PD -Chapter 194 Members of the Task Force

“Yes,” Liu Xiaopeng nodded, but I could tell he was somewhat distracted.

I sighed and was about to think of how to comfort him when Tang Shanshan stormed over, glaring at Liu Xiaopeng.

“Kid, did you bully Zhu Zhu?” she snapped.

“Zhu Zhu has such a good personality, how could she get angry for no reason!” Tang Shanshan continued, still staring at him.

I muttered inwardly. That Miss Zhu really did have a decent temperament, but if you were talking about temper… she was practically carved from the same mold as Tang Shanshan. There was no way you could call her “gentle.”

But seeing Tang Shanshan looking so fierce, I didn’t dare interrupt. This could only be handled by Liu Xiaopeng himself.

“I… I just don’t want her to come along and risk her life with me,” Liu Xiaopeng said, lifting his hand.

There was a scar on his hand—left from the Rift incident, during a fierce battle.

I sighed. I fully understood how Liu Xiaopeng was feeling.

I also didn’t want to drag Tang Shanshan into all of this… so for Zhu Zhu’s safety, it wasn’t strange for Liu Xiaopeng to think this way.

After hearing his words, Tang Shanshan naturally understood his difficulty as well.

For a moment, the atmosphere became awkward, and none of us said anything more. We simply went back to packing our things.

Early the next morning, we drove out and headed toward the city where the case had taken place.

Half a day later, we arrived. We went straight to the Public Security Bureau handling the girl’s murder case.

Of course, before going, we had already contacted them using the identity arranged for us by Institute 507.

Our current identities were senior provincial inspectors, here to assist in the investigation. The reason given was that the dismemberment case was extremely brutal and heinous…

Moreover, the killer might be a serial murderer, with a high probability of striking again… so the provincial department attached great importance to the case and specially sent the three of us to assist.

With this identity prepared by Institute 507, everything we did here became much more convenient. We could even freely enter the city’s police system and access all case-related materials, with full investigative cooperation privileges.

As soon as we parked at the entrance of the police bureau, a beautiful female officer in uniform walked up to greet us.

“Hello, are you the provincial task force leaders?” she asked.

I smiled and nodded. “Hello, I’m Qiu Han. This is Liu Xiaopeng, and this is Tang Shanshan.”

As I spoke, I gestured to the other two.

The officer unconsciously sized us up, her gaze lingering on Tang Shanshan… as if she couldn’t quite believe such a young girl could be a member of a provincial task force.

However, she clearly already had our information. Since it had been arranged from above, she had no choice but to believe it.

“I didn’t expect the provincial experts to be so young. My name is Yan Shu. Let me first take you to learn about the case,” she said with a smile.

I nodded. “That’s a pretty special name. ‘In books, there is a jade-like beauty.’”

I then followed her as she led the way.

Yan Shu blushed slightly at the compliment.

We exchanged a few polite words along the way. She first took us to attend a welcome meeting organized by the city bureau leadership. After some formal greetings, she began to guide us through the actual details of the case.

In truth, the general outline of the case was not much different from what we had already seen in the documents. However, since the city bureau was the first to receive the report and begin the investigation, they naturally had more clues and finer details.

These details and clues could not be fully reflected in a written report. Sometimes, even a minor detail could lead to very important leads. That was exactly why we were willing to go through all the trouble of entering as a task force and personally examining every aspect.

In this case, the body was discovered by the girl’s landlord. The estimated time of death was between 23:30 and 00:00 at night.

The body was discovered eight hours after death—at around 8 a.m. the next morning.

Because early in the morning, when the landlord went downstairs, they saw blood seeping out from under the door, which led to a relatively timely discovery.

After that, the police immediately began tracking the victim’s movements from the previous night and pulled surveillance footage from across the city, finding several highly suspicious clips.

Yan Shu took us to view the surveillance recordings. The first clip showed a narrow alley with dim lighting. Neon signs flickered everywhere, indicating a bar street.

It was already around 2 a.m. The alley was empty. After a while, a girl walked out of a bar.

She had a delicate face and was dressed rather lightly. It was hard to imagine that she would soon be killed in such a brutally horrific manner.

The girl was a bartender at that bar. It seemed she often worked late and was used to walking home at night.

Her walking posture was confident and cool. In the dark, quiet street lit by dim lights, she showed no sign of fear at all.

In the footage, she walked alone to the end of the street. Suddenly, an invisible cold wind swept behind her, lifting fallen leaves and trash in the alley into a swirling spiral.

The girl clearly felt something was wrong and stopped to look back. Her long hair was instantly blown into disarray. She seemed to sense a faint chill and wrapped her arms around herself.

But soon, the strange wind died down, and the leaves and trash fell back to the ground.

Aside from the invisible gust, she saw nothing unusual—no one was following her. The camera also captured nothing except her.

She hesitated slightly, her expression no longer as carefree as before, then turned and quickened her pace.

But after walking a few steps, she suddenly looked back again. This time, she seemed to see something terrifying. Her eyes widened in horror, her whole body trembling.

Immediately after, she turned and ran.

She fled in panic, so much so that her high heel broke and she twisted her ankle…

Yet she still forced herself to keep running, constantly looking back as if being chased.

However, in the surveillance footage behind her, there was still… nothing.

It looked as if she was being pursued by an invisible person that the camera simply could not capture.