Chapter 204

The computer screen suddenly flickered, and a pop-up notification indicated that the file had been opened. However, what appeared on the screen was a blank document.

“Oh no, the other party set up a program. If the file isn’t opened with the correct password, the content will be immediately erased,” Li sighed helplessly. “No wonder he didn’t delete the file—it had a self-destruct mechanism.”

Fang Rui asked, “Can the file content be recovered?”

“I’ll try.”

After a while, Li spread his hands and said, “No, it’s completely corrupted.”

They didn’t dare to attempt forcibly opening another file again.

Director Liu’s social media had a lot of contacts, and they needed to go through them one by one. His chat history also needed to be sorted through. However, after a quick glance, they didn’t find any useful leads.

Although they couldn’t see the file’s content, judging by the file name, Director Liu was likely conducting some illegal experiments. This was probably the reason he sought a surrogate mother.

Fang Rui asked Mu Mian, “What is a ‘Neural Rose’? Is that a technical term? Is it some kind of drug or neural tissue?”

Mu Mian replied, “As far as I know, there’s no such technical term as ‘Neural Rose.’ I’ve never come across it before. It’s likely a term they created themselves.”

“What about the ‘Genius Brain Project’? Could it be that they’re trying to use drugs or surgery to make pregnant women give birth to genius babies?” Fang Rui speculated.

If Director Liu was the executor of the Genius Brain Project, then the child in Wang Yuqing’s womb was his experiment. But is it really possible to make someone give birth to a genius baby?

Could it be that Li Yan giving birth to a child with Down syndrome was man-made?

If that were true, their experiment would be downright inhumane.

Mu Mian analyzed, “The Neural Rose is most likely a drug that can make people smarter, but its effects are highly unstable, which is why they keep conducting experiments.”

Fang Rui said, “So the murderer who dumped the body and left a mark on the ground might be guiding us to investigate this matter.”

Li chimed in, “Then why didn’t he just report Director Liu to the police? Why go through all this trouble to guide us? Dumping a body is also a crime, right?”

At that moment, the dispatcher called Fang Rui: “Captain Fang, we just received a report. A child’s body has been found in the wasteland near Star Home…”

Fang Rui and his team immediately drove to the crime scene.

The wasteland was overgrown with weeds, including tall, sharp-bladed silvergrass.

Although it was a desolate area with few visitors, there was a fishpond nearby. The owner of the fishpond discovered the body while feeding the fish and reported it to the police.

A child’s body lay on its side in the grass. The child was about 1.3 meters tall and wore a blue knitted hat.

Mu Mian put on gloves and turned the body over, revealing the child’s tender face.

Mu Mian exclaimed in surprise, “The victim is Yuanyuan?”

After the truth about the death of Star Home’s director was uncovered, Yuanyuan had left Star Home and was sent to a disabled children’s rescue center, where he received treatment and care.

That facility was located in the new district, more than thirty kilometers away from here.

Mu Mian removed his hat. Like the first victim, Yuanyuan’s hair had also been shaved off, and his scalp bore a centipede-like suture line.

Mu Mian said, “The wound on Yuanyuan’s scalp shows no signs of life reaction, just like Victim Tang. His scalp was cut open postmortem. Yuanyuan’s time of death was within the last 12 hours.”

Wang collected several footprints from the ground. One footprint was size 42, and the other was size 41. Based on the size, both footprints likely belonged to men.

The size 41 footprint was quickly confirmed to belong to the person who reported the case.

The other footprint likely belonged to the killer.

“Look here,” Wang said, pulling aside the weeds to reveal a layer of soil where a symbol “დ” was written in blood.

“This crime mark has appeared again. It seems the killer has struck once more.”

Mu Mian placed Yuanyuan’s body into a body bag and took it back for an autopsy.

Fang Rui and Wang went to the facility where Yuanyuan had been adopted to gather more information.

The facility’s director was a middle-aged man with black-framed glasses and a receding hairline. He seemed somewhat impatient.

“Zhang Yuanyuan was a child under our care. He had autism. Half a month ago, he went missing. We’ve been looking for him but couldn’t find him. Officer, do you have any news about him?”

“He went missing, and you didn’t report it to the police?”

“We did report it, but after searching for several days, the police couldn’t find him. Although this child has autism, he’s quite stubborn and often runs off. This isn’t the first time he’s tried to escape. In the past, we’ve always found him, but this time, for some reason, we couldn’t locate him no matter where we looked.”

Wang said in disbelief, “So you just gave up and stopped looking altogether?”

“We searched for over half a month and couldn’t find him. What else could we do?”

Fang Rui asked, “Do you have surveillance cameras here?”

“Yes, there are cameras in the hallways and at the main entrance. We saw Yuanyuan sneak out when the security guard wasn’t paying attention, but we don’t know where he went after that.”

Fang Rui went to the security room to check the surveillance footage, but the facility only kept recordings for half a month. The footage from the day Yuanyuan went missing had already been overwritten.

Wang analyzed, “It’s very likely that the killer abducted Yuanyuan. But he has autism—how could he have been so easily lured away?”

“The person who abducted Yuanyuan was probably someone he knew.”

But as an autistic child, Yuanyuan likely didn’t interact much with anyone outside the children at Star Home.

Fang Rui suddenly thought of Lin Qianyan. He seemed to be friends with Yuanyuan, and Yuanyuan listened to him. But Lin Qianyan was just a child—how could he have orchestrated this?

Mu ​​‌‌​‌‌​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌‌​​​​​‌‌​‌​‌​‌‌​​‌‌​​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​​‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​​​‌​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​​​‌​‌‌​​​​‌​‌‌​​​‌​​​‌‌‌​​‌​‌‌​​‌​‌‍Mian quickly completed Yuanyuan’s autopsy. Like the first victim, the killer had sawed open Yuanyuan’s skull, severed the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, and removed half of the brain tissue.

Unlike the last time, this time the killer had taken the right hemisphere.

During the case analysis meeting, she reported the autopsy results: “The external injuries on Yuanyuan’s body show no signs of life reaction, meaning they were inflicted postmortem. There are no typical signs of mechanical asphyxiation or poisoning. It’s preliminarily suspected that Yuanyuan may have died from an illness. However, we’ll need to wait for the pathology report to confirm the exact cause of death.”

Fang Rui asked, “So it’s highly likely that Yuanyuan also died from an illness?”

“Yes.”

“Then what was the killer’s purpose in dumping the body this time?”

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