I asked Xiaozhou about the results of the lab testing, and he told me that the capsule found in the victim’s stomach contained Cedilanid, which was a common drug used to treat heart disease.

“A heart medicine, huh?” I mumbled. “Any other discovery?”

Xiaozhou replied that the drug sample I took from the victim’s skin was an unknown chemical, while the substance that was injected into the victim’s body four hours ago was an unknown biological enzyme. The effects of these two substances could offset each other, which was to say that the victim had both the poison and the antidote injected into his body!

“I get it now!” I exclaimed. “The murderer controlled Chen Da by injecting poison into his body then forced him to act a certain way by promising to give him the antidote!”

Xiaozhou nodded in agreement, then added, “The dose of antidote found in the victim’s body is too small, though. It wouldn’t be enough to completely neutralize the poison.”

“That’s probably the cause of death,” I said. “Once the victim completed his task, the murderer rushed to inject the antidote into his body, but it was impossible because the bodyguards had subdued him.”

“You mean to say that the murderer was there at the party?” Xiaotao was shocked.

“That is a possibility,” I replied. “But perhaps Chen Da was just a pawn. Perhaps the murderer didn’t care at all if Chen Da died or lived. Still, it’s not a bad idea to investigate the background of the guests’ at the party.”

Xiaotao immediately made some phone calls to direct some officers to check the hotel’s parking records.

It was getting late, so Xiaotao told Dali and me to go back to our dorms. Before I left, I told Xiaozhao, “You should tell the coroner to dissect the body and extract the poison from the victim’s liver. Just inject the poison into a couple of mice and observe the effects over time.”

The next day, Dali and I went to the police station early in the morning. When I saw Xiaotao, I noticed that her complexion was slightly sallow.

“Did you stay up late again last night?” I asked.

“No,” she sighed. “I had a quarrel with my father.”

I asked her if it was about the arranged marriage, but she replied that it was more than that. Because of the incident at the party, the rich lady’s pharmaceutical company’s stock fell to the lowest point since its conception. Since Xiaotao’s father had tens of millions of shares in the company, he suffered a terrible loss. He asked Xiaotao to reveal some details about the investigation of the case, which angered her because instead of valuing the gravity of the murders committed, all her father ever thought about was money and the stock price fluctuations.

“Nothing matters to him except money, money and money!” Xiaotao grumbled resentfully. “Why was I born to such a horrible father?”

“But how did the stock price fall so quickly?” asked Dali.

“It’s because once those rich folks at the party saw the murder attempt on the rich lady, they immediately rushed home to sell their shares in her company, causing dramatic fluctuations in the stock price!”

“Did you discover anything from yesterday’s investigation?” I asked.

Xiaotao then reported their findings to me one by one. They didn’t find anyone who looked like the suspect in the hotel’s surveillance videos. From the bank, they found that the person who withdrew the money from Chen Da’s account was Chen Da himself. There had been no large deposits amounting to 20 million yen in any accounts lately, so the money should still be in someone’s hands in the form of cash. Lastly, the rich lady received a call from an unknown number at around 3 pm yesterday, and the call lasted about one minute.

Apart from that, there was a setback to the investigation. Amid the chaos that happened yesterday, a key piece of evidence was lost— it was the knife that Chen Da used to stab the rich lady.

“The knife is gone?” I groaned. “What about the little experiment with the mice? How’s that going?”

“You can go see for yourself now!” Xiaotao replied.

The three of us went to Xiaozhou’s laboratory. He had injected the poison obtained from the victim into two mice last night. They were now lying motionless in the cage as if they were dead.

My skills were useless in this instance, so I asked Xiaozhou to dissect one of the mice to check its internal organs.

“That’s just cruel!” Dali exclaimed with a frown.

“It’s the only way we can solve the case,” I replied. “Besides, these mice were bred to be used in medical experiments anyway.”

“Um, actually…” Xiaozhou meekly interjected. “I’m not very good at dissecting animals myself. You should go ahead and do it, Song Yang.”

I sighed. This was not my expertise at all, but out of everyone here, it seemed that I was the one best suited for the job. I put the mouse in a sterile box and pinned its two front limbs on its side. Then, I went ahead and cut its belly open with a scalpel. The mouse did not resist at all. Once the abdominal cavity was open, I found that the internal organs were all in a stagnant state. It looked no different from a dead mouse, except for the fact that its heart beat very slowly. How slowly? Once every ten seconds!

“It’s basically in a fake death condition!” shouted Dali with fascination.

I stabbed the mouse in the heart, killing it immediately. Then I recited the reincarnation mantra and prayed that it would be reborn as a human being in its next life. Then I took the other mouse and injected it with the antidote extracted from the victim. Within minutes, the mouse ‘woke up’ and seemed to return to its normal behavior.

“That’s incredible!” exclaimed Xiaotao. “I would never believe that drugs could do this if I didn’t see it with my own eyes!”

“This is interesting,” I thought out loud. “The poison and the antidote are both clearly specially formulated. Wouldn’t that just cost too much? Why not just use ordinary poison instead? Who would go to such trouble?”

“Would it really cost that much, dude?” asked Dali. “Can’t someone just buy some chemicals and mix them together?”

“You may not realize it because you’re a lay person,” Xiaozhou explained, “but any chemist knows that it takes a lot of manpower and resources to develop a drug. Take the painkillers, for instance. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars when it was first developed. You can’t just cook up some drugs in your kitchen without having a strong financial backing.”

“Xiaozhou is right,” I nodded. “Ordinary people do not have the ability and the financial resources to develop these drugs. Yet, the rich lady owns a pharmaceutical company. Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence?”

“Perhaps her company developed these drugs!” Xiaotao realized.

“Yes,” I agreed, then speculated further. “Perhaps the murderer used to work for the rich lady, probably as a researcher. Then, a dispute might have arisen between them, so the murderer used the drug to attack the rich lady.”

“By the way,” I added, “I figured out how the murderer threatened the rich lady using that missing knife!”

Firstly, Chen Da was injected with this fake death drug, followed by a small amount of antidote to keep him alive just enough to carry out a task for the murderer, which was to stab the rich lady. The murderer did not intend to kill the rich lady at all, only to poison her with the fake death drug by coating the drug on the knife. Once Chen Da had completed the task, his life didn’t matter to the murderer anymore.

Once the rich lady was rescued, she would find that her heart was beating very slowly and that her blood flow was almost stagnant. She would then realize what was going on, and when she received the call from the murderer, she would have no choice but to submit to the murderer’s demands. This was when she was ordered to kill her secretary and get into his car.

“But if her company developed the drug, wouldn’t she have access to the antidote too?” asked Xiaotao.

“That is the point that still puzzles me,” I replied. “I think this is the key question that we need to answer if we want to solve the case. There’s one more thing that I’m curious about—what medical value can this fake death drug possibly have?”

We all thought about it for a long time, yet none of us could come up with a possible answer.

“Enough with this ruminating!” Xiaotao suddenly exclaimed. “Let’s go to the rich lady’s company and see what we can find out there!”

“Okay!” I nodded.

Xiaotao, Dali, and I then headed to Ronghua Pharmaceuticals soon afterwards. Because their president was missing, the whole company seemed to be in disarray. We were kept waiting for a long time before we were ushered into an office to meet an executive manager whose surname was Wang. He was the company’s research and development director.

“What kind of drugs is your company developing?” I asked matter-of-factly. “May I see a list of these drugs?”

“I’m afraid that’s a company secret that I can’t disclose,” the man replied nervously.

“The president of your company has been kidnapped and every second could mean the difference between her life and death!” I stated. “We’re the police and we have the right to see this information. If you want to save your president’s life, then please cooperate with us!”

“R-Right!” the man bit his lip. “I’ll call the board of directors right away!”

He excused himself and made the call outside the office. When he was gone, Xiaotao chuckled and commented, “You’re acting exactly like a police officer now, Song Yang!”

“I learned from the best!” I replied, blushing.