Chapter 2: Lockdown Mode

  In the freezer room on the ship, I saw the deceased Li Mohan, as well as Kong Xiangdong who was standing outside the freezer room with a bewildered expression.

  Kong Xiangdong, about forty years old, wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt and shorts commonly seen on beaches, now draped in a dark blue security coat, slumped at the entrance of the freezer room.

  "Wait here for me, little lemon. I'll go take a look." I'm worried that the girl will be scared and also don't want this matter to tarnish her pure and innocent heart.

  "Haha~" Wu Xing suddenly burst out laughing: "What kind of corpse, what kind of demon or ghost haven't we seen before? Don't underestimate her."

  "I'm fine!" Zhang Meng blinked her bright and shiny eyes.

  She dared to go to Longxi Ancient Town by herself to find inspiration for writing, she must have a big courage, and that unscrupulous laughter... I just followed her.

  First, I bypassed Kong Xiangdong and directly examined the body. This is my habit as a forensic doctor. Don't be blinded by the case at first, the dead body is the most honest narrator, start looking for answers from here.

  The temperature in the freezer wasn't too cold, so the woman's body hadn't frozen into an ice block. The first thing I saw was what she was wearing - a bright orange short-sleeved shirt and shorts with a seascape print on them. The clothes were identical to the blue short-sleeved shirt and shorts Kong Xiangdong had been wearing, probably a couple's casual outfit...

  "What are you looking at me like that for?" I was observing Kong Xiangdong when he suddenly gave me a deep and hateful stare, as if I had killed his wife!

  Seeing me suddenly energetic, Kong Xiangdong turned his gaze aside: "Don't pull on my wife's clothes, what are you doing?"

  "You..." I was about to burst out in anger, "Are you sick or something?", but then I thought, this city's people seem to all have some kind of mental problem. Calm down, calm down: "I'm a police officer, inspecting the deceased requires thoroughness, if you can't accept it, then you yourself uncover her clothes."

  Kong Xiangdong curled his lips, which were full of whiskers: "It's the same old routine. You young police officers, learning from others to be detectives, what use can you be at such a young age?"

  "What do you mean, someone moved the body before me?" I was somewhat puzzled, two and a half days after the incident, could it be that the local police had investigated? This wasn't good, as for his suspicion, I didn't bother to argue with a man who had just lost his wife.

  Kong Xiangdong didn't have a 'bright' look on his face: "There was a young Detective Lin, who came here and hadn't slept for over 30 hours, finally fainting and being sent to the hospital."

  "Is your surname Lin?" I naturally thought of Lin Ruoyin in my subconscious, but that was impossible: "Stop talking nonsense, your wife is dead, the murderer is still at large, if you don't want her to die unjustly, hurry up and cooperate with us to investigate the case."

  "It's...my Inspector." Kong Xiangdong gloomily unbuttoned the woman's clothes.

  I put on my gloves and mask, set aside the toolbox, and started working.

  Without an autopsy, I took a closer look at the body of Li Muhong and found a non-fatal wound on his head, which seemed to be scratched by fingernails. The fatal wound was on his back, with a crisscross pattern, as if stabbed multiple times in one spot. Was the murderer's strength really that weak?

  No, it's not like that!

  Combining the two wounds, a picture naturally formed in my mind: the murderer grabbed the victim's hair and pressed down while stabbing a knife into the victim's back. As the victim struggled, the wound showed intersecting scars.

  A very reasonable cause of death, I threw away my gloves: "Down there, take me to the murder scene and have a look."

  "Is that all you've checked?" Wu Xing suddenly asked.

  "This guy has some skills, and he also took care of Zhang Meng, so I replied very politely: 'It should be a fatal blow to the head during the fight, do you have any other opinions, sir?'"

  "You're too muddled." Zhang Meng pointed with her small hand: "Look at her fingernails, the color is off."

  "From the color of her fingernails and pupils, it can be seen that the deceased had a habit of taking tranquilizers before death. Her teeth were very bad, which should have been for pain relief." I was calm in expression, this point is similar to my old mother, when people get older, their teeth are not good, and they haven't pulled them out yet, it's really suffering.

  With a gentle attitude, Wu Xing waved his hand: "Not only that, young man, after death, the wrinkles on one's face will all be smoothed out. But take a look at this 'woman's' facial features, the wrinkles between her eyebrows are still deep and condensed, gathering but not dispersing. She must have had an unhappy life before. And look at the skin on her hands, ankles, there are signs of allergic reactions."

  I'm not very interested in physiognomy, but the allergies on my hands and ankles have caught my attention. It reminds me of when I went to the aquarium with my first love, Liang Xue Ru, and the breeder had this 'hairy' disease.

  "Is she allergic to anything?" I asked Kong Xiangsen.

  "There's nothing allergic, but what you said about my wife having bad teeth is true. She likes to eat sweets and also eats before sleeping. I've told her many times but she hasn't changed." Kong Xiangdong is now cooperating with our work.

  "Ah~ I also eat fruit before sleeping, will my teeth be bad later? What to do, what to do?" Zhang Mian started acting like a spoiled child again. She really is one of a kind, not afraid of dead bodies at all. This is quite different from normal girls.

  "Wu Xingsi said after a moment: 'Young man, you'd better get some sleep first, lest you repeat the mistakes of the past.'"

  Sleep?

  I've been driving for a whole day and it's already evening, I'm really tired, but I'd rather get the case done as soon as possible, get the legendary one million, besides, I have to keep up with Zhao Yong and the others, follow the old hand and accumulate experience, after all, I'm still too green now.

  "It's just past six, let's investigate some more."

  "Hey, if you're going to investigate the ghost market, you'll definitely end up in a state of extreme collapse. Go get some sleep first, come on, I'll take you to find Little White Sheep, let's have some fun!"

  Was Wu Xing going to investigate something behind my back? After all, I had only known him for a day, and it was completely reasonable to suspect him.

  So after leaving the freezer room, I pulled Zhang Mian who was jumping up and down: "At least take a look at the crime scene first before going to rest."

  No one can outdo me. Kong Xiangdong led us to leave the so-called Noah's Ark and came back to the Ghost Market, which was full of mysterious colors.

  "Hiss! Kill him, how can this little guy be my opponent? Brothers, attack! Hahaha~~~" Turning left, the lights in a glass house by the water's edge flickered on and off, inside were over a dozen "hardcore" online game enthusiasts.

  "Hurry up." Kong Xiangdong urged, after passing by this group, he looked disgusted: "These green-haired 'flower' kids are simply the dregs of society, without any dreams to speak of."

  "What are you and your wife pursuing in terms of dreams here?" I wouldn't let such a significant clue go.

  Kong Xiang walked along and said: "We are different, my wife and I are identifying the direction of human poverty and wealth, we are pursuers of freedom."

  "Poverty and freedom, shall we talk about it?" I asked. After that, my brain short-circuited for a while. On the road, I saw male-male, female-female, and other unconventional love relationships. There was even a long-haired woman who wasn't wearing anything, squatting at the base of a tree, seriously sculpting something.

  Zhang Meng's small hand suddenly reached out, ruining the breathtaking view that had made my heart skip a beat.

  Kong Xiangdong's face was full of confidence: "First, you have to know one thing. A jiazi is sixty years, which is a lifetime. How people live their lives is basically determined from birth, and more than half the journey is set. Don't you think this is bloody and cruel?"

  "No way, I'm very free." Zhang Meng hummed, indicating that she didn't care about her birth status.

  Kong Xiangdong sneered, "That's because you haven't realized the cruelty of this world yet. From 1 to 7 years old is childhood, carefree and innocent; from 8 to 22 years old is school; from 22 to 32 years old belongs to work; from 33 to 55 years old belongs to children, when your child graduates from university, you save some more money, support him in getting married and setting up a family, and then you can basically step into the perfect sunset of life. In the long river of time, quietly walk through one's life. But have you ever thought that if something goes wrong in between, what kind of life would it be?"

  "What will happen?" Zhang Momo became curious: "I only went to high school for a few days and never went back, what will happen in the future?"

  Kong Xiangdong's eyes gleamed with a sharp light: "You didn't attend high school, you didn't attend university. In the future, you won't have a good job. There are only two paths for you to take: either find someone rich to marry or venture out on your own, enduring wind and sun to work and do business to earn money. Otherwise, you won't even have a place to live, let alone be able to support children, provide for their education, help them find work, get married... it's simply a fool's dream."

  "Wu Xing frowned and said, 'Old Kong, your words are a bit too extreme. With money, one can raise children in luxury; without it, they can still be raised in poverty. It's not like those without money shouldn't raise their kids at all. I detest those who abandon their children the most.'"

  "Too right!" Kong Xiangdong clapped his hands, extremely excited: "Old Wu, you're the most clear about this. Those who can't afford to raise their children will eventually abandon them. Your orphanage has plenty of examples like that. They are indeed a deformed symptom of society, it's just because they didn't follow the rules and made mistakes along the way, resulting in such a cruel outcome of flesh and blood separation!"

  "...". Wu Xing, that sharp and spirited old man, was left speechless.

  Zhang Meng pulled my hand and whispered: "Does your head hurt? I told you to sleep first, wasn't that right?"

  "No, he's absolutely right." I've been through the confusion of having no prospects, resentment and suffering, so I cherish this job at the Provincial Public Security Bureau's Major Crimes Unit, as well as the 16 years of education my parents provided for me.

  Kong Xiangdong, seeing me nodding in agreement, became even more spirited: "This kind of fixed prison around us is just like raising chickens or pigs - feeding them fodder, letting them grow big, slaughtering them and eating the meat. We can't break free from it. Once we do break free, we have to rely on others, or else end up lonely and abandoned, abandoning our children. Old Wu, isn't that what happened to you too?"

  Wu Xing said with a bad tone: "I was pursuing knowledge, missed my youth, so I didn't have that woman with me. Young man, don't be fooled by him, this guy used to do multi-level marketing, he's a master of brainwashing!"

  "Not bad!" Kong Xiangdong's face changed to one of regret: "I didn't attend university, after serving in the army I couldn't find a job, among all the odd jobs, only sales made a lot of money. From being a shy young man who blushed when talking to people, I grew into a sales manager. Even though I was rejected countless times and didn't know what shame was, I still couldn't start a family. Later, I became a multi-level marketing tycoon with thousands of people under me, making a lot of money, finally having a home, and a beautiful wife. But in the end, without regard for anything, looking back, I feel that this money is disgusting. I'm lost and can't find myself, I couldn't sleep at night. I wanted to go back to my original path, but what shocked me was that if I went back, I would lose my home, and my beloved wife!"

  In the end, his eyes were bloodshot and he was almost frantic.

  "So does your wife agree with your idea?" My heart beats faster, this is undoubtedly a crucial point in the case!

  But little did he know, Kong Xiangdong looked dejected: "She used to love beauty, pearls and precious stones, luxury cars and mansions, and shared my ideas. But later we didn't have children, she thought I had harmed all our relatives and friends, lacked 'yin' virtue, and no longer agreed with my ways. So, I wanted to make an effort on my own, for the sake of people pursuing freedom in the world, to open up a piece of sincere paradise, but..."

  But the country's laws do not allow it, you came to Ghost City to avoid relatives and friends, wasting years and ultimately achieving nothing, in the end she died, and you can't see any hope at all, this is a retribution!

  The answer flashed through my mind but I didn't say it out loud. After all, dead men tell no tales: "Alright, I already know what's going on with you guys. Let's take a look at the crime scene first."

  Kong Xiangdong nodded and pushed open a wooden door with his hand.

  The moment the door opened, I, Wu Xing and Zhang Meng were all stunned. Inside was a space of about 400 square meters, with flowers, grass, sunlamps, artificial hills and streams, as well as mist, like a small fairyland...