The air in the autopsy room was thick enough to choke on. The stench of formalin, mixed with the heavy iron tang of blood, assaulted Jason's nasal passages.
Any ordinary trainee officer would have been forced into a corner, retching by now. But with his vampire-enhanced sense of smell, Jason could discern the exact ratio of garlic to soy sauce in the bowl of rice noodle rolls the victim, Duan Kun, had eaten the night before.
He forced his brow to furrow, projecting an expression of pained nausea.
"Old Tu, how is it? Cause of death confirmed?" Su Ping ignored Jason's "performance" and walked straight to the stainless steel table, looking down at the body whose thoracic and abdominal cavities had been fully opened.
Old Tu, the forensic pathologist, set down his scalpel and adjusted his goggles. "Almost. There's only one fatal wound on the victim, located at the neck, 17.8 centimeters long. The wound is spindle-shaped, with no hesitation marks on either side and no skin flap residue in the cavity. This indicates the weapon was extremely sharp, and the killer acted with absolute decisiveness and brutality."
Old Tu pointed to the pale incision on the corpse's neck, a hint of a chill creeping into his voice that even he didn't notice. "The base of the wound is shallow on the right and deep on the left—the deepest point cut straight to the cervical vertebrae, even leaving superficial scratches on the periosteum. The trachea, esophagus, and common carotid artery were severed instantly. Death was caused by hemorrhagic shock from the ruptured artery, combined with mechanical asphyxiation from a massive amount of blood drowning the trachea."
Hearing this, Jason mentally graded his masterpiece: that horn-handled stiletto with the cross-grain pattern was indeed efficient. Slitting a mimetic vampire's throat felt like cutting through warm butter.
"Time of death?" Su Ping's voice broke Jason's reverie.
"Based on the digestion of stomach contents, body temperature, and the spread of rigor mortis, the victim's death is pinned precisely between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM last night," Old Tu concluded definitively.
10:00 PM. Exactly the time Jason had been gaming at home with "Duan Kun."
Su Ping turned, his hawk-like eyes locking onto Jason as if trying to pierce his soul. "Xiao Qi, did you hear that? The forensic scalpel doesn't lie. The 'Duan Kun' who was in a voice call with you, even cursing at you through the mic, was already a dead man with a severed windpipe at that moment!"
Su Ping's interrogation hit like a barrage of artillery. The air in the room seemed to solidify.
In the moment while Old Tu and Su Ping waited for the rookie to break or slip up, Jason's mind was racing at a speed far beyond human limits. He couldn't panic, nor could he show any sign of hidden knowledge.
"Captain Su..." Jason's face turned paper-white. His body trembled slightly, his eyes filled with profound confusion and fear. "I... I don't understand. If Duan Kun was dead at ten... then what exactly was the thing talking to me last night?"
"I'd like to know that too." Su Ping coldly retracted his gaze and turned toward the evidence table on the other side of the room. "Old Tu, are the test results for that back yet?"
Old Tu's expression soured instantly. He walked to the table and picked up a transparent sealed bag. Inside was the bronze fragment—the one Jason knew intimately, the one that matched the star badge around his neck perfectly.
"We found this in a hidden compartment under the register. What's even stranger..." Old Tu's voice actually trembled. "We extracted two sets of DNA from the fragment. One belongs to Duan Kun. The other..."
Old Tu took a deep breath, as if fighting the collapse of his scientific beliefs. "The helical structure of the second set of DNA completely defies modern biological common sense. It... it doesn't belong to any known carbon-based organism on Earth."
"Non-carbon-based life," Su Ping chewed on the words, his gaze shooting toward Jason like a blade once more. "Trainee, can your brilliant detective brain explain to me what that means?"
"I don't know, Captain. I really don't know." Jason backed away, perfectly playing the part of an ordinary person whose worldview had been shattered. "This... this isn't scientific..."
"No, it isn't," Su Ping sneered, tossing the bronze fragment back onto the table. "But in this world, there are always monsters wearing human skin who think they can pull the wool over our eyes. Listen, Xiao Qi—I don't care what that thing was talking to you, or what taboo Duan Kun touched. As long as it's still in this city, I'll flip the very earth itself to find it!"
Looking at Su Ping's profile, filled with murderous intent and obsession, Jason sighed inwardly.
You won't find it, Captain.
Because that non-carbon-based lifeform was currently locked inside his left wrist, providing him with extremely useful night vision and hearing.
"By the way," Su Ping suddenly changed the subject, picking up a phone in an evidence bag. "Forensics recovered Duan Kun's phone. Since 1:30 PM yesterday, this device has been in airplane mode. Someone cloned his SIM card and used it to complete that bizarre gaming session with you last night."
"Cloned?" Jason feigned shock. "But didn't the carriers debunk that? They said chip cards can't be cloned."
"Not without the original card," Su Ping interrupted coldly. "The killer didn't just take the card; they perfectly simulated Duan Kun's voice and gaming habits. This means the killer was close to him—maybe even... among us."
At this point, Su Ping's suspicion was pointing at Jason without any attempt at concealment.
"I understand, Captain." Jason lowered his head, hiding his emotions in the shadows. "I'll cooperate with the investigation."
"You've had quite a shock today. Once you finish the scene investigation report, take two days off to rest and recalibrate." Su Ping issued the dismissal.
"Thank you, Captain Su."
Jason turned and walked out of the autopsy suite. The moment the heavy blast-proof door hissed shut behind him, the cowardice and fear on his face vanished like a receding tide. It was replaced by an abyss-like coldness and a flicker of extreme fanaticism.
Two days off. Exactly what he needed.
Forty-eight hours later. Furonghe City, 400 kilometers away from Yuqiao. Green Source Middle School.
At 11:30 PM, the moonlight couldn't penetrate the thick, heavy clouds. The entire city felt as though it were being smothered by a massive sheet of black velvet.
Wearing a black hoodie and a surgical mask, with a heavy tactical backpack slung over his shoulders, Jason melted into the shadows outside Dormitory Building 2 like a ghost.
In the past two days, he had played the role of a rookie on the verge of a breakdown at the station. Secretly, however, he had used his "Licensed Investigator" credentials to dig into the truth behind File No. FRH-094.
The three students who were traumatized and the dorm supervisor with necrotic legs had provided suspiciously identical statements—they claimed they had never seen a headless torso or an eyeless head, insisting they were injured after being accidentally locked in the school cafeteria's cold storage.
Even the mother of one student, Pan Dapeng, had angrily chased Jason away when he visited disguised as an insurance adjuster, adamant that the cold storage was to blame.
Quite the performance. Even I almost didn't see the signs of lying.
Jason crouched beneath the dormitory perimeter wall, sneering to himself. But after he had accessed the school's classified archives, the terrifying truth hidden beneath the "cold storage accident" finally surfaced.
Three years ago, a middle schooler named Qin Shuang living in this building had gone to meet a young woman he'd met online. He was caught by the woman's boyfriend; the two of them brutally dismembered the boy and stuffed him into a freezer in a rental apartment. The case wasn't solved until the killers surrendered a year later.
So, the "thing" wandering at night, causing extreme cold and muscle necrosis... isn't a prank. It's a dismembered ghost frozen in resentment.
Jason touched his tactical pack. Inside were various "ghost-hunting" folk remedies he'd scoured from the web—cow tears, blood from the tip of a tongue, salt, and even a few bottles of holy water he'd "appropriated" from St. Paul's Cathedral.
"No idea if this superstitious junk works on non-physical entities, but I have to try. That d*mn Asylum system is like a corpse—it doesn't even give you a tutorial."
Jason sighed and looked toward the ajar glass door of Dormitory Building 2. In the guardroom, a dim incandescent bulb glowed, where a young security guard was diligently staring at the monitor screens.
"This is a bit of a problem. Dealing with a freezer ghost might make some noise; I can't have a civilian getting in the way."
Standing in the shadows, Jason slowly raised his left hand.
He closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into the [Calamity Asylum]. He deactivated the [Calamity-0001] "Vampire Physique" on his wrist and transferred the power to the gold ring on his left middle finger.
[Skill Loaded: Basic Hypnosis (Progenitor Derivative)]
With a wave of strange weakness, Jason lost the terrifying strength and agility of the vampire, returning to a mortal body. However, his deep eyes suddenly flashed with an eerie, dark-gold luminescence in the dark.
Like an elegant cat, he silently pushed open the glass door and reached the guardroom window. The guard seemed to sense something and whipped his head around.
Snap!
The moment the guard turned, Jason snapped his fingers sharply with his left hand.
As the sound rang out, the guard's gaze met Jason's glowing dark-gold eyes. In an instant, the guard's alert pupils dilated and glazed over, as if his entire soul had been s*ck*d into a bottomless whirlpool.
"Listen," Jason's voice became ethereal, carrying an irresistible magic that planted itself directly into the guard's cerebral cortex. "You saw nothing. Tonight, no matter what screams you hear or what unspeakable things you see in this building, you will not leave this room. Understood?"
The guard's facial muscles twitched slightly, and then, like a marionette, he nodded blankly. He turned stiffly back to the empty monitor screens, resembling a soulless statue.
"Perfect. The check for Basic Hypnosis is a hundred percent success rate against mortals."
Jason looked at the gold ring on his middle finger with satisfaction, a cruel arc touching his lips. He toggled the permissions back to his wrist, reactivating the vampire's hearing and night vision.
Then, carrying his bag of exorcism tools, he stepped into the pitch-black, chilling corridor of the second floor—a corridor that felt as if it might start weeping blood at any moment.
"Alright, little online-dater who got chopped up."
Jason licked his lips, his eyes burning with the intense hunger of a predator tracking supernatural prey.
"Detective Jason is here for your counseling session. Now, be a good boy and get in my cage!"