Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Fatal Joy (05)

Guang Jun’s stiff shoulders slowly relaxed when he heard Hai Shu’s new question. The trembling muscle lines on his face also smoothed out. He covered his face with both hands and wiped it with force, his voice trembling with the aftershock, “Xixi, yes, I... and Xixi…”

Hai Shu took the initiative to bring up Yin Canxi’s past in Bin Cong City, “Yin Canxi is very smart. Although she only finished middle school, she’s no worse than those who went to high school or college. When I first met her, she was following a bad-tempered makeup artist. Everyone else couldn’t stand him, but she could, and learned all his skills. Later, she opened her own shop.”

Guang Jun nodded and gave a somewhat embarrassed smile, “I fell in love with her at first sight.”

Hai Shu was intrigued, “Oh?”

“She came back to sell cosmetics, and her shop was opened on the commercial street. During the grand opening, she offered free makeovers. It was a big event.” Guang Jun said, although Yin Canxi was from Zhouping Town, he hadn’t noticed her before then. The commercial street was bustling, and when his friends heard about the new cosmetic shop, they dragged him along. As the shop owner, Yin Canxi was naturally wearing exquisite makeup. He only took one glance and felt that this was the woman he had dreamed of.

Hai Shu coldly sneered in her heart. Guang Jun was probably referring to his girlfriend at that time.

Guang Jun seemed to realize he shouldn’t have mentioned the friend, awkwardly glancing at Hai Shu. After drinking some water, he continued, saying that he had Yin Canxi in his heart and would visit her shop often. Yin Canxi would tease him, “You, a man, want to wear makeup?”

To support Yin Canxi’s business, he bought a lot of perfume from the shop. Everything else was for women, which was hard to buy. Yin Canxi changed her makeup every day, from playful, delicate, mature, to cute—she could handle any style.

He couldn’t stand it anymore and bought a lipstick set from the shop. Yin Canxi smiled and asked, “Who is this for, your girlfriend?”

He took the opportunity to confess to Yin Canxi, “I want to give it to you.”

Yin Canxi didn’t immediately agree. After some back-and-forth, they finally became a couple.

It didn’t sound special. Hai Shu thought for a while and asked, “I just saw your family. They don’t seem to like Yin Canxi?”

Guang Jun sighed and hesitated, “Xixi’s job is unstable, and she never told us exactly what she did when she was working away. She just said she helped the police.”

Hai Shu still felt that there were many issues with Guang Jun. He didn’t seem like the kind of man Yin Canxi could love. Yin Canxi was like a vibrant butterfly, and Guang Jun was just the dull concrete on the ground.

If there was any reason to marry Guang Jun, it was only one thing—his family was influential in Zhouping Town.

The backbone of Zhouping Town was the Huiyong Glass Factory, and Guang Jun’s father, Guang Yongguo, was the deputy director of the factory.

Although this factory-centered small society had declined, in the relatively backward rural town, the deputy director still had considerable influence.

Everyone in the Guang family worked at the glass factory, and Guang Jun himself worked in the Housing Department. It was the most relaxed yet most lucrative position—the Housing Department had the final say in house repairs and allocations. Workers would fight over housing, and even a small clerk in the Housing Department could live a comfortable life.

Hai Shu felt that Yin Canxi, who had been struggling in Bin Cong City, wouldn’t marry Guang Jun for these reasons. But returning to her hometown, things were different. The Yin family was a large family, and they were all regular workers. Yin Canxi had an older sister and younger brother, and marriage wasn’t just her own decision.

Guang Jun seemed uncomfortable and asked tentatively, “Can I leave now? I’ve been here a while, and I’m not feeling well.”

Hai Shu stared at him again. “By the way, why didn’t Yin Canxi come with you?”

Guang Jun was uneasy. “She... she didn’t come back yesterday. She might be at her own house.”

“She came to see me last night, alone, late at night,” Hai Shu said, watching Guang Jun’s expression. “She asked me if the deceased was Wan Zeyu.”

Hearing Wan Zeyu’s name, Guang Jun stiffened again. “Oh, she’s very concerned too.”

“Wan Zeyu is your good friend, yet you didn’t accompany her?” Hai Shu said. “When she went back, you didn’t come to pick her up. It was her family who took her back.”

Guang Jun became anxious. “I couldn’t process it all yesterday! I don’t know where she went!”

You’ve processed it today, but you still haven’t cared about where Yin Canxi is. Is there something else occupying your mind? Hai Shu didn’t ask directly but stood up, looking down at Guang Jun. “What are you afraid of?”

Guang Jun’s pupils suddenly constricted, and his lips lost all color. “I... What am I afraid of?” He suddenly became agitated. “What is there for me to be afraid of? When Zeyu died, I was at home, and so many people can vouch for me!”

Hearing the noise in the room, the Guang family rushed in. Guang Jun’s mother scolded loudly and shielded him from Hai Shu. “This is outrageous! You can’t catch the criminal, but you’re bothering us regular folks! I’ll report you!”

Some members of the Criminal Investigation Team on the second floor overheard the noise downstairs. Wen Xu laughed, “Looks like our new leader is a bit thorny. She’s already made the crowd angry. Want us to go clean up the mess?”

Sui Xing gave him a look. “You? It’s a miracle you’re not making things worse.”

Wen Xu joked, “How can you talk to your senior like that, Little Star—”

Sui Xing put down what she was doing and went downstairs, just in time to meet Hai Shu on the stairs. Sui Xing asked, “Did they start fighting?”

Hai Shu scoffed, “Are you here to break up the fight, or to watch the fun?”

Sui Xing grinned. “Next time, let them fight a bit longer. Otherwise, I won’t even have time to join in and stir the pot.”

Hai Shu clasped her hands together. "You just reminded me!"

"Huh?"

"Firefighters!"

The captain of the firefighting team arrived, and Hai Shu mentioned the safety risks of smoking meat in the forest. The captain looked helpless and said he didn’t have a good solution. This was a tradition in Zhouping Town. They insisted on doing it there, and the elderly people, no matter how old, never listened to advice. Every year at this time, they were always on high alert, quickly deploying whenever something seemed off.

Hai Shu asked the captain if he knew why the townspeople smoked meat in the forest. The captain couldn’t explain it, just saying it was a tradition.

Hai Shu said, "An old woman told me that the smoking barrels in the forest are like a ritual for appeasing vengeful spirits."

The captain was startled. "That’s impossible, right? Our town hasn’t had any superstitions for years!"

Just then, the station chief and deputy station chief happened to be there. Hai Shu shifted her focus. "Chief Zhao, Deputy Chief Wang, today during the investigation, an elderly woman told me that thirty years ago, there was a series of murders in the town. Do you have any records about it?"

Chief Zhao, who was in his fifties, froze for a moment when he heard. "Are you talking about that case? I remember it, I heard the old officers talk about it when I first joined the force. That case was eerie!"

The police station’s archive room smelled musty, and the light revealed many floating dust particles. Chief Zhao called in several younger officers for help, and after about half an hour, they found the records from that time. However, due to the passage of time and the outdated investigative methods and insufficient manpower back then, much of the content was incomplete when viewed through modern eyes.

As Hai Shu flipped through the pages, she listened to Chief Zhao’s recollections. The police records had a lot of similarities with the old woman’s account:

The case happened in the winter thirty years ago. The first victim was Luo Dafu, the eldest son of the Luo family, found dead in a town ruin, stabbed seven times, with both kidneys removed. Afterward, the elderly father of the Luo family, the second son, and his wife were killed. The next three cases were all home invasions. Their kidneys were also missing. Within a month, the only survivor in the Luo family was the elderly Luo mother, leaving the family without heirs.

At that time, similar kidney-removal cases were happening across the country, and the townspeople were terrified. However, the police were clear that the killer’s method of removing kidneys was crude, with no apparent use for the organs, suggesting it was either a souvenir or some kind of mark by the killer.

When investigating the Luo family’s case, they found that Luo Dafu had married a woman from another area, Cai Mei, three years before his death. Cai Mei drowned in the summer six months before Luo Dafu’s murder, and the child she was carrying was almost nine months old. Back then, the town hadn’t adopted cremation, and when someone died, the family didn’t bother with death certificates from the police station; they would bury the body after the funeral.

With so many deaths in the Luo family, people started saying it was Cai Mei causing trouble. The police didn’t believe this, but they still looked into Cai Mei’s background. This investigation revealed that Cai Mei wasn’t even listed on the household register, and she had never officially married Luo Dafu. The Luo family had nearly all died, and no one knew her surname or where she was from.

In a panic, a group of men dug up Cai Mei’s grave, only to find it empty!

At the time, there were two popular theories circulating in Zhouping Town: one was that Cai Mei hadn’t died and had a grudge against the Luo family, killing them all; the other was that Cai Mei had died, and her vengeful spirit had taken her body to exact revenge on the Luo family.

Soon after, the deaths spread to two neighboring families, the Li family’s third son and the Xu family’s two eldest sons, who were all stabbed to death in the same manner, with their kidneys removed. They had close relationships with Luo Dafu and had worked together in other towns years earlier.

The only survivor from the Luo family, the elderly Luo mother, had gone insane and couldn’t speak. The Li and Xu families couldn’t explain anything either. Whatever had happened to Cai Mei in the Luo family had been taken to the grave by death.

The file was only a few pages long, and Hai Shu quickly finished reading it. "So this case has just been left like this?"

Chief Zhao sighed. "What else could we do? We couldn’t find the killer. There wasn’t a single clue. The strange thing is, after the spring, the killer stopped. No similar cases happened after that."

Hai Shu’s mind wandered back to the old woman’s words. The middle-aged and elderly people in the town, who strongly believed in ghosts and gods, had invited "immortals" to perform rituals to calm Cai Mei’s spirit. Finally, she had found peace, and no more deaths occurred as a result.

But superstition was still superstition. The killer had probably stopped killing because they had already killed everyone they intended to.

In the killer’s eyes, Cai Mei and her unborn child had been killed by certain members of the Luo, Li, and Xu families.

By now, Luo mother had long since passed away, and the Li and Xu families had moved away more than twenty years ago, disappearing without a trace. This old case would likely never see resolution.

Hai Shu returned her focus to the Wan Zeyu case and asked, "Chief Zhao, have you heard of the ritual?"

Chief Zhao was silent for a moment and then smiled bitterly, nodding. "I know. The police back then had no solution. It was just the crowd’s desperate attempt to save themselves."

Hai Shu said, "But during my time here, it feels like everyone has forgotten about the ritual."

"The older generation didn’t want the younger ones to know, thinking they would be scared and it would be unlucky. Back then, the ‘immortals’ who were invited to do the feng shui were also old people who quietly did it. Over time, as they passed away, no one talked about it, and it gradually faded away." Chief Zhao also mentioned that after the glass factory came, bringing in new blood, no one knew about Cai Mei or the ritual anymore.

Then, Chief Zhao was suddenly alarmed. "Hai team, you don’t think these two cases are related to the Luo family’s massacre, do?"