19 Devil Mountain
Fang Chengjin turned to the side, reached out and patted her shoulder, as if he wanted to pull Zhou Yun into his arms, "Don't worry, it's all over."
Zhou Yun's thoughts were complicated.
As Pan Fei was being escorted by the police, he stared at Zhou Yun, his gaze filled with a complex mix of emotions.
Zhou Yun met that gaze and frowned.
At this moment, Fang Chengjin suddenly turned forward and blocked the gaze.
“Let’s go out too,” he said.
Zhou Yun hummed in agreement, her whole body seemingly relaxing and less on guard.
Lin Long gave a wink to the police officer next to him, and the officer stepped forward to untie Li Li.
"This is terrifying! Pan Fei is a complete freak! You absolutely cannot let him get away with this! And these bones, you must go back and investigate! Who knows whose they are!" Li Li still looked terrified.
Zhou Yun and Fang Chengjin both looked at the broken bones lying on the ground. These broken bones were of various sizes and were shocking to behold.
**
A female police officer conducting the investigation suddenly discovered an old notebook in a corner. She picked it up and flipped through a few pages, and was shocked. She immediately turned around and gave it to Lin Long.
"Team Leader Lin, this is a diary."
Lin Long raised an eyebrow, took the diary, and began to read it.
As he read, he said, "Pan Fei was abandoned by his mother in this manor when he was a child and grew up alone. He is naturally withdrawn and didn't study much. Instead, after working for a few years, he went to adult school and somehow became a doctor. The later part of this diary is all about his feelings after killing someone. It's disgusting!"
The basement was dimly lit, and the text on the page was blurry, as if the ink had faded, but some traditional Chinese characters were still legible.
Fang Chengjin also walked over and said, "Let me see."
Lin Long gave it to Fang Chengjin, who turned on the flashlight and looked around the basement again to see if he could find any more evidence.
As Fang Chengjin flipped through the pages, he frowned. "Pan Fei's past experiences seem quite unpleasant, especially his childhood. He used a lot of 'x' symbols, which in psychology is a strong indication of negativity towards his current life and situation. This suggests that Pan Fei had a very repressed childhood. Later in life, he also experienced betrayal by his girlfriend, which triggered the malice within him."
Zhou Yun listened from the side, saying, "We are experiencing the victim's path of victimization, but those victims did not have the ability to escape as we did. If we hadn't come to investigate, he might have harmed even more climbers."
Lin Long suddenly exclaimed, "There's another cave entrance here!"
In another corner of the basement, a tattered cloth covered the area. Lin Long lifted the cloth, revealing another passageway.
Lin Long: "I was wondering why there was a draft in this basement. Pan Fei was doing human experiments here, so the smell should be hard to dissipate. But the smell wasn't that strong when I came in earlier. The fact that there's a passageway here explains it."
Fang Chengjin: "These passages were probably built in the old days to avoid bandits and pirates. They should lead to the well at the foot of the mountain for easy escape."
Lin Long was surprised: "How did you know?"
Fang Chengjin: "The diary should have mentioned it, and I also observed that there are too many wells at the foot of the mountain, which is completely illogical. This mountain is close to the sea, so there is no need to dig so many wells. It can only be said that they are used for escape. There is a history of pirates entering the mountain, so it is normal to have underground passages for escape."
Zhou Yun had been flipping through her diary, and when she heard Fang Chengjin say that, she immediately turned to a page that said "underground passage".
“Pan Fei’s diary did indeed contain this entry. It must have been passed down from their ancestors. The diary mentions that his mother drew it for him.”
Lin Long's gaze was intense. "This passage must be thoroughly investigated."
**
Without hesitation, Lin Long dispatched some police officers from outside to follow him into the tunnel. To prevent oxygen deprivation, they also brought in special oxygen cylinders. Fang Chengjin and Zhou Yun also went in together.
The passageway was extremely long, and there was more than one. After passing through the long passageway, you would occasionally find a pile of bones and some tattered clothes. Some of the clothes looked out of date, and they seemed to be clothes that had been brought in by robbers from outside who couldn't find a way out and died here.
According to the map, they eventually emerged from a well at the foot of the mountain.
When they came out, the well was near the village gate. As long as they came out of the well, they could escape, which was very convenient, just as Fang Chengjin had predicted.
When they came out of the well, the villagers nearby were stunned.
Only elderly women and some children remained in the village. The women were dumbfounded. Lin Long led his men forward and asked them a few questions. The women didn't know that the well could lead to the top of the mountain.
According to them, these wells have been dry for years, so people don't usually come here to draw water. Half of the wells in the village are dry, and they all think it's due to water depletion and don't pay much attention to it, since so many years have passed and landslides have occurred.
This also shows that only a few people know the function of wells.
Pan Fei was one of them.
**
The case has finally come to a close. The bones found in the basement were confirmed to be those of the victims of the previous missing mountain climbers after testing, and Pan Fei's guilt was also confirmed. As for Zhao Ping, when Lin Long investigated Zhao Ping's network of connections, he discovered that Zhao Ping had recently bought insurance for Chen Qingqing and also owed a lot of online gambling debts. Undoubtedly, this was another murder case, intertwined with the mountain climber case.
Chen Qing's body was also found at the bottom of the cliff. She died from a head injury caused by the fall.
Zhao Ping was also imprisoned for murder.
**
It turns out that the strong smell of disinfectant that Fang Chengjin smelled was from disinfectant sprayed by Pan Fei to cover up the smell of plastic when making the human bone doll.
Panfei mixed bones and plastic together to make dolls, which he placed in each room.
As for Pan Fei's room, it was filled with a full ten dolls.
Back on the second floor of the guesthouse, when I opened Pan Fei's room, the first thing I saw was a row of dolls on the bed.
Lin Long shook his head and cursed, "What a pervert!"
Fang Chengjin's gaze fell on a doll placed on the pillow in the middle. This doll was different from the other dolls; it had no long hair and only four perfect, naked limbs.
Fang Cheng, wearing gloves, picked up the doll and said with certainty, "This is the original victim, his girlfriend."
Lin Long and Zhou Yun both gathered around and examined it closely.
Zhou Yun raised an eyebrow, "How do you determine that?"
Fang Cheng explained: "After reading that diary, you should know that his initial murderous intent came from his girlfriend. After killing her, he began to destroy the evidence and make dolls. He didn't have time to do any decorations. It was from this doll that every doll he made afterward became exquisite and skillful, like constantly refining a skill or art. The psychopathic killer wasn't completely psychopathic at first. In the end, we live in a world that abides by the law. He only became more and more enjoyable and accepted that killing was a normal thing because he kept breaking the boundaries.
Fang Cheng carefully put the doll back on the bed and had the investigator take photos as evidence.
He walked to the window and stared at the closed window of the room.
The smell in this room is absolutely awful; it's nauseating.
However, he had smelled too many unpleasant odors, and his body had long since developed a tolerance for them.
Fang Cheng reached out and pushed open the window, and a refreshing breeze suddenly rushed in.
The wind carries the scents of the mountains and forests: the sweet aroma of pine nuts, the damp scent of spring water, the earthy notes of wood, and even the warm scent of sunshine.
This smells amazing.
The breeze that blew in made everyone in the room feel refreshed.
Fang Cheng murmured to himself, "This is the true taste of the mountains. Freedom is never in the body, but in the soul. This vast forest has trapped such a wretched soul."
Behind her, Zhou Yun gazed at Fang Chengjin's figure. Upon hearing his words, she immediately typed quickly in her phone's memo app to record what Fang Chengjin had said.
**
Three days later, in the interrogation room of Yau Ma Tei Police Station.
Lin Long placed the first doll on the table, opposite which was Pan Fei, whose hands were cuffed.
At this moment, Pan Fei looked tired and dejected.
Lin Long tapped the table with his index finger, gesturing to him, "Tell me about it."
Pan Fei was touched. He glanced at the doll and smiled bitterly.
"I have nothing to say."
Lin Long wasn't angry when he heard this. He just sneered, "If you have nothing to say about your girlfriend, then why don't you talk about your mother?"
Pan Fei's expression darkened when his mother was mentioned.
Pan Fei remained silent.
Lin Long placed his hands on the table and said, word by word, "The Pan family manor. Your ancestors were landlords who fled to Devil Mountain and built this manor. But later, the Pan family became sparsely populated. We also found out that there was inbreeding within the Pan family, which further led to diseases caused by consanguineous marriage. Starting with your mother, there was schizophrenia. Your mother often beat and scolded you when you were a child and locked you in the basement. As for your father, we found out that he went missing at sea, and later you were the only one left in the manor. Pan Fei, you had a very miserable childhood."
In just a few simple words, Pan Fei's most despicable side was revealed.
Pan Fei slowly lowered his head, revealing no emotion, but his hands gripped the board in front of him so tightly that his fingers turned blue.
Some say that a person's life is actually a process of healing from the unhappiness of their childhood.
Standing outside the interrogation room, Zhou Yun crossed her arms and stared at Pan Fei. Suddenly, she understood the notes that Fang Chengjin had written in the book earlier.
Pan Fei, driven by loneliness, fear, and loss, actually killed his girlfriend who had betrayed him.
At the moment his girlfriend betrayed him, did he think of his mother who abandoned him, or the lonely moments he spent alone on the estate all those years...?
At this moment, only Pan Fei himself probably knows the truth.
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