Chapter 67

The Donghua Ice Factory had been out of business for a long time, but its underground ice storage was very clean, as if someone was frequently cleaning it.

"Stay up there and guard the entrance to prevent anyone from locking us both inside. I've already informed the colleagues nearby; they should be here soon."

Li Xue looked around the ice storage with her phone and soon made a discovery.

"What's that?"

The light from her phone shone on a corner, where Li Xue saw an incense burner and a color photo of Meng Shi next to it.

"A photo of the deceased? Why is there a photo of the deceased here? Is someone mourning her here?"

The underground ice storage was not very large, and there were no obstacles blocking the view, so Li Xue gradually became bolder.

She walked to the corner without touching the photo on the ground but used her law enforcement recorder to document everything.

"Did you find anything?"

"I found a photo of Meng Shi. Someone specifically came here to mourn her. Judging by the ash in the incense burner, this person has been here many times."

"Is that all?"

Han Fei, who placed great importance on the clues provided by Meng Shi, seemed a bit disappointed by Li Xue's findings: "Why don't you come up? I'll go down and take a look."

After pulling Li Xue up, Han Fei jumped into the ice storage. Almost as soon as he entered, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.

It was enclosed, cold, and an endless darkness enveloped him. His limbs felt numb. Han Fei remembered his experience at Meng Shi's house, where the 1031 room gave him the same feeling when the old lady lost control.

"Originally, that coldness was the feeling of the old lady's death!"

He turned on the flashlight on his phone and went to the corner, looking at the incense burner and the photo of Meng Shi.

In the photo, Meng Shi looked young, her hair not yet gray. The person who came to mourn her seemed to have only this one photo.

"The Donghua Ice Factory should be the first crime scene. The person who comes here to mourn her must know the inside story and be closely related to Meng Shi, possibly one of her three children."

"The eldest set up an altar at home, so there's no need for him to come here specifically. Apart from him, only Meng Changxi and Meng Chang'an are left."

A cold wind blew past Han Fei's face. Although the ice storage was designed underground, the ventilation was excellent, which puzzled Han Fei: "Does an ice storage need to maintain air circulation?"

Following the direction of the wind, he came to a corner where a drain seemed to be slightly separated from the floor.

Grasping the gap, Han Fei pulled hard and found that the drain was just a decoration, and there was a passage underneath.

"Can it go down further?"

Looking at the dark underground passage, Han Fei hesitated.

The air became damp, and a faint odor emerged from the passage.

"The ice storage drain has been hollowed out and connects to the city's underground drainage system. Should we go down and take a look?"

"Let's wait for backup. In the past, Xinhu used an underground pipeline drainage system, but with the city's expansion, it has been replaced by an underground corridor system. It's complex and easy to get lost without a map." Li Xue, a former police officer, was experienced. She never hesitated when it was time to act but was also cautious when necessary.

They waited for about ten minutes, and two of Li Xue's former colleagues arrived. They were different from ordinary police officers; they were members of the criminal investigation team.

One of the detectives applied for temporary access to the city's drainage system and retrieved a map. Only then did they follow the passage into the underground.

The air had a faint, strange smell, and the underground artificial river made a gurgling sound. They walked on a walkway for maintenance personnel, with water, gas, and communication pipes laid above their heads from over a decade ago.

"If the Donghua Ice Factory is the first crime scene, did the murderer move the body through the sewer after the murder?"

Li Xue was thinking about the case, Han Fei was recalling every word Meng Shi had said, and the other police officers were studying the map.

"Sister Li, the area we are in is not on the map." A police officer zoomed in on the electronic map: "There is a man-made passage below the ice storage."

The map of the city's drainage system did not match the actual site. Li Xue and her team entered an area not shown on the map, where a hidden "room" had been dug out.

As they entered the cave, Li Xue and Han Fei were both stunned by the scene before them.

In this dark cave, various blueprints and thick stacks of documents about the body-in-ice case and the human puzzle case were placed.

Some of the documents were yellowed, indicating a long time span, and they had been collected over several years.

"Don't touch anything! Everyone put on gloves!"

What surprised the police even more was what was inside the cave. On the wall at the back, there were some cut-out photos and images involving over a dozen people. Most of the photos had a black circle drawn around them with a pen.

Only three people were exceptions. The first was He Shouye, whose photo had a red X drawn on it.

The second was Meng Chang'an, whose photo was circled in red and had many holes from the pen tip, indicating that the cave's inhabitant deeply hated Meng Chang'an.

The most unexpected was the third photo, which was new and had been taken recently. The person in the photo was Han Fei.

On Han Fei's photo, a black question mark was drawn.

"The photos with black circles likely indicate people excluded from suspicion, the red X represents those already killed, and the red circle might indicate the next target. As for the question mark..."

All the police officers looked at Han Fei, who also felt puzzled: "I felt someone was following me recently. Could the person following me be this guy living in the sewer?"

"It's very likely, but why did he draw a question mark on your photo? Did you do anything special when you were being followed?" Li Xue focused on Han Fei's photo.

"The first time I noticed I was being followed was on the set of 'The Flower of Evil.' I was on the phone with you, and I said something like—compared to Meng Changxi, you should pay more attention to Meng Chang'an, the one who seems the least harmful might be the real murderer of his mother." Han Fei's eyes widened: "Yes! It was right after I said that I heard a sound from behind the corner. The person must have been emotionally affected by my words!"

"Based on the information the police have, all evidence points to Meng Changxi. You are the only one speaking up for him, and you believe the real culprit is Meng Chang'an." Li Xue looked at the thick stack of documents in the cave and made a bold guess: "Could the person living in the sewer be the long-missing Meng Changxi?"