A perfect crime? To me, it's full of flaws!

Qi Feng took off his disposable gloves, which were covered in red oil, rubbed them together, and precisely tossed them into the trash can in the corner. He took three tissues and vigorously wiped the oil stains from the corners of his mouth.

"This meal will cost 860 in total, Da Li. Remember to ask Captain Zhao for reimbursement later. Although I, Qi, am rich, I will never let Captain Zhao down." Qi Feng earnestly instructed.

Da Li's lips twitched slightly: "Advisor Qi, how do we report this title?"

"Just write 'Nutritional Supplement Expenses for Nighttime Brainpower Exhaustion of the Special Task Force.'" Qi Feng waved his hand. "Alright, eat and drink your fill, get back to work."

He stood up, walked to the corner, grabbed a large whiteboard with wheels with one hand, and dragged it to the front of his desk.

Xiao Liu, Da Li, and the other two immediately put down their milk tea cups, took out their notebooks and pens, and sat up straight.

Qi Feng removed the cap from his black marker and drew three parallel circles heavily on the whiteboard.

"Let's rearrange the cards in our hand."

"First crime scene: abandoned auto parts factory in the west of the city." Qi Feng wrote the location in the first circle. "The location is extremely remote, abandoned for many years, and even homeless people don't go there. Items collected at the scene: black raincoat fibers, minor scratches left by the murder weapon."

"Second crime scene: a rental house in a slated urban village slated for demolition." The pen tip circled the second area. "The surrounding residents have already moved out, and the water and electricity have been cut off. Extracted from the drainage ditch outside the door: half of an infant's umbilical cord."

"At the third crime scene, outside the construction site, a damaged black plastic bag was retrieved from a trash can. Traces of the deceased's blood and some tissue fluid were found inside."

Qi Feng spoke extremely fast, and his handwriting was bold and unrestrained.

"This is the objective physical evidence." Qi Feng tapped the whiteboard with the tip of his pen. "Now, smash the frame from which we drew the profile. We'll start from scratch."

He wrote the words "Pregnant Woman" in large letters on the blank space of the whiteboard.

"First question: How did the killer find these three victims? Did they just randomly pick them on the street in the middle of the night?"

Xiao Liu immediately shook his head and opened his notebook: "Absolutely impossible. All three crime scenes are remote and secluded areas. Normal pregnant women, especially those six to eight months pregnant, would not go to such places at night due to their limited mobility. Moreover, the forensic toxicology report showed that no sedatives or date rape drugs were detected in the bodies of the three victims. This rules out the possibility that they were drugged and then carried out."

"That means it was either a crime committed by someone you know, or you were coerced into it by violence," Da Li said, stroking his chin.

The bespectacled officer, Old Zhang, frowned and retorted, "The chances of coercion are slim. The journey from the city to these remote areas is definitely not short. Along the way, the pregnant woman would have had many opportunities to ask passersby for help or simply jump out of the vehicle and escape."

"Not necessarily." Da Li raised his voice. "What are pregnant women most afraid of? Something happening to the baby in their womb! If a criminal holds a knife to her stomach and says, 'If you move, I'll stab your son to death,' she definitely won't dare to make a move."

"Wouldn't it be even more dangerous in the wilderness? The best chance of survival is to take a chance when there are many people in the city. Pregnant women aren't stupid," Old Zhang retorted.

Qi Feng raised his hand, interrupting their argument.

"You both make sense." Qi Feng drew two branching lines under "pregnant woman," indicating two possible causes: luring by acquaintances and coercion. These two directions run parallel, and neither can definitively rule them out. Write this down; we'll re-examine the interpersonal networks of the three victims tomorrow.

[At this point, I hope readers will remember our domain name 12199.99]

He turned around and glanced at the four people.

"The next question is motivation."

Qi Feng wrote the word "purpose" on the whiteboard.

"Consultant Qi," Xiao Liu raised her hand, "weren't you very certain before that the murderer committed the crime because of an accidental loss of a child or severe infertility, which led to psychological distortion?"

"That was my earliest profile," Qi Feng frankly admitted, without any attempt to hide his embarrassment at his mistake. "But you ran yourself ragged, checking the hospital records of more than two thousand people, and came up empty-handed. What does that mean? It means that my profile criteria were too rigid, or that we overlooked some extremely secretive group."

The office fell silent.

The four police officers looked at each other, lost in thought.

Officer Wang Hao, who hadn't said much, suddenly looked up.

"Consultant Qi, is it possible... that she never went to the hospital at all?" Wang Hao pushed up his black-rimmed glasses.

Qi Feng raised an eyebrow: "Be more specific."

"Recurrent miscarriage." Wang Hao swallowed, organizing his thoughts. "I have a distant relative like that. When she was young, she was naive and had an abortion at an unlicensed clinic, which damaged her health. Later, after getting married, she would miscarry after two or three months of pregnancy, and it kept happening. Many people with this kind of early miscarriage just stay at home for a few days and let it go, without ever going to a proper hospital to see a doctor. They're ashamed, and they also want to save money."

"Moreover, in some families with outdated views, the woman is often treated like a 'barren hen' and suffers immense mental anguish," Wang Hao added. "They dare not speak out and can only endure it silently."

Qi Feng's eyes lit up instantly.

Da Li slapped his thigh suddenly: "That's right! If that's the case, there's absolutely no record of her in the medical insurance system, obstetrics and gynecology files, or even the blood bank records! She's invisible!"

Following this line of thought, Xiao Liu quickly analyzed: "In other words, the murderer is likely a woman who has long struggled to conceive and repeatedly experienced recurrent miscarriages. She endured the disdain of her in-laws, the neglect of her husband, and even the gossip of her neighbors. Prolonged mental repression and despair ultimately led to a complete psychological breakdown and distortion!"

"Excellent." Qi Feng snapped his fingers, not holding back his praise. "This direction is very reasonable. Tomorrow morning, shift the focus of the investigation to the community neighborhood committees and family planning offices in each jurisdiction, and even check the medical records of those folk remedies and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, and the list of worshippers at the Guanyin Temple that grants children. Although the scope is a bit large, at least it's a lead."

He wrote the words "habitual miscarriage" heavily on the whiteboard and drew two horizontal lines below it.

Then, Qi Feng stopped moving.

He stared at the whiteboard, his brows furrowing more and more.

"Alright, let's assume the motive is valid." Qi Feng turned around, his voice lowered, and he abandoned his previous casualness. "The third question is also the biggest logical flaw in the entire case."

He drew a huge question mark in the very center of the whiteboard.

Why did she take the stillborn baby?

Qi Feng's gaze swept over the crowd like a knife: "The three victims were between six and eight months pregnant. Common medical knowledge tells us that in the wilderness without any medical equipment, a forced cesarean section using crude methods would have absolutely no chance of survival for the fetus!"

Qi Feng pointed to the words "damaged plastic bag" on the whiteboard.

"Do you remember that torn bag from the third crime scene? The bag was torn, but she was willing to risk exposure to reprocess it at the construction site and take its contents with her. Inside were stillborn fetuses!"

"She went to great lengths to kill three people, but in the end, all she took with her were three cold, stillborn babies."

Xiao Liu was stunned, and subconsciously replied, "Because she wanted children so badly? Even if they were dead, she would raise them as her own?"

"Want a child?" Da Li retorted immediately. "If she wants a child, she can steal one from the hospital's maternity ward! Or buy one from a human trafficker! With her skills and counter-surveillance abilities, is it difficult for her to steal a newborn baby? The risk is small, and she'll get a living, breathing infant!"

"That's right," Old Zhang agreed. "She bypassed all surveillance cameras and cleaned the scene flawlessly. This shows she's perfectly intelligent and has extremely clear logic. What would a woman of normal intelligence do with three stillborn fetuses just to have a child?"

Old Zhang's words plunged the room into a deathly silence.

The hum of the exhaust fan became particularly jarring.

Yes.

Psychosis is not the same as intellectual disability.

Stealing a live baby is better than killing someone to get a dead baby.

Even a fool knows which one to choose.

But the killer chose the most extreme, bloodiest, and least profitable method.

Why?

Qi Feng stared at the huge question mark on the whiteboard.

In my mind, countless fragments of clues spun and collided wildly.

Raincoat, scratches, unknown white powder, remote crime scene, stillborn fetus, skilled cesarean section technique...

Suddenly, Qi Feng's pupils contracted sharply.

He considered an extremely terrifying possibility.

"Unless..." Qi Feng's voice rang out in the quiet office, carrying a hint of barely perceptible chill.

All four of them turned to look at him, holding their breath.

"Unless, what she wants isn't a living child at all."

Qi Feng turned around, placed his hands on the desk, and stared intently at the case files on the desk.

"Live babies cry, fuss, need to be fed, need to be cared for, and most importantly, the disappearance of a live baby will immediately trigger a city-wide manhunt."

Qi Feng's voice grew colder: "But stillborn babies won't."

"Or perhaps, she wasn't doing it to 'raise' a child at all." Qi Feng's mind flashed back to the sharp knife wrapped in insulating tape. "She was using pregnant women as a source of some kind of 'raw material.' She needed to extract stillborn fetuses through this bloody process of 'cesarean section' to satisfy some extremely perverse ritual, or... for medicinal purposes."

"Medicinal use?" Xiao Liu's face turned pale instantly, and his stomach churned.

"Among folk remedies, there is a horrifying claim called 'Ziheche,' which is the placenta. But there are even more extreme ones..." Qi Feng didn't continue.

Just then.

"Bang!"

The office door was suddenly pushed open, and the door panel slammed against the wall with a loud bang.

Zhao Gang stood at the door.

He gripped a fax document tightly in his hand, his knuckles white from the force. His face was ashen, his eyes filled with horror and anger, and his chest heaved violently.

"Qi Feng." Zhao Gang's voice trembled, filled with suppressed rage.

"Something's happened. The fourth one..."