“Don’t worry, you’re safe now,” I comforted the man. “We’re the police. How long have you been trapped here? Blink once for each week you’ve been here.”

The man blinked eight times. Xiaotao gasped and cried, “He’s been here two months!”

Evidently, the development of the hibernation drug had been successful. It allowed the man to survive for so long without food and water, and it also appeared that he was still conscious of what was happening to him. But that fact made me shudder. It meant that the man had been lying helplessly in the dark as his body slowly wasted away, inching closer and closer to death every day without the ability to do anything about it. What a horrifying way to die! It was as terrifying as being buried alive!

I noticed that the man’s eyes kept fixating on a particular direction. “Is there someone else in there?” I asked.

His eyes darted up and down.

I quickly picked up a crowbar and rushed to the crates. I pried them open with haste, and discovered another person tightly stuffed inside. He was in a similar condition as the first man, and was barely alive. The horror I felt in that moment was beyond words.

Before the other officers arrived, I asked Dali to help me pry open all the crates there. Eventually, we found thirteen living corpses in total. The fourteenth body we found was already dead. Judging by the looks of it, he had committed suicide using a nail from the crate when he could still move his body.

We carried these people out of the crates carefully one by one. They were all severely dehydrated, and they’d lost so much weight that it was disturbingly easy to lift them up.

When we were done, Yuanchao arrived with a few other police officers. They were visibly dismayed when they saw the half-dead bodies lying there.

“Should I give them some water?” asked Xiaotao.

“Absolutely not!” I answered. “Their organs are all dried up at this point. Drinking water now will instantly kill them! We have to get them to the hospital!”

Xiaotao ordered Yuanchao and the other officers to bring these people to the hospital immediately. We stayed there to pick up some more clues. The lights were turned on by that point, so we returned to the laboratory and found a photo in a drawer. It was a picture of fifteen researchers in white coats standing around the rich lady. Everyone was smiling and appeared happy.

I placed a ruler on the table and started measuring. Xiaotao looked on in confusion and asked me what I was doing. “I’m measuring their height!” I explained.

“Right!” cried Xiaotao. “The murderer should be about 1.75 to 1.8 meters tall, right?”

Apart from his height, we also had a rough idea of what he looked like through the sketch from the poor beggar. Because of that, it took me no time at all to identify the man standing next to the rich lady as the mastermind of this chilling case.

So he was indeed one of the researchers. Something must’ve happened that motivated him to attack his colleagues and employer.

Xiaotao handed the photo to the forensics team and asked them to ID the people in it through their database. We then went into Xiaotao’s car and waited there. We just sat in silence the whole time because the scene we just saw disturbed us too much.

To what extent could one be vicious? I thought I had seen enough evil by that time in the previous cases I’d worked on, yet their brutality paled in comparison to the murderer of this case.

Xiaotao’s phone rang suddenly and we all jumped in surprise. She picked up her phone and had a short conversation before hanging up. I asked her, “Any progress?”

“It was Yuanchao just now,” she replied. “He was calling from the hospital. The doctors are trying their best to save the victims’ lives, but the prognosis for their conditions isn’t very hopeful.”

“I’m sure the murderer has the antidote that will save them!” I said. “We have to catch him as soon as possible!”

Xiaotao’s phone rang for the second time. It was the forensics team. They had found a match for a person with all the characteristics of the murderer. The suspect’s name was Xu Gang. He was a physician who had studied and worked abroad before. He had also worked in several pharmaceutical companies in the past, which cemented the fact that he was definitely the killer we were looking for.

Xiaotao immediately mobilized all available police officers to search for Xu Gang all over Nanjiang City. His residence, the places he usually frequented and all hotels were searched.

All I could do at that point was wait, which made me extremely anxious. The next day, I received a call from Xiaotao at night, “We can’t find Xu Gang, Song Yang! Can you help us with your divination technique, maybe?”

“It’s not a normal murder case,” I said. “I’m afraid that technique won’t work this time.”

I heard Xiaotao’s disappointed sigh on the phone. My heart sank hearing it, and I honestly wanted to help her, so I said, “Perhaps I can give it a try anyway.”

“Great!” cried Xiaotao, full of excitement. “I’ll go and pick you up now!”

“No,” I replied. “I can do it here on campus. Just come here and wait for me. Actually, by the time you arrive, I’ll probably have the results…”

“Alright then!” chirped Xiaotao.

Dali was already in bed, so I woke him up and told him we had stuff to do. I took a map of Nanjiang City that I bought not too long ago, picked up my bag of tools and went outside.

We found an empty classroom where I could comfortably get to work. We couldn’t turn on the lights because the security guards might see us. It was almost winter too, so it was very chilly.

“Why must you always do things at night, dude?” Dali complained as he shivered from the cold.

“I’m sorry. It’s just more effective at night.”

It wasn’t just a joke. The best time for the divination technique was during midday or midnight.

I burnt an incense stick and spread out the map on the table. I marked Xu Gang’s house and the crime scenes on the map. I asked Dali to stand on guard and warn me when the incense was completely burnt out. Before that happened, I warned him not to disturb me under any circumstances.

I held a compass in one hand and began the process. I factored in the characteristics of the killer into the hexagrams and calculated the possible actions that he could take. My mind was so focused on the task that I hardly noticed the time. The next thing I knew, someone was shaking me and calling my name.

I woke up from the daze and saw Dali’s worried face.

“Dude! Song Yang! Were you possessed by the devil or something? The incense is completely burnt out now!”

I stared at him blankly, which worried Dali even more since it was his first time seeing me going through this process.

“I was watching you the whole time, dude,” he said. “You looked like you were totally possessed! I think your eyes even rolled to the back of your head! I was dead worried! By the way, did you figure out anything?”

I drew a large-ish circle on the map. Because it wasn’t a straightforward homicide, I only managed to calculate an approximate range where Xu Gang could be found. Dali blinked incredulously as he stared at the circle.

“Is that where the murderer is, dude?” he asked with wonder. “But how did you figure that out? Was it through magic or something?”

“I’ve only done it once before,” I explained, mentally exhausted by that point. “But it worked out fine last time…”

I looked at the circle on the map. The range was a bit too wide for my liking, to be honest. If Xu Gang realized that the police were closing in on him, he might decide to run and hide, and in that case, I feared that we might be looking for a needle in a haystack.

Dali and I packed up our things and went to the college gate to wait for Xiaotao. Soon, two police cars arrived. It was Xiaotao and Yuanchao. Xiaotao told us to get in the car, and once we got inside, I asked her, “Why is it just you and Yuanchao?”

“The officers have been working non-stop for the last twenty-four hours,” she explained. “I didn’t have the heart to drag them along anymore. The four of us will do for tonight.”

I told her about my results, which showed that Xu Gang might be hiding near a candy factory. When she heard that, Xiaotao’s eyes rounded to the size of saucers.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Why are you startled?”

“God!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that? We found out that Xu Gang’s wife used to work in a candy factory, but we completely forgot to search the area! I’m sure he’s hiding there, Song Yang! Looks like your method has been incredibly helpful again!”

I was immensely relieved. It seemed that the scope could be narrowed to a reasonable size now.

I asked Xiaotao about Xu Gang’s wife, and she replied with a sigh.

“She died a year ago,” she added. “From what we found, it seems that she contracted a terminal illness and was euthanized.”

“Euthanized?” I was stunned. “But isn’t that illegal in China?”

“She was euthanized abroad,” Xiaotao clarified. “You know, I’ve thought about this myself. If I ever get terminally ill, I wouldn’t want to suffer a slow and agonizing death. I’d probably go to Sweden or Finland where I can die peacefully…”

I wasn’t listening to Xiaotao at all. My mind was drawn to the fact that the development of the hibernation drug also started a year ago. Could it be that this case was crucially related to Xu Gang’s wife?