Chapter 129 Tumi 20
Donglan City, night.
It was an almost impossible task to evacuate everyone in an orderly manner in a short period of time, allow bomb disposal police to enter and defuse the bomb, and ensure the safety of more people, but Chi Li did it.
The idle people in the mall have been evacuated, and security guards are standing at the door to set up a fast lane for bomb disposal personnel so that they can quickly understand the situation and carry out operations.
In the once bustling shopping mall, all the lights were on as usual, but it became unusually quiet.
The ground was littered with scattered debris and items left behind by people fleeing in panic.
A yellow and black cordon had been erected near the device, and two police officers wearing heavy explosion-proof suits approached the atrium and began to dispose of the bomb.
They wear the most clumsy clothes, but have to do the most delicate work. Life and death seem to be just a moment away.
Chi Li pursed his lips, watching all this from a distance. He had just finished evacuating the crowd, and when he turned back, Luo Siwei had already disappeared. At a moment like this, without an urgent reason, she wouldn't leave on her own and leave him here. Chi Li dialed the number, but Luo Siwei's phone was busy at first, then turned off.
Chi Li figured out the reason as quickly as possible. The warning was sent to Luo Siwei's mobile phone. In the noisy environment just now, Luo Siwei walked out by himself.
Time passed minute by minute, and finally, the bomb disposal personnel carefully placed the black box into an explosion-proof barrel.
The police officer in charge of bomb disposal breathed a sigh of relief, turned around and gestured to Chi Li.
The crisis in the mall has been resolved, but perhaps the battle tonight has just begun.
Chi Li turned around and called Luo Siwei again, but the phone was still turned off.
He made a quick decision and contacted Director Chen. "The crisis at the mall has been resolved for now, but this may be a diversionary tactic. Lin Shuangting's target is Luo Siwei, and she's already been taken away." He paused and said, "Our action may be brought forward."
Director Chen replied, "I will contact all departments and declare an emergency. I will give you the highest authority to formulate a rescue plan..."
Chi Li hung up the phone and turned around, preparing to rush back to the Municipal Bureau. When he reached the door, he saw Su Ye Nan stumbling over: "Are you Captain Chi? Luo Luo was taken away by him... by them."
There was no surprise on Chi Li's face. He turned his head to look at Su Ye Nan, his expression normal, but with a hint of red in the corners of his eyes: "Come with me to the Municipal Bureau and tell me everything that happened tonight, every detail."
Su Ye Nan said hurriedly: "Okay..."
In the car, Su Ye Nan recounted the details of how she was kidnapped tonight. At the end, she stammered, "That man... let me tell you..."
"What did he say?" Chi Li asked her.
Su Ye Nan was very careful, fearing that he had missed some information: "He said... 'Even if he could save everyone, he couldn't save her.'"
Chi Li lowered his head and thought for a moment, then his brows relaxed: "I understand."
This was Lin Shuangting's triumphant boasting, but it also made Chi Li understand his purpose: he wanted to complete the plan he had made many years ago. This also showed that Lin Shuangting had been forced into a desperate situation by them.
Chi Li turned his head to Su Ye Nan and said, "I'm sorry, I have to record your statement later. You may have to stay at the Municipal Bureau tonight. I will make arrangements for you."
Su Ye Nan hurriedly said, "I will cooperate with you." She said to Chi Li, "You...you must save Luo Luo. I hope she can be safe..."
"I will." Chi Li looked ahead and said, "They didn't succeed then, and they won't succeed now."
Late at night, Luo Siwei woke up slowly and found herself lying flat on a bed.
The bed wasn't hard, but rather quite soft. A light was on in the ceiling, and the place seemed like a square box made of cement, with no windows. There was a strange smell in the air, something hard to describe.
Luo Siwei was dazed for a moment, her mind was confused, probably because of the anesthetic. She felt that everything around her seemed to be spinning, and her hands and feet were soft and weak.
Then she saw Lin Shuangting sitting in front of the bed. He looked just like when he was working in the detention center. He was wearing glasses and a white doctor's uniform. He looked clean and meticulous.
"Are you awake?" Lin Shuangting stretched out his hand to Luo Siwei, like a guard waiting for the Sleeping Beauty princess to wake up.
Luo Siwei didn't help him, but tried to sit up by herself. She looked around and said, "Is this your base?"
"Yes, all the walls are extra thick, shielding the signal. This place is like a maze, and ordinary people will never find the entrance. Even if you get in, without guidance, you will reach a fork in the road, and many roads end in dead ends." He said this and looked at Luo Siwei, "So, don't expect anyone to come and save you."
Luo Siwei looked at him. Lin Shuangting's voice was very gentle, but it sounded chilling to her bones.
Lin Shuangting said, "Don't be afraid. I won't make you into a wax figure so soon. Before that, I'll chat with you and show you around here. You can tell me any obsessions or last words you have."
Luo Siwei asked: "Did you treat the other victims the same way?"
Lin Shuangting nodded gently: "Because... I don't want my wax figures to look terrified. I hope they can accept everything calmly and peacefully. Only in this way can they become the most beautiful works of art."
He extended an invitation to Luo Siwei: "Come on, I'll take you to visit my studio, which is also my showroom."
Luo Siwei was still a little confused. She got up from the bed, put on her shoes, and followed Lin Shuangting forward.
They left the room and came to a long corridor. Lin Shuangting's back cast a long shadow under the light.
Luo Siwei suddenly remembered their previous meeting in the detention center, when Lin Shuangting had led her through the corridor. At that time, he must have been filled with the joy of facing his prey, but she failed to notice it. The man in front of her was too good at disguising himself.
"We're here. This is it." Lin Shuangting stood in front of a door and pushed open the heavy door in front of Luo Siwei.
The room was dark and had no windows. Only the light from the corridor shone through the door.
Luo Siwei saw someone sitting inside. It was an empty studio with a few empty chairs and a large easel.
Lin Shuangting turned on the light, and the room lit up. Luo Siwei could see clearly that there were several women sitting inside.
She recognized them as wax figures, made from the flesh and blood of living victims injected with embalming fluid.
Looking at the scene in front of him, Luo Siwei felt a chill all over his body for a moment. Seeing it with his own eyes was more shocking than looking at a photo.
They were young, beautiful, and sitting there neatly dressed, but in fact they had already died, their lives strangled by the devil.
The smell in the room was that of preservatives and decay, which made people feel stuffy and nauseous.
Luo Siwei found it difficult to describe how she felt when she saw this shocking scene. For a moment, she subconsciously wanted to escape, but at the same time, she wanted to see the faces of those women clearly, wanted to collect evidence, wanted to uncover the final mystery, and wanted to bring Lin Shuangting to justice.
Her body was in such a conflict, she hesitated for a moment, and finally mustered up the courage, staggered a few steps into the depths of the studio, and stood among the corpses.
Lin Shuangting also walked in naturally and sat on the empty chair in front of the easel.
Luo Siwei finally understood why the bodies in the house were placed in such a strange way.
Those women, or rather wax figures, sat quietly behind Lin Shuangting, as if watching him paint.
Luo Siwei recognized one of the women as very familiar: Liu Yunxi. They bore some resemblance, and the wax figure seemed to have been dressed up, making it look even more like her. It was as if she were looking in a mirror, seeing her dead self...
The scene before my eyes was too weird and disgusting.
For a moment, Luo Siwei felt as if her stomach was turned over by a hand. She couldn't help but bend over and retch, but she hadn't eaten dinner and couldn't vomit anything.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Lin Shuangting asked, a smile blooming on his gentle face, as if he was admiring a fine work of art. "You will also become one of them. I will dress you up beautifully. With you, I can even throw away all this garbage."
"Madman..." Luo Siwei trembled all over and started to curse, but the most vicious words she knew were not enough to curse the man in front of her.
She couldn't understand how someone could do such a perverted thing and still be so smug about it. She couldn't imagine what those women had gone through before they died, and why they were innocent and treated so cruelly...
Luo Siwei tried hard to calm herself down and steady her mind. She didn't look at the wax figures, but pulled a chair and sat opposite Lin Shuangting.
Her first priority now is to maintain her strength. The effect of the anesthetic has not completely dissipated yet, so it is not the time to take action.
Second, she had to delay. As long as she delayed as long as possible, she would be safer.
Third, she wanted to find out Lin Shuangting's purpose and get the final information from him.
Thinking of this, Luo Siwei asked, "I'm very curious, why did you do this? I've looked up your information, but I still feel like I don't know you well enough."
Lin Shuangting looked at his phone: "There's still time, I can tell you slowly..."
In the city bureau's command hall, everyone was on high alert.
Chi Li asked Ni Xiang to go and organize the statements with Su Ye Nan, and then he walked into the command room.
"Shen Qing, are you nearby? Notify the supermarket's security personnel and retrieve all surveillance videos from tonight and the previous week."
"Old Yu, please send me all the documents you have checked so far. We need to prepare for the rescue operation in advance."
"Guo Zhengyao, contact the SWAT team. We need them ready to go tonight."
"Drones have begun searching the area along the river."
Liu Ran asked, "Should we pay attention to places with lights?"
Chi Li shook his head: "No, there won't be any lights. Bright lights will attract attention. We should pay attention to completely dark places instead."
Huo Cunsheng stood up with a serious expression and said, "Captain Chi, I want to use an informant and set up a hotline to collect information..."
Chi Li thought for a moment and nodded. "Okay, Luo Siwei was taken away in the center of Donglan City. Someone should have seen her and the suspicious vehicle." He paused, remembering what Luo Siwei had said to him in the car. "Also, collect relevant clues about missing women cases in recent years and issue an announcement later."
Huo Cunsheng said: "Okay."
Now is no longer the time to worry about alerting the enemy. They must collect as many clues as possible and mobilize all the forces they can.
Chi Li asked: "Tang Xi, can you show me the electricity calculation table for the area we focused on earlier? How is the progress?"
Tang Xi stood up and said, "All the data has been sorted out, but this time, the data is different from a few years ago. We haven't found any areas with particularly abnormal power levels."
Chi Li lowered his head and thought for a moment: "I have seen the equipment there before. It uses a lot of electricity for cryogenic freezing, making wax figures, preserving corpses, and people living in it. They may have dispersed the power supply and distributed it to three or four surrounding factories. Pay attention to the slight increase and the average increase."
Tang Xi suddenly realized: "I understand. I will calculate the average power value of each suspected area."
As the night deepened, police cars drove out of the police station, sirens blaring, cutting through the night sky and heading into the darkness.
"You should already know that my mother died in the elevator." Lin Shuangting's face was calm, as if he was not mentioning his mother's death, but talking about an extremely ordinary thing.
"I know that you were admitted to No. 3 Middle School later, and at that time, my mother was managing the art studio." Luo Siwei said.
Lin Shuangting nodded gently. "Your mother was a very good person. She always kept her studio open for me and waited quietly for me to finish painting before closing it. Sometimes I would buy some bread and eat it in the studio while I painted. I remember she once handed me an orange. I had never tasted such a delicious orange before. That was one of the few warm memories I have."
"With the encouragement of Teacher Tao, I signed up for the art exam even though I wasn't an art student. But even though I drew better than those students, I wasn't admitted. Then, I heard Yan Yeran accepting the parents' thanks with a beaming smile on the phone." Lin Shuangting chuckled softly, raised his head, and smiled, but that smile was scary.
Lin Shuangting paused, then raised his head and said to Luo Siwei, "I have a bad life. I lost my mother when I was young, and later my father. I have never been able to get what I want easily. I often try my best but still get nothing."
Luo Siwei asked, "Later... you became a disciple of a fortune teller?"
Lin Shuangting said, "I initially approached them out of revenge. I thought, those people killed my mother, and I wanted to find evidence of their crime. But after I actually became Zhou Jingwang's apprentice, I realized that, to be precise, they weren't the only ones who killed my mother."
Luo Siwei was puzzled: "Why?"
Lin Shuangting said, "My mother and I are just ordinary people at the bottom of society. They just want to kill ordinary people. It doesn't matter who that person is. For powerful and wealthy people, killing a person is as easy as crushing an ant with their hands. Those who crush the ants don't care which one they crush. In their eyes, it doesn't matter which one they crush. Ants die simply because they are ants."
This was a somewhat confusing passage. Luo Siwei's brain was still affected by the anesthetic. She had to think about it again before she roughly understood what Lin Shuangting meant.
"Is this what Zhou Jingwang taught you?" Luo Siwei remembered what Huo Cunsheng had told her about the changes that happened to the young Yu Qingchen when they met again.
"Zhou Jingwang taught me what fate and luck are." Lin Shuangting said.
He thought about the time when he went to worship his enemy as his master. Zhou Jingwang recognized him at that time and frowned and said, "Is your mother the cleaner?"
He knew from the frown on his face that his apprenticeship might fail, so he knelt down and kowtowed, then said, "My mother didn't believe in you, so she died. I believe in you. Master, you can turn misfortune into fortune. I beg you to take me in and keep me safe."
After hearing some of the words, Zhou Jingwang laughed and accepted him.
Once, when they were alone, Zhou Jingwang crushed an ant to death in front of him. He explained the theory of ants to him, then Zhou Jingwang wiped his hands and said, "You are a smart kid. If you don't want to be an ant, you have other options. You can even be the one who crushes the ant."
At that time, Zhou Jingwang had not thought that he was nurturing a tiger to harm himself, and his students would surpass him and replace him.
In the studio, Lin Shuangting continued, "...I learned Zhou Jingwang's skills and helped them when they were being pursued by the police. Now that my master is dead, I can say I've avenged myself."
Then he said, "However, I believe the fortune teller's theory is correct: merchants pursue profit, and officials seek power. I don't have a good background, nor do I have extraordinary strength. All I have is my intelligence and a talent for crime. Therefore, I will offer sacrifices to those in power, offering advice and strategies in exchange for wealth and status."
"When I was at No. 3 Middle School, that was the beginning of my plan. I gradually won over the Hua brothers and used Mu Yuexin. Starting with the cheating case, I opened a path to get to know those powerful people. Then came the wax artist case, and little by little, I grew my wings..."
Luo Siwei looked at Lin Shuangting's face. There was boundless malice in his eyes, which was unfathomable.
Lin Shuangting's thin lips parted slightly. "In the past, I was an upright person. I hated evil and couldn't understand why those things happened to me. When I closed my eyes at night, I would think of my mother's bloody head. I couldn't feel happy. I had no feelings for this world, only disappointment. It was filled with violence, hostility, and injustice."
"Bullying and cyberbullying have become the norm. Anyone who cloaks themselves in the guise of a defender of justice, no matter how vile they are, can stand on the moral high ground and speak freely, criticizing those who are different, hiding behind the internet."
“Humans should see how ugly and stupid they are.”
"Later I came to terms with it and felt relieved." He closed his eyes as he spoke.
"In this world, there must be both black and white, just like the Yin and Yang of the Eight Diagrams. Darkness will never disappear. I don't like those who commit crimes, but I can use them. Crime can be taught, and what I'm good at is turning evil into something I like."
"Every quarrel is a million-dollar business. Every death is a sword in people's hands. There is nothing that death cannot change. If it is not enough, then let more people die."
"Slowly, I fell in love with this feeling."
A smile broke out on his face again.
"I like to see the wise become possessed by demons, the paranoid isolated and helpless, the kind-hearted desperate, the traitors turning against the world, the guilty killing each other, and the righteous falling into despair."
Lin Shuangting's voice echoed in the empty studio: "I can crush ants at will, and use them to buy status and money, allowing me to rise to the top, do whatever I want, manipulate public opinion, and even this city. This is the joy of being in control."
Luo Siwei got goose bumps on her arms when she heard his words. Lin Shuangting was a typical antisocial personality.
The death of his mother, the opportunity taken away by others due to cheating in the exam, and the worship of Zhou Jingwang as his teacher, the boy gradually degenerated and turned evil, becoming a devil.
Lin Shuangting leaned down and looked at Luo Siwei. "So, do you understand? I'm already in hell, so I need more people to accompany me."
Luo Siwei asked: "Did you have anything to do with my mother's death?"
Lin Shuangting was silent for a moment and then said, "Yes, your mother was the first person I killed with my own hands."
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