An infinite journey starting from paradise

Lin Shangren said, "I heard you guys arguing about whether or not to use condoms when visiting prostitutes from a distance. I'm not deaf, and I'm certainly not an idiot."

Then he changed the subject and continued in an indignant tone, "How could she be a prostitute? Have you ever seen a prostitute wearing such an expensive Yuzen kimono? Even the courtesans of the Edo period couldn't easily wear such a high-end kimono!"

"Is this...is the kimono she's wearing expensive?"

Born in Ningyo Village and having never come into contact with so-called upper-class women, Takayama Shixin really couldn't tell the difference between good and bad kimonos.

"Indeed," Nagato Izou also examined the deceased's kimono. "Although her red undergarment looks tacky at first glance, no different from the cheap ones worn by ordinary prostitutes, the intricate printing and embroidery on the garment can be clearly seen in the sunlight. So..."

"So she's not a prostitute, but a wife of a wealthy family who's secretly been having an affair?" Gao Shanzhixin concluded. "She deliberately put on heavy, cheap makeup and changed into gaudy clothes to conceal her identity. So, the person she's having an affair with must be the murderer!"

"..."

Lin Shangren was speechless. "Let's not talk about how arbitrary your imaginary assumption is. How do you know that the person who killed the victim and had sex with the victim were the same person?"

"Because this is a secret room, according to the proprietress who discovered the body, after the deceased entered the room last night, only one person entered the room and never came out again." Gao Shanzhixin explained.

"Did the boss lady see that man?"

"Um...she didn't see it, but she heard it."

"Hear? She is blind?" asked Xu Hai Wenzhi who was beside Lin Shangren.

Although the inn's proprietress suffered from night blindness, she wasn't blind. She used the word "hear" because it was customary in her profession. Small inns like this never registered their guests, especially those whorehouse prostitutes and their guests. Not only would they not register, they wouldn't even bother meeting them.

The reason for this was simple: this wasn't a real brothel, and the inn's owner wasn't a pimp, soliciting clients and letting the women take a cut. She wasn't a pimp either; she simply provided cheap services to self-employed prostitutes. Excessive contact with the rented prostitutes and their clients would only lead to trouble.

The typical operating model for these small inns is that a prostitute personally contacts the owner, renting a room for the day. Afterward, she brings a client, locks the door, and then proceeds with her duties. The owner typically avoids the situation during this time—a client who visits a prostitute privately doesn't appreciate others seeing their appearance. As for whether the prostitutes and their clients damage or steal the inn's belongings, there must be valuables in the inn. These small inns typically only have cheap bedding, so even if something is stolen or damaged, it's not a big deal for the owner. At most, he'll just swear.

Small hotels like these operated this way out of fear of breaking the law. During this period, the "Prostitution Prevention Act" hadn't yet been enacted, and while registered brothels like the Snow White Brothel were legal, harboring prostitutes for prostitution was illegal. After all... they didn't pay taxes. However, businesses like this, completely avoiding contact with clients and not accepting their accommodation fees, "could" avoid the practice of harboring prostitutes.

Of course, the premise of “not belonging” is that the “sponsorship money” given to the police station is sufficient.

Although the Japanese government spearheaded the provision of prostitutes for the comfort of American troops stationed in Japan after the war, the private sex trade remained mired in a gray area: paying protection fees was legal, while failing to do so would result in arrest and potential sexual atonement. It wasn't until the enactment of the "Prostitution Prevention Law" in 1958 that the situation began to improve slightly.

Nagato Izo explained, "No, but she did claim to have night blindness. According to her, only the deceased and the suspect entered this room last night. No one left all night. In the morning, no one came out, so she tried to knock on the door to get them out, but found it was still locked. As you can see, the door to this room is a sliding wooden paper door. She kicked it down with force, and then she saw the body."

As he spoke, Nagato Izo walked over to the door and added, "Although this door is easy to kick down, it can't be put back in from the outside. It can only be installed from the inside. And the window over there faces the wall of the next courtyard, which is too narrow for people to pass through. Therefore, this is still a secret room."

"Secret room?"

Lin Shangren sneered:

"Let's not talk about whether the murderer could escape through the window, let's just talk about this door. Although this door is locked, if it is forcibly removed, it cannot be installed again from the outside. But, couldn't the murderer wait for someone to open the door before leaving?"

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that when the innkeeper's wife kicked open the door, the murderer might still be hiding in this room. Here."

Lin Shangren pointed to the pile of quilts near the door. "Even if the murderer felt the quilts were in the way when he was killing someone, there was no need to throw them so far away, right? Coincidentally, the quilts are in a blind spot when someone looks into the room from outside the door.

"I wonder if an ordinary person, after seeing a body with a horrible death and eyes gouged out, would still notice if there was someone hiding under the quilt beside her where she couldn't see? Of course, there was more than one murderer hiding in the room."

"what?"

The police on the scene had just caught up with Lin Shangren's thoughts when they saw him walk to a small cabinet in the corner of the room. The cabinet was very small, only one meter square, and obviously could not hide an adult.

Lin Shangren used a black umbrella to pry open the cabinet door. The cabinet was empty, with a faint puddle of water at the bottom.

"Roar~ It seems like he was scared." Lin Shangren muttered and walked to the corpse again.

"It looked like he was struggling mightily, but there were no obvious signs of struggle. The legs were kicking, but there weren't many signs of resistance on his upper body. The deceased's fingernails were not short, and there was no trace of his blood or body tissue in them.

This foot... oh, it's quite interesting."

Lin Shangren picked up the deceased's right foot and examined it carefully. He did this not because he was a foot fetishist, but because the condition of the deceased's foot was indeed very unnatural.

"Everyone," Lin Shangren suddenly said, "Try it. Relax your legs, press down hard with your big toe, and lift the other four toes as high as possible."

"what?"

"Ah ah ah ah ah!"

Takayama Zhixin and Inui Bunji suddenly screamed, and then both of them fell to the ground twitching.

“It hurts…it hurts!…I’m cramping!”

"Pfft."

Lin Shangren couldn't help laughing. "It does cause cramps, and it feels quite sore. The question is, why are the deceased's toes in this state? She's already in rigor mortis, which means she was in this state before she died. So, why did she do this?"

"Why?" asked Nagato Izo.

"I can't be sure yet... Hmm...? Could it be that she really is a pervert?"

"What did you say?"

Lin Shangren did not respond to Nagato Izo's question, but reached out and lifted the dead woman's head, carefully observing the bruises on the dead woman's neck, which were the marks left when she was strangled to death.

"It's not a rope, it's something very stretchy and elastic... stockings?! Sexual asphyxiation and extreme pain?"

Chapter 137: Devil?

"The fact that a noblewoman could disguise herself and come to a place like this for a date, whether she did it voluntarily or under duress, suggests that the murderer was familiar with the deceased, or at least knew her. This contradicts the Eyebreaker's previous criminal logic and target selection.

The five victims before were not three prostitutes who were killed on the roadside while picking up customers in the middle of the night, a female student who was abducted on her way home from school, and a housewife who was killed by a murderer who broke into her home through a window when she was alone.

Randomness, lack of preparation, strangulation, gouging out the eyes, but not violating the victim – these characteristics do not fit this case.

Therefore, there is a high possibility that this case is a copycat crime.”

Lin Shangren stared at the dead body, constantly sorting out various key words in his mind.

"Infidelity? Stockings, sexual asphyxiation? Abnormal cramps,... marks... hmm..."

While Lin Shangren was thinking, the four beast dice in his consciousness began to rotate slowly. As he thought deeper, the rotation speed of the four beast dice continued to accelerate.

"So... could that be the case?"

Lin Shangren squatted down, put on rubber gloves, reached out and lifted the skirt that was covered by Nagato Izang, exposing the dead woman's white thighs again.

"What are you going to do?"

"Check for traces." Lin Shangren replied.

"What traces?"

"."

"what?"

For men, whether you do traditional crafts, use a famous tool, or even engage in actual combat, after these, your Jill will not be much different, and there will be no noticeable marks left.

But, women are different: forcing and submitting are different, pushing and scratching are also different.

As the saying goes, even gods have difficulty rolling around in the toilet. If the other party forcibly accesses the vagina and the woman also tries to resist, then it is easy for the mucosa to be damaged and the corpus luteum to rupture. If she is obedient and cooperates, the elasticity of the vagina can accommodate anything.

As for pushing and scratching... let's put it this way, scratching is more likely to cause damage than pushing. And the marks left by scratching are more obvious than those left by pushing, and are easier to distinguish.

What Lin Shangren wanted to confirm was whether the deceased with a red and swollen body had engaged in sexual intercourse before his death.

The reason for testing this is simple - to confirm the gender of the murderer and to confirm whether the nature of the case is murder or manslaughter.

"Given that there were only traces of fingering, and the idea of ​​roast chicken with kimonos and stockings didn't exist in 1956..."

Thinking, Lin Shangren looked at the white tabi wrapped around the deceased's feet.

"So this case is about a white pufferfish having an affair, going too far with the suffocation trick, accidentally killing her, and then disguising himself as a bruised eye demon to commit the crime?"

This judgment is still a bit hasty, but the current information does not fully confirm the gender of the deceased or the reason for the murder. What if the murderer is a man who likes to carry stockings with him and only touches them without inserting them? What if he deliberately wanted to strangle the deceased during a suffocation game?

These possibilities exist, and they are not insignificant. Normally, to know whether the specific circumstances are consistent with Lin Shangren's speculation, we have to wait until the identity of the deceased and her interpersonal relationships are confirmed.

But, Lin Shangren is cheating.

"Laplace."

After confirming a series of keywords and making inferences, Lin Shangren decisively opened Laplace and recreated the original scene.

Based on his experience gained from repeated use, when using Laplace to reconstruct past events, the more comprehensive the known conditions and the closer the event to the present, the clearer the details of the restored historical scene, and the less "energy" it consumes. Furthermore, when using the power of Laplace, the accuracy of the restored scene can be improved by investing "energy".

"It won't take much to just reconstruct what happened last night."

As the spring bag was drained of its stock, the scene before Lin Shangren changed. The eyeless corpse, already in a state of rigor mortis, began to come alive, its lost eyes returning to their sockets. Then, Lin Shangren saw the person who had gouged out the dead man's eyes: a woman in a white robe.

"I can't see her face, but judging by her figure and the skin on her hands, she's probably around thirty years old. Nearly 1.65 meters tall is definitely considered tall for that era. The knot on her hand is...as expected."

The scene continued to change rapidly, like a rewind tape, and then everything stopped and started playing again in normal order. Lin Shangren reviewed the entire case as if he were watching a movie.

……

She married her husband three years ago and became the wife of a silk shop.

After their marriage, the couple treated each other with great respect. She was beautiful, cared for her husband meticulously, treated servants and business owners kindly, dealt with customers tactfully, and even knew how to do the accounting. In every way, she was an impeccable young lady of the silk shop.

On the contrary, her husband, who was the fifth or sixth generation head of the silk and satin business, was a young master who was ignorant of the ways of the world and knew nothing at all. His only virtue was his timidity and caution, and he was a well-known coward in the neighborhood. Everyone said it was a pity that she married that consumptive man.

But she didn't think so. She wanted to cherish the relationship with her husband. Her husband often boasted to others, saying that such a good wife would be hard to find even with a lantern. However, what her husband didn't know was that she had a difficult past to talk about.

"I know your secrets. Tokyo, Tanimachi, the Red Line District, the institutions catering to Americans... Need I continue?"

That woman suddenly broke into her life. She knew her shameful past and used it as a threat, wanting to... get her.

"That's not my fault!" she argued. "It was the state that established the Special Comfort Facility Association, and wasn't it the Metropolitan Police Department that established its predecessor, the Tokyo Restaurant Association? Looking back in history, it was the shogunate that established Yoshiwara. Whether they were geishas, ​​prostitutes, new Japanese women, or street prostitutes, they all did the same thing! We were simply deceived and coerced by the government."

She certainly thought so, and part of the truth was true. At such a young age, she believed the emperor's rhetoric about "devoting one's body to one's country" and entered that institution, where she was ridden by thousands and tens of thousands of men. During that period, many women from the lower classes were forced to become official prostitutes in order to survive and make a living.

But... she took the initiative, and her family background was not bad... She felt that she had mistakenly believed the emperor's lies, but the truth might also be that she was a natural bastard.

This can be seen from her attitude towards the woman who coerced her: fear, grief, and... a hint of excitement.

"Aren't my hands much more comfortable than your husband's or those stinky men's?"

She stroked and slapped her bottom: "Say it, don't you?"

“Hmm…oh…”

Her sensitive body had already begun to react. She moaned and twisted her body, her legs slowly opening, and at the same time, liquid had already begun to flow out of the cracks in her white panties, and the liquid that kept flowing out of her panties had already become sticky and stuck to her inner thighs.

"How shameless of you to be toyed with by another woman behind your husband's back, and yet you make such lascivious noises."

The man's fingers kept rubbing the hole inside through the thin layer of silk satin in the milky white hollow silk panties, and used his fingers to massage the cracks and protruding petals, making the deep part of the open legs feel spasmodic with joy.

"Fuck... me... please..."

She lost.

Just the first time, her body betrayed herself and her husband.

She's... a little addicted.

They began to have regular affairs, and she gradually became dissatisfied with just fingering and teasing, and the same went for him.

"Hit me... please, hit my nasty ass with a whip..."

"Snapped."

She hit her, on the face, with a slap.

"Flogging is a sunnah for mothers, and a bitch like you is unworthy."

"I'm sorry... Sister. Please, slap me, this bitch..."

However, the nun did not beat her again.

"If I hit you, it would be bad if it left marks. Come on, be good and put this on."

So she put on a collar. It tightened until it strangled her to the brink of death. Between life and death, she experienced an inexplicable extreme.

She fell in love with this feeling.

The nuns were also happy to give her some rewards, from collars, belts, to stockings...

Gradually, she was no longer satisfied and wanted something more exciting, such as... pain.

"Hit me... stab me... strangle me..."

The stockings around her neck gradually tightened, her cramped legs and feet continued to struggle. Her eyes gradually bulged out, her breathing became increasingly difficult, and her chest felt so stuffy that it was about to explode.

“Gah…ah…”

In the pain of passing through Yin, her consciousness gradually became blurred.

The world in my eyes turned into an ambiguous pink, and everything was melting and collapsing.

Then, she saw a woman with bat wings and blood gushing out of her lower body - her lower body seemed to have been torn apart by something powerful.

She saw it before she died, and Lin Shangren, who was watching this history, also saw it.