Chapter 206: The Connection Between the Victims

2022-05-20

I finally understood it—at the same time realizing that Xiao Liu was looking in the wrong direction. The killer couldn’t possibly be more than one person. There’s only one murderer. Just like actors who fully immerse themselves in a role, the killer truly saw himself as the victim each time he wrote his stories.

Only someone who’s either a flawless actor or a total psychiatric case could pull that off. In psychology, we call this condition—split personality.

Heraclitus once said, “No man steps in the same river twice.” In the same way, someone with dissociative identity disorder can’t speak as two people at once. In the sewer, we heard different voices talking, but these voices never spoke at the same time.

It was like whenever that man’s voice appeared, the little girl’s sobbing stopped. If that’s the case, then the killer’s dissociative disorder must be entering the final stages. Judging by what I heard in that sewer, the killer has at least four personalities.

There’s a young man, a little girl, a young woman, and a man who calls himself Yama. And this disorder, this split personality, is deeply linked to one’s upbringing and the inner growth of their mind. When a person can’t face their own problems and no one around them can help, someone will always appear and whisper, “Don’t be afraid, I’m here.”

But that person—it’s never anyone else but you.

If no one can help you, you just create someone who can.

Thinking of this, I turned to Gu Chen and said, “Xiao Liu never told us exactly what the victims had in common, but he found a clue with those bowls. What do you think the bowls could have told Xiao Liu? Was there some secret? All we saw were fragments.”

Gu Chen leaned all the way against the railing, rubbing his temples as he replied, “Aside from being old and worn, I didn’t see anything special.”

“Then old and worn must be the defining traits of those bowls.” I turned away and pressed myself against the railing, whispering, “Old and worn…”

Suddenly, a crucial thought struck me. I dashed to Mary’s dorm door and started pounding on it with everything I had. On my tenth try, the door finally flew open. Mary glared at me, hair a mess and face dark with fury. “What are you doing? You really expect people to get any sleep with you banging like that in the middle of the night?”

Looking straight at her wild hair and stormy face, I said, “Of course I woke you up—to save lives. Check the family registers of the victims right now. If I’m right, these people all used to live near each other, maybe a few years or even more than a decade ago.”

Mary shot me a nasty look and gave a huge yawn. “You’d better hope you’re right or I’ll smash your head in myself!”

With that, she beckoned us in with a finger, signaling Gu Chen and me to come inside.

Mary booted up her computer, which she’d carelessly dumped on the floor, and started typing away on the keyboard.

I stared at the computer, amazed. “Isn’t that the department-issued laptop? You just toss it on the ground like that? Aren’t you worried it’ll break?”

Mary scrolled through files without even glancing at me. “If this laptop broke that easily, it’d be a piece of junk. I could chuck it off the sixth floor, pick it up, and it would still run. It works underwater, works in the cold or heat—doesn’t matter the temperature.”

As we talked, Mary pulled up the victims’ files and set up something for comparison. I watched numbers and maps flash across the screen, and soon a 3D map appeared before my eyes.

In the first story, the victims were two office workers. In the second, it was a family of three. In the third, three residents from Xingfu Apartment Complex. At first glance they seemed randomly scattered across Dongxing City, with no apparent connection.

It didn’t take long for three dots to appear on the digital map. We all knew—these were the previous homes of the victims.

After studying the map a moment, Mary said, “They’re supposedly all in Dongxing City, but you can’t really call this ‘nearby.’ On this map, a centimeter equals an hour’s drive, and a decade ago, not many people even had cars. If you walked or biked, it would take two or three hours easily.”

She stood up and shot me a dark look. “Wu Meng, don’t you dare wake me up again in the middle of the night for your wild guesses. You ever hear of beauty sleep? Get out.”

“Bang!” The door slammed shut, leaving Gu Chen and me in the hallway, staring at each other.

Gu Chen scratched his head. “So, what did you figure out?”

I yanked at my hair while pacing outside the door. “At the very least, all of them were locals from Dongxing City. But if they’ve been locals for years, they’d be filthy rich by now. Just the demolition payout could’ve made anyone a millionaire. None of them ended up wealthy.”

Suddenly, Gu Chen slapped his forehead. “Remember, Wu Meng, in the third story the killer mentioned the mindset of those Xingfu Apartment Complex residents. They wanted their place demolished for the payout, but nobody cared about that property. The old city district is beyond the fifth ring road. The story even said, after Dongxing City became big and successful, it had nothing to do with the people in the old city.”

I frowned, the reminder clicking something into place. He was right—the Xingfu residents waited for redevelopment, but it never came. Dongxing City’s only original district that never got rebuilt was the old city. They claimed it was to protect the ancient buildings, but really, it’s because that area is far from the river, far from the sea, and impossible to develop.

The modern Dongxing City might have just inherited the name. Compared to the newer parts, the old city felt more like a rural village.

But even if they all lived in the old city, it would still take at least an hour to drive across. So how were these victims connected? A decade ago in the old city, the killer must have had some kind of link with them. But what kind of connection was it?

In the second and third stories, the kids were only six or seven. The killer is at least in their twenties. So what kind of history did they share?

With this in mind, I knocked on Mary’s door again. As it opened, a pillow came flying at my head. Before it hit, two fingers pinched it out of the air. I turned and saw Gu Chen beaming smugly.

“Nice reflexes,” I said.

Gu Chen grinned. “I’m starting to think there’s nothing I can’t catch.”

Mary shouted, “Are you two done yet?”

Peeking around the pillow, I called, “Give me a map of the old city.”

Mary raised a fist. “I’m warning you, next time it won’t be a pillow I throw at you.”

She swiped the feather pillow from Gu Chen’s fingers.

It only took a moment and then the map of the old city appeared on the screen before us.

Sure enough, all three red dots were clustered inside the old city. This was the connection between the victims.

“Here!” I pointed to one spot on the map.

Both of them leaned in, speaking in unison. “The Old City Cultural Center? What about it?”

I looked at them and shared my theory, “Everyone knows Dongxing City only grew thanks to government investment turning a small village into a metropolis.”

“That’s right,” Mary added. “I visited Dongxing City seven years ago, back when it was still Dongxing County.”

“Back then,” I continued, “there were hardly any recreational venues. The only place for entertainment was probably this so-called cultural center. The victims have no ties by family, age, gender, or work. The only link must be here.”

“But what could’ve happened in a place like that?” Gu Chen asked, glancing back at me. “It seems unlikely, the odds are just too small.”

I nodded seriously. “If you eliminate all the impossible, whatever’s left—no matter how unlikely—must be the truth. These people probably went to their graves never knowing why they were targeted. But for someone with a split personality, paranoia, distrust, jealousy, sensitivity, rage, resentment—they never let go.”

“But what could’ve happened for the killer to hold a grudge for so many years, even going after kids who were just babies back then?” Gu Chen pressed further.

I fell silent for a moment, then told Gu Chen, “There must be a hidden reason why the killer sometimes acts like a man, sometimes a woman. It’s their deepest secret. As years passed their bitterness only grew. So they sought out and killed anyone who ever learned that secret.”

“Even if those people had long forgotten it,” I added, my eyes meeting theirs.

“He—or she—must be intersex.”