PD -Chapter 196 The Heart-Ripping Demon

My head suddenly felt dizzy, and the scene before my eyes shifted instantly. Liu Xiaopeng and police officer Yan Shu, who had been standing with us, were gone. Only Tang Shanshan and I remained in the middle of the apartment.

The bloodstains that had previously covered the walls and floor had also disappeared, and the room had become neat and clean.

Knock, knock, knock…

Suddenly, hurried footsteps sounded outside the room, followed immediately by the sound of a key being inserted into the lock and the door being opened.

I froze for a moment, then pulled Tang Shanshan aside.

Just then, the girl from the surveillance footage rushed in from outside. In panic, she quickly shut the door and locked it from the inside.

I knew in my heart that this wasn’t the girl coming back to life. What we were seeing was most likely the real scene from a week ago—the night of the murder—preserved within this room.

Thinking of this, I glanced at Tang Shanshan beside me and realized that this was probably her precognitive ability activating again.

The girl leaned against the door, panting heavily. It took her quite a while to calm down. Then she went to the bed and plugged her phone into a charger. It seemed her battery had completely drained; only after a long while did the phone finally turn on…

At that moment, a cold gust suddenly blew through the gap under the door.

I turned to look and saw a strand of black smoke drifting in with the wind, slipping into the room. Yet the girl remained completely unaware.

She finally got her phone to start up, checked several voice messages on WeChat, and replied to a few texts. Her earlier panic seemed to fade, the sense of “home” restoring her security.

After a while, she put the phone down and began undressing, as if preparing to take a shower.

And at that very moment, the black smoke that had entered the room slowly condensed in midair into a tall humanoid figure.

The towering black figure drifted behind the girl and slowly raised its long, withered, claw-like hand.

Still completely unaware, the girl continued unbuttoning her clothes, exposing her smooth back.

Squelch…

A sound like a sharp blade piercing flesh rang out. It wasn’t loud, but it was enough to make one’s scalp go numb.

Along with the sound, the girl let out only a faint groan—no scream. A large spray of blood burst from her back, splattering the wall behind her.

The claw that had pierced her was the black shadow’s hand.

Thud.

The girl collapsed to the ground, blood continuously pouring from the wound. In the shadow’s grasp, her heart was now held in its claw.

The black figure opened its mouth and, trembling, raised the blood-soaked heart before swallowing it in a single bite.

At the moment it swallowed the heart, the shadow seemed to grow several times larger…

Then it bent down and lifted the girl’s corpse from the ground…

“Officer Qiu! Officer Tang! What’s wrong with you two?”

A voice suddenly rang out, pulling Tang Shanshan and me back to reality.

I snapped back to my senses and removed my hand from Tang Shanshan’s shoulder. Looking around, the black shadow and the corpse were gone—only the walls and floor remained, with bloodstains that were gradually turning dark.

“You two… are you okay?” Yan Shu asked in confusion.

“Ah, we’re fine. I just… feel a bit dizzy too, probably motion sickness or adjusting to the environment,” I said, rubbing my face and quickly changing the subject, asking about the scene findings.

“No fingerprints, no footprints. Despite committing such a brutal crime, the killer left behind absolutely no trace…” Yan Shu said as she led us around the scene.

“This murderer is not only insane, but also extremely meticulous and difficult to deal with,” she sighed.

“It’s not a werewolf,” I said quietly to Liu Xiaopeng as I stood beside him.

He froze for a moment and looked at me, seemingly realizing that Tang Shanshan and I had just seen something. But with outsiders present, he didn’t ask further.

We followed Yan Shu to the bedside—the exact spot where the girl had stood when she was killed in what we had just seen.

Tang Shanshan’s face was pale. Standing near the door, she refused to step forward, clearly still shaken by the scene of the heart being ripped out.

The white carpet was covered in blood droplets—scattered, forming strange, unsettling patterns.

I suddenly froze. In Tang Shanshan’s vision, the moment the girl’s heart was ripped out, the blood had clearly sprayed outward in a burst…

But on this carpet, the blood appeared only as gradual drops. This completely didn’t match what we had just seen.

Frowning, I stared at the stains on the carpet and suddenly realized something. I immediately looked up and said, “Do you have a marker pen?”

Yan Shu paused, then opened her bag. “No marker, only a gel pen.”

I didn’t say anything more, took the pen, and crouched down. Following the blood droplets on the carpet, I connected them one by one.

A strange pattern—resembling an eye—appeared on the floor.

“What is this…” Yan Shu stared in shock. “Did the killer deliberately leave this behind?”

I didn’t answer directly. Instead, I turned to Liu Xiaopeng and asked, “Have you ever seen a symbol like this before?”

He frowned and studied it for a long time before shaking his head. “It doesn’t look like any talisman or formation I’ve ever seen.”

I nodded. The pattern was too simple; nothing in my knowledge of Taoist arts or formations matched an eye like this.

Even so, I was certain this eerie eye-shaped pattern was no coincidence.

It might have some causal connection to that black shadow.

“You two… what are you talking about?” Yan Shu asked, frowning.

I shook my head and told her to take a photo of the pattern and check if it could help the investigation.

Although she was full of questions, she still complied.

By the afternoon, Yan Shu had other matters and had to return to the bureau. We found an excuse to split up from her and decided to head to the bar where the girl worked and the nearby alley to investigate on our own.

The alley was part of a bar street, already lively by evening. We entered one of the bars, casually ordered drinks at the counter, and began asking around for information.

But just then, I noticed something unusual in Liu Xiaopeng’s eyes.