Chapter 41: Duhuang City Serial Murder Case (Part 1)
Sunday’s sunlight was harsh. Dongfang Cheng tugged his baseball cap lower, walking alone through the deserted industrial zone.
[Old factory, commercial street alley, drainage entrance… coordinates pinpointed to the meter, with simple path markers. Leave a good review, dear!]
Lin Feng’s message included a lockdown map pulled from the municipal system, complete with police patrols and surveillance blind spots.
“This guy… his efficiency on serious stuff is scary. Is he that eager to date me… I mean, Zero?” Dongfang muttered, glancing at his phone.
Even in broad daylight, the area felt oppressively grim. Rust, dust, and damp mold mingled, like a sealed coffin pried open, reeking of decay.
Dongfang got off the bus a few streets early, weaving through alleys to dodge cameras, heading toward the first murder site per Lin Feng’s coordinates—a factory deep in the zone.
From a distance, it was an overgrown industrial ruin. Rusted smokestacks loomed like forgotten giants’ bones under a gray sky.
Yellow-and-black police tape cordoned off the factory. Several squad cars sat quietly at the perimeter, no sirens, but the air was tense. About ten officers stood guard, eyes scanning.
Duhuang’s government acted fast, sealing the scene before reporters could swarm. Dongfang knew a quiet investigation would be impossible otherwise—the media would’ve turned it into a circus.
But Lin Feng’s coordinates pointed to the factory’s core, so he had to get in.
Edging toward the gate, he was spotted before reaching the tape.
“Hey! You, girl in the cap! This is a crime scene—sealed off. Leave now!” An officer’s voice cut through the quiet day, hand instinctively on his baton.
“Tch, who’s a girl…”
Dongfang grimaced, retreating to an unremarkable alley a block away, littered with construction debris and graffiti-covered walls. Checking for onlookers, he pulled the black rhombus crystal from his pocket.
“Daytime’s a hassle,” he grumbled, slotting the crystal into the terminal.
[Identity Authentication Module—Inserted, Verified]
[Physical Interference Unit—Restricted, Loaded]
[Individual Reconstruction Protocol—Executing, Transformation]
Dark light swirled, reshaping his form into the black battle dress and thigh-high stockings, wildly out of place in the daylight.
Magical Girl Zero opened her night-black eyes under the glaring sun.
Where Dongfang couldn’t go, Zero moved freely. The police focused on the ground and entrance, leaving the factory’s upper levels unguarded. Zero darted, ghost-like, defying gravity, and reached the main roof in a few bounds.
Sunlight streamed through a broken metal roof, glinting off her cascading black hair. She crouched, slipping silently through a shattered, rusted window into the factory.
No light inside, save a single beam piercing a hole, illuminating countless dust motes. The air was thick with blood, rust, and rot, nauseating.
Zero’s gaze locked on an open area to the east. The gray cement, once stained with old oil, was now a grotesque canvas of dark, congealing blood, vivid under the sunlight.
At the center, near a rusted metal wall, the blood was thickest. The wall bore a faint human silhouette—not graffiti, but blood sprayed and soaked, a haunting prisoner in light and shadow.
Zero approached, her boots silent on the blood’s sticky edge. Sunlight from above cast fractured spots on her.
Crouching, she brushed a gloved fingertip over a jagged scrape, sniffing a bit of dried blood.
“Victim had roughly 20cm penetrating wounds in both shoulder blades, irregular edges, likely caused by a heavy, non-standard blunt weapon forcibly driven through,” she recalled from Lin Feng’s forensic report, her expression chilling.
Around the blood silhouette and stretching meters away were deep grooves, like a giant snake’s trail, as if heavy chains dragged something across the floor. Fresh concrete dust glinted in the grooves. The wall showed patches where rust flaked off from intense friction, revealing shiny metal—likely the victim’s struggles.
At the silhouette’s head and limbs, deep scratches marred the wall, some nearly embedded. Fingernail fragments gleamed faintly in the rusted seams.
The victim had been bound and whipped by massive chains, dragged to the wall, and brutally pinned by a sharp weapon.
Blood splattered even the beams meters above, like countless frozen eyes staring down at the daylight slaughterhouse.
Zero frowned, scanning the grim scene, her delicate profile unlit by the faint sunlight.
“Time to work, dumb cat,” she called in her mind. “Any unusual magic here?” Her own magic sense was near-zero, so she relied on the unreliable round-headed black cat.
“Sniff sniff… this meow smells something! Not just one, meow!” The cat’s voice buzzed in her head, excited.
“Monster or magical girl?” Zero pressed.
“Hmm, meow… neither, meow! The residual magic isn’t as pure as a magical girl’s or as chaotic as a monster’s. It’s stuck in the middle, meow!”
“Got it.” Zero nodded thoughtfully. “Let’s hit the second site.”
Half an hour later, Dongfang stood outside the second crime scene from the police files—a quiet alley off a commercial street.
Unlike the factory, this was downtown. Though the alley saw little foot traffic, police tape now blocked it, with two stone-faced officers barring entry.
Bloggers livestreamed at the tape, muttering about “the fate of Lue Mao District,” which Dongfang didn’t get.
“Can you sense that same weird magic from here?” he asked the black cat mentally.
“Nope, meow~” The cat yawned lazily. “The magic here’s way fainter than the factory, and it’s muddled by too many human vibes. Gotta get closer to sort it out, meow.”
Dongfang clicked his tongue, annoyed. With so many eyes around, he couldn’t just transform and sneak in. Frowning, pondering how to slip past, a gentle tap hit his shoulder.
He spun around instinctively, and a cool, slender finger poked his cheek before he saw who it was.
“Yo, Dongfang! What’re you doing here?” A familiar, sunny voice rang out.
“Class Prez?” Dongfang blinked at Huang Yu Tong, the energetic short-haired girl in a tracksuit, her bright eyes reflecting his surprise like a summer sky.