I had expected something like this to occur, because I’d secretly asked Dali to take pictures of the stitches on Dr. Kong’s patients. To his credit, Dali did manage to take a few, but one girl evidently thought he was a pervert, so she used the pepper spray on Dali.

“I’m really sorry, Dali,” I said. “I’ll make it up to you somehow. Let me see the pictures you took!”

He handed me his phone, and I asked a police officer to print out the pictures. I compared the pictures to the stitches on the victim’s body.

“Look at this part,” I pointed at a picture. “It obviously looked like they were sewn by the same person.”

Stitches were just like handwriting. Every doctor had their own habits and their own unique ‘signature.’ Still, this wouldn’t be enough evidence to convict anyone in court.

“You’re right,” nodded Xiaotao. “There’s no doubt that Kong Hui is the murderer. We should concentrate our time and resources on trying to get evidence against him and get him arrested as soon as possible. Great job once again, Song Yang!”

“Thank you!”

For the moment, Dali and I had nothing else to do so we went back to our dorm. I assumed that the case would be resolved soon, but Xiaotao texted me the next day saying that a few police officers in the task force asked to withdraw themselves from the investigation team, but they did not specify their reason for doing so.

Then, three days later, the case still hasn’t progressed yet. I was about to go to the police station myself, but one of my roommates handed me a letter and told me, “I got a letter for you, Song Yang.”

“A letter?” I took it from him. It felt a little unusual in my hand. The envelope seemed to contain something else in it. There was nothing else written on the envelope except my name and address. My first hunch was that someone might’ve sent me some infectious virus as a way to take revenge on me due to the cases I’d solved. It was not too far-fetched to think that I’d made some enemies by now.

But after feeling the content of the envelope for a while, I finally realized what it really was. I tore it open and, sure enough, there was a bullet inside.

This was a common way for people in the underworld to threaten people. Basically, it was a warning. They sent me a bullet in an envelope this time, but if I don’t stop snooping around, they would ‘send’ me another way, using a more, let’s say, direct method.

I immediately took out my kit and sprinkled some seaweed powder on the envelope. There were three sets of fingerprints on it. These would include my roommate’s fingerprints, the postman’s, and mine. Then I wet the stamp and carefully peeled it off. I sniffed at the back of the stamp. The person who sent me this letter was very cautious, because there was no sign of saliva on the back of the stamp.

There was the Nanjiang Post Office stamp on the letter, but I knew that there was nothing to be gleaned from this fact.

I called Xiaotao and told her about it. She was silent for a few seconds before she said, “Actually, I received one just like that myself yesterday.”

I was stunned.

“I’ve asked for the forensics team to test it,” she said. “The bullet is a 7.62mm sniper rifle bullet made in Russia. Ordinary people would never be able to acquire a gun like that.”

Hearing this, I glanced out of the window, thinking there might be a sniper lying on the top of the building right opposite the dorm now, just waiting for their order to shoot.

The only time I ever heard of such a threat was when the actor Edison Chen received such a letter containing a bullet when his photo scandal[1] erupted in the news. When I saw the news on TV, my thought was, why would anyone be so scared of a tiny bullet? But now that I’d received such a threat myself, I found that my hands were shaking.

It was clear now why those police officers refused to participate in the investigation.

“I never expected a plastic surgeon like Kong Hui to have connections with the underworld!” sighed Xiaotao. “This complicates matters. Song Yang, I think you should withdraw from this case.”

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me?” Xiaotao laughed slightly nervously. “Well, I’m a police officer. It’s my duty to bring criminals to justice, even if my life is on the line. Besides, I don’t think they’d do anything to me. With my rank, if anything happened to me, the whole police force would be enraged, and when that happens, even they’d know that they’d bitten off more than they can chew.”

“In that case,” I said, “I’ll stay on the case and work with you until the end!”

“No, Song Yang!” Xiaotao’s tone suddenly changed. “From now on, you’re no longer a part of the task force!”

She then hung up the phone. I immediately grabbed my coat and ran outside. I had a feeling that someone was staring at me from behind, but when I turned around, no one was there.

This eerie feeling lingered all the way from my dorm to the police station. I had no idea if it was just my imagination or if there really was someone watching me.

When I reached the station, a police officer told me that Xiaotao had already left to investigate the case. I called her, but it didn’t get through. I thought that she must’ve been at Kong Hui’s plastic surgery clinic, so I rushed there straight away. I was about to enter the clinic when I felt someone tapping my shoulder from behind, and I heard a voice ask me, “Where are you going?”

I was shocked. I never thought that these people would dare to act in broad daylight. But then I realized that it would make no sense for them to even come near me. I’d seen how black organizations worked in the movies. All they had to do was follow me discreetly and shoot me from afar. That way, I wouldn’t even know what hit me, and there would be no witnesses too.

And so, I turned around and saw that it was just Hamster.

“Thank god, it’s you!” I cried, immensely relieved. “What are you doing here?”

“Never mind that,” replied Hamster. “You shouldn’t be here, Song-ge!”

“Aren’t you still with the Black Panthers gang?” I asked.

“That’s history now, Song-ge!” he said. “I slept with one of the boss’s women. I thought it would be safer to run now before anyone finds out.”

My cheek twitched. What a life you lead, Hamster! I thought.

“Anyway,” Hamster continued, “Officer Wang knew that you’d come, so he asked me to wait for you here. He asked me to tell you not to investigate this case for the time being. He’s working secretly with Officer Huang to check Kong Hui’s background. But seriously, Song-ge, you received the bullet letter, didn’t you? Surely you’d know it’s best to lay low for a while!”

“Did Yuanchao receive it too?” I asked.

“They all did!” Hamster nodded. “This Kong Hui guy is no small fry, Song-ge! My guess is that he’s helped the underworld people a lot.”

“Do you know him?”

“I don’t know him, but I know the underworld. Think about it, Song-ge. Many of these gangsters are fugitives. What could be more convenient for fugitives than to change their face entirely? And look at this clinic! Do you think a guy in his mid-twenties would be able to set up such a big clinic on his own without any help?”

Hamster made a lot of sense, so I decided to follow his advice and went home. Xiaotao and Yuanchao were busy investigating for the next few days, yet there was absolutely nothing that I could do to help them. I was particularly worried about Xiaotao, who didn’t answer my texts and calls at all.

One day, I received a spam text on my phone. It was an ad for an online game. I was about to delete it, but at the last minute I realized that the sender was Xiaotao. I followed the link and logged into the game. It was a decent game, though the graphic was quite poor and the animation was often glitchy, so there weren’t any other players at all.

I picked up a task in the Beginner’s Level and walked around the virtual village. Then I saw another player whose avatar’s name was Peachy[2] and was delighted.

“What a unique way to meet!” I typed.

“What is my room number?” Peachy asked.

“503!” I answered. “What’s my roommate’s name?”

“Dali the Imbecile!” she replied.

Now that we’d confirmed each other’s identity, I quickly put on the clothes I had in the game’s package. Although we were in the virtual world, it still felt embarrassing to be naked in front of Xiaotao’s avatar.

“I’ve recently been closely followed by some people in the shadows,” typed Xiaotao. “I think my house has been bugged too. This is the safest way for us to meet.”

“Who is Kong Hui connected to?” I asked. “Is it the Black Panthers gang or the Blood Wolf gang?”

“Neither,” replied Xiaotao. “I suspect that he’s connected to a much stronger and darker force!”

1. His private photographs with various women were distributed over the Internet.

2. Xiaotao’s name means ‘peach’ in Chinese.