17 Boiling Vegetables in the Stomach

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When I saw the household registration page from that booklet, I froze once again.

The name Chen Mu was obviously mine. But what did the name Chen Tianming, listed as the head of the household, mean? My father’s name was Chen Youquan, so how had it become Chen Tianming?

Jin Ze clearly remembered my father’s name as well. He asked me directly, “Chen Mu, wasn’t your father’s name Chen Tianming? And this isn’t your home address.”

I nodded. “That’s right. My father’s name is Chen Youquan, and this isn’t my home address either. Could this Chen Mu not be me? Or is this household registration page forged?”

“It’s hard to say for now,” Jin Ze replied. “But the killer should have noticed the victim clutching this piece of paper, so it was probably deliberately left for someone to find. Of course, it’s also possible that the killer was too flustered to think about it, but that seems unlikely. It appears Captain Fang was responsible. Given his temperament, something like this wouldn’t have caused him much psychological turmoil. He wouldn’t have panicked.”

I nodded. “Captain Fang Qinghe… How could this have happened?”

“Don’t think about it for now,” Jin Ze said. “Since Captain Fang left this scene behind, he probably had a purpose. We should withdraw first. It could be a trap.”

We prepared to leave, intending to find an opportunity to report everything once we were outside.

But the moment I stood up, Jin Ze suddenly gave me a meaningful glance. I understood at once. Someone might have arrived.

I immediately followed his gaze. At the doorway, the door had not been fully closed, and through the narrow gap beneath it, I could see the faint tip of a shoe.

Someone was hiding outside.

Because of his position, the person outside could not see into the room. Jin Ze therefore approached the door with barely a sound. When he reached it, he suddenly yanked it open.

We were soon confronted with the same situation as before. On the other side of the open door, there was nothing but a single shoe.

Seeing it, I breathed a sigh of relief. Jin Ze, however, reacted completely differently. He abruptly raised his gun toward the outside.

At that very moment, I saw a figure drop from above. The person landed hard, both feet driving forward in a vicious kick that struck Jin Ze squarely in the chest.

The attacker’s movements were astonishingly agile, and the blow sent Jin Ze staggering.

But Jin Ze was no ordinary man. He rolled with the impact, then lay on the ground with his gun aimed at the attacker. “Move again, and I’ll shoot.”

By then, we realized that the attacker was also pointing a gun at Jin Ze.

What shocked us even more was the attacker who had used the shoe as bait and then launched the ambush.

It was Fang Qinghe.

I cursed inwardly. We had stumbled upon Captain Fang’s secret, and now he intended to silence us. I had never imagined that Fang Qinghe would be so skilled, though it made sense. Anyone capable of becoming head of the Cold Case Unit—and an officer of the National Security Bureau—could hardly be lacking in combat ability.

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I was still considering whether to go forward and help Jin Ze when Fang Qinghe suddenly lowered his gun.

“Oh? What are you two doing here?”

Jin Ze sprang to his feet with a kip-up, but he kept his gun trained on Fang Qinghe.

Fang Qinghe soon noticed the person lying on the ground. Ignoring the gun pointed at him, he simply raised one hand to block it and went over to examine the victim. He immediately made a phone call and summoned an ambulance.

His reaction left me puzzled. He seemed genuinely concerned about the victim. Could it be that he really knew nothing?

I stole a glance at Jin Ze, wanting to see how he intended to proceed.

Jin Ze pointed his gun at Fang Qinghe. “Captain Fang, I believe you owe us an explanation. We saw you enter this place earlier, and after you left, we came in and found the victim.”

Fang Qinghe turned to look at him without the slightest sign of panic. Calmly, he asked, “You followed me?”

Everything was already clear without another word. Fang Qinghe continued, “He was one of my former subordinates. I came here today to discuss something with him. He was fine when I left, but after I had gone, I suddenly felt that something was wrong, so I came back to check. That was when I encountered the scene you just witnessed.”

Jin Ze continued, “Then why didn’t you leave through the front door, Captain Fang? Why did you break the window and climb out?”

“Habit,” Fang Qinghe replied. “Whenever I come to see him, I leave that way. It’s also a counter-surveillance measure. You should understand that very well, Jin Ze. Are you really going to ask why I practice counter-surveillance? I can give you only three words: occupational habit.”

Jin Ze soon lowered his gun. “My apologies, Captain Fang.”

I had no idea whether Jin Ze truly believed him or was merely pretending, but since he had said that, I could hardly object. I put on a mild expression and greeted Fang Qinghe as well.

Fang Qinghe suddenly asked us, “Was he lying like that when you came in? Did you disturb the scene? Did you find anything unusual?”

Jin Ze immediately shook his head. “No. We had just arrived ourselves. He looked extremely strange, with his abdomen swollen so badly. We were just about to call an ambulance.”

Fang Qinghe did not ask anything more. He merely said, “It seems you’ve begun to suspect me too, Jin Ze. I understand your actions, but let me remind you of something: don’t let the killer lead you by the nose and send you down the wrong path.”

With that, Fang Qinghe suddenly glanced at me, then offered me a cigarette. He lit one for himself as well and began to smoke.

The ambulance arrived shortly afterward and carried the victim away. We followed.

In the end, the man could not be saved. More accurately, there had never been any chance of saving him; he was already completely dead by the time he reached the hospital.

What followed was Miaomiao’s work: the autopsy. The manner of the victim’s death was so grotesque that it left people unable to eat for days. It was depraved beyond description.

The victim was named Fang Dajun, a police officer at a local station. The reason his abdomen had swollen so grotesquely was that it had been packed full of food, until his stomach and intestines had burst.

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The strange thing was that the material stuffed into Fang Dajun’s abdomen was not poisonous at all.

It was food.

His stomach was filled with vegetables: leafy greens, scallions, black fungus, raisins, and a great deal of rice.

Most of it had been cooked, making it appear like food that had already been digested.

But Miaomiao said that the food had not been cooked beforehand. It had been raw when it was forced into Fang Dajun’s body and had only been cooked after entering his stomach. The reason it had become cooked was not stomach acid. The killer had filled Fang Dajun’s abdomen with boiling water—scalding water, in fact.

In other words, the killer had turned Fang Dajun’s stomach into a cooking pot, using boiling water to blanch vegetables inside his body.

Nearly everything from Fang Dajun’s esophagus through his stomach and intestines had been scalded raw. They were swollen, reddened, and torn apart. The sight was enough to make one’s scalp crawl. One could imagine the agony of his death: raw vegetables had been forced down his throat and into his stomach, then rammed farther inside with a stick. And as if that were not enough, boiling water had been poured in to cook them.

How deep could the hatred have been to inflict something like that?

Fang Dajun had indeed been terrified out of his mind before he died. Miaomiao said he had not died directly from the burns. He had lost control of his bladder and bowels, and he had been frightened to the point of collapse. He had even tried to bite through his own tongue before death. But because of the boiling water, the piece of tongue he bit off had been cooked.

For the time being, Fang Dajun’s death became a mystery, and the police naturally began an investigation. But Jin Ze and I knew that his death was no mystery at all. It was connected to the recent cases, and the household registration page was the evidence.

Afterward, Jin Ze and I left. We made a brief appearance at the police station, and then Jin Ze took me away.

It was the same van as before. Inside, Jin Ze said, “Chen Mu, I’ve been thinking. Perhaps Fang Dajun wasn’t killed by Captain Fang after all. Maybe the real killer was framing him. But Captain Fang must have concealed something extremely important from us. In any case, this household registration page is a crucial clue. I checked the population information database, but there is no such household. There is no household containing a man named Chen Tianming and his son, Chen Mu.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean? Is the household registration page fake?”

Jin Ze shook his head. “No. It should be genuine. But the household must have been deregistered. Nothing can be found in the system, and even online searches turn up nothing about them. To accomplish that—to make an entire family disappear from the records—an ordinary person wouldn’t have the power. Even Captain Fang would have to expend enormous effort.”

I was bewildered. “What exactly are you saying? They were deregistered? You mean that this father-and-son pair, Chen Mu and Chen Tianming, really existed, but someone powerful erased them from the information system so that they can no longer be found anywhere? In other words, there really was a Chen Mu and a Chen Tianming? But my father’s name truly is Chen Youquan. Don’t the records contain information on my father and me?”

Jin Ze nodded. “Yes. That’s what makes this so interesting. It further proves that everything was arranged deliberately. If my guess is correct, the man who looks exactly like you is also named Chen Mu. He is the Chen Mu listed on the household registration page. And the reason that police officer Fang Dajun was killed, I suspect, is that he helped conceal this family. The killer took revenge on him. The killer is the man who looks exactly like you—the other Chen Mu.”

At those words, I suddenly understood.

Jin Ze quickly continued, “Information can be erased, but if a family ever existed, traces of it must remain. Now that we have the address, we can go there, ask around, and naturally uncover some clues.”