At the same time, Shen Ting, who had booked an afternoon psychological counseling session under Song Ci's identity, had already heard about this case.
Executing his mission in Jianghu City, Shen Ting inevitably needed the cooperation of the local police force. Therefore, Director Yan had arranged a local mission supervisor for him—Sun Ruohai, the current Chief of the Jianghu City Public Security Bureau.
Shen Ting himself was a Jianghu City local, and his father had worked in the Jianghu City public security system for over a decade. It was entirely possible that this Sun Ruohai had even held him when he was a baby.
After confirming the address for his psychological counseling with Chief Sun Ruohai, Shen Ting casually inquired about the pedestrian street body-dumping case that the media had been hyping up.
The Lu'an Sub-bureau, which had jurisdiction over Jiangning Pedestrian Street, was currently working overtime on this case.
"We collected two relatively complete fingerprints from the backpack, and one very clear print from the note. Currently, these three fingerprints are being cross-referenced with the existing fingerprint database. We cannot rule out the possibility that they belong to the killer."
Shen Ting had only asked about the case in passing.
After all, in a massive metropolis like Jianghu City, the number of various cases occurring daily was countless.
Toward this kind of case that sparked nationwide debate but didn't actually fall within his mission's scope, Shen Ting held an attitude of simply listening and moving on.
Although vicious cases involving murder, dismemberment, and dumping bodies in busy downtown areas were indeed uncommon, that was only true for ordinary citizens.
In the eyes of Shen Ting—who had participated in cracking numerous major and critical cases, who had received multiple exceptional promotions by the age of twenty-seven, and was already a First-Class Police Inspector—a murder and dismemberment case of this magnitude was merely "nothing new under the sun."
As the call was about to end, Sun Ruohai suddenly mentioned Shen Ting's father.
Today was the anniversary of Shen Ting's father's death.
A few days prior, Sun Ruohai and several old colleagues who had been on good terms with Shen Ting's father had visited Shen Ting's mother together and brought flowers to his father's grave.
Shen Ting was grateful for the concern of his elders.
But selfishly, he really didn't wish that at this time every year, people would line up to visit his mother—who already frequently sighed and shed tears over his father's early passing—only to inadvertently trigger her grief all over again.
The call with Sun Ruohai ended. Shen Ting walked back into the bedroom, pushed open the bathroom door, turned on the showerhead, and prepared to take a quick shower.
The warm water spraying from the showerhead sounded like endless, noisy weeping.
Fifteen years ago, an orphaned son and a widowed mother, clutching the urn of their father and husband, had also wept with such sheer despair.
It's all in the past.
Wiping the water droplets from his face, Shen Ting thought calmly.
Song Ci hadn't returned to Jianghu City in many years. Lin Huo had sent people to clean his room in the old family mansion ahead of time. But Song Ci refused to move in.
He was already an adult and had lived independently abroad for so long. Moreover, with Song Shi hospitalized, he had even less reason to move back there.
Unlike Song Ci's decadent private life, Song Shi, who was over a decade older, was not someone who messed around when it came to romantic relationships.
Song Shi had been married once in his early years, and had a ten-year-old daughter named Song Qi'er with his ex-wife.
The little girl's parents had divorced early on. After remarrying, her mother settled overseas permanently. The only parent left by her side was her father, who was an incredibly busy man.
Consequently, lacking parental love but never lacking money, Song Qi'er was naturally spoiled rotten by those around her, developing a severe case of "princess syndrome."
Song Ci and Song Qi'er had never seen eye to eye.
Therefore, Lin Huo could completely understand why Song Ci was unwilling to move back.
Because of this, before Lin Huo could properly arrange a new residence for him, Shen Ting naturally checked into a hotel.
After his shower, Shen Ting checked the time.
Lin Huo had called him first thing in the morning to arrange a lunch meeting, wanting to discuss company matters with him.
It was about half an hour until lunchtime.
Lin Huo desperately hoped that Song Ci would prepare himself to take over the company as soon as possible.
Song Ci's undergraduate major was business.
It was a broad field that covered management, marketing, accounting, and commercial law.
However, Lin Huo had watched Song Ci grow up and knew perfectly well that Song Shi had spent a massive amount of money just to ensure his younger brother could graduate smoothly.
He could conclude just by thinking with his knees:
Song Ci was absolutely not the type of good student who would attend classes on time and study hard.
As the number one seed for "loafing around and waiting for death," the number of times he went to campus each week probably couldn't even compare to the number of times he hit the tables at the Crown Casino or watched private dances at strip clubs.
Lin Huo knew Song Ci was a piece of rotting wood✦ translator's noteRotting wood (朽木): An idiom derived from Confucius ("Rotten wood cannot be carved"), referring to someone who is a lost cause or simply unteachable.. But he owed a massive debt of gratitude to Song Shi, much like the loyalty the great strategist Zhuge Liang✦ translator's noteZhuge Liang & Liu Bei / Liu Shan (Ah Dou): From Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Zhuge Liang was the brilliant, fiercely loyal strategist to the warlord Liu Bei. After Liu Bei's death, he served his incompetent, pleasure-seeking son Liu Shan (infant name Ah Dou) out of sheer loyalty. Calling someone an "Ah Dou who forgets his duties in the face of pleasure" (乐不思蜀的阿斗) is a classic metaphor for a useless, spoiled heir. owed to his lord Liu Bei. Even knowing that Song Ci might be an incompetent fool like Liu Bei's heir—who forgot his duties in the face of pleasure✦ translator's noteLiu Shan / Ah Dou (乐不思蜀的阿斗): Liu Bei's son and heir, infamous for his complacency and inability to rule. The phrase "forgetting one's duties in the face of pleasure" became a byword for a spoiled, useless successor who squanders what was built for him.—he would still do everything in his power to help Song Ci secure his position amidst a pack of hungry wolves.
But Shen Ting was not Song Ci.
He needed to take over the mess Song Shi had left behind as quickly as possible.
Only then could he utilize Song Ci's identity, penetrate the smokescreen of Song Shi's legal operations, and dig out the super drug lord orchestrating the mass production and distribution of "Zombie" behind the scenes.
Sniping this true behemoth hiding in the darkness—this was his real objective.
Two years ago, the Ministry of Public Security received a joint report from Jianghu City's Customs and Anti-Narcotics departments. In Jianghu City and its surrounding areas, they had repeatedly intercepted a new type of narcotic mailed via international EMS.
The intercepted drug parcels all weighed less than one kilogram. It was a classic decentralized mailing tactic.
Small and light packages were the easiest to slip through the net during customs inspections. This decentralized, high-frequency mailing strategy created genuine difficulties for customs to intercept every single batch of the drug packages.
Very soon, Jianghu City's testing center confirmed that these suspicious substances intercepted by customs were synthetic hallucinogens. They fell under the category of new psychoactive substances, commonly referred to in the field as "new-type drugs."
Lab experiments also revealed that this new drug possessed highly hallucinogenic and highly addictive properties. Furthermore, its chemical composition differed from all existing narcotics currently on the market.
This new narcotic originating from overseas appeared as a transparent, odorless powder. It didn't even require direct inhalation; mere contact with skin tissue was enough for it to take effect. If it came into contact with mucous membranes or blood, its potency and toxic effects would multiply tenfold.
According to the Anti-Narcotics Bureau's investigation, a new drug had indeed recently emerged among addicts in the Jianghu City area.
It possessed the terrifying trait of causing addiction after just a single use. After consumption, it induced sluggish movement, pain paralysis, and mental derangement.
Users would feel as though they had transformed into giants, utterly invulnerable to weapons.
There were even frequent reports in the press of users hallucinating and biting their companions.
Therefore, this new super-drug earned a notorious moniker within the industry—"Zombie."
Judging from the test results, what was hidden inside those intercepted parcels was exactly that—"Zombie."
This result caused a collective silence across Jianghu City's Customs and Anti-Narcotics departments.
Customs knew full well that for every such parcel they intercepted, there might be ten or even more identical packages slipping through behind it.
These dense yet dispersed parcels were exploiting the gaps. Despite their small individual size, the total volume was staggering, flowing endlessly into the country right under their noses.
Naturally, the Jianghu City Narcotics Control Office also understood exactly what the emergence of this new drug meant—a drug that was colorless and odorless, yet of extreme purity and potency, highly addictive after one use, and effective upon mere physical contact.
It would not only upend the existing drug trade market and exponentially increase the difficulty of combating drug trafficking and consumption, but it would also cause countless ordinary people—entirely ignorant of this new narcotic—to be lured in by malicious individuals and reduced to drug addicts.
The Ministry of Public Security attached immense importance to this case. To avoid alerting the enemy, the investigation into this case was kept strictly confidential from the public. But internally, this case was the Ministry's number one listed major case for supervision in 2018.
As the investigation gradually deepened, multiple teams of experts at the Ministry concluded after profound discussions that this case involved far too many facets to be simply classified as a standard new-type drug case.
Therefore, the Ministry appointed the National Criminal Investigation Bureau to take charge, ordering them to investigate it to the very end without tolerating a single criminal at any link in the chain.
However, during the second year of the Criminal Investigation Bureau's dragnet—which was exactly two and a half months ago—Song Shi, who had already been identified by the Bureau as closely connected to the research and development of the new drug's formula, suddenly suffered an unknown attack, falling into a deep coma.
The highly experienced Director of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, Yan Qiming, immediately deduced that this was absolutely not a simple accident.
Just as the investigation stalled due to Song Shi's coma, the Bureau received another precious piece of intelligence.
In the second month of Song Shi's coma, with little hope of him waking up, his trusted confidant Lin Huo recalled his younger brother, Song Ci, who was studying abroad, intending for him to take over all the businesses Song Shi had left behind.
When they received the frontal photo of Song Ci sent by the intelligence team, several veteran partners in the special investigation task force who had previously carried out missions with Shen Ting collectively fell silent for three seconds.
And then, the entire room erupted.
The resemblance! The resemblance was too uncanny! This man was practically the hooligan version of Police Inspector Shen Ting!
Aside from a completely different look in his eyes and overall aura, the blonde-haired youth in the photo had the exact same straight-A student face as Shen Ting.
In fact, among the over seven billion people on Earth, we can occasionally find two individuals who look strikingly similar.
Scientific research suggests that there is a high probability of another unfamiliar "twin" existing in this world who looks exactly like you.
Furthermore, renowned French humanist photographer François Brunelle once spent a full 12 years traveling the globe to find strangers who looked identical.
The final result was astonishing: two completely unrelated people with absolutely no blood ties genuinely could look exactly the same!
And it was precisely this one-in-a-trillion stroke of luck that provided the police with a brilliant opportunity to infiltrate the enemy's inner circle and snipe the criminals directly!
Thus, Shen Ting—whose solo combat capabilities were off the charts, who boasted illustrious military merits, and had received countless commendations—welcomed a secretive and arduous undercover mission.
This mission was genuinely a case of "making a living off his face✦ translator's noteMaking a living off his face (靠脸吃饭): A slang term usually referring to idols or attractive people who succeed primarily because of their looks. Here it is used literally—Shen Ting's face is the key to the entire undercover mission.." He was to use Song Ci's identity to infiltrate the criminal syndicate headed by Song Shi and uncover the true mastermind behind "Zombie."
This sting operation—directly supervised by the Ministry of Public Security, investigated by the National Criminal Investigation Bureau, and unconditionally assisted by various related departments at all levels—was named "Operation Peach Wood✦ translator's notePeach Wood (桃木): In traditional Chinese Daoist folklore, swords and talismans made of peach wood are used by priests to exorcise evil spirits and hopping vampires/zombies (jiangshi). The operation name is a direct play on the drug's nickname, "Zombie."," drawing from the folklore that zombies fear peach wood.
And Shen Ting, codenamed "Peach Wood," became the most absolutely crucial key in the entire operation.
Early spoiler: Brother Ting's nickname is 'Ear.' Although Chu Huainan—President Chu—hasn't approved it yet, I've unilaterally decided that everyone can also call Brother Ting 'Little Ear'~
See you tomorrow at 9:00 again! My cuties in the comments section, let me see your hands!
Rotting wood (朽木): An idiom derived from Confucius ("Rotten wood cannot be carved"), referring to someone who is a lost cause or unteachable.
Zhuge Liang & Liu Bei / Liu Shan (Ah Dou): A historical/literary reference to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Zhuge Liang was the brilliant, fiercely loyal strategist to the warlord Liu Bei. After Liu Bei's death, Zhuge Liang served his incompetent, pleasure-seeking son, Liu Shan (infant name Ah Dou), striving to keep the kingdom from collapsing out of sheer loyalty to his former lord. Calling someone an "Ah Dou who forgets his duties in the face of pleasure" (乐不思蜀的阿斗) is a classic Chinese metaphor for a useless, spoiled heir.
Making a living off his face (靠脸吃饭): A slang term usually referring to idols, actors, or attractive people who succeed primarily because of their good looks. Here, it is used literally, as Shen Ting's face is his key to the undercover mission.
Peach Wood (桃木): In traditional Chinese Daoist folklore, swords and talismans made of peach wood are used by priests to exorcise evil spirits, specifically hopping vampires/zombies (jiangshi).