Chapter 9: The Seventh Is Not Yet Dead |
In the surveillance footage, the slender figure lingered in the shadow of the museum's massive stone pillars for a full ten minutes, like a lost butterfly, before finally being swallowed by the bottomless darkness of the side door.
Shen Mo's heart sank. Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed his coat and rushed out of the monitoring room, the sound of the police siren left far behind him.
The air in the museum's storeroom was cold and stagnant, mixed with the peculiar smell of old wood and preservatives.
When he pushed open the heavy lead door, Su Wanying was facing away from him, her thin shoulders trembling violently, as if she would fall apart in the next second.
Her fingers were stiffly pointing at a separate glass display case in front of her. Inside, a Qing Dynasty finger-branding clamp was displayed, the dark iron instrument gleaming with a cold, eerie light under the spotlight.
"Captain Shen..." her voice was thin and ethereal, with a hint of a sob, "Quick, look."
Shen Mo strode forward, his gaze instantly captured by the scene inside the display case.
The inner wall of the thick bulletproof glass was covered with fine water droplets, as if it had just been steamed.
And on the smooth metal base of the display case, a wet footprint had appeared abruptly.
"Pull the security records," Shen Mo's voice was terrifyingly calm. "Whose access authority was used to open the door to this display area?"
The security supervisor next to him was sweating profusely as he swiped on his tablet. "No one... Captain Shen, in the last three hours, there have been no card swipe records for Storeroom Area B. Miss Su came in with me through the main passage of Area A. She never even got close to here."
Su Wanying finally turned around, her face as pale as paper, her lips trembling. She said something that made everyone present's hair stand on end: "She... she never came in at all... But, Captain Shen, that footprint... it's warm."
Shen Mo's pupils contracted.
A non-existent intruder had left a warm footprint.
He had no time to process this bizarre fact. He immediately took out his phone, his fingers flying as he pulled up Zhao Wan's phone location.
The red signal point flickered on the city map and finally stopped, its location a long-abandoned pumping station downstream of the Old Town River.
Twenty minutes later, several beams of powerful flashlights pierced the darkness of the pumping station.
The rusty iron door let out a piercing screech. A thick smell of mold and water rushed out.
Shen Mo led his team into the central control room of the pumping station and immediately saw a beige trench coat draped over a rusty instrument panel, and next to it, a phone with a shattered screen.
They both belonged to Zhao Wan.
A subordinate officer was about to step forward to collect the evidence, but Shen Mo raised a hand to stop him.
He stared intently at the concrete wall directly opposite the control room.
On the wall, a thin layer of moisture had condensed into a line of crooked, watery characters, as if someone had written on a steamy glass with their finger.
Under the flashlight beam, the water droplets on the words rolled slightly, reflecting a cold light.
"It's your turn."
Just then, Shen Mo's phone vibrated crazily.
It was a call from Old Zhang of the forensics department. The background noise was chaotic and heavy.
"Shen Mo, an unidentified female body was found in the reeds in the suburbs, just recovered. The situation... is very strange. The deceased's lungs are filled with a large amount of water, and there are typical river algae in her fingernails. The preliminary judgment is drowning. But this characteristic is exactly the same as the case of that woman named Lin Wanqing last month."
Shen Mo's heart skipped a beat. "The deceased's identity?"
The other end of the line was silent for a few seconds, as if confirming something unbelievable.
"The photo just came through... Shen Mo, prepare yourself. The deceased... is Zhao Wan."
The lights in the morgue were blindingly white.
Shen Mo personally lifted the white cloth. The familiar face, which had smiled at him countless times, was now lifeless, her lips a strange purplish-blue due to lack of oxygen.
It was Zhao Wan, no doubt about it.
Old Zhang handed over the preliminary autopsy report, his brow furrowed. "It is indeed drowning. The water in her lungs is the main cause of death. But there are two very unusual points. First, extremely high concentrations of adrenaline and norepinephrine were detected in the deceased's blood sample, which means she experienced unimaginable extreme fear before she died. But the second point," he paused, his tone even more puzzled, "her hyoid bone is intact, there are no signs of pressure on her neck, and there are no resistance injuries on her body. This is completely inconsistent with the characteristics of passive drowning. It's more like... she walked into the water willingly."
Shen Mo didn't speak. He put on gloves and gently lifted the corpse's cold right hand.
He rubbed the smooth palm, but his gaze was like an X-ray, trying to penetrate the epidermis.
Suddenly, his movements stopped.
Under the bright light, something seemed to be slowly changing under the originally smooth skin.
Some extremely fine, ring-shaped patterns were slowly emerging in the subcutaneous tissue, like ink spreading on rice paper, or like seeds breaking through the soil.
The patterns became clearer and clearer, forming a new, unfamiliar fingerprint outline.
Shen Mo's mind was struck by lightning. He was incredibly familiar with this "regenerating" fingerprint pattern—it was the fingerprint of the deceased from the previous case, Zhou Zhenguo!
A terrifying thought instantly ran through all his thoughts.
He suddenly realized, this wasn't Zhao Wan!
Or rather, not entirely.
This was the thing he had named "the echo," using Zhao Wan's body to perfectly replicate Zhou Wenhai's death ritual once again!
Fear, drowning, fingerprint regeneration... all the details were exactly the same.
"Seal the pumping station immediately! No one is allowed to go in again!" he roared into the phone and rushed out of the morgue.
Returning to the cold and damp control room, Shen Mo's gaze became as sharp as a knife.
He bypassed the evidence bags on the floor and walked straight to an inconspicuous old piece of equipment in the corner—the humidity controller.
He opened the rusty lid. The setting inside sent a chill down his spine: 98.7%.
The scheduled start time was exactly two hours before Zhao Wan went missing.
On the paper registration form next to the equipment, the user column was sloppily written with the two words "Zhao Wan," but Shen Mo could tell at a glance that the handwriting was forged.
He didn't stop. He used a tool to pry open the controller's circuit board.
Among the dense wiring, he found an extra wire. It had been artificially connected to an external power source with an extremely professional technique.
Following this wire, he found an abandoned wire trough in the corner of the wall. The cable inside had long been out of use, and its underground path... led straight to the legendary dry well in Qiwu Li.
Shen Mo slowly stood up, looking around this carefully arranged "stage," his voice as cold as ice. "It's imitating us... using our methods to set the scene."
Late at night, the city fell into a deep sleep.
But the doorbell of Shen Mo's home rang without warning.
He cautiously looked out through the peephole, and his whole body instantly froze.
Standing outside the door was Zhao Wan.
She was soaking wet, her long black hair clinging to her pale face. Water droplets dripped from the ends of her hair onto the carpet, creating a small, dark patch.
Her eyes were unfocused, like she had just woken up from a long nightmare.
Shen Mo yanked the door open and pulled her inside.
Zhao Wan's body was as cold as a block of ice just taken out of a freezer.
She looked at Shen Mo, her lips moving for a long time before she managed a weak sound, hollow as if her soul had been drained. "I... I woke up at the pumping station... I saw another me... She was standing by the water, smiling at me and saying... you should be dead."
Shen Mo wrapped her tightly in a blanket and settled her in a completely safe room.
He handed her a cup of hot water, but his gaze involuntarily fell on the back of her neck.
Right at the hairline, there was a very fine, almost imperceptible red mark.
He pretended to dry her hair and brought over a portable microscopic detector.
Under the lens, the shape of the red mark was magnified—it was not an ordinary scratch or ligature mark, but showed a strange, water-eroded texture, its edges smooth and deep, as if it had been washed by an invisible, high-pressure jet of water, day after day, year after year.
Shen Mo slowly closed the detector, the last bit of warmth in his eyes disappearing.
He went outside the door, where Su Wanying was waiting anxiously.
He looked at her, his voice lowered to a whisper, as if afraid of disturbing the "survivor" who was slowly regaining her body temperature in the room.
"The seventh name is not yet dead..." he whispered, each word carrying a bone-chilling coldness. "But it has already begun to live for us."
(End of Chapter)