Chapter 681 Weird

The living room on the first floor was in a mess, as if it had been ravaged by an invisible storm.

The expensive handmade wool carpet was overturned and crumpled, stained with blood that had turned black and hard.

The exquisite European-style sofa was cut open by a sharp weapon, the filling burst out, and the chandelier shattered into a pile of crystal debris, with fragments splattered everywhere.

Li Shang looked solemn and started the investigation from the first floor.

He first scanned the open kitchen stove, where an irregular circle was clearly marked with standard site survey white chalk.

The inside of the circle was empty, but in the center, the Technical Department placed a numbered evidence marker.

There once was a head placed there, the head of a maid in the villa.

There was also an outline of a headless corpse drawn on the ground, and an evidence marker was also placed on it.

Li Shang's face was as calm as water. He stretched out his hand, and a detective from the technical department next to him immediately understood and handed him a stack of freshly developed photos of the scene.

The photo still has a slight smell of chemicals, but the image is clear and cruel.

Li Shang carefully compared the angles and details of each photo, trying to penetrate the still image and recreate the moment when the maid was killed in his mind.

"It looks like... he approached from behind and attacked suddenly, leaving the maid with no chance to resist?"

Li Shang muttered to himself, a hint of suspicion on his face, his brows unconsciously furrowed.

The gate of the villa was smashed by violence, and the entire first floor was filled with a rough and tragic atmosphere, which showed the brutality and tyranny of the attacker.

Isn't it a bit too gentle for such a vicious man to attack a maid from behind?

He is fully capable of and should be more inclined to destroy her with more direct and violent means.

Li Shang put down the photo and did not draw any conclusions immediately. Instead, he temporarily suppressed his doubts.

The exploration has just begun.

Li Shang stepped aside to avoid the debris and blood on the ground and walked towards the maids' dormitory in the corner of the first floor of the villa.

The door to the maids' quarters was half open, and the scene inside formed a stark contrast with the living room outside.

It's too neat here.

Several beds of the same style were arranged in an orderly manner, covered with plain sheets. Although a little messy, there were no signs of severe damage.

There was no overturned furniture, no torn fabrics, and no signs of a struggle. Only on each bed, the outlines of human figures representing death were outlined with the same white chalk.

Everything seemed too "neat", except death itself.

Li Shang squatted down, almost crawling on the ground, observing the bloodstains on the ground that had turned dark brown.

His fingers traced the path of the blood in the air. With years of experience, he deduced in his mind the angle at which the maids were attacked on the bed, as well as the angle and force at which the murderer swung the weapon when committing the crime.

The angle of the blood splattering, the force of the gushing, the shape of the dripping... every drop of solidified blood, in his eyes at this moment, is like a silent word, strung together to form a complete sentence describing the truth.

Chang Erbing whispered beside him:

"The technical department determined that the time of death was around the early hours of last night. Both individuals were slashed in the throat with a sharp weapon while they were asleep, leaving them with little time to struggle."

Li Shang didn't say anything, just nodded. His inference was consistent with that of the technical department.

All the maids were assassinated very quietly while they were sleeping.

The murderer's movements were precise, calm, and even professional.

He sneaked into the room, and in the darkness and silence, silently took the lives of the maids like harvesting crops.

There is a strange sense of disconnection between the circumstances in which the maids died and the overall tragic state of the villa.

In short, the painting styles of the two seem to be quite inconsistent.

Either the perpetrator is schizophrenic, or...

An astonishing guess, like a flash of lightning in the darkness, suddenly appeared in Li Shang's mind.

His pupils shrank slightly, but he didn't say this guess out loud. Instead, he stood up suddenly, walked out of the bedroom quickly, and hurried to the second floor.

Chang Erbing and others hurriedly followed, and the man from the maintenance department also followed behind with a slightly frown.

He didn't know how to solve cases, but as someone working in the Executive Yuan building, his ability to read people's expressions had already been upgraded to the max. He could see the change in Li Shang's expression, as if the other party had discovered some clues.

Li Shang had no time to care about anything else and went up to the second floor in a few steps.

His eyes quickly scanned the densely packed tiny pinholes on the stairwell wall, giving him a higher assessment of the intensity of the battle on the second floor.

Then, he walked into the badly damaged door of the inner room on the second floor without hesitation.

The painting style in this room is consistent with the style of the entire villa.

It was in the same terrible mess, with almost no furniture intact, and wood chips and rags scattered all over the floor.

The walls, covered with luxurious wallpaper or decorated with oil paintings, were densely covered with countless tiny pinholes.

In the middle of the floor, there was a huge pool of coagulated black blood, like an ugly dark carpet, emitting a disgusting stench.

Li Shang's nose twitched slightly.

He was too familiar with the smell of blood: the smell of fresh blood, the smell of solidified rust, and even the sour smell of decay... But the smell of the blood in front of him was a little unusual.

It's so "stinky".

It doesn't look like the blood of someone who has just died.

After the blood of the maids downstairs coagulated, there was more of a strong smell of rust, but here... it was more like the stench of rotten blood after the body had been dead for many days and had begun to rot.

"strangeness……"

Li Shang was filled with doubts.

"Judging from the signs of intense fighting at the scene, the person bleeding must have died not long ago."

He carefully observed the amount and shape of the blood on the floor. The amount of bleeding was so great that it almost formed a pool of blood. There were also complex traces of splashing and flowing around the edges, indicating that the victim must have had a huge open wound on his body and was definitely not going to survive.

His gaze shifted slightly and fell on the most conspicuous object next to the pool of blood.

A safe.

Or rather, something that used to be a safe.

The safe was made entirely of gold and was torn into two by the huge force, with the broken end looking hideously twisted.

What concerned Li Shang even more was that he saw some unusual traces in the center of the fracture.

It was a sign of severe corrosion. The metal surface became bumpy and even blackened, intertwined with the surrounding tear marks.

Violent tearing... plus strong acid corrosion? What kind of combination is this?

Li Shang stared at the remains of the safe and fell into deep thought.

The man from the maintenance department saw that Li Shang was just squatting and watching without saying anything, so he couldn't help but ask:

"Captain Li? Did you figure out something? This safe..."

Li Shang seemed not to have heard his question. He stood up and waved to the technical department constable who was busy not far away:

"What was in this safe?"

The detective from the technical department replied somewhat awkwardly:

"Captain Li, due to the special status of the special commissioner, the items he stored in the safe are likely to be highly confidential. Therefore, Commissioner Zheng does not allow us to take photos of the items in the safe for evidence collection.

The items inside were also personally counted by Commissioner Zheng and taken away..."

The detective from the Technical Department paused, then glanced at the man from the Maintenance Department. After a moment's hesitation, he replied:

"But Captain Li, I saw Commissioner Zheng ask us for an evidence bag and put..."

Li Shang quickly asked, "What did you install?"

The technical department's constable scratched his head, his expression indescribably strange, and hesitantly said:

"It seems...it seems like a tooth? Yes, it is a tooth!"

Li Shang was stunned on the spot and repeated subconsciously: "What did you say?"

The detective from the Technical Department confirmed very seriously:

"A tooth. A human tooth."

Li Shang felt his brain stalling slightly. No matter how hard he racked his brains, he couldn't figure out how the confidential item stored by the special envoy in the gold safe could be a human tooth?

This is totally illogical!

Does the special envoy have a perverted fetish for collecting human organs? ! !

Li Shang pulled out a strand of his hair, then squatted down again, his face almost touching the cold metal surface of the safe, observing the tear marks and acid corrosion holes more carefully.

Suddenly, his face froze, and an incredible thought emerged in his mind:

"No, it's not that there's a tooth locked in the special commissioner's safe, but rather that the murderer's tooth accidentally fell into the safe."

This idea was very bizarre. After all, in all his decades of investigating cases, this was the first time he had seen a tooth left at a crime scene.

But Li Shang's eyes became brighter and brighter the more he thought about it. Combined with the incongruous picture of the maid's death downstairs, the outline of the truth vaguely emerged in Li Shang's mind.

He thought to himself, his thoughts racing:

"Last night, the assailants who entered the Special Envoy's villa were most likely not one person, or even a group of people, but two groups of people who entered here one after another with different purposes.

The first wave of people should have sneaked in earlier with the purpose of stealing something from the special agent's safe.

He quietly dealt with all the maids who might be in the way, then came to the room on the second floor and began to try to open the safe.

However, just when he was about to succeed, or had already succeeded, a second wave of people arrived.

This second wave of people were the real 'thugs'. They made no attempt to hide their true intentions and broke in violently from the main gate, crushing everyone in their way and heading straight to the second floor.

Their target is most likely the special envoy himself.

So, two groups of criminals with different purposes happened to meet in this room, and a fierce fight broke out.

The result is likely that the first wave of people had their teeth knocked out by the other side in the fierce battle, and they are likely to die, and his body..."

Li Shang stood up suddenly and rushed to the completely shattered window.

Most of the glass fragments were scattered outside the room, with a small amount remaining on the window sill, and several blackened and hardened bloodstains could be seen on the edges.

Li Shang leaned out and looked out the window.

The downstairs was also in a mess, the lawn was trampled beyond recognition, and the flowers and plants were fallen over.

It was obvious that a fierce fight had also taken place on the road opposite. There were many cracks and potholes on the ground, and there was a car wreck that had been dismantled into parts. Under the street light next to it, another pool of solidified blood could be vaguely seen.

Li Shang swallowed his saliva and recalled the scene in his mind:

"The body of the first intruder was thrown directly out of this window by the second wave of attackers, and it crashed far away under the streetlight."

The reason why Li Shang inferred that the person who died was the first murderer was because he was too gentle when he killed the maid.

Assassination, sneak attack... usually means not being strong enough.

The brutality and strength of the second wave of attackers were best evidenced by the entire villa and the dismantled car wreckage on the road.

The more Li Shang thought about it, the clearer his thoughts became. He didn't know if it was because he had been called a "super detective" for too long, or if he really had the potential to become a super detective in his bones.

Now, once he steps into a crime scene, his brain becomes extremely sharp, and all kinds of clues and inferences come to him one after another, as if he were assisted by God, as if there really is a detective power in his body that is being activated and bursting out.

Li Shang's brain continued to work frantically, and all kinds of fragmented information and associations flashed through his mind.

It reminds me of the special envoy who disappeared without a trace;

Thinking of the proposal to him to set up a trap to kill Feng Ju;

Thinking back to the scene when he presented the parchment scroll to the special envoy in this villa;

Considering that Feng Ju's phone was also unreachable...

Countless clues finally converged into one point, like a match struck in the darkness, suddenly lighting up the fog.

Li Shang suddenly felt his throat dry, his heart skipped a beat, and a terrible thought uncontrollably came to his mind:

"Could it be that the first intruder last night was Feng Ju?!

Was his conspiracy with us a lie, or perhaps not entirely true? His real purpose wasn't to kill the special envoy at all, but to take advantage of the chaos... and steal the parchment?!

Did he think the special envoy would hide the parchment in a safe?

If that's true, then the tooth that fell into the safe... is Feng Ju's?!"

Li Shang sucked in deep breaths of cold air, a chill running up his spine and rushing straight to his head!

He felt his throat dry, his heartbeat was like a drum hammer, hitting his chest, his face turned pale and blue, and he couldn't control the changes in his expression.

The man from the maintenance department watched Li Shang's expression change strangely, but he remained silent and his expression gradually became gloomy.

Li Shang swallowed hard, struggling to suppress the turmoil in his heart.

Now all this is just speculation, there is no substantial evidence. The tooth has been taken away by Commissioner Zheng, and he has no way to obtain it for comparison.

But suppose that Feng Ju really did it, and if all this were to be exposed...what kind of impact would it have on him?

If someone follows the clues and investigates further along Feng Ju's path, then they may find evidence that "he is colluding with [Mask]".

Although the evidence was false.

And their plan was likely to have failed, because no remains of the special envoy's shattered body were found in the sewer.

Li Shang shook his head and forced himself to suppress his chaotic and dangerous thoughts.

The most urgent task is to find evidence to verify your own reasoning.

Corpse!

The body under the streetlight is the key!

…….

(End of this chapter)