326: Chapter 326 Fortunately, this murderer retained some humanity.

After the heavy rain, the sky remained overcast.

By midday, the sun was nowhere to be found.

The thick clouds were occasionally torn open, leaking a few wisps of feeble sunlight before closing up again.

An abandoned slaughterhouse in the suburbs of Guanlan District was currently cordoned off layer by layer with red and white warning tapes for isolation.

Outside the cordon, many nearby villagers who came to watch the commotion had gathered.

They stepped on the muddy ground, whispering to each other, and from time to time curiously poked their heads inside, attempting to peek at what was going on.

Several police cars flashing police lights parked on the roadside, firmly blocking these nosy crowds outside.

The air was filled with the damp, earthy stench of mud, and a faint, elusive smell of blood drifted over.

Sizzling—

A black off-road vehicle crushed through the muddy water on the road and stopped steadily in front of the warning tape.

The car doors were pushed open, and three figures filed out.

Leading them was none other than Gao Jin, followed by two young administrative officers, Officer Zhou Liang and A-Li.

The two of them bore heavy dark circles under their eyes and yawned.

Looking at the muddy ground underfoot where there was almost nowhere to step, expressions of disgust unconsciously showed on their faces.

Gao Jin, however, appeared energetic with a sharp gaze.

Ignoring the filth underfoot, he directly lifted the warning tape, took large strides, and walked forward.

Seeing this, a middle-aged police officer in charge of the scene immediately hurried over to greet him with a very respectful attitude.

"You must be Officer Gao, right?"

"I am Liu Yuan, the head of the Criminal Investigation Team of the Guanlan Precinct Police Station."

Gao Jin nodded slightly, and after introducing themselves to each other, he got straight to the point:

"What is the situation at the scene?"

Officer Liu was obviously well prepared and immediately began to report to him:

"Preliminary judgment puts the time of the crime between midnight and two o'clock last night."

"The reporter is a villager living nearby, who claimed that he was awakened last night by continuous dog barking and a few loud noises resembling gunfire."

"Because the rain was too heavy at night, he didn't dare to go out to check, only vaguely seeing a figure in a raincoat moving near the slaughterhouse from the window, but couldn't see the appearance clearly."

"It wasn't until the rain stopped this morning that he came out and walked over, intending to look around the situation, and then discovered that something had happened here."

Gao Jin's gaze swept across the dilapidated outer wall of the slaughterhouse and then asked:

"Has the identity of the deceased been confirmed?"

"Confirmed."

Liu Yuan answered methodically:

"The deceased is named Captain Chen Rui, male, thirty-two years old, the contractor of this slaughterhouse, an out-of-towner who usually lives here."

"According to visiting investigations, he was fairly kind-hearted on weekdays and had no enemies, but his personality was a bit eccentric. He kept dozens of large, fierce dogs, and it is said he planned to open another dog farm after the New Year."

The two of them talked while walking, and had already arrived at the entrance of the slaughterhouse.

A young police officer immediately handed over several pairs of blue shoe covers.

Gao Jin and his two subordinates skillfully put them over their shoes to avoid bringing the mud from outside into the scene.

Pushing open that rusty iron door, a strong, pungent smell of blood hit them like a physical entity, instantly overpowering the original stench of the place.

Officer Zhou Liang and A-Li frowned almost simultaneously.

The scene before them made these two administrative officers, who had witnessed quite a few scenes, feel strong discomfort.

The interior of the slaughterhouse, spanning hundreds of square meters, could be said to be a complete mess.

The air was permeated with the unique smell mixed with blood and internal organs.

Ground, walls, ceiling, everywhere were splashed dark red bloodstains.

Collapsed iron frames, twisted iron hooks, scattered slaughtering tools, mixed with broken bones and rotten meat, almost filled the entire space.

There were a few carcasses that could barely be recognized as large dogs, looking fragmented and shattered.

As if hit by some terrifying force, they burst open, and internal organs and minced meat were randomly scattered everywhere.

Some fragments even stuck directly to the wall a dozen meters away.

In the center of the scene, a rusted iron hook hung from the ceiling.

Hanging on it was none other than the deceased Captain Chen Rui.

However, that could no longer be called a complete corpse.

Several police officers in survey suits were busy all over the scene, carefully collecting every possible piece of evidence, or holding cameras to take pictures, sample, and record.

Officer Zhou Liang's face turned a bit pale, covering his mouth and asking in a low voice:

"Officer Liu, among these... these fragments, there aren't any human ones, right?"

"The forensic doctor has already confirmed, they are all from canines."

Liu Yuan replied in a deep voice, his expression also exceptionally solemn:

"Although the deceased suffered cruel torture before death, his limbs are still relatively intact."

Officer Zhou Liang and A-Li breathed a sigh of relief in unison.

The killer wasn't perverted enough to churn humans into minced meat too, at least retaining a shred of a bottom line.

However, seeing this ground full of canine remains, if animal lovers were present, they would probably collapse on the spot.

Gao Jin's expression, however, remained calm as water throughout.

His pupils flickered slightly with light, like the most precise scanner, calmly sweeping across every corner of the scene.

In his mind, these chaotic traces were rapidly being reverse-deduced and combined into dynamic battle scenes.

He saw the trajectory of the heavy iron frame being knocked over by an irresistible huge force.

He identified the direction and angle of the bloodstains splashing on the wall.

Then, his gaze fell upon that thick stainless steel slaughter table.

On the tabletop, there was a fist print indented two centimeters deep.

The metal surface at the edge was twisted and torn due to the huge impact force, and had almost been completely pierced through.

In a trance, Gao Jin seemed to have witnessed that thrilling scene of the moment—

A muscular and stalwart figure leaped high like a cannonball, fiercely blasting out a heavy punch carrying the force of a thousand jun!

And his opponent frantically dodged at the split second between life and death.

Letting that fatal fist smash onto the hard slaughter table, making a deafening metallic wail!

Gao Jin's gaze flickered slightly, gathering his thoughts.

Afterward, his gaze locked onto the enclosing wall not far away, simply constructed with firebricks.

In the center of the wall, a huge hole with a diameter of over two meters was broken open.

Broken bricks were scattered outside the house, as if blasted head-on by a giant siege hammer.

And right on the wall opposite the hole, someone used the blood of the deceased to portray a huge and terrifying smiling face.

That smile was twisted and manic, looking like a show-off, and even more like an undisguised provocation.

Speaking of which, ordinary homicide cases, no matter how cruel and tragic, would not be the Special Investigation Team's turn to intervene.

But the extraordinary destructive power before his eyes, as well as the inhuman death state of the victim, obviously exceeded the scope of conventional crime.

The police force reported to the Dongdu Metropolitan Police Department at the first instance, and the Metropolitan Police Department then transmitted it to the Special Investigation Team, issuing an instruction to assist in the investigation.

As soon as Gao Jin heard that the crime scene was in Guanlan District, he immediately associated it with the arrest operation he was in charge of last night, so he volunteered to take over this case.

He didn't even care about resting, directly bringing his confidants and subordinates to rush over, hoping to find new clues.

"Eh?"

Officer Zhou Liang suddenly pointed at an area in front of the hole and raised a question:

"Captain Gao, Officer Liu, look here, is something a bit not right?"

Hearing this, Gao Jin cast his gaze over.

That was a concrete floor of about a dozen square meters, which appeared unusually "clean" compared to the surrounding blood and mess.

Although not spotless, it obviously lacked those splashed bloodstains and scattered broken bones and rotten meat, as if it had been deliberately cleaned by someone.

And in the corner of the wall directly facing this area, more tools, sundries, and corpse fragments were piled up.

Seeing this, Liu Yuan thought Officer Zhou Liang was questioning his professional ethics, so he hurriedly opened his mouth to explain:

"Our people are very professional and will never commit low-level errors of destroying the scene."

"According to the forensic doctor's speculation, this area might have been blown into this state by the fierce wind pouring in from that hole because the wind and rain were too heavy last night."

"Not right..."

Officer Zhou Liang walked close to that area, carefully observed it, and shook his head in rebuttal:

"If it were blown by the wind, aerodynamically speaking, the airflow should be in a diffusing state and wouldn't form such a clearly bounded fan-shaped area."

"And look, the accumulation pattern of those blown-away sundries is more like being repeatedly impacted by a continuous and strong directional airflow."

Gao Jin nodded approvingly, agreeing with Officer Zhou Liang's judgment.

A-Li scratched his head in puzzlement and also joined the analysis and reasoning:

"Could it be caused by the killer removing clues? Otherwise, why would the ground be made so clean?"

"However... why did he only clean this patch?"

"This is not cleaning up the scene."

Gao Jin slowly spoke, his voice deep:

"Instead, it's a shockwave formed during a battle..."

As he spoke, his gaze was profound, falling back onto the deeply indented fist print on the slaughter table.

Just at this moment, "Jingle-ling—" a hurried ringtone rang out abruptly.

Liu Yuan immediately apologized and took out his cell phone from his pocket.

He walked aside to answer it, deliberately lowering his voice so as not to affect the scene, but the surprise in his tone still came across.

The content of the conversation vaguely heard seemed to be communicating with a subordinate about something.

"What?"

"The police car that our precinct lost last night was just found on Yinhu Road in Wenchuan District..."

"Alright, you drive it back first, do a good job checking and handing over records, and talk about it after I get back..."

Hearing the two words "police car", Gao Jin's eyes moved.

"Lost police car?"

"Yes."

A moment later, Liu Yuan hurried back, and seeing Gao Jin asking, he explained a few sentences:

"Didn't our precinct police station receive orders last night to cooperate with your department's operation and set up roadblocks around?"

"When one of my colleagues was on duty, his patrol car was urgently requisitioned by an officer claiming to be from the Special Investigation Team, saying he was going to track a major criminal."

"That officer even showed identification at the time, it seems... it seems his surname is also Zhou."

"My colleague reported it immediately after returning, but when we verified it with above, no requisition record was found."

"However, it's good that the car is found now. That officer must be a busy VIP who forgot to register and return it."

As he spoke, he also subconsciously glanced at Officer Zhou Liang standing behind Gao Jin.

Officer Zhou Liang's complexion instantly changed slightly, and his neck unconsciously shrank back.

Afterward, he exchanged a startled and uncertain glance with A-Li beside him.

Fortunately, Officer Gao only gave him a faint glance and didn't pursue the questioning.

This made Officer Zhou Liang couldn't help but breathe a slight sigh of relief.

Gao Jin's attention was entirely focused on the doubts of the case itself at hand.

His gaze was gloomy and deep, examining the corpse hanging on the iron hook and the blood painting on the wall, his brain running rapidly.

The killer and the deceased were obviously not ordinary people.

Especially the killer, whose pure physical destructive power displayed, Gao Jin asked himself, even if he put on the bio-colony armor, he could only barely achieve it with fists.

This showed that this person's strength was likely not below his own.

Was it a feud between ability users, or were there other hidden reasons?

Gao Jin inevitably connected this case with last night's action mission.

Those arrested members of the Noah Organization had mouths as stubborn as stones in a latrine.

They seemed to have undergone special training, or had some dirt in the hands of the Noah Organization.

So much so that they preferred to bite the poison pill hidden in their mouths to end their own lives rather than leak a single word.

Only a few, under the interrogation methods of the Special Investigation Team, could not bear the heavy pressure and suffered a mental breakdown before spitting out a little intelligence.

The code name of their operation this time was "Demon Hunting Operation", and the target was a young man in an orphanage named "Smiling Demon".

And this "Smiling Demon" happened to be a certain serial perverted killer who had recently risen to fame.

Staring deeply at the devil-like smiling face on the wall, a bold guess faintly formed in Gao Jin's heart.

However, there was still another doubt...

Why did the intelligence transmitted by the insider Xu Hao say that the Noah Organization was targeting the children in the orphanage?

Was this kid deliberately concealing it, or was the situation urgent and he truly failed to explain it clearly?

Gao Jin pondered for a moment, then issued an order to Liu Yuan:

"After you finish the scene investigation and autopsy, compile all relevant information of this case into a document and send it to my place."

"Yes!"

Hearing this, Liu Yuan immediately stood at attention and agreed.

After giving instructions, Gao Jin turned around and prepared to leave.

Just as he walked to the door, as if remembering something, he turned back and asked:

"What you just said, that requisitioned police car, was it driven away from within the cordon area of last night?"

"Yes, officer."

Gao Jin's pupils condensed, and a key thought chained together in his mind.

"After going back, hand over all driving records retrieved from the positioning System, along with the case data, to me."

The positioning System installed inside the police car could not only monitor the vehicle's location in real-time, but also record in detail all driving routes, speed changes, and even parking locations of the vehicle within a specific time period.

Although Liu Yuan had some doubts in his heart, he still simply agreed, saluting and watching the three leave.

Gao Jin stepped on the muddy ground out of the slaughterhouse, his gaze sweeping across the woods and roads around the courtyard once again.

His gaze was deep and thoughtful.

Afterward, he took Officer Zhou Liang and A-Li, boarded the off-road vehicle, and quickly drove away from the scene.

Among the crowd watching around the slaughterhouse, two gazes had been quietly watching them.

Those were two middle-aged men who looked ordinary in appearance.

After seeing the off-road vehicle leave, the two of them glanced at each other without a trace.

The moment their eyes met, it was as if they were silently communicating something.

From their location, they could just see clearly through the huge hole in the wall of the slaughterhouse onto the inner wall.

That chilling devil's smiling face painted with fresh blood.

Meanwhile, in Wenchuan District at the other end of the city, Feihong Road.

The "Midnight Forest" bar had just taken down the "Closed for Rest" sign.

Past 1 o'clock in the afternoon, inside the originally deserted bar, guests gradually increased.

The sound waves of the music also began to be strong and powerful, and men and women held wine glasses, swaying their bodies slightly with the rhythm.

The atmosphere of the entire bar slowly became heated.

As if waiting for the upcoming another sleepless night that would make people high to the extreme.

The door of the second-floor VIP lounge quietly opened.

Fang Cheng put on a clean set of gray sportswear and casually flung the shoulder bag containing the bloody clothes onto his back.

Ignoring the hustle and bustle downstairs, he left directly from the concealed back door and came to the roadside.

The weather was somewhat gloomy, and pedestrians and vehicles coming and going on the street were in a hurry.

Woo— woo—

A police car flashing police lights roared past the end of the street, breaking the stuffiness of the afternoon.

Fang Cheng narrowed his eyes, the corners of his mouth slightly raised.

With a sunny and cheerful appearance, he was just like a college student who had just finished a weekend gathering and was preparing to go home.

(End of Chapter)