Volume 26: Pursuit Of The Murderer Within A Dream

On June 29th, Tao Yueyue went to her classmate’s house for a sleepover. Chen Shi seized the opportunity, and as soon as he entered the door with Lin Dongxue, they became fiercely passionate.

The two were kissing on the sofa when Chen Shi suddenly discovered pink woman's panties on the sofa. He cursed mentally and quickly stuffed the panties into his pocket.

When he looked up, he saw kk standing behind the curtains with a lascivious smile, waving at him.

He turned to look at the bedroom, and there was a bespectacled perverted face behind the half-closed door.

Chen Shi suddenly developed an urge to kill and quickly picked Lin Dongxue up. He tapped the bridge of her nose and asked, "Ah, yes, would you like to take a bath first?"

"So, you love cleanliness that much?" Lin Dongxue said shyly.

"No, I forgot to buy the 'necessary supplies' and need to go out for them. I’ll buy dinner while I’m out as well. What do you want to eat?”

"Then I’ll have pizza!"

"Why don’t you have some standards? I'll buy you lychee grilled fish. After you take a shower, you can play with your phone for a while. There are drinks and fruits in the refrigerator."

Lin Dongxue hugged him and said, "Come back soon."

After he had tricked Lin Dongxue into going to the bathroom, Chen Shi immediately went to confront kk and Sun Zhen. He took out the panties, shook them in his hand, and lowered his voice, "Are there any more?"

"Just this one." kk said with a smile.

Chen Shi kicked out the two perverted guys and scolded, "Are you guys trying to get me into trouble? Who let you in?"

"Cool down, cool down. We’re conducting a research project to observe your emergency response... Overall, Brother Chen's resilience is pretty good. Right, Little Worm?" kk laughed.

Chen Shi was so angry that he felt like smoking.

Sun Zhen said, "Did you forget, Brother Chen? We have a team-building activity tonight, so we came and waited for you in the house first."

Chen Shi became frantic. "I said ‘the end of the month’. June 30th. Are you two brainless?"

"I understand today to be the end of the month." Sun Zhen said confidently.

kk said, "Hurry up. Sister Gu has already arrived and she said that there was an important discovery."

Chen Shi sighed, took out his mobile phone and called for takeaway, indicating that it should be delivered an hour later. He said, "I have to come back within an hour."

kk snickered, "Or we wait five minutes here for you. Can Brother Chen last for five minutes?"

"Wanna die?!"

When kk saw that Chen Shi was really angry, he retracted his teasing smile.

The three went to Chen Shi's temporarily rented room. Gu You was reading a document while drinking coffee. After entering the door, kk shouted, "Sister Gu, hurry up. Brother Chen still needs to go back and perform his marital duties with sister-in-law!”

Gu You smiled, "Sorry, I didn't know that you were busy today."

"Can you have some respect for other people’s privacy?" Chen Shi said, "By the way, my door is equipped with a security alarm. How did you get in?"

Sun Zhen said, "This is also part of the project. I spent some time overwriting the program of the alarm... Rest assured, I’ve restored it back for you."

Chen Shi thought that in a sense, he needed to thank both of them. If they could get in, so could Zhou Xiao. It seems that the defense at home needed to be upgraded. However, he was too lazy to thank these two pranksters.

Gu You tossed over the document in her hand, "Let's just make this long story short. Do you still remember Wang Sunxu?"

"I do. Zhou Xiao's fanatical fan. What is this? A novel in dialogue form?” Chen Shi saw a large section of dialogue on the papers and the parties were named M and Z, respectively.

"It’s the record of a psychological consultation. One of my university classmates is a psychological counselor in prison. His evaluation of Wang Sunxu was that he had a strong sense of self-protection, a strong tendency for violence and a penchant for extreme thinking. He had injured several fellow prisoners and even blinded another person's eyes with a sharpened toothbrush."

kk commented, "This type of death row prisoner isn’t afraid of anything.”

"Have you been in prison?" Sun Zhen asked.

kk smiled proudly, "How could I have? I’m a piece of flawless white jade[1]. A thieving genius and I have never been caught... Since I work alone, there’s no risk of any associates snitching on me."

"Don't! Go! On! A! Tangent!" Chen Shi yelled.

Gu You continued, "Wang Sunxu didn't want to disclose his childhood experiences, but he told his psychologist about his three dreams. I think Wang Sunxu knew Zhou Xiao at some stage of his life. If we can figure out these three dreams, we may find out the true identity of Zhou Xiao."

"Cool!" kk clapped, "Master Detective Freud. Have you watched that TV series?"

"Let's take a look." Chen Shi started reading the document.

Wang Sunxu's first dream: “I dreamed that I was walking in a dark world. I was walking and walking. A stone appeared on the ground and I kicked it away. I kicked more and more stones. Then the stones became little people. Their heads poked out and they kept crying and screaming. I was so annoyed that I kicked their heads away one by one as I laughed out loud. At this time, a fluffy monster rushed from behind, looking like a werewolf with blood on both its mouth and claws. I was terrified and ran away.”

“I ran and ran and the little people on the ground popped up like bamboo shoots. I don’t know why, but I suddenly had an idea. I picked off their heads and ate them, and every time I ate a little human head, I grew a bit larger. Then I also became a werewolf.”

“I thought that I could beat the werewolf chasing me in this manner, so I turned around and wrestled with it. Who knew that it would cut open my belly with its claws in one swipe? The little heads that I ate sang a song as they rolled out from my belly. Then I woke up.”

There was a note from the psychologist at the end saying that the patient had been suffering from severe enuresis. Whenever he dreams of bleeding, falling into water and similar imagery, he will suffer from enuresis.

Wang Sunxu's second dream: “I dreamed that I was walking in the desert. I was awfully thirsty. While I was thinking about that, a tropical forest emerged in front of me. Monkeys were leaping and jumping around on the trees chattering, as if they were showing off while eating wild fruits. The fruits were red and big, and the juice spurted out when they bit into them. My throat was so dry that it was almost going up in smoke. I was unable to pick the fruit, so I was really angry and threw rocks at them.”

“Walking on, I came to a church. Yes, the church in the tropical rain forest was very large and magnificent, and the exterior walls were covered in moss. I pushed open the mossy door and walked in. I was already too tired and wanted to sleep inside. I suddenly saw a portrait of the Virgin Mary; she was wearing red clothes.”

“I knelt down and prayed and saw that the Virgin Mary had suddenly started burning. The fire spread everywhere and even spread to my body. I was so scared that I began screaming as I ran out of the church. The fire kept spreading behind and the chattering monkeys on the trees were burned to death. The fire got bigger and bigger and finally swallowed me up. Then I woke up.”

The psychologist's note: Upon questioning, the patient said that he was influenced by his parents in childhood and was formerly a Catholic.

The postscript mentioned that whenever the patient dreamt about fire, the patient would also suffer from enuresis.

1. White jade is associated with perfection and rarity. So he means he hasn’t been “tainted” by getting caught.