A real killer playing a villain; the guy surnamed Zhen in Detective, run!

My phone suddenly started vibrating wildly in my coat pocket.

Jiang Yan pulled out her phone.

"Captain Jiang!" Old Chen's voice suddenly cracked, "Multiple bags of dismembered body parts found at the southern suburban garbage compression station. Return immediately!"

The garbage bag was violently thrown into the metal bin in the stairwell. Jiang Yanren was already rushing downstairs when she pushed open the iron door with one hand, slamming it heavily against the wall with a loud bang.

---

The Criminal Investigation Division of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, fourth floor, special case conference room.

The curtains were drawn tight, and the fluorescent lights overhead emitted an annoying buzzing sound.

The photos spread out on the long table could make any seasoned detective, accustomed to seeing many cases, feel nauseous. On the projection screen were macro photos that forensic pathologist Lao Li had just retrieved.

"The bone saw model is Stryker System 7, a surgical-grade oscillating saw from Stryker in the United States."

Old Li pushed up his glasses and circled the arc-shaped lines on the osteotomy surface with a laser pointer in his hand.

"The cutting angle is stable, and the infeed and withdrawal marks are uniform. The operator has received systematic anatomical training and is at least at the level of a surgical resident."

Turn to the next page.

"The body bag's inner and outer surfaces showed zero fingerprints, zero hair, and zero skin flakes. I used three different reagents for cross-testing, and all results were negative. All biological traces were completely wiped away using chemical methods."

"My initial assessment of the reagent used is that it is a complex solution of sodium hypochlorite and hydrogen peroxide. The concentration ratio was precisely calculated to destroy the DNA double-strand structure without corroding the plastic bag itself and leaving any suspicious marks."

Old Li took off his glasses and rubbed his nose wearily.

"What's even more chilling is that the bag's microbial community has also been wiped out. Normal plastic bags exposed outdoors for more than six hours will definitely have environmental bacteria on their surface. But this bag is as clean as if it just came out of a sterile laboratory."

The meeting room was deathly silent.

Only the air conditioner vents were making a whooshing sound, and the white noise seemed particularly jarring at that moment.

The image analysis team took over the conversation. The large screen switched, and a densely packed surveillance coverage map popped up, with red dots representing cameras and blue lines indicating investigation routes.

"There are 1,203 surveillance cameras within a 5-kilometer radius of the crime scene. The brothers worked themselves to the bone, checking them all." The head of the surveillance team's voice was dry, as if he had chewed sand.

"Vehicle trajectory, pedestrian recognition, and abnormal loitering analysis were cross-checked, and the result was zero. This killer is just like a ghost."

He pulled up a route simulation map and drew a curved line on the screen with a red pen.

"Based on the time window of the body disposal and the operating cycle of the garbage compression station, we deduced the killer's entry and exit routes. That bastard—"

"The route he took perfectly bypassed the intersection of seven surveillance blind spots. The transition window between each blind spot was only three to five seconds long."

The head of the image analysis team made a heavy dot on the map with the tip of his pen.

"In other words, before he even took action, he had already etched the blind spots of this area into his DNA, frame by frame."

Old Qi sat in the shadows in the corner, not saying a word.

Only after the image analysis team finished their report did he slam the pen he had been clutching for so long onto the table.

"This is definitely not the first time I've done this job."

Everyone's eyes turned to that direction at once.

"His bone saw operation is as steady as a rock, indicating extensive practical experience; his precise chemical reagent mixing indicates he has conducted countless experiments in private; and his meticulous route planning indicates that his environmental perception is far more granular than that of ordinary people."

Old Qi tapped his index finger heavily on the table, enunciating each word clearly.

"This wasn't a crime of passion committed in a moment of passion, nor was it the work of a novice in a training ditch. This is definitely the work of a seasoned serial killer who has honed his skills to perfection."

The temperature in the conference room was as warm as ever, but the hairs on the back of everyone's necks stood on end.

---

Three days, a full seventy-two hours.

The lights on the third floor of the Municipal Bureau never went out.

Jiang Yan led her team like madmen, searching every blind spot and dead corner of all the sewer manhole covers, abandoned factories, and construction sites in the southern suburbs.

They conducted door-to-door investigations, visiting 300 people and checking all the surrounding households, shops, and nighttime scavengers. They used every available, hard-core method, including physical evidence collection, trace comparison, and database cross-referencing.

The result was that nothing was gained.

The killer doesn't exist in any system. There's no prior criminal record, no DNA match, and no behavioral correlation.

The net of 1,200 surveillance cameras was so thoroughly penetrated by this man that not even a shoe print was left.

The municipal government officials made 800 phone calls a day. The wording changed from "expediting the process" to "solving the case within a time limit," and then from "time limit" to a death order.

The pressure of public opinion control is immense, and social panic can no longer be contained on local social media.

On the afternoon of the third day, Jiang Yan stood in front of the whiteboard, her eyes bloodshot.

The board was covered with bloody photos, maps, and timelines, the red and blue lines crisscrossing to form a suffocating spiderweb. She held a marker in her hand, biting the cap in frustration.

Serial killer behavior model.

Organized and unorganized classification frameworks, geographical profiling, psychological profiling... Over the past four hours, she has repeatedly applied, overturned, and rebuilt the tools she knows by heart from the police academy textbooks.

The whole thing was ruined; there wasn't a single model that could contain the killer.

The characteristics of organized crime all fit—meticulous planning, professional tools, and zero traces at the scene. But this model presupposes that criminals typically have normal social interactions and can be caught by a screening network. Yet, this killer is a transparent ghost at the societal level.

The premise of geographic profiling is that the killer operates within their comfort zone. But this psychopath chose body disposal sites entirely within absolute security zones protected from surveillance, completely unrelated to their normal life trajectory.

What made her most desperate was the complete crushing defeat in the counter-surveillance dimension.

According to the ironclad rules of criminal psychology, even the most cautious serial killer will eventually slip up after three to five crimes due to overconfidence.

But this person's counter-surveillance awareness is simply outrageous; it seems to have long been a passive skill of his.

The marker cap fell out of its mouth and rolled away down the floor.

Jiang Yan turned and walked back to her desk, feeling completely drained. Six empty coffee cups sat on the desk, remnants of a life sustained only by caffeine.

The golden 72 hours have passed.

This means that the value of physical evidence begins to plummet, eyewitness memories become blurred, and the murderer has plenty of time to cover everything up.

What's even more alarming is that the timer is still running. If this is indeed a serial killer, the next victim has likely already been identified.

Jiang Yan walked to the window and felt the cold wind for a while, then walked back blankly.

She pulled two files from the table, signed the borrowing slip, and stuffed them into her handbag.

Go home. She needed a change of environment; this place was making it impossible for her to think.