28 Underground Cold Storage

Once we confirmed this was our destination, my heart climbed straight into my throat. This was my first real police operation—not just tagging along as a guest—and I was desperate for it to yield results.

Jin Ze quickly signaled the backup units via his phone, ordering them to prepare for immediate action and surround the area to ensure no big fish escaped.

With everything ready, we remained in hiding, holding off on the strike. We didn't want to alert our target, and honestly, we were curious what he was doing. Was he planning to roast human heads for dinner?

Soon, the man standing with his back to us rose. He pulled over a cart laden with items, lifted a half-meter-tall water vat, and placed it by the fire. He then added a wooden cross and a metal scale, positioning them on either side of the vat to form an arc.

I finally caught a glimpse of his face. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties—though it was hard to tell. He was tall, gaunt, and hunched, resembling a bamboo pole bent under pressure.

For some reason, seeing him made me uneasy. He didn't look like a normal person; he exuded a bizarre, supernatural aura, likely intensified by the grotesque nature of his work.

He retrieved the string of baby heads from the roaring fire. What followed made my skin crawl.

He grabbed the roasted heads with his bare hands, seemingly unfazed by the heat, though I knew better—I could hear the sickening sizzle of his flesh burning from where I stood.

He impaled the first head onto the top of the wooden cross. He then took the second head and hooked it onto the scale’s metal weight, the hook piercing through the mouth and exiting through an eye socket. It made my palms sweat.

He threw the third head into the water-filled vat. As it hit the water, it hissed, sending up a cloud of steam.

Next, he dug a shallow pit with his bare hands and buried the fourth head, leaving most of it exposed.

Finally, he placed the stick back over the fire, leaving the last head roasting.

"The Five Elements," the phrase suddenly flashed in my mind.

An infamous case in Chongqing involving a "Red-Clad Boy" had once stirred up wild rumors of dark rituals, linking the five elements to spirit-raising: the weight for Metal, the beam for Wood, the swimsuit for Water, the red clothes for Fire, and the ground for Earth. There were tales of soul-splitting needles and soul-locking charms. I had always dismissed those as superstitious nonsense, especially after working with Jin Ze, but looking at this scene, I couldn't help but draw the connection.

This was far more sinister than the Red-Clad Boy case. Five infant heads arranged upon objects representing the five elements—what else could this be but dark sorcery?

Seeing my anxiety, Jin Ze glanced at me, signaling with his eyes to stay calm, reminding me that even the most twisted rituals are just illusions.

I relaxed slightly. Perhaps this gaunt old man was just a superstitious fanatic or a charlatan claiming to be a Taoist. Even if we didn't believe in it, others did, and that didn't mean he wouldn't commit extreme acts to mimic these legends.

I watched with morbid curiosity, eager to see what he would do next. Jin Ze, also focused, gripped his gun tightly.

Then, a scene so bizarre unfolded that it nearly made me lose control, shattering my hard-won rational worldview.

As the heads charred and melted, dripping liquid into the fire, the ground around the five heads began to tremble, as if something was struggling to claw its way out from beneath the earth.

The old man jumped onto the patch of ground, and the moment his feet touched it, the earth split open like a fault line during an earthquake.

The most terrifying sight followed: two hands burst from the fissure and grabbed the old man’s ankles, as if trying to drag him into the abyss. They weren't human hands—they were skeletal, bleached white, and devoid of any flesh.

I was stunned. Had he actually summoned some demonic entity?

Before I could process it, Jin Ze shouted, "Not good!" and fired at the old man.

Jin Ze was lightning-fast. Before the man could vanish into the fissure, the bullet struck his shoulder. Jin Ze charged forward, signaling the nearby officers to move in.

I followed suit, casting aside my hesitation. When I reached the edge of the fissure, the trick became clear. There were no ghosts here. It was a man-made trap: a concealed channel beneath a false floor covered in soil. Once the floor split, the passage opened, revealing mechanical skeletal hands designed to terrify anyone who approached.

The realization hit me: this was a distraction. If a normal person—or even a police officer—had seen that, they would have been paralyzed by fear, giving the old man time to escape through the tunnel.

His theatrical display of "Five Elements" sorcery was just a stalling tactic. By now, the cold storage unit housing the zombie meat had likely already been evacuated.

The old man had known we were coming all along.

If Jin Ze hadn't reacted so decisively, their plan would have succeeded. We saw the old man caught in the fissure, but as Jin Ze lunged for him, he slid down a chute. Without hesitation, Jin Ze followed. Seeing the other officers closing in, I jumped down after them.

The chute was nearly ten meters deep. Landing at the bottom, I knew immediately that we had reached the heart of the operation.

A biting chill greeted us, like falling into an ice cellar. I saw a cold storage unit with its door wide open; they had indeed been evacuating the contents. There was another escape route down here—a professional setup.

However, thanks to Jin Ze’s speed, they hadn't gotten everything out. Scattered across the floor of the cold storage were several small, frozen bodies.

As we moved toward them, we spotted a coffin nearby, surrounded by four flickering corpse-oil lamps. The old man, shot in the shoulder, scrambled to the coffin and, with a dull thud, slammed his head against it, committing suicide.