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

"Click!"

The hydraulic clamps snapped shut, and the crisp sound of the snap ring breaking echoed through the empty, deathly silent factory area.

Jiang Yan kicked open the iron gate, and trace evidence investigator Xiao Zhou squeezed in right after her.

The flashlight beam swept across the concrete floor. It was flat and dry, without even a single footprint.

Upon closer inspection, the seams of the doors and windows were found to be completely sealed with translucent waterproof tape, and the width and pressure of each strip of tape were remarkably consistent.

There was no smell in the air. There was no musty smell that an abandoned factory should have, and no pungent dust.

Xiao Zhou raised his flashlight and shone it along the walls, surveying the ceiling. The reinforced concrete ceiling was dry and leak-free; not even a single spider web was visible on the cable trays in the corners.

"Something's not right," Xiao Zhou muttered to himself. "A house that's been abandoned for three years can't possibly have zero dust levels in the air. Someone must have come here regularly for extremely thorough sealing and maintenance."

The dumping ground for the bodies of obsessive-compulsive perfectionists.

Lu Yuan's cold, hard statement struck Jiang Yan's mind like lightning once again.

Police dogs entered the scene. Two Kunming dogs, heads down, frantically sniffed the ground. The handlers held tightly to their leashes, following behind and checking step by step.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes.

The police dog gave no response.

In the quiet factory, hushed whispers began to circulate among the workers.

"Captain Jiang, are you sure you're not mistaken...?"

"Even if an informant's intelligence is top-notch, they wouldn't just randomly hide body parts in this abandoned factory where not even ashes remain, would they?"

Jiang Yan suddenly closed her eyes.

—He doesn't need to calculate; taking that route is as instinctive as you taking your own living room to go to the bathroom.

—A perfectionist. Radius: 800 meters.

Go check!

"Perfectionism..." Jiang Yan's lips moved silently.

That's right, perfectionism! A person with an extreme, morbid fear of "dirt" would never casually leave things lying around in places where they can be easily seen.

Jiang Yan suddenly opened her eyes!

The flashlight beam swept directly into the deepest part of the power distribution room.

At the far end of the ground, three abandoned cable trenches are embedded side by side in the concrete. The trenches are covered with prefabricated cement slabs, each about 120 centimeters long and 60 centimeters wide. The dust on the surface of the slabs looks exactly the same as the dust distribution on the surrounding ground.

Consistent? No!

This is a power distribution room that has been abandoned for three years. The dust that naturally accumulates on the ground will definitely create spatial differences – it should be thicker in the corners, thinner in the passageways, and there should be dark streaks formed by dust accumulation in the gaps of the cover plates.

The ash here is spread out too evenly!

Without hesitation, Jiang Yan knelt down on one knee. Her face was almost pressed against the cold concrete floor, and she turned her head to shine her flashlight intently at the joint between the cover plate and the trench wall.

found it!

Beneath the ash layer on the eastern edge of the second cover plate lies a very shallow scratch! Less than a millimeter wide, it runs from the inside out.

These are marks from the crowbar. Someone moved this cover, and afterwards, they evenly covered it back with layers of dust!

"Get a crowbar!"

Three of the strongest officers rushed forward and forcefully inserted thick crowbars into the gap. With all three exerting force simultaneously, veins bulging on their arms, the heavy cover plate barely loosened by an inch.

"rise--!"

The heavy concrete slab was blown away, crashing to the side with a dull thud and kicking up a cloud of dust.

Several powerful flashlight beams simultaneously pierced the bottom of the ditch.

The cable trench is about 40 centimeters deep, and the original cable channels have been cleaned thoroughly. At the bottom, a thick layer of moisture-proof plastic film is laid tightly.

In the very center of the plastic film, two black, double-layered, thickened plastic bags are neatly stacked like two works of art.

Forensic pathologist Lao Li's breath hitched. He immediately put on his rubber gloves, slid down into the ditch, and squatted down.

The surgical scissors moved very steadily, cutting along the sealing tape at the ligature.

The moment the bag was opened, a strong, pungent smell of sodium hypochlorite compound solution surged up from the bottom of the ditch, causing the two officers closest to instinctively turn their heads away and cough violently.

The flashlight beam shone directly into the inside of the bag.

The bone cut surface was deathly pale. The curve was perfect. The incision was clean and precise. Even the serrated lines left by the cut were perfectly even, without any trace of abrupt correction.

Old Li squatted by the ditch, his head almost buried in the dark depths. The backlight of his flashlight shone back up from below, making the old forensic doctor's face look like a chillingly white sheet of paper.

He slowly raised his head, his voice hoarse.

"The bone saw model matches perfectly. The cutting technique matches perfectly."

"Captain Jiang, these are new body parts."

The power distribution room was deathly silent.

A dozen or so tough detectives stood frozen in place, their flashlight beams fixed on the two black bags at the bottom of the ditch. The only sounds in the air, besides the nauseating smell of chemical preservatives, were their heavy, suppressed breathing.

The hands of trace evidence investigator Xiao Zhou were shaking like a leaf. When he raised his DSLR camera to take a picture of the evidence, he pressed the shutter three times in a row before he could barely get the focus right.

……

High-definition photos and accurate GPS location data from the scene were encrypted and transmitted back to the municipal bureau in real time.

The special task force meeting room is located on the fourth floor.

On the large electronic map screen, there are glaring red positioning points.

The head of the image reconnaissance team, Cui Lei, stared intently at that red dot—it was no more than twenty meters away from the bullseye circled in red on the sketch Jiang Yan had slapped on the table before leaving!

"Clatter!"

The coffee cup in Cui Lei's hand slipped and slammed solidly onto the keyboard.

Old Qi, who had been sitting in the shadows in the corner, suddenly stood up from his chair.

The call was made immediately.

"Team Leader Jiang."

Old Qi's voice trembled with barely suppressed emotion. He had worked in the field for twenty-seven years, handled hundreds of bloody cases, and written enough criminal profiling reports to reach his waist. But he swore he had never been so humiliated in his life.

"Tell me honestly, which reclusive, highly skilled master drew this picture for you?"

On the other end of the phone, the wind howled through the southern suburbs.

Jiang Yan stood silently outside the warning line of the power distribution room. Listening to Lao Qi's almost frantic questioning through her earpiece, she looked up at the dark night sky.

The image of that man involuntarily surfaced in my mind—

Wearing a wrinkled windbreaker and a tattered apron, he casually munched on braised pork ribs while effortlessly overturning the judgments of the entire city bureau's image investigation network and major crime profiling team with just a marker.

This is absolutely outrageous!

Two black plastic bags were pulled out from the bottom of the ditch by forensic doctor Lao Li.

The smell of sodium hypochlorite lingered in the enclosed space, choking the two officers closest to it until their eyes turned red.