Shen Weixi · Chat

It is 11:00 PM, and the lights on the floor of the M.P.D. Special Investigation Unit in Abyssal City are still on. Shen Weixi sits at his desk with three files spread out before him. The coffee cup to his left is empty, with a dark brown ring at the bottom proving it has been refilled at least twice. He finishes signing the last report, closes the folder, and writes his name in the signature block—the strokes are cold and sharp, with every final flick ending cleanly, like a knife carving into ice. He then turns off the computer screen, stands up, and picks up the large-sleeved overcoat from the back of his chair. The black fabric has a matte finish under the light, and an ice-blue skull embroidery flashes briefly at the cuff. He drapes the coat over his arm without putting it on—he doesn't like wearing it during field ops, finding it cumbersome. He wasn't supposed to work overtime tonight. But twenty minutes ago, he received a call. It wasn't from Mo Xuanzhi, nor from Yun Ling, but from a junior officer at the dispatch center. The officer's voice was trembling, saying they received a report of a body found in the back alley of the "Neon Pavilion" nightclub in Wandan Lane. After arriving on the scene, the patrol officers' preliminary judgment was that it wasn't a conventional homicide—the victim's expression was "off." "What do you mean by 'off'?" Shen Weixi had asked at the time. "...He's smiling," the officer's voice was very low, as if telling a ghost story he didn't dare speak aloud. "The victim has a smile on his face. But his eyes... his eyes are full of blood. The patrol officer said he didn't dare touch the body. He's scared." Shen Weixi was silent for two seconds. "Send me the location. Cordon off the scene; no one is to enter. Wait for me to arrive." He hung up the phone without notifying Mo Xuanzhi or Yun Ling. The case at the Iron Rust Docks had just wound down; Mo Xuanzhi had gone back to catch up on sleep, and Yun Ling was still waiting for sample analysis results. A simple "off" case wasn't worth dragging the whole team out of bed. It was enough for him to go alone. Wandan Lane is a place in Abyssal City where the lights never go out. Neon signs hang in layers from rooftops to the ground—red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple—each color so thick it feels almost rotten. There are always people on the streets—drunks, streetwalkers, gang members, youths staying up late for the internet—but the back alley tonight is unusually quiet. Yellow police tape has already been stretched across, and two patrol officers stand at the alley entrance, their faces pale. Shen Weixi bends down to pass under the tape. Seeing his face, the patrol officers visibly relax. "Inspector Shen." "Has the scene been disturbed?" "N-no. We haven't touched anything since we arrived." "Surveillance?" "There's no surveillance in this back alley. The Neon Pavilion's cameras only cover the front entrance." Shen Weixi doesn't respond, walking straight into the depths of the alley. The body lies face up in the center of the alley. A male, around thirty years old, wearing an expensive deep blue suit with a platinum wedding ring on his left ring finger. The cause of death isn't immediately apparent—no obvious external trauma, no bloodstains, clothes are neat. The only abnormality is his expression. The corners of his mouth are turned upward in a perfect smile. But his eyes are wide open, and the blood vessels on the surface of his eyeballs have all burst, staining the white sclera a uniform deep red. A person cannot be smiling and in extreme terror at the same time. These two expressions belong to two completely different nervous systems. Theoretically, they cannot appear simultaneously. Unless—that wasn't his own expression at all. Shen Weixi kneels on one knee beside the body. He isn't wearing gloves, but he doesn't touch the body either. He just looks. From left to right, top to bottom, surface to interior. His gaze moves extremely slowly, missing not a single inch, like a high-precision scanner focusing. Fifteen seconds. He finds the first anomaly. The victim's left ring finger—the one with the wedding ring—has something small embedded under the fingernail. It's not skin flakes, nor fabric fibers. It's a small piece of semi-transparent, shimmering film. Like the molted shell of some insect, or scales peeled off the surface of something. He takes out his phone to snap a photo, zooming in, then zooming in again. The edges of the film have tiny serrated structures, arranged neatly—not naturally formed. The second anomaly is discovered seven seconds later. Behind the victim's right ear, at the edge of the hairline, there is a pin-sized red dot. It's not a mole or a blemish. It's a puncture hole. Precise to the point of being almost vertical, depth unknown, the skin around the wound slightly blue, nearly invisible under the red glow of the neon lights. But Shen Weixi's eyes are extremely sensitive to any color deviation—a near-pathological visual discrimination trained through countless scene investigations. He stands up, takes three steps back, and begins to observe the alley itself. There are no bloodstains or signs of a struggle on the walls. On the ground, besides the victim's footprints, there are two other sets. One set extends deep into the alley, with small strides and even spacing, resembling the gait of a woman in high heels. The other set—stopping abruptly by the victim's feet—has large strides and irregular spacing, with significantly more pressure on the forefoot than the heel. The victim was running. The person chasing him was walking. For someone walking to catch someone running, there are only two possibilities: either the chaser didn't care how far the prey ran, or—they knew exactly where the prey would stop. Shen Weixi lowers his head, his gaze falling on the spot where the victim took his last step. The dust there was kicked up into an unnatural fan shape, toes forward, heels dragging—the mark of a sudden stop. He stopped suddenly less than a meter away from his own death. Why? Shen Weixi looks up, his gaze following the vertical line of the alley forward. Three meters ahead is a wall. The plaster is peeling, covered in layers of small advertisements and graffiti. But among those messy scraps of paper, there is a small patch of blank wall with a single symbol printed on it. The outline of a five-petaled lotus. The edges are neat, as if carved with a precision laser. The number of petals is different from the pattern on the exterior wall of the Rusty Lotus case at the Iron Rust Docks, but the brushwork is identical. Shen Weixi's pupils contract slightly. This is the first—and only—time tonight his expression has changed. The shift is minute, lasting only a fraction of a second, before returning to normal. He picks up his phone and dials a number. "Mo Xuanzhi." When the call connects, his tone is no different from when he was signing files in the office. "Are you awake?" There's a rustling sound on the other end, followed by Mo Xuanzhi's sleepy but still stubborn voice: "Awake, awake. What is it, Inspector Shen?" "Back alley of the Neon Pavilion, Wandan Lane. New case. I'll give you ten minutes." "...Ten minutes?! Where I live is nowhere near Wandan—" Shen Weixi hangs up. He puts away his phone and kneels back down beside the body. This time he puts on gloves—left hand first, then right, movements not fast but extremely precise, each finger fitting perfectly. Then he flips over the left collar of the body. As he expected, there is a second puncture hole on the skin above the collarbone. It's one size larger than the one behind the ear, with the same faint blue tint around the wound. He takes out a forensic swab, takes samples from both puncture holes, then pulls out a portable UV pen, turns off his flashlight, and switches on the ultraviolet light source in the darkness. Under the UV light, the body looks like a repainted canvas. The victim's lips, fingertips, eyelids, and the areas around the two puncture holes all emit rings of pale blue fluorescent patterns. Those patterns aren't random—they present a regular, fractal vein structure, like the veins of a leaf or a circulatory system within a biological organism. All the lines eventually converge at a single point: the chest, the location of the heart. Shen Weixi turns off the UV light, stands up, and places the gloves in an evidence bag. Until Yun Ling's analysis results come back, he cannot confirm the specific composition of that blue fluorescence. But based on experience, he can make a preliminary judgment—something was already growing inside this body before it was murdered. Slowly, orderly, spreading along the circulatory system like an invisible vine. Two puncture holes. One is the injection point, the other the discharge point. What was injected and what was discharged will have to wait for Yun Ling's toxicology report. But the discharged one—the smaller hole behind the ear—shows significantly more tissue collapse than the hole below the collarbone, indicating that the pressure during discharge was far greater than during injection. Someone injected a substance into the victim. That substance did something inside him. Then, something else was discharged. Shen Weixi glances at the smile on the victim's face, then at his blood-filled eyes. The smile is a side effect of the discharge. The fear is the result of the injection.