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

Evening, in an old residential area in the south of the city.

The motion-activated light in the stairwell was broken. Jiang Yan touched the cold handrail and slowly made her way upstairs. Her legs felt like lead, and her knees protested with every bend.

The third floor has twelve steps on each floor.

She stood in front of her old, dilapidated security door, her fingers reaching into her handbag to pull out her keys, just touching the edge of the keyhole.

A smell drifted into my nostrils along the corridor.

That was the aroma wafting from the crack in the security door next door—a rich, hot meaty smell mixed with the caramelized aroma of star anise and rock sugar.

Braised spare ribs.

Three days ago, the man engaged in a psychological game with Mr. Liu at the market and bought two pounds of spare ribs.

The enigmatic man was stewing pork ribs.

Jiang Yan's hand froze in mid-air, the key hovering over the lock.

The aroma of meat, mingled with the scent of everyday life, forcefully penetrated the caffeine and adrenaline of the past seventy-two hours, breaking through the knot in her mind and suddenly stirring a nerve.

She remembered something.

Lu Yuan's movements in the market were almost ghostly. From blending into the group of middle-aged women, to using the steam from the steamed bun stall to block their view, to precisely cutting in through the blind spot at the back door of the bus.

—Isn't this the ultimate route planning capability?

In the supermarket, Lu Yuan scanned the shelf layout in a fraction of a second and instantly cut into the empty space of the crowd.

—Isn't this just like spatial perception, which is like a game-changer for blind spots in surveillance?

At the premiere, Lu Yuan appeared to fall in a disheveled manner, but in reality, he used a thin A4 sheet of paper to precisely disable the thug's limb nerve in 0.3 seconds, leaving no trace of his deliberate act afterward.

—Isn't this perfect disguise and the ultimate control over physical traces?

An absurd thought, so outrageous it made her question the meaning of life, surged up her brainstem.

The most advanced reconnaissance network was completely crushed by this dismembering killer.

All conventional criminal psychology models are rendered obsolete because their default parameters are based on ordinary people, or at most, highly intelligent criminals.

But this killer was not within the Five Elements at all; he jumped directly out of the atmosphere of the conventional model.

Who's above him? Who's in even higher outer space?

Jiang Yan slowly turned her head, her gaze fixed on the peeling paint on the security door next door. Beside the door was a plastic bag containing three empty aluminum cans that she planned to sell as scrap.

Yes, that's the man stewing pork ribs inside.

The man who could kick a nut with his toe to correct the trajectory of a 60-kilogram iron block.

The man who made the renowned criminal psychology expert, Lao Qi, personally write the four words "extremely dangerous" on his assessment report!

How ironic, she was the one monitoring him, while he was a high-risk, high-priority surveillance target. She endured months of painstaking effort to prove that this man was an extremely dangerous individual.

But now?

There was a real wild beast raging outside, and all the hunting rifles in the hands of this dignified criminal police captain had become useless scrap metal that could no longer fire.

Jiang Yan stood in the dark corridor, motionless like a statue for a long time.

The aroma of the ribs grew stronger and stronger, the scent of star anise hit me hard, with a hint of tempting sweetness.

She took a deep breath and put the keys back in her pocket.

She did not go to her security room, which was filled with the highest level of listening equipment and thermal imaging cameras.

Instead, he turned around and walked to the next room.

When she raised her hand, her knuckles trembled uncontrollably twice due to three consecutive days of high-intensity work and mental exhaustion.

The joint finally landed on the door panel.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

There was movement inside the door, the clattering of footsteps, the sound of flip-flops scraping against the cheap floor.

The door clicked open.

Lu Yuan stood behind the door with his slightly spiky hair sticking up.

He wore a tattered gray apron and held a stainless steel strainer in his right hand. Thick braising sauce dripped from the bottom of the strainer onto the ground.

Her face still had a small blush from the cooking fumes.

Jiang Yan looked at him.

Lu Yuan also looked at Jiang Yan.

The policewoman outside the door looked frighteningly pale, with sunken eyes and spiderweb-like red veins in the whites of her eyes. Her lips were chapped and peeling, the skin on her cheekbones was taut, and her whole body exuded an inescapable weariness and a faint smell of disinfectant.

Lu Yuan paused, his fingers tightening on the doorknob, and the sauce on the strainer splattered onto the floor with a "plop".

"Lu Yuan".

Jiang Yan's throat was so dry and hoarse, as if it had been rubbed raw by sandpaper. She stared intently at the chef in front of her, who exuded the warmth of everyday life, and finally let down all her guard and the aloofness of a criminal investigator.

The only way to counter magic is with magic.

"I need your help."

Lu Yuan looked at the ashen, emaciated face outside the door.

"Officer Jiang, if the drain is clogged, contact the property management; if there's a leak upstairs, contact the landlord." He took a half step back, shoved the strainer behind his back, and said, "You've got the wrong person."

His right hand was already on the doorknob.

He was thoroughly fed up with all the messy things from his past life. Killing and being killed, chasing and being chased—every single one was a zero-sum game where lives were the stakes. In this life, all he wanted was to quietly stew some ribs and watch his sixth brother eat until he was stuffed and roll over on the sofa, belly up.

As the door was pushed halfway in, Jiang Yan's left foot slammed into the gap between the door frame and the door panel with a loud thud, causing her to be pushed forward.

Old Liu hunched over the sofa armrest, letting out a low whimper from deep in his throat.

Lu Yuan didn't use force. It would be a bit unfair of him to actually push the door shut on a female detective who hadn't slept for three days and whose knees were trembling.

Jiang Yan entered the house and stood next to the coffee table. The aroma of pork ribs wafting from the kitchen filled her nostrils, causing her stomach, which had been empty for three days, to spasm.

She gripped the strap of her handbag tightly.

"Dismemberment case at the garbage compression station in the southern suburbs."

Lu Yuan placed the strainer on the shoe cabinet, leaned against the wall in the entryway, and put his hands in his apron pockets.

"It's been three days." Jiang Yan's voice was like an iron pipe that had been sanded down.

"All 1,203 probes were checked, and zero were found. The killer used a surgical-grade oscillating saw to dismember the body; the osteotomy surfaces were perfectly aligned, and the forensic pathologist determined the surgeon to be at least a surgical resident."

"The body bag was free of fingerprints, hair, and skin flakes, both inside and out. The solution, a combination of sodium hypochlorite and hydrogen peroxide, was precisely diluted to destroy the DNA double strand without corroding the bag, and the surrounding environment was completely free of bacteria."

Lu Yuan remained expressionless, turned and walked into the kitchen, lifted the pot lid, and a rich aroma of star anise and caramelized rock sugar wafted out.

He took a small bowl from the dish rack, picked up a piece of pork rib, bit into it, and the meat separated from the bone. The dark brown broth seeped out along the meat fibers, with a perfect balance of sweet and salty.

Lu Yuan smacked his lips in satisfaction.

Jiang Yan followed him to the kitchen door, where his phone screen was already lit up. A close-up of a heavily pixelated bone-cutting surface was shoved in front of him; even with the blurring, the precision of the curved saw marks was still shocking.