SFTD -Chapter 28 Giant Cadaveric Swelling (Part 8)

After another thorough search, they found no additional physical evidence.

Xu Biao carefully photographed every corner of the bathroom before following Zhou Hai out.

The master bedroom was still fairly tidy. A large white blanket lay spread neatly across the bed, though near the bedside there was an M-shaped wrinkle in the fabric. Xu Biao immediately leaned in, his tiny eyes widening with certainty.

“That’s a butt print!”

Zhou Hai nodded, and the two began searching the room.

The four corners of the European-style bed each had a carved pillar draped with canopy curtains, giving it a dreamy appearance. However, the bottoms of all four pillars showed evenly worn abrasion marks.

At the gap between the southeast pillar and the mattress, the three men discovered a professional restraint chain wedged inside. Xu Biao let out a long whistle.

“The world of rich people! What an exciting little hobby.”

Captain Huang held back a laugh. Zhou Hai showed no reaction whatsoever. Xu Biao coughed awkwardly twice before quickly removing the chain and sealing it in an evidence bag.

The chain was wrapped in velvet fabric, which could easily retain shed skin cells.

Next, they discovered a wiped patch of moisture on the bedsheet beneath the blanket. After drying, the fabric had wrinkled slightly.

They removed the sheet for evidence collection. When Xu Biao lifted the pillow, a small pink plastic wrapper appeared before them.

“Whoa! Durex!”

Xu Biao quickly sealed it in another evidence bag.

Items like that contained lubricants, making fingerprints particularly easy to recover from the outer packaging.

Inside the open walk-in wardrobe stood a password-protected safe, currently left open. Several banknotes were scattered on the floor, while both the clothing and bedside cabinet showed signs of being rummaged through.

Xu Biao frowned.

“These signs of disturbance are fresh. There’s no dust covering the wiped areas.”

Zhou Hai understood immediately.

The killer had tried to stage the scene as a robbery. But a robber wouldn’t carefully hide a corpse for months, only to dump it later into a secluded pond and let it rot.

The three returned to the second-floor study.

Unexpectedly, the study was even larger than the master bedroom, roughly sixty square meters in size.

There were three computers and two office desks.

One of the desks had a thirty-degree angled surface clearly meant for drafting, with rulers casually scattered across it. It seemed to be where Xu Zekai worked.

On several open bookshelves along the eastern wall sat photographs of the group. Viewed up close, Xu Zekai and Wan Zhiyong looked astonishingly alike.

If Xu Zekai weren’t taller and broader, people would easily believe they were biological brothers.

The photos showed the three of them—Xu Zekai, Wan Zhiyong, and Lü Shuo—from their teenage years all the way into their handsome twenties.

But why had Lü Shuo disappeared from the group midway through?

The entire western wall consisted of built-in cabinets. One cabinet door at the southern end stood open, revealing a hidden storage area for sports equipment. An outsider would never have found it.

As the three prepared to head downstairs, Zhou Hai suddenly turned back toward Captain Huang.

“When we get back today, let’s begin comparisons immediately. This looks like a crime committed by someone familiar with the victim, staged to resemble robbery. Xu Zekai spent many years abroad, so his social circle in China should’ve been relatively simple. That’s why I think we should start investigating the people closest to him. Especially Wan Zhiyong and Lü Shuo. The three of them were once business partners. One of them disappears, yet the other two supposedly know nothing about it? That doesn’t make sense. And didn’t Xu Zekai’s father specifically say over the phone that we weren’t allowed to touch this computer ourselves? Captain Huang, you should get the cybercrime experts from the municipal bureau to crack it. We might uncover something unexpected.”

The three returned to the first floor.

The living room and dining area formed one large open-concept space—spacious and unobstructed.

But on the north side of the first floor stood a glass sliding door leading into the kitchen. Xu Biao headed over first since he’d already done a preliminary inspection and knew the layout somewhat.

He slid open the kitchen door.

The kitchen was rather spacious, lined with a row of beautiful crimson-red cabinets.

A double-door refrigerator still hummed loudly as it ran, the sound strangely echoing through the room.

Opening the fridge revealed only canned foods. Nothing valuable.

Standing beside the refrigerator, Zhou Hai stared thoughtfully at the wall behind it.

The entire house had been designed luxuriously and neatly, yet this section felt strangely out of place.

Because there were no cabinets installed there.

For such an abrupt bare wall to exist was extremely odd. Someone trained in architecture—someone with an aesthetic obsession—would never allow such disharmony.

Zhou Hai walked over and knocked on the wall.

A hollow sound echoed back.

His hand paused slightly.

Immediately, he pressed both palms against the wall and shoved sideways with force.

Click.

The wall slid open.

It wasn’t a wall at all, but a concealed sliding door.

Behind it sat a massive white freezer inside a hidden storage room.

Hearing the sound, Xu Biao poked his head over.

“My god… Th-this…is a freezer?”

Recalling Zhou Hai’s earlier theory about corpse storage, Xu Biao quickly stopped both Zhou Hai and Captain Huang from touching it.

Shouting as he grabbed his equipment case, he rushed over.

He dusted the freezer edges for fingerprints. Although he found more than ten prints, he looked far from pleased.

“I recovered several fingerprints, but judging by the shape and layering, they probably don’t belong to the killer. The contact areas used to open and close the freezer are all covered with glove marks.”

“In such an upscale neighborhood,” Zhou Hai said, “someone designed a hidden compartment in the kitchen just to store a giant freezer. What exactly needed hiding?”

Captain Huang strongly agreed.

He stepped beside Xu Biao.

“The freezer light’s still on, meaning something has been kept frozen the whole time. Let’s open it.”

All three felt a surge of nervous excitement.

Xu Biao and Captain Huang lifted open the freezer lid together.

Zhou Hai raised his flashlight and shined it inside.

The three froze in shock.

At the bottom of the freezer lay a silver-white human-shaped bundle.

Zhou Hai pressed his lips together and said quietly:

“Go make the arrests.”

Captain Huang immediately pulled out his phone and began issuing orders while Xu Biao frantically snapped photographs.

The freezer temperature had been set extremely low, and the waterproof wrapping had frozen rock-solid. Xu Biao searched for a while before finally finding the power cord and unplugging it directly.

Judging by the length of the bundle, Zhou Hai estimated the victim’s height to be around 170 centimeters. After examining the shape of the wrapping, he noticed the body was much slimmer than Xu Zekai.

A woman?

Climbing onto the freezer edge, Zhou Hai noticed this corpse had been wrapped far more carefully than the previous one.

He bent over, raised his scalpel, and located the position of the head.

Carefully, he sliced a T-shaped opening into the waterproof material.

One layer.
Two layers.
It took four full cuts before he finally sliced through everything.

Holding his breath, Zhou Hai slowly peeled back both sides of the T-shaped incision.

A frost-covered face emerged beneath.

The eyelids were slightly open, while the curled eyelashes were coated entirely in white frost.

It really was a young woman.

Afraid Zhou Hai might fall in, Xu Biao hurried over and grabbed him as half his body dangled inside the freezer. At the same time, Xu Biao instinctively glanced into the freezer.

That single glance made the flesh beneath his chin tremble uncontrollably.

“Holy crap… another one!”

With a quick heave, he hauled Zhou Hai down from the freezer edge.

Captain Huang returned after finishing his phone call.

“I’ve already sent Team One to bring people in. Another support unit is on the way.”

Zhou Hai waved a hand.

“Let’s lift her out together.”

Xu Biao shrank back.

“She’s frozen solid like a block of meat! H-how are we supposed to move her?”

“Call Xiao Liang in to help. And let Xu Xiangyun wait in the living room for now. I assume Captain Huang will also need to keep her here for questioning.”

Captain Huang nodded.

“I’ll go call them. Xu Xiangyun has a key to this house, so she definitely needs to be questioned as part of the investigation.”

Soon, Xiao Liang entered.

The four men worked together, pulling on the ropes to lift the corpse out.

The body itself wasn’t heavy. The real difficulty was that the waterproof wrapping had frozen firmly to the freezer interior.

Still, that also made it the easiest condition for preserving trace evidence.

Xu Biao could barely hide the excitement on his face.