Chapter 196: Still Alive?

Chapter 196: Still Alive?

After a thorough search…

Guo Qiang and two other veteran detectives stood before Xiao Yu, shaking their heads in exasperation.

Not even they could find anything… Xiao Yu frowned.

Don’t think for a second that these old detectives are just tools.

Their experience goes far beyond ordinary.

Clearly, trying to find something using ‘normal methods’ just wasn’t cutting it.

Activating ‘Falcon’s Eye’, Xiao Yu conducted a personal sweep of the area.

But found nothing!

“Could my deduction be wrong?”

Xiao Yu mumbled, “Was it that there was no SD Phone Storage Card, or that the murderer left nothing behind?”

No, that can’t be right — if it were so easy to find…

Then why kill?

Why not just take the item? Three lives… Did he really think he was butchering chickens and lambs?

Setting aside the assassin from the recent ‘Assassin Group’ case,

an ordinary person might, when backed into a corner, dare to kill.

But to kill three people?

“500” years on the force, Xiao Yu hadn’t encountered many of these cases.

Such mental fortitude isn’t something everyone possesses!

If it could drive a murderer to kill, then whatever was hidden must have great significance… and it’s still here!

Xiao Yu’s gaze continued scanning the room.

“If I were to hide something in this room, where would I put it?!”

He went all out!

There was no helping it; without turning on every brain cell, not even he could guess.

And that wasn’t all.

Switching into high gear, he also employed his ‘Psychological Expert’ skills.

He pushed his deduction to the extreme!

Xiao Yu’s expression hardened, his eyes void of any emotional fluctuation.

Step by step he moved, his eyes meticulously sweeping every corner of the room.

Finally, he stopped in the bathroom, standing in front of the toilet…

Having eliminated every possibility, could it be here?

A spark of life returned to his eyes as he stared at the toilet. “No ordinary person would even think of hiding something in a toilet. And certainly not in the dirtiest spot. Someone would hide a card here, and even if others searched, they’d never check this spot!”

Twenty minutes later.

Guo Qiang arrived wielding a heavy sledgehammer.

With the water valve turned off and the toilet drained, two detectives worked in tandem to lift the toilet from the ground and carry it into the hall.

“Break it open,” Xiao Yu ordered, eyeing the toilet.

Bang!

Guo Qiang swung the sledgehammer at the toilet.

At first, it merely cracked.

Bang!

With another blow, the ceramic toilet shattered into pieces!

“Ha!”

Crouching down, Xiao Yu peered into the toilet’s drainage outlet, noticing something stuck on the exposed ‘backflow’ channel.

It was a small plastic box, fixed in place with glass adhesive.

Wrapped in glass glue, no matter how you flush, it wouldn’t be washed away.

Everyone knew that glass adhesive was incredibly waterproof and highly resistant to corrosion.

If they hadn’t smashed the toilet open,

nobody would have ever discovered that a card was hidden there in this lifetime!

“That’s one hell of a mastermind!”

Guo Qiang marveled, cursing not at Xiao Yu,

but at the ingenious culprit who had hidden the item!

Li Xin and Liu Hongqiao, however, stared at Xiao Yu with strange looks—as if he were a pervert.

Are you sure you have a human brain?

Does a human brain really come up with a place like this?

If a human brain could do it, why can’t we? It makes us feel inferior!

Ever since Xiao Yu joined the Criminal Investigation Team,

colleagues have thought him a man of great depth.

But if you were to spend an hour getting to know him,

you’d realize that it’s a complete waste of time — utterly incomprehensible.

That’s exactly why he racks up accolades with ease.

While we end up with nothing!

……

Finding the SD Phone Storage Card is key, right?

No!

This card is extraordinary — it’s even password-protected!

Xiao Yu’s temper flared at the thought.

He thought, Isn’t this lunacy?

We’re out here uncovering the truth, aiming to avenge the entire Ji family,

and yet, not only was something hidden, it was secured with a password?

Life is tough, isn’t it?

If Xiao Yu were an internet keyboard warrior,

he’d be spouting off grandiose theories and fiery words at this very moment.

He’d start typing furiously,

unable to hold back his anger — it’s utterly infuriating!

The fact that a password was set shows there’s a huge secret with this card.

It’s bound to be the key to the Ji family tragedy!

Should we fetch a password expert or what?

Smack!

Xiao Yu slapped his forehead.

Is he stupid?

Has he forgotten his ‘Red Hacker Expert’ abilities?

How many people in this world understand computers better than he does?

Xiao Yu began programming a custom password cracking tool on his computer…

It’s about the accounts and passwords we rely on every day,

since they guarantee our data and security.

What do you do when you forget a password?

There are only a few ways to crack one.

Brute force, password collisions, reverse-engineering a password database…

No matter the method, those versed in cryptography know it takes at most thirteen steps…

Half an hour later,

Xiao Yu’s little program finished in a flash…

With a simple click on ‘Start’,

the computer screen was soon flooded like a torrential downpour.

Nondescript characters overwhelmed the entire screen.

Countless password combinations assaulting the SD Phone Storage Card, each possibility being frenetically validated.

Simple and brutal!

One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes…

Suddenly,

all the data streams and meaningless characters vanished, and the phone’s storage card, connected to the computer, prompted an eject page.

Xiao Yu grinned broadly.

Done!

But barely five seconds after his smile,

when he clicked open one of the nine folders,

and saw countless photos inside, the grin on his face froze.

The first photo showed a living person, stark naked, lying on a silver operating table.

In the second photo, his body was suspended, propped up by metallic arms.

The third photo featured a doctor clad in surgical attire, holding a scalpel, his eyes the only visible feature.

In the fourth, the doctor’s scalpel was seen slicing through the living man’s back skin…

Taking a deep breath, Xiao Yu used the arrow keys to flip to the fifth photo.

There, the man’s back skin was being gradually peeled away by the scalpel…

In the sixth photo, the skin from his lower body was separating from his flesh…

The seventh, eighth, and ninth photos continued until Xiao Yu reached the twentieth.

In that one, an entire layer of skin had been stripped off a living person.

And then,

an incomprehensible, eerie, and utterly unacceptable scene appeared in photo 4.8.

The person without skin wasn’t dead.

His bloodied body was not only devoid of skin but also missing eyelids, with exposed eyeballs hanging in the air.

And they were moving!

Yes, even though the photo was still.

Xiao Yu knew those eyes were moving.

From the forty-fifth photo onward, each image showed a piece of skin being extracted from a container filled with an unknown liquid by a doctor.

Then, it was placed over a white wax figure.

Once the skin was perfectly sewn onto the wax figure,

the figure seemed to transform into a real person.

After that, there were no more photos in the folder.

This bone-chilling series of photos left Xiao Yu stunned for a full minute.

He was pondering one question.

Is the person, who was skinned alive,

still alive?!