Pristine Darkness - Chapter 121

“Ah She,” Song Kun called out.

Bo Jinyan and Jian Yao turned around at the same time.

Song Kun smiled, an extremely chilling smile, and said, “Find me the imp who is making mischief behind our backs. If you can’t find him . . . “ he raised his head to look at Bo Jinyan, “all I can do is kill you. Everything is as you said, you said that once I got rid of Gu An I would not have to worry about anything else. Everything also happened after you arrived at this small town. I don’t like trouble. If anyone gives me trouble, I kill that person.”

Bo Jinyan remained silent. Song Kun looked at Zhao Kun, who was next to him, and said, “Have I made myself clear?”

Zhao Kun looked at Bo Jinyan with a coldly indifferent expression. “Crystal clear.”

Song Kun left quickly with the others. Zhao Kun closed the door, and it was only the three of them remaining.

Bo Jinyan took off his sunglasses, grasped Jian Yao’s hand, and said, “As I have said before, when what we see appears to be bizarre and complicated, as long as we take it step by step, we can always find the actual facts. The blood on the ground is not completely dry yet, so the killer cannot be far away. If we can find him, we will be able to solve a puzzle which seems to be complicated, but is simple in reality.”

His words seemed to indicate a deeper meaning. Jian Yao stiffened, then nodded. She calmed down from her initially panicked state slowly.

Bo Jinyan crouched down next to the body. Zhao Kun glared at the body and said, with a bitter laugh, “I served as a police officer for a few years on the mainland previously. I never thought that I would one day be investigating a murder case in the stronghold of a ciminal gang!”

Bo Jinyan responded, “Hey, doesn’t that make it more interesting? It’s like wielding a double-edged sword, only the most awesome bstrds, like us, can be sword-wielders.”

Zhao Kun was momentarily lost for words.

Jian Yao laughed and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “He’s always been like this, you’ll slowly get used to it.”

Zhao Kun also laughed and said, “But we don’t have any equipment right now, and we don’t have any means to verify information, so how do we solve the case? There’s a bloody handprint next to the body, but there’s absolutely no way to run even a fingerprint check.”

“We definitely need physical evidence to solve the case. We don’t need it to identify the suspect,” Bo Jinyan said.

Zhao Kun had heard that the two of them were criminal psychologists, that they could sometimes walk around the crime scene and infer the criminal’s characteristics. Thus, his interest was piqued, and he waited with folded arms to see what they would do.

Jian Yao had already put aside any distracting thoughts and entered ‘work mode’. She said, “the blood on the ground is not dry yet. The time of death is not more than one hour ago.”

“I saw that when I entered the house,” Zhao Kun interrupted. “The door was not completely closed, the lock had not been tampered with, and there were no traces of the windows having been forced open.”

“An acquaintance committed the crime,” Bo Jinyan said, unhurriedly. “However, what provides most food for thought is the words on the wall.”

“Indeed.” Jian Yao had also looked up, her expression grave

Zhao Kun frowned as he, too, surveyed the writing on the wall. He felt that the words were somewhat strange, but he could not pinpoint exactly what was so strange about them.

You can’t kill me.

Bo Jinyan looked at Jian Yao and said, “Dear, do these words have a deeper meaning?”

Following an interval of contemplation, Jian Yao responded, “Without a doubt, this is an accomplice of the masked killer. After Gu An died, he immediately killed a member of Buddha’s Hand in order to create panic, and he used that weapon which only I and Bo Jinyan knew about, the iconic axe – this was the weapon the masked killer used when committing crimes in the US many years ago. We can infer this from the wounds on the body. However, these words are not about taking revenge, not anything like ‘I will avenge him’ or ‘You will all definitely die’, but ‘You can’t kill me’. Gu An’s body was thrown into the river, we can all attest to that. It would make no sense for this person to be deliberately mystifying. This shows that his words have an unambiguous, genuine meaning. He sees himself and Gu An as one person. Their relationship was already very close, that he lives is the same as Gu An being alive.”

“There is also another possibility . . .” Bo Jinyan took over. “They share an identity. They are all the masked killer. There is no superior and subordinate, no sense of someone being more important and others being less so. The masked killer is not limited to just one person. I have previously inferred that the masked killer wears a mask in order to conceal his true identity. The other possibility is that they are a group of people; whoever wears the mask is the masked killer. A game played by a group of madmen, so fun, so exciting!”

Jian Yao nodded. “Just like twins, or triplets.”

Bo Jinyan said, “Well done!”

These words rendered Zhao Kun speechless due to surprise. He was silent for a while before saying, “Then, how many people are there in the masked killer gang?”

Bo Jinyan muttered, “The people who attacked us last year did not wear masks. This shows that they were not core members of the masked killer group. There won’t be many members in the core group. If they had many members, they would act as they did last year, planning carefully before moving to act, like a real poisonous snake, subduing the enemy with just one stroke. They would have launched a comprehensive sneak attack to take out you, me, Song Kun and everyone else. Not like now, where they are clearly working as individuals, and their bark is worse than their bite. We can see that they don’t have many people remaining at present. There is no way to infer their current numbers, but in terms of their core structure, three is always a relatively stable structure. In this way, it is possible to achieve a relative balance between the team’s opinions and conflicts, and this structure is simple. If I were to organise such a gang, I would look for two other people.”

Zhao Kun’s eyes were wide open – all that inferred, just like that? There were two more people to the masked killer? It sounded incredible, but also reasonable.

Like the other gang members, Zhao Jian’s house was a complete mess, extremely untidy. Moreover, at present, there were bloody footprints all over the place, making it even more disorderly. The footprints were made using cloth shoes that were common in the small town; a lot of people wore them. The shoes were more or less size 41, which was also a common measurement.

A few beautiful daggers as well as a few handguns, surprisingly very well polished, were in the living room sideboard. These clearly showed their owner’s preferences. There was a medical kit on top of the sideboard, its lid closed. Inside, gauze bandages, medication, iodine and other medical supplies were neatly arranged.

“The crime weapon – that axe hasn’t been found,” Zhao Kun said. “The killer took it with him.”

“Oh.” Bo Jinyan’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “This is a significant discovery. Such a big axe, as well as clothes and shoes that have been splashed with blood and must be changed. The killer had to have been carrying a big bag as he left the crime scene and walked to the street.”

Bo Jinyan put on his sunglasses, and the three of them walked out of Zhao Jian’s house. At this time, it was very dark, and there were few people on the streets. Two gang members were standing in the doorway of the house opposite, drinking water from ladles, and glancing over in their direction from time to time. Jian Yao had no doubt that news of this horrific murder had spread all over the small town. Dark clouds covered the sky, and raindrops fell. The weather in the mountains changed rapidly, and it was also the rainy season. It looked as if they were on the verge of experiencing heavy rain that night. The house that Buddha’s Hand lived in was just at the end of this street. Four or five gang members were keeping guard at the door. It was an unusual period; the atmosphere of the small town had become abnormally tense. They stood at the door for a while, and in that time, no locals poked their heads out of the windows.