playful yet cold light flashing in his eyes.

"He's clearing the stage; he doesn't want the audience to see the 'surprise' he's prepared."

"Chen Mo, what kind of time is this to be joking!"

Su Qingxue gritted her teeth, her forehead covered in fine beads of cold sweat.

Fifty meters.

Thirty meters.

Ten meters.

The three of them stopped before the two-hundred-kilogram blast-proof, insulated door.

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