Netherworld Investigator

"What's wrong?" the shadow asked mockingly. "Are you afraid of letting me see what your grandfather has taught you?"

"He didn't teach me anything!" I insisted.

"Then how did you know your grandfather is here?"

I began to panic and sweat. This mysterious figure was too smart. In a few minutes, he'd seen through my lies.

"Hmph, not bad!" he said. "For such a young boy you are pretty smart." As he talked, he kept running the cold blade across my skin.

Was he Grandpa's enemy? Why was he trying to test me? If I could really answer his question correctly, would he really let me go?

My thoughts were running in circles, I had never encountered anything remotely like this ever in my short seventeen years of life. At that moment I couldn't think of what to do at all, cold sweat kept soaking through my clothes, ironically chilling me to the bones.

"Hurry up!" the dark figure said. "There's a limit to my patience!"

I had no choice but to start examining Grandpa's body. I put my index finger on his skin to measure the temperature, and found that it was about ten degrees. I checked his knuckles, his fingers, and found no signs of struggle. Then I pry open his eyelids and checked the eyes, and found no turbidity…

Once I put my whole concentration into the task, my nerves gradually calmed down.

There were no obvious cuts or wounds on Grandpa's body. He didn't show any signs of being poisoned either, and there was even a faint rosy flush under his skin. If his vital signs hadn't completely stopped showing signs of life, he would look just as if he was sleeping.

Could the fatal wounds be underneath his clothes?

Forgive me, Grandpa, I thought, as I began to unb.u.t.ton his Tang suit. Although my emotions were in disarray, my mind was still surprisingly clear. I slowly examined every inch of Grandpa's skin and all the joints and bones of his body.

I found nothing.

There were no signs of cuts or bruises, no open wounds, and no signs of bone fractures at all.

I put my ears on Grandpa's chest and tapped my fingers on his diaphragm. There was no sign of internal bleeding.

I found no signs of suffocation, no signs of strangulation, and no signs of illnesses.

None of this made any sense. I couldn't determine the cause of death at all. In that moment, I doubted everything that Grandpa had taught me, but more than anything else I doubted myself, thinking that I was the most useless grandson that ever existed.

Seconds pa.s.sed, then minutes… The wind that was blowing in the warehouse was bitingly cold, yet I was soaking in my own cold sweat.

I kept wiping away the sweat on my forehead with my hand, and the figure behind me started to laugh again.

"Can't Song Zhaolin's grandson find out how his own grandfather died?" he mocked.

I stayed silent.

"Speak up!" he barked. "Tell me what was the cause of your grandfather's death! Or else I'll reveal it to you by killing you the exact same way I killed your grandfather!"

I clenched my fist. I knew there was no way I could make an escape right now. I was completely in this person's mercy and there was nothing I could do about it.

"I don't know!" I finally admitted.

"Is that your answer?" the shadow asked.

If I was going to die, I wanted to at least die fighting. Perhaps I could even find an opening to escape. The chances were slim, but it was better than doing nothing. Even if I couldn't defeat him, at least I would see what he looked like before I die.

I rushed up onto my feet.

He was no more than half a meter away from me, so I turned around abruptly and threw my fist straight ahead, but my fist was caught and gripped by a hand that was wearing a leather glove.

I can see clearly now that the figure was about 1.8 meters tall. He was wearing a black trench coat. His whole body was covered, not even an inch of his skin was exposed. He was wearing a ghastly mask, the lips curled up into a cruel smile, and out from the mouth were two blue fangs.

The eyes behind the mask were pitch black, it didn't reflect light the way normal human eyes would somehow. That made me wonder if this figure was even human!

The black shadowy figure twisted my wrist effortlessly. It made a clicking noise and suddenly an unimaginable pain reverberated throughout my body, completely incapacitating me.

"Your courage is commendable!" the shadowy figure nodded. "But you're nothing but a stupid boy! I won't waste my time and energy killing a clueless suckling like you! Maybe I'll let you live till the day that you find out how I killed your grandfather, then I'll come back and strike you down! Remember this: I will always be the bane of the Song family!"

As he finished the sentence, he started making a strange gesture and came for the point right in between my eyebrows. I felt dizzy instantly, and everything turned black before my body even hit the ground…

I was woken up by the sound of sirens. A big heavy hand kept slapping at my face. I looked around groggily and noticed that I was surrounded by strangers. The only familiar face was Officer Sun, who was kneeling in front of me, and it was his hand that had been smacking my face. Memories of what happened before I blacked out rushed back to me, and I started to panic.

"Grandpa!" I blurted. "What happened to Grandpa?"

"Kiddo," said Officer Sun dejectedly, "your grandpa's already…"

So the nightmare was real, I thought. I wasn't completely shocked by it though, I just felt numb and depressed. Anger, shame, humiliation – all these emotions run through my mind and were entangled together, completely clouding my mind. I bit my lips so hard that I didn't realize I was bleeding.

Officer Sun dropped a coat over my shoulder. Only then did I notice that I had caught a slight cold, which was unsurprising considering I'd spent a whole night in the chilly warehouse.

The two bodies had been taken away, and Officer Sun told me that my aunt was looking for us the whole night, but now that she knew I was fine, she was relieved.

Officer Sun asked me to accompany him to the police station in the city to record my statement. I told him everything I knew, then asked him a few questions that had been troubling my mind like who was Jiangbei Daggers, how did Grandpa die, and who was that fat man?

"I know there must be a thousand questions running through your head right now," replied Officer Sun, "but since your Grandpa advised you to stay away from these matters, I think it's best that you don't involve yourself in this case any further."

"How can you expect me to do that?" I stood up in anger, gnas.h.i.+ng my teeth. "My grandfather was murdered! I have to seek justice and vengeance!"

Officer Sun sighed heavily.

"All right," he finally said, "I'll tell you everything I know. But you must take this to your grave and never mention it to anyone else!"

He then lit a cigarette and was about to speak, when suddenly a police officer arrived at the door, holding a doc.u.ment. He saw me in the office and began to step back, but was stopped by Officer Sun.

"It's fine," said Officer Sun. "Say what you have to say."

The officer took a quick doubtful glance at me, but then obeyed Officer Sun's order anyway.

"Sir…" he muttered, "the coroner's report is here."

"Give it to me."

Officer Sun glanced over the report and his face suddenly turned stony and severe.

"So it really is the same person," he said.

He handed me the report, and I proceeded to read it. Although it was my first time reading an official coroner's report, and there was, in fact, many technical and medical jargon in it, I could nevertheless grasp the content without much effort, because the main principles of modern forensic science were largely similar to what I had been learning from Grandpa.

According to the report, the first victim, meaning the fat middle-aged man, showed no signs of injuries on his body and no signs of poisoning. In fact, apart from the eyes being gouged out while he was still alive, causing a break of the nerve at the back of the eyeb.a.l.l.s, his body was in almost perfectly normal conditions. Apart from that, his heart was missing in his chest, suspected to have been removed using a sharp instrument. But the skin around the chest and all the bones showed no signs of cuts or injuries at all. The heart that he was holding in his hand had been a.n.a.lysed in the lab, and it was shown that it was his own heart.

I drew a sharp breath when I reached this point in the report. Was it really possible to gouge out a human heart without damaging the body?

Meanwhile, Grandpa's death was caused by large perforations of the heart valve, suspected to be done by a sharp object. The direct cause of death was the stopping of the heartbeat, and just as it was for the first victim, there were no other injuries found on his body, no signs of struggle, and no signs of poisoning.

I was so shocked that I couldn't speak. Officer Sun took the report back out from my hands.

"The only person who could do this," he said, "is the same Jiangbei Daggers from ten years ago. It seems that he's returned to take revenge on the Song family."

And so Officer Sun began the account of the as yet unsolved case from ten years ago…
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