Fisherman's Case 1.3
Kids, I haven't been in the zone lately, so my writing feels like a diary entry. I don't know anything about the F6's bond either, and the writing just doesn't feel funny or profound—it's just not good. It's like my left and right brains are fighting each other. I'll try my best to correct it, but this case just turned inhuman as I wrote it. I'm so desperate, I'm really speechless. Everyone, please skip to the next case in three days. —Cat Mimi Cat, the main text is as follows:
Time: 5:00 AM on the same day
Location: 121°47′E, 31°13′N (the sinking site of the "Blue Fish")
Jiang Zhaoyan's submarine "Deep Blue" is hovering 40 meters below the riverbed.
"The sonar indicates a metallic reaction on the starboard side," the pilot said, his voice trembling. "But... the dimensions are wrong."
On the monitor, where the wreckage of the fishing boat should have been, there was a 5-meter-long shuttle-shaped cabin curled up, with the faded "M-7" printed on the hatch covered with algae.
"Ah!!!" The passenger suddenly pointed at the observation window and screamed.
A swollen, pale face was pressed against the glass, its mouth torn to the earlobe, revealing a catfish-like serrated jaw.
Jiang Zhaoyan slowly put on his gloves: "Aim the sampler at its gills."
.
Time: 11:20 AM on the same day
Location: Chen Haisheng's abandoned boathouse
Wen Lin pried a metal box out from under the bed, inside which lay a rotten diary.
May 3, 1998, Sunny
Today we found someone, Dr. Ya, who said he could cure Ah Xiu's illness...
Its eyes were exactly the same as Ah Xiu's before she died.
"1998.5.17 Rain
Ah Xiu woke up in the vat, but she didn't recognize me.
Dr. A said he would send her back to the sea.
They lied to me!!!
The last page has a photo: a young Chen Haisheng holding a glass capsule, inside which a blurry shadow has a human face and a fish tail.
.
Time: 23:50, the fifth day after the incident
Location: Abandoned ferry crossing in Linjiang Village
The river water gleamed with a viscous light in the darkness, like a pot of overcooked fish glue.
Chen Haisheng's boat emerged from the mist, the kerosene lamp hanging at the bow swaying violently, its shade covered with a spiderweb of salt frost. He hunched over as he cast his net, his movements stiff as a marionette. The net sank into the water with a muffled "plop"—but it wasn't a net at all; it was a bloated scarlet wedding gown, the gold-embroidered mandarin ducks long since gnawed to shreds by fish.
In the reeds, Yu Yan's night-vision goggles were fogged up. He pressed his earpiece: "The target is retrieving the nets, inside the nets... damn!"
A dark, tangled mass emerged from the water from the wedding dress, swaying in the moonlight in a silvery arc—it was hair, a woman's hair, still attached to her scalp.
.
Time: 2:30 AM on the same day
Location: Special Autopsy Room, Municipal Forensic Center
The wedding dress was laid flat on the stainless steel countertop, and the seeping river water mixed with formaldehyde flowed into the drain.
Fan Jinci picked up a scale-like object, which gleamed with the luster of mother-of-pearl under the light.
“It’s not fish scales.” He flipped the tweezers over, and the capillaries on the edges of the scales were clearly visible. “It’s highly keratinized skin tissue containing mammalian keratin.”
Situ Jin suddenly knocked over the reagent rack with a "thud." The electron microscope in his hand displayed the DNA comparison results from the lining of the wedding dress:
[The sample had a 99.8% match rate with relatives of the crew members of the "Qingyu" ship]
“It’s Ah Xiu’s…” Situ Jin’s Adam’s apple bobbed, “but according to bone measurements, her growth rate after death was 17 times that of a normal human.”
The sound of fingernails scratching glass came from outside the door.
Time: 6:04 AM
Location: Isolation ward of Jiang's Private Hospital
Jiang Zhaoyan inserted the cassette tape into the old-fashioned tape recorder. A piercing crackling sound of electricity blared from the speaker, followed by the submarine pilot's desperate cries: "It dragged Engineer Wang away! Gates! Close the gates—"
The sudden interruption of the female voice sent chills down everyone's spines:
"Brother Haisheng..."
The voice sounded like it had been sanded, yet it clearly sang the tune of "Crying at the River." The recording ended with a loud metallic crack and three minutes of... chewing sounds.
On the hospital bed, the "creature" bound by restraints suddenly opened its vertical pupils.
Its swollen fingertips dug into the sheets, tearing five bloody scratches.
“Voiceprint analysis complete.” Li Weimian showed her tablet. “97% match with Chen Haisheng’s deceased wife—if this really is Ah Xiu, she has lived underwater for twenty-six years.”
Time: 12:15 PM
Location: Cellar of the ancestral hall in Linjiang Village
Chen Haisheng was huddled among the ancestral tablets, clutching a glass jar in his arms.
An eyeball was soaked in formalin, and even in the liquid, the pupil maintained an eerie vertical line shape.
“That year, Ah Xiu had late-stage liver cancer, and Dr. Ya said…” His cloudy tears fell onto the jar, “that as long as the ‘Goddess’ was allowed to parasitize her, she could regenerate limbs like a catfish.”
Wen Lin stepped on the empty syringes scattered on the ground, picked up a vial with the Ryan logo on it: "You injected her with experimental drugs?"
"It was a wedding!" Chen Haisheng suddenly sneered, tearing open his collar to reveal a gill-like scar. "I personally sewed her into the wedding dress and sank her into the 'Goddess's' lair... but when she returned..."
The sound of rushing water came from deep within the cellar.
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