S.C.I. (Volume I) - Case 5: Chapter 4

The Doppelganger Killer 04 - Another World

Zhan Zhao rarely saw Bai Yutang look so solemn. He watched as Bai Yutang raised his head to gaze at the high walls surrounding them, shaking his head a moment later and saying in a cold voice, "It's impossible to go from above!"

"If going from above is impossible..." Zhan Zhao looked down at the ground, and both of them spoke in unison—"Below!"

Bai Yutang lowered his head to inspect the ground and saw that it was a rare slab-paved surface. The square, uniform concrete stone slabs bore quite a few flaking pits and cracks. As he looked, he paced along them, and before long, he stopped at the edge of a slab, squatted down, and extended his fingers to trace slowly along the gap at the slab's edge.

Zhan Zhao walked over as well. "How is it?" he asked, squatting down.

"There's a draft," Bai Yutang said as he slipped his finger into a hole in the middle of the crack. Hooking his index finger, he gave it a fierce, sudden heave, and the concrete slab lifted cleanly, carrying a gust of wind with it. The two of them stared fixedly and saw a pitch-black passage underneath. Countless crisscrossing pipes ran through it, and the tunnel was nearly two meters deep—it was an old-style S City underground drainage system.

"Looks like that's how he managed to slip away last time too," Zhan Zhao said, looking down into the underground passage.

Bai Yutang nodded. "I'll go down and take a look, you..."

Before Bai Yutang could finish, Zhan Zhao glared at him. "I'm going too!"

There was no time to argue. Bai Yutang nodded, took the lead by jumping down first, and reached out to catch Zhan Zhao as he leaped after him.

Entering the tunnel, the two discovered that one end was blocked off, so they headed in the opposite direction. Just a few steps inside, the surroundings plunged into complete darkness. Bai Yutang pulled out his cell phone and turned on the flashlight, and the two of them advanced guided by the faint beam of light.

The tunnel was exceptionally quiet, to the point that even their faint breathing sounds became extraordinarily clear due to the acoustic resonance of the enclosed structure. From time to time, one or two scuttling gray rats would bolt away like flying shadows, startled by the illumination. The air was saturated with the smell of mildew and decay, and Zhan Zhao noticed Bai Yutang frowning, knowing that for someone with his mild germophobia, this kind of environment was sheer torture.

After walking for about five minutes, the space ahead suddenly opened up into a relatively large area, where two diverging branch forks appeared.

Bai Yutang turned to look at Zhan Zhao. "Cat, which way?"

Zhan Zhao sized up the passages on both sides using the dim light, then suddenly let out a soft "Huh?".

"What is it?" Bai Yutang asked.

"It looks like people frequently walk through here, and there are quite a few of them!" Zhan Zhao looked at one of the pathways in confusion and pointed at the ground. "Look, there are plenty of footprints."

Bai Yutang nodded and walked deeper into the passage. After another ten minutes or so of walking, a beam of light suddenly appeared ahead—could they have reached the exit already?!

The two exchanged glances and quickened their pace toward the light. Soon, the scene at the end of the tunnel grew clear as the illumination intensified.

Reaching the exit, they found there was yet another corner. Just as they were about to round the turn, a pile of objects in the nook caught their attention. On the ground in the corner lay some plastic sheeting and discarded clothing, topped with a pile of filthy toys, mostly battered dolls and plastic robots...

Bai Yutang walked up and crouched down to examine the pile of toys.

"Bai, this thing was manufactured a long time ago!" Zhan Zhao pointed at a white, grimy plush cat. "Do you remember we had these when we were kids?"

Bai Yutang nodded, reached into his pocket to pull out a tissue, covered a weathered plastic toy gun, and picked it up. "Cat, doesn't this look familiar?"

"It does!" Zhan Zhao nodded. "It looks a lot like those toy guns from the crime scenes!"

Just as they were talking, a chaotic flurry of footsteps and laughter drifted in from around the corner. Turning to look, several dark figures emerged at the exit—they were a group of grimy children. Those kids had been romping and playing noisily, but the moment they caught sight of Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, they all froze in their tracks, sizing up the two men with a mix of fear and curiosity.

Zhan Zhao walked toward the children, but seeing him approach, they turned around and scattered in a panic. Zhan Zhao hurriedly stopped and called out, "Wait a second..."

Unfortunately, not a single one of them paid any attention to him and kept running outside. At that moment, Bai Yutang said in a cold voice, "Stop right there!"

The two kids running at the very back instinctively halted, turning back with timid expressions to look at Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao.

"Don't be afraid, I just want to ask you a couple of questions." As he spoke, he walked closer. Noticing that the two children still seemed terrified, he pulled two ten-yuan bills from his pocket. The kids' eyes lit up, and they reached out to grab them, but Bai Yutang gently raised his hand just out of their reach. "Answer my questions nicely."

"Okay!" The two fellows nodded vigorously, looking thoroughly cooperative.

"Is this a place you guys often come to play?" Bai Yutang pointed at the toys in the corner. "Where did those toys come from?"

"From the garbage dump!" one of them answered.

"Which garbage dump?"

"Pretty far, down at the intersection," another child pointed into the distance.

Bai Yutang nodded. "Have you ever seen a man dressed in black with a big beard?"

"A big beard?" Both kids nodded excitedly. "Saw him! He's a weirdo!"

"How so?" Zhan Zhao stepped up to ask as well.

"He's such a grown-up, yet he still wants to play with us!" one child asked the other. "Right? He even wanted us to call him older brother, when looking at his big beard, we should be calling him grandpa!"

"Do you know where we can find him?" Bai Yutang continued to ask.

The two kids scratched their heads in thought and shook their heads. "We don't know. Usually, we just notice him hanging around watching us while we play..."

Bai Yutang nodded and asked them again, "Want to make some more money?"

"Yes!" The kids nodded in unison.

"Cat, do you have a pen?" Bai Yutang turned back to ask Zhan Zhao. Zhan Zhao nodded, pulled a pen from his pocket, and handed it over.

Handing the money to the two children, Bai Yutang wrote his mobile number on the palm of one of them. "If you see that man again next time, call me when he isn't paying attention, and I'll give you double the money."

"Got it!" Pocketing the cash, the two children scampered off happily.

Bai Yutang handed the pen back to Zhan Zhao.

"How did you know I had a pen?" Zhan Zhao asked as he took it back.

"Bookworms always carry one on them," Bai Yutang replied with a smile.

Zhan Zhao glared at him. "Why didn't those kids run away when you acted so fierce, but when I spoke to them politely, they turned and fled?" Zhan Zhao felt somewhat depressed. "That doesn't really fit with psychology!"

"Ha～～" Bai Yutang was amused by him, carefully wrapped the toy gun in a tissue, and stuffed it into his pocket. "Kids like this probably haven't heard a single gentle word their entire lives; they've only ever been ordered around and shouted at. So when you act fierce with them, they basically don't offer any resistance."

"And if they did resist, would they get beaten?" Zhan Zhao walked outward alongside Bai Yutang, noticing that the surroundings were filled with dilapidated houses and randomly piled trash.

Bai Yutang remained silent, simply nodding as he scanned his surroundings, as if trying to get his bearings.

The two walked down a narrow alley for a while, and the crowd gradually grew denser while the houses became a bit less dilapidated. There were quite a few youths along the road with dyed hair and eccentric clothing, moving in groups, either smoking or flirting and chatting. As Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang walked past, everyone looked them over with curious gazes, clearly realizing that these two did not belong in this place.

Gradually, Zhan Zhao noticed several young men tailing them. He tugged at Bai Yutang's sleeve. "Bai?"

Bai Yutang shook his head. "Ignore them. There'll probably be more in a moment."

Sure enough, after the two walked a bit further ahead, five or six people were already trailing closely behind them, and the distance was shrinking.

"Hey～～" Zhan Zhao suddenly gasped in surprise as someone had just patted his backside～～

Turning around, he saw the trailing group grinning at him. One of them, walking right at the front, opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, a flash of white appeared before his eyes... Without warning, Bai Yutang strode over, grabbed the youth by the collar, and violently hurled him against the wall. Pinning the guy's right hand down against the brickwork, Bai Yutang snatched an empty glass bottle off the ground and smashed it down right beside the youth's hand.

Not just Zhan Zhao, but all the other youths were stunned, frightened into stepping back in a scramble.

The sharp crunch of shattering glass echoed out. The pinned youth had squeezed his eyes shut in terror, but no searing pain hit his hand. Opening his eyes, he saw Bai Yutang glaring down at him with a cold smirk, while the broken bottle had been pulverized less than a centimeter away from his fingers.

"Ah～～" Terrified out of his wits, the man turned and bolted, and his companions scattered in every direction as well.

Tossing away the jagged neck of the bottle, Bai Yutang turned around, grabbed Zhan Zhao's hand, and walked away. After turning through a few alleyways, they emerged onto a proper street and saw that not far ahead was the very bank they had visited earlier, with Bai Yutang's car parked right where they left it.

"What was that just now?" Zhan Zhao asked, baffled. He felt like he had just taken a trip to another world where Bai Yutang handled everything with ease while he had been left completely helpless—it was a blow to his pride.

Bai Yutang chuckled, reaching out to give Zhan Zhao's nose a light flick. "A house cat wandered into a den of wild rats and got its tail stepped on, so I played the hero saving the beauty." With that, he dodged a retaliatory swipe!

While ducking blows, Bai Yutang pulled out his phone and called Jiang Ping, instructing him to pull the architectural blueprints of all underground tunnels in S City and investigate the situation in this district.

Hanging up the phone, he successfully subdued a certain puffed-up cat, shoved him into the car, and headed back to the police station.

Eugene drove his car to the front of a luxury villa on the outskirts of S City. The moment he stepped out, a servant stepped forward and informed him, "Mr. Zhao is currently painting in the greenhouse."

"Painting?" Eugene shrugged. "People in the underworld are this refined these days? What kind of person did Eldest Boss hook me up with?" He muttered to himself as he followed a gravel path deep into the courtyard toward a glass structure surrounded by lush greenery.

The greenhouse door wasn't locked. Eugene walked straight in with an unconcerned swagger and looked up—freezing instantly.

Sunlight refracted through the glass roof of the greenhouse, casting a strange, volumetric beam of light that dusted the lilies scattered all across the greenhouse with a faint layer of honey-gold.

In the center of an open patch, a person dressed entirely in black sat upon a pristine white chair, painting. Eugene could catch a profile view of his face and couldn't help letting out a low whistle. What an absolute beauty! If the boss hadn't told him this was the man he was supposed to take orders from next, he would have definitely assumed the boss had found him a lover—even though he was a man, and not particularly young either, that nasolabial fold stretching down to the corner of his mouth was damn near too sexy.

The man paid no attention to Eugene's whistle, continuing to focus intently on his artwork. It was only then that Eugene saw what he was painting, which shocked him even more. Not only the canvas the man was working on, but several other canvases lined up on the ground as well, all depicted the exact same person—none other than Zhan Zhao, whom he had laid eyes on just earlier. Whether it was the facial features or the expression, they were an exact match, uncanny in their likeness!

After watching quietly for five minutes, Eugene, who was being treated like ambient air, finally lost his patience and spoke up, "Did you make me go take a look at whether he was cute beforehand just to prove how well you paint?"

The man still ignored him, staring fixedly at the canvas before him as if the living breathing human standing beside him couldn't compare to a single strand of hair on the portrait. Eugene felt a surge of frustration; if there was one thing he hated most, it was being ignored—and even more so, being ignored by a beauty.

Waiting a little longer without getting an answer, Eugene simply dragged a chair over from the side and sat down. "The boss told me to listen to you about everything. You're Zhao Jue, right?"

Finally finishing his last stroke, the man appraised his work with satisfaction, put down his paintbrush, turned his face to look Eugene up and down, and flashed a faint smile.

Eugene stared wide-eyed at the smile on that face, taking a long while to remember to wipe away his drool. Good grief, what kind of relationship did this guy have with the Eldest Boss?

Standing right in front of Eugene was none other than Zhao Jue. He slowly stood up and said in a low voice, "You are indeed a suitable candidate."

"Since the boss says you can help him take over all the turf around here, how are we going to do it?" Eugene stood up as well, walking over to Zhao Jue's side—Whoa! That neck is gorgeous! What is that faint red mark on it?

"Should we start with him first?" Eugene gestured toward the portrait of Zhan Zhao on the canvas. The moment the words left his mouth, Zhao Jue suddenly whipped his head around to glare at him, his face completely devoid of expression.

"...Wh-what?" Eugene thought to himself: You're paying this much attention to him, aren't you supposed to deal with him?

Zhao Jue stared into Eugene's eyes for a moment before speaking slowly in a deep voice, "Remember this face, and stay away from him! Otherwise, I'll make you disappear from this world entirely." With that, an even brighter, more radiant smile bloomed on his face as he turned and walked away.

It took Eugene a long time to snap back to reality. Swallowing hard, he took a deep breath. What was that feeling just now? That voice sounded as though it had slipped directly into his mind... If he had said "suicide" just then, maybe he really would have gone and killed himself... Remaining silent for a long while, he squatted down, clutched his head, tugged at his hair, and muttered to himself, "Damn it, he's a monster. That was way too scary～～"