Xiao Ji · Chat

The rain fell in fine, dense threads, clinging stickily to the window glass and blurring into smeared patches of water. The Municipal Bureau's Major Case Unit office was brightly lit, yet so quiet that even the scratch of pen nibs on paper sounded crisp. The door was pushed open, and a cold wind thick with moisture swept a tall figure into the room. As Xiao Ji came in, he casually slung his soaked jacket over the back of a chair. His 192-centimeter frame carried an oppressive presence even in this somewhat cramped space. He walked over to the whiteboard, an unlit cigarette pinched between his fingers. A few strands of his rain-dampened fringe clung messily to his forehead. Those eyes, so often heavy with drowsiness, were now startlingly sharp. "The victim, Li Jianguo — male, 52, lived alone, antique restorer." His voice was low, carrying a careless indolence, yet precise enough to allow no doubt. "He was found at seven this morning by a distant nephew who came to bring him breakfast. No obvious signs of a struggle at the scene. The doors and windows are intact, and the lock shows no signs of being picked." He drew a line after the name "Li Jianguo" on the whiteboard, then, with a flick of his pen, pointed at a crime scene photo nearby. In the photo, inside the tidy workshop, the antique shelves stood in orderly rows — except for one empty slot on the lowest shelf. The victim lay collapsed before his workbench, death caused by asphyxiation. "The preliminary autopsy report places the time of death between eleven last night and one in the morning. The cause of death isn't strangulation, and it isn't poisoning. The strangest thing is —" Xiao Ji paused, his gaze sweeping across everyone in the room. That listless roguishness vanished in an instant, replaced by a keenness that made hearts skip. "Traces of high-concentration medical-grade adhesive were detected in the victim's respiratory tract." A low murmur of discussion rose in the office. "Medical adhesive? How does that kill someone?" "Asphyxiation. The adhesive cured rapidly at body temperature and sealed off the airway." Xiao Ji cut off the question, tracing an idle circle in the air above the photo. "But that isn't the strangest part yet." He walked to the display board on the other side and picked up a close-up photo of an item left at the scene. In the photo lay a man's cufflink, carelessly discarded beside the trash can. The material was ordinary, but it had been polished to a brilliant shine, with an extremely obscure totemic pattern engraved along its edge. "No signs of forced entry at the scene, no valuables missing, and the antiques beside the victim are completely unharmed." Xiao Ji pinned the cufflink photo to the very center of the whiteboard. "The only clue is this cufflink. Forensics has run comparisons — the pattern belongs to no known family crest or organization emblem. It's as if... it was fabricated out of thin air." He turned and leaned against the edge of the desk, his broad shoulders and narrow waist etched sharply beneath his uniform. His hair was still a mess, but his eyes were as cold as the rain outside the window. "The killer knows the rules, and he knows his limits. He left no fingerprints, no DNA, and didn't disturb a single item at the scene." Xiao Ji's gaze swept slowly over the room. "But he left this cufflink." "He wasn't after money, wasn't after revenge, and it doesn't even seem like he was covering anything up." He raised a hand to rub the space between his brows. That hint of weariness crept back into his face, yet it only made him more inscrutable. "It's as if he were performing some kind of ritual." "The case is clean. Too clean." Xiao Ji picked up the marker and wrote out "cufflink" in large characters on the whiteboard, pressing down hard at the final stroke. "But the cleaner a case looks, the more it tends to hide underneath. Dig into the social connections of every antique restorer in the city, and chase down every possibility behind that totem. Also, screen everyone who could have entered that old apartment building between eleven last night and one this morning." He tossed the marker onto the desk with a sharp clatter. "This isn't a simple murder. This is a provocation." Xiao Ji walked over to the window and looked out at the street, blurred behind the curtain of rain. Rainwater slid down the glass, smudging his profile until only a tall, aloof, solitary silhouette remained. "The one we're looking for isn't an ordinary killer." He murmured to himself, a barely perceptible gravity in his tone. "The one we're looking for... knows the trade, and is playing a game with us." The rain kept falling, and the game had only just begun.