Chapter 42
Chapter 42
Zhang Tao wasn’t exactly the most articulate person.
However, the genuine terror on his face and the stuttering pauses as he recalled his memories added a layer of authenticity to his otherwise unremarkable narrative.
Yin Minmin felt a shiver run down her spine. Her eyes darted around the conference room before she silently dragged her small stool over to sit next to Qin Ying.
Her minor movement didn’t attract any attention. Zhang Tao’s yellowed eyes were fixed intently on a small burn mark on the table, left by a cigarette butt.
At some point, Wen Hao had raised an old, outdated-looking camcorder and aimed it at Zhang Tao to film him.
Qin Ying tilted her head slightly, observing Zhang Tao without blinking.
She had noticed the hand Zhang Tao used to hold his cigarette.
On the first knuckle of his index finger, there was a discolored tattoo of the character for “Abstain,” and he was missing a segment of that finger.
Going back twenty years or so, this kind of tattoo was very common among thugs.
Though largely useless, tattooing the word “Abstain” usually meant the person was trying to quit either drugs or gambling.
Judging by Zhang Tao’s complexion, which lacked the sallow, emaciated look of a drug addict, and the shortened index finger-the very finger used for feeling tiles in gambling-his past as a gambling thug was practically written on his face.
When Qin Ying had splashed the ice-cold cola on Zhang Tao earlier, she had noticed his neck.
There was a pair of crossed strangulation marks on it, the fingerprints bruised a deep purple.
The size and shape of those fingerprints matched Zhang Tao’s own hands, right down to the missing segment on the right index finger.
Combining this with Zhang Tao’s claim of encountering something strange, Qin Ying had concluded that while she was just a contract worker who could leave whenever she wanted, Zhang Tao was the one who couldn’t afford to wait.
Noticing Yin Minmin sneaking over, Qin Ying gave her a reassuring look.
At that moment, Zhang Tao snapped out of his fear and lit another cigarette with trembling hands.
He continued explaining how he ended up here.
As the saying goes, snakes have their holes and rats have their tunnels. Even as someone on the fringes of society, Zhang Tao didn’t want to die so easily.
Because of this, he had spent an entire day piously visiting every Taoist temple, Buddhist monastery, and Christian church in the city.
His philosophy was simple: he would believe in whoever saved him.
But such last-minute prayers were useless. Zhang Tao continued to find himself death-gripping his own neck in his sleep.
Though he was unconscious during the acts, every time he woke up, he had to face the terrified gazes of his friends and family.
After spending a night at the Martyrs’ Cemetery and finding that nothing had changed, Zhang Tao gritted his teeth and decided to turn himself in.
According to the logic of the underworld, police officers possessed a “bureaucratic aura” that could ward off evil.
Besides, he had only shouted; he had no subjective intent to kill. Even if he were sentenced, it wouldn’t be heavy.
Zhang Tao’s confession involved a human life, so it was taken very seriously.
The police cordoned off the sewage plant and spent several days dredging and investigating, but they found nothing.
Most importantly, after reviewing the surveillance footage, Zhang Tao was the only person seen from beginning to end.
With a missing chain of evidence, the case was procedurally closed as a hallucination caused by Zhang Tao’s intoxication.
But another problem arose.
Zhang Tao had to sleep while in detention.
Every time he closed his eyes, he would start strangling himself while letting out a sinister, eerie laugh.
Two cellmates who were in for fraud were so terrified by him that they wailed for their parents and confessed everything on the spot, desperate to repent.
After an examination, the detention center’s psychologist discovered that the bastard wasn’t acting.
He would fall into a deep sleep almost the instant his eyelids closed, and his sleep cycles were several times longer than those of a normal person.
With no way to investigate further, Zhang Tao was released.
Just as he was in the depths of despair, the person escorting him out of prison gave him a letter of recommendation and told him to try his luck at the Third Cultural Heritage Preservation Institute.
Zhang Tao had been so desperate he was ready to jump into the moat, but this news pulled back a sliver of his will to live, and he had come scurrying over.
Once Zhang Tao finished speaking, silence fell over the conference room.
Everyone instinctively turned to look at Qin Ying, as if waiting for her to give the orders.
Qin Ying propped her chin on one hand, her slender fingers resting against the smooth lines of her cheek.
There were several lies in Zhang Tao’s story.
Setting aside harmless little lies like his supposed love for his job, the major issues lay in two places: his description of the Shadowy Figure falling down the Bar Screen and his subsequent report of the incident.
Zhang Tao stared at Qin Ying like a prisoner awaiting sentencing.
He didn’t know why he felt such a sense of inferiority, but in his panicked state, he was acting purely on instinct.
Qin Ying glanced at the old DV camera Wen Hao was using to film. Seeing that he was being sensible and keeping the lens focused solely on Zhang Tao from start to finish, she felt a bit more at ease.
Qin Ying tapped the tabletop. “You lied about the Shadowy Figure falling down the Bar Screen and in your report. Why?”
A single wooden beam spanned the empty conference room, adding a significant amount of pressure to the atmosphere.
Zhang Tao made a raspy sound in his throat. Before he could open his mouth to defend himself, he heard Qin Ying continue, “To reduce your culpability?”
A mixture of shock and fear washed over Zhang Tao’s face. He suddenly looked up, meeting Qin Ying’s clear, dark eyes.
His throat bobbed, but in the end, he didn’t dare to resist.
“I did lie,” he said in a low voice.
On the day he saw the lingering Shadowy Figure, Zhang Tao hadn’t been up to any good after having a few drinks. All the resentment he felt toward life had been triggered the moment he saw the hunched figure of what looked like an old scavenger.
As a result, not only had Zhang Tao shouted at the figure that day, but he had also thrown the flashlight he was holding from a distance. He figured an old scavenger was an easy target who had trespassed by mistake, so he took the opportunity to toy with and threaten her.
After throwing the flashlight, he had actually seen the Shadowy Figure’s appearance clearly.
Zhang Tao’s lips trembled. “She looked a bit… like a Wandering Madwoman from near the Sewage Treatment Plant.”
Expressionless, Qin Ying picked up an empty cola bottle nearby and hurled it at him.
“You bastard, you hid information like that?”
“If you hadn’t run into something strange yourself, you never would have reported it. You were just hoping for the best, waiting for the body to be discovered, weren’t you?”
Qin Ying’s words clearly struck a nerve. Zhang Tao didn’t even dare to breathe after taking a hit to the head from the bottle.
He only offered a small, weak defense: “That Old Woman always came around to rummage through the trash, making a mess everywhere. I just wanted to scare her…”
“Besides, I was the only one on the surveillance footage. That Old Woman stopped being human a long time ago!”
At this point, Qin Ying realized there was nothing left to interrogate him about.
She said to Zhang Tao, “Go wait outside. We need to discuss something.”
Zhang Tao left without a word, tail between his legs, and even closed the door behind him.
Qin Ying signaled for Wen Hao to turn off the DV camera before asking, “What’s the usual workflow for things like this?”
It would have been better if she hadn’t asked; Yin Minmin and Wen Hao just looked at each other blankly.
Wen Hao coughed and said sheepishly, “I’ve been transferred here for two years, but I’ve never encountered a case.”
Yin Minmin cautiously raised her hand to speak. “I’ve only been here for five months.”
Seeing that she couldn’t rely on these two, Qin Ying asked again, “What about Old Miao and Laodao?”
“Laodao is in the hospital.”
Yin Minmin knew the answer to this one. She replied, “Their phones are off. They probably ran out of battery playing games at the hospital and were too stingy to rent a power bank.”
Speaking of which, Qin Ying remembered how Laodao ended up in the hospital and awkwardly looked away. “Fine then. Let’s keep this guy under control for now.”
This was their first real case, and based on Yin Minmin and Wen Hao’s reactions, these incidents seemed quite important.
Qin Ying said, “Can we arrange a place for him to stay? Let Zhang Tao stay here for the night, and we…”
She originally wanted to say they should all see what this vengeful spirit was really about. But then she thought of the box at her house-the one where things were constantly going wrong. She had to go back and check on it.
So, she changed her tune: “I’ll head home for a bit, then I’ll come back and watch over Zhang Tao with you guys.”
Qin Ying didn’t want to investigate this kind of thing alone-not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t dare, especially since Wen Hao and Yin Minmin seemed even less reliable than she was.
Just as she finished speaking, a sudden change occurred. A gurgling sound came from outside the door.
It sounded like the raspy wheeze of someone being strangled.
The three people in the conference room exchanged looks and ran out the door together.