Chapter Eighty-Five: Divine Insect!

We immediately rushed upstairs.

Li Hong was holding a jar of chili sauce in his hand. It looked surprisingly clean, out of place in that dust-choked room.

"Where did you find that?" I asked at once.

He pointed to a box by the wall. "Inside that box."

Our attention was instantly drawn to the box in the corner.

Could that box be filled with corpse-worm paste? A wave of revulsion surged through me, and I nearly threw up.

Li Hong carried the box over and opened the lid. At once, a thick sour stench poured out, so foul it was almost suffocating.

The smell was peculiar. At first, we thought it must be the same putrid odor as before, but Tang Jingjing told us it was not.

She said it smelled like brain matter.

That was truly inconceivable. How could it be brain matter? Why would anyone put brains in there?

Old Lin fell into thought. After pondering for a long while, he finally explained that human brain matter was the best nourishment for corpse worms. In other words, these jars were actually breeding vessels for them.

In other words, the corpse worms inside those jars were still alive.

To prove Old Lin was right, we immediately shone our flashlights over the jars. Old Lin held the light steady on one of them. Sure enough, through the transparent container, we could clearly see the corpse worms writhing and struggling inside.

I drew in a sharp breath. "This is insane. They're breeding corpse worms in a restaurant."

"Could they be cooking with corpse worms?" Li Huai asked.

"I doubt it," I said. "Old Lin, the corpse-worm paste we saw before... could it have been something not meant for people to eat?"

Old Lin nodded. "Exactly. In nature, corpse worms are a rare kind of insect that likes to devour its own kind. They may be using a brutal process of survival of the fittest to eliminate the weaker worms and leave only the strongest."

"I just don't get it. What are they raising these vicious worms for? Surely they aren't planning to keep harming people."

We searched the room for a while longer. Aside from a few pairs of women's black stockings, we found no other useful clues.

Just as we stepped out of the inner room, Li Hong suddenly froze. Then he lowered his voice and said, "Old Lin, this is bad. We're being watched!"

Li Xingchen jumped in alarm. "There are cameras here?"

Li Hong said, "No. I noticed a reflection just now. Someone is using binoculars from a rooftop across the way to watch us. Don't look. Pretend we haven't noticed and leave here at once. Little soldier, you stay behind and protect everyone later. I'll go over to the building opposite and pull out that nail."

The young soldier immediately objected. "No. I have to protect all of you. You can't leave my side."

Li Hong smiled. "When I was killing enemies on the border, you were still running around with your backside open."

The young soldier still refused to agree, and Li Hong said nothing more.

He led us to a blind spot where the watcher could not see, then seized his chance and slipped away. The rest of us hurried to a traffic police command post and took shelter there for the moment.

The young soldier wanted to send people to help Li Hong, but Old Lin stopped him, saying the more people we sent, the easier it would be to expose ourselves. For Li Hong, it would actually be less likely to get caught that way.

The young soldier was still worried about Li Hong's safety, but seeing how unconcerned the rest of us were, he gradually calmed down.

After about ten minutes, Li Hong came back, carrying someone over his shoulder. On closer inspection, it was Tian Feier.

Old Lin hurried over and asked what had happened to her.

Li Hong said that when Tian Feier saw him, she tried to kill herself, but he stopped her.

Old Lin said, "She couldn't have gone out on her own. Hurry to the little restaurant. There must still be an insider."

With that, we ran quickly toward the restaurant. But it was already too late. The rolling shutter had been opened again, and the box of chili sauce inside had long since been switched out.

Old Lin looked thoroughly annoyed. "We were careless. Little soldier, post people here and keep watch, but do it covertly. If you spot anyone suspicious, catch them first. If necessary, you may use firearms."

The young soldier nodded at once.

Old Lin said we should go back and question Tian Feier, and hoped she could tell us something useful.

We did not return to headquarters. Instead, we went straight to Yu Tian's police station. When Song Tian saw that we had brought Tian Feier back, he was delighted and immediately said he wanted to question her personally.

Old Lin refused. "After we're done asking her our questions, then you can interrogate her."

Yu Tian was somewhat displeased, but he said nothing further.

We borrowed the city bureau's interrogation room and stopped caring about formalities. Aside from Li Xingchen, Li Hong, and the young soldier, the rest of us stayed in the room.

But the three of us sitting there waiting for Tian Feier to wake was awkward beyond measure, so Old Mo asked whether there was any way to bring her around.

"I'll try," I said.

I took out three silver needles and swiftly pierced three points on the back of her head. Tian Feier shuddered all over at once, then slowly opened her eyes, looking blankly around her.

"You're awake?" Old Lin asked.

Tian Feier looked around, understood her situation, and gave a cold laugh. "Ask whatever you want. I'll tell you everything."

Her frankness shocked us. She seemed to have some confidence in hand, which made her hard to understand.

The reason she had watched us and rescued the people from the Guardian Lord Sect was that they needed to take away the so-called divine worm from the restaurant.

Among that batch of corpse worms, they intended to cultivate a single divine worm, which made the whole batch extremely important to them.

When we pressed her further about the divine worm, she refused to say anything else, insisting it was the Guardian Lord Sect's highest secret and could not be told to anyone.

However, she revealed something tremendously important: who had actually killed those forensic experts.

By her reasoning, the person who had killed those public servants was none other than Officer Wang.

Officer Wang and the Guardian Lord Sect had an entangled, inextricable connection. When this case was being handled, all the clues pointed toward the sect.

Just when the case seemed about to break wide open and they were discussing a complete sweep of the Guardian Lord Sect, Officer Wang had used his position to kill them with corpse worms.

We obviously could not believe such reasoning. After all, Officer Wang was already dead. Now that the dead could not speak, there were only two possible aims in pinning the murders on him.

The first was to throw us into confusion and muddle our thoughts. The second was to shift the blame, to wash the Guardian Lord Sect clean of its sins.

In response to our suspicion, Tian Feier merely sneered and said she had enough evidence to prove Officer Wang was the murderer.

Her evidence, astonishingly, was that Officer Wang was still alive.

That was even more absurd. Right now, Officer Wang's body was lying in the autopsy room.

Yet Tian Feier said that the man there was only Officer Wang's double. The Guardian Lord Sect's disguise technique had reached a near-divine level; fooling us with a substitute would not be difficult for them at all.

More than that, the brain matter in those sauce jars had been personally drawn from the heads of the forensic experts by Officer Wang himself.

Naturally, we did not believe a word of it.

Tian Feier burst out laughing. "I knew you wouldn't believe me. That's exactly why I never turned myself in. Looking at it now, my choice before was the right one."

"Why are you being so forthcoming?" I asked. "Had a change of conscience?"

"Of course not," Tian Feier said. "I just think you're rather pitiful. Since you happened to discover me, I came here to give you a few clues. But don't worry. The divine worm will protect me. I won't die."

Old Lin smiled. "Have you been brainwashed? If the divine worm can protect you, then how did Li Hong catch you?"

Tian Feier said, "I was meant to lure Li Hong. The point was to draw your attention away so someone could take the divine worm away."

"That person was one of the Guardian Lord Sect members you just rescued from the police station, wasn't he?"

Tian Feier said, "Yes."

Old Lin sighed. "Your acting is pretty good. Full marks."

"Then according to your story, your father was also killed by Officer Wang?"

Tian Feier shook her head. "No. My father was killed by me. He kept using me and threatening the man I loved, so I had the worms eat him. I never expected you to uncover him so quickly, or Officer Wang could have killed a few more people..."

After the interrogation, we rushed to the other command headquarters and conducted a fresh identification of Officer Wang's body.

After examination, Officer Wang's DNA was clearly inconsistent with the DNA found at his residence. Indeed, they were two different people.

And as for the forensic experts who had died, when we searched through their nostrils we found a subtle puncture. Inside their nasal cavities, there really was brain-tissue residue.

So in that case, had Officer Wang really been the killer?

Had we stumbled into cracking the case by sheer accident?

The result left all of us laughing and sighing at once.