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Chapter 280 of 310

What Are...

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Liu Sang went back to his car, picked up the unfinished sesame cake, and started reading through the notes he had just written.

How was the murderer able to find the victim? It should have been difficult to find people who were able to hear high-frequency sounds in their everyday lives.

But the murderer was in the vicinity of the victim’s home and used high-frequency sound waves for a long time before he was able to find the opportunity to lure her out.

This showed that the murderer not only knew that the victim was capable of hearing high-frequency sounds, but also knew where she lived.

This kind of scheme must have taken a long time, so the fact that an acquaintance committed the crime couldn’t be ruled out.

But murders using the same method had happened in other places one right after another.

This meant that the killer was on the run.

Starting from Boshan Town seventeen hundred kilometers away, all the way to here, the victims appeared to be irregularly distributed. But they all appeared during intervals of heavy rain.

It was impossible for a murderer to go to a place and immediately become acquainted with the people there, let alone find people with high-frequency hearing.

First of all, the interval of time between these cases didn’t allow for it. Moreover, the number of people with high-frequency hearing was actually very small.

That basically meant that they weren’t acquaintances.

So, the murderer must’ve had his own very skilled way of finding people with high-frequency hearing.

Wang Guo gave him some information about the case. For the police, that preliminary information fell into the category of suggested coordinates when looking for a needle in a haystack, but for Liu Sang, it was actually very useful.

The first victim worked at KFC. After getting off work, she passed by Jiefang Road—the town’s main street—and then turned right when she reached the intersection of Nanjia Road. She then went all the way to the South Gate and crossed a bridge called Nanjia Bridge.

After crossing the bridge, she turned right and entered a small intersection, which was the small street where she lived. That small street was called Shaoxiang Road, and it was barely wide enough for a car to drive through. If another car was coming from the other way, you would need to find another route to take.

The whole journey was about 1.3 kilometers, and the victim biked to and from work.

The second victim worked at a local hotel called Great Macau World, which was a local place that focused on catering to one’s more sensual tastes. The victim also crossed Nanjia Bridge on her way home, but then she had to cross through the rice fields they had been at before in order to reach the village where she lived.

Of course, Nanjia Bridge was one of the two bridges in town that almost everyone crossed every day, so there was essentially no way to analyze it as a key feature of the case.

Liu Sang drove to the vicinity of Nanjia Bridge and found that this was a town where it was easy to park. There were food stalls set up below Nanjia Bridge’s arches. As long as the river didn’t overflow, this was the place where migrant workers would gather. Liu Sang parked next to the food stalls and walked under the bridge’s arches.

This kind of small-town bridge generally had three arches: the middle arch was for the river to pass through while the two small arches on both sides were for people to walk through. This was so that people walking on both sides of the riverbank could pass through to the other side of the arch without having to go to the top of the bridge and then make their way down the other side.

It wasn’t raining much, but it was still early so the food stalls hadn’t been set up yet.

He walked under the bridge’s arch and took off his headphones.

On the side was the rushing river, which sounded very majestic due to the heavy rain that had been falling recently. There was also the sound of the rain outside, accompanied by the sound of raindrops hitting the water’s surface.

This was a place where there was a lot of white noise.

He began to contemplate.

The murderer was probably carrying around a cell phone that played high-frequency sounds. If someone passed by him on the side of the road and heard the high-frequency sound, they would feel uncomfortable and try to avoid it. Noticing this, he would then immediately start following them.

This town was very special: the business district was generally on this side of Jiefang Road while most of the residential areas were on the other side of the river. In other words, everyone in town had to cross the two bridges in order to get to and from work.

The murderer killed during the intervals when the rainstorms stopped, but it should have been impossible for him to directly find a target during those intervals.

So, he must have already found a good target long ago. In fact, there should be more than one target. In other words, he must have found the first and second victims very early on and already knew where they lived.

There were three people with high-frequency hearing in this small town, which was already a lot.

When there was finally a break in between the rainstorms, the killer’s mental state would become murderous and he would appear to kill the targets.

As for what the murderer’s current mental state was, Liu Sang didn’t know. But if his conjecture was correct, then the murderer may have already found the third victim and was already preparing to kill them.

So, when did this murderous mental state start?

Did it start from the beginning of the rainstorm, or did it suddenly start when the rainstorm stopped?

There was also another strange point—if a rainstorm ran its course without interruption, then there would be no victims.

In other words, the murderer would kill only when there was a particularly strange rainstorm—that is, when it was interrupted in the middle and then continued.

But how did the murderer know whether the rainstorm had stopped completely or was just paused so that he could decide whether he wanted to kill or not?

Liu Sang had absolutely no clue, but if it were him, he would know for certain whether the rain had stopped completely or was just paused by listening to the sounds of the clouds in the sky.

This was because the sounds of the clouds for those two states were completely different.

So, the murderer’s ears should be the same as his.

Those who had particularly good ears and practiced honing their hearing skills all had a similar characteristic—there was something wrong with their heartbeat. Otherwise, the better their ears, the more they’d be able to hear their own thunderous heartbeat. As a result, these people’s heartbeats had to be very slight at ordinary times, and their clothes had to be specially made to isolate the sound of their heartbeat.

This was also the reason why Liu Sang couldn’t fight with others too much.

If the other person was also someone with particularly good ears, then they would never be caught. They were actually very easy to find, because as long as Liu Sang drove through the town, he would be able to hear that faint heartbeat. But as long as Liu Sang got close, the other person would definitely run away.

It was only during a rainstorm when the both of them would be the same as ordinary people.

Thinking of this, Liu Sang put on his raincoat and began wandering around the area.

Although he wasn’t entirely sure, this bridge had to be a key point because both victims had previously crossed it on a daily basis for a long time.

If he was the murderer, he would definitely choose to act when people got off work. That way, if he managed to find a target, he could immediately follow them to their home.

One of them had been on foot while the other had ridden a bike.

There was no way to catch up with a cyclist on foot.

So, the murderer either had a bicycle or an electric-powered vehicle. It had to be one of the two instead of a regular car because cars couldn’t follow someone onto Shaoxiang Road.

But what kind of two-wheeled vehicle could it be?

Liu Sang knew that the bicycle chain would be well-lubricated if the murderer was riding on a bicycle. Otherwise, they would be tortured by the sound of the chain when riding it.

So, if someone was on a bridge and driving a two-wheeled vehicle, what kind of behavior wouldn’t attract people’s attention?

As long as you stopped on the bridge, you were sure to be noticed since you’d be blocking the pedestrians.

After all, the area where people could walk was separated from the area where vehicles could drive. Someone could remain very inconspicuous if they stood on the bridge and leaned against railing because it would look like they were simply waiting for someone.

Bicycles were parked nearby.

Liu Sang passed through the bridge’s arch and arrived at an old street next to the bridge. There was an open factory there, where many electric-powered vehicles and bicycles were parked.

There were many people in that factory. It seemed that this was a family factory area, where many families were working.

Just as he was about to walk in, his cell phone suddenly rang—it was Wang Guo.

He didn’t answer, because at that moment, the rain began to stop.

<What Are They Doing 2022 Chapter 13><Table of Contents><What Are They Doing 2022 Chapter 15>

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