Chapter 84: The Worm Inside the Stomach

2022-05-20

According to the report, only at night did Chen Lin have the right conditions to dig there. With the main power shut off, he had to grope around in the dark, careful not to wake anyone up. No wonder Chen Lin was chosen—he had guts, yet worked with precision.

Now that we knew who Chen Lin was, he became the breakthrough, the lead we needed. If we could find Chen Lin’s whereabouts, we’d be one step closer to cracking this case.

It made sense that Chen Lin used Liu Feier’s lipstick. But the dog blood on his lips—that didn’t add up. He’d spent the night hiding under Liu Feier’s bed, probably without eating or drinking, so the blood on his lips likely got there before he snuck in.

“We need to find a place with a lot of stray dogs and almost no one living there,” I said slowly.

Right after I said it, I locked eyes with Gu Chen and knew we were thinking of the same spot. At the exact same moment we blurted out, “The abandoned buildings that have been under construction forever!”

Exactly, the same half-built site Old Zhang once guarded before he went on the run. Even in broad daylight, barely anyone passes by. It’s become a paradise for strays—dogs and cats alike. The safest place is often the most dangerous one, and if I were hiding in a city this big, that’s where I’d go.

“Let’s move!”

An hour later, we arrived by car. The place looked almost unchanged from six months ago. Reviving these buildings clearly wasn’t going to be quick—or easy. The site gate stood wide open, weeds taking over the ground. Graffiti covered the walls, scrawled in a dozen different languages.

Six months earlier, Zhang Mingliang’s head had fallen from one of those buildings. Now we stood here again. The time apart wasn’t long, but something about it felt strangely distant.

“This is it. Start searching,” I said to the team. “Thanks for your hard work.”

“Follow me,” I told the others.

I remembered talking to Old Zhang half a year ago. Outside his makeshift shack sat a bucket reeking of blood—dog blood.

Returning now, I knew my guess had been right.

A pool of blood had long since dried in front of the hut. Guan Zengbin strode over, pulled on her gloves, scraped some up, and sniffed at it, her brow furrowed. “Not human blood. Probably dog blood, but we should test it to be sure.”

Watching her, I couldn’t help but tease, “When did you turn into Wang Ergou? Is your nose that sharp? Actually, why don’t we just call in Wang Ergou—the guy whose nose is better than a real dog’s?”

With that, I texted Team Leader Shao to ask him to bring Wang Ergou here.

Guan Zengbin stood and said, “This dog blood has been dried for only a day or two, so someone was here recently. Could Chen Lin have gotten the blood here?”

Running a hand through my hair, I said slowly, “That’s likely. So this place must have been visited by Old Zhang, Lai San, and Chen Lin, right?”

All three had something in common—they were fugitives. Suddenly, a thought hit me: What if from the very beginning, Liu Feier had already been targeted for murder? These people are capable of anything.

But who actually planned this whole mess? Lai San, who once dreamed of being the strongest in the martial world? Old Zhang, who saw dog blood as his lifeblood? Or Chen Lin, who seemed to have no idea why he was alive? Or was there someone else lurking in the shadows?

So, how many are in this group? And what do they really want?

Everything is still a mystery.

“Over here—there’s a body!” Someone suddenly shouted.

A body? We glanced at each other, then dashed to where the voice had come from. Sure enough, there was a corpse lying in the tall grass. Judging by the shape, it looked like a woman. My heart skipped a beat—could it be Liu Feier? But up close, I saw it wasn’t her. To our shock, it was someone else entirely.

It wasn’t anyone else—it was Chen Lin.

The face looked like Chen Lin’s, but nothing like her photos. Her face was mottled with spots, her skin dull and yellowish. For someone who was only twenty-eight, she looked way older, like her youth had completely faded.

“This is Chen Lin?” Xiao Liu was stunned. “She looks nothing like her pictures. Does everyone edit their photos these days or what?”

Guan Zengbin stepped forward and said, “She’s probably been off estrogen for a long time—no one’s been giving her hormones all these years. With less estrogen, she’s gotten uglier, and at only twenty-eight looks closer to forty-eight. That’s just how it is.”

She examined Chen Lin’s body and continued, “People like this go through three phases. Before adulthood, it’s all about learning talents and skills. Eighteen to twenty-five is the golden age, when they’re at their best and can earn big money. After twenty-five, things go downhill fast, and most only make it to thirty-five or forty.”

Xiao Liu shook his head, almost pitying her. “If that’s true, it’s a short life, isn’t it?”

But Guan Zengbin shook her head. “For them, that’s already a long journey. Especially in the end—not a few choose suicide. Maybe they’re like moths drawn to flame, knowing it’ll burn yet rushing forward anyway.”

Her words left me heavy-hearted. I said, “Maybe. There are people who live to a hundred, but when they look back, they feel nothing meaningful was ever done. Most of our regrets come not from what we do, but from what we never did.”

“Just like with that security guard before,” Guan Zengbin noted, glancing at the wound. “There’s only one visible injury on the neck—deep, and clearly from the same killer. But we should do an autopsy just to be thorough. We might find new clues.”

Chen Lin’s corpse was soon sent to the funeral home. The forensics team was combing the site for any trace left by the killer. Gu Chen and Xiao Liu stayed behind; I left with Guan Zengbin to wait for the autopsy results.

I’d watched Guan Zengbin dissect men and women before, but this time, a strange anticipation crept up on me. I quickly buried the feeling—this was no time for morbid curiosity.

The security guard was dead. Now, Chen Lin was dead. Everyone we’d been able to question had ended up dead. It really was using people and tossing them away. Still, it proved the group would stop at nothing to cut us off from the truth.

A chill ran through me. If we kept digging, would they silence more people just to stay safe? It was only the first day, yet already two team members had been killed. Wouldn’t the group’s own people start to get nervous?

Is the idea that the fewer people left, the bigger the share of the loot?

Guan Zengbin was already prepping for the autopsy. I watched by her side. Chen Lin’s face was far from pleasant. If there was dog blood on her lips, would her stomach show any traces of what she last ate?

Guan Zengbin’s scalpel moved with steady care, as if every corpse—no matter its state—was all the same to her.

“Do forensic doctors see death as just a normal thing?” I asked.

Without turning, Guan Zengbin replied quietly, “We’re no different from the rest of the living world—we all die, and leave a body behind. My job is just to say the final goodbye for these people, figure out how they died, so they can rest easy.”

“If one day you had to autopsy me or Gu Chen, could you stay this calm?” I said with a smile.

She paused for a second. “I hope that day never comes.”

Guan Zengbin began working on the organs. Just then, she suddenly screamed. I jumped and hurried over. “What happened?”

“Look!” she said, pointing into the open body.

I rushed forward and glanced down, and nearly threw up right there on the corpse. There was a long, pure white worm, only one end visible, the rest flat and twisted, hidden in the intestines that hadn’t been fully opened up.

Judging from what I could see, the worm had to be over a meter long—just the sight made my skin crawl.

“How could a worm like this get inside her stomach? And how long is it?” I managed, fighting the nausea.

Guan Zengbin quickly found her composure and said slowly, “If I told you it’s probably over four meters long, how would that make you feel?”