Xia Fan felt melancholy. After leaving the tomb, he realized for the first time how important money was.
It was not that Xia Fan did not have money. In the spatial ring that Old Blind gave him, there were Level 9 energy crystals and gifts from the scourges. These things were very valuable, but Xia Fan had no intention of selling them. They were all his memories from the past ten years.
Chu Yan finished her breakfast like a whirlwind and patted her belly in satisfaction.
After some thought, Chu Yan said to Xia Fan, "Actually, if you need money, there are ways to get it."
"What ways?" Xia Fan asked curiously.
"To be a bounty hunter." Chu Yan winked mysteriously and picked up a cup of coffee with cream.
.....
* Swoosh *
The Special Task Force's hover car flew at high speed in the sky. After more than an hour, Chu Yan and Xia Fan arrived at a mountain villa in Como Valley.
The villa covered a large area, but everywhere was deserted. The courtyard had not been cleaned for a long time, and it was covered in yellow leaves. The grass in the lawn was as tall as a person, and the tall brick walls were covered in moss.
The hover car stopped in the courtyard of the villa. Xia Fan and Chu Yan got out of the car. Chu Yan looked around and said to Xia Fan, "This is the scene of the famous dismembered body case four years ago. One of the victims was the granddaughter of the owner of the villa. The case has not been solved yet, and the owner of the villa has offered a reward of 10 million Alliance dollars for the culprit, dead or alive."
Xia Fan nodded slightly after hearing this.
The bounty hunter that Chu Yan mentioned was actually a private detective.
The Special Task Force was only responsible for major cases related to crimes committed by superhumans. They did not care about murder cases. For example, the victim's family had offered a huge reward for solving the case. If Xia Fan could successfully find the culprit, he would be able to get the reward. As a trainee investigator of the Special Task Force, it would be easy for him to gain the trust of the victim.
At that moment, the door of the villa opened, and an elderly couple walked out. They seemed to be the housekeeper and maid of the owner of the villa.
The interior of the villa was clean, but it was filled with an inescapable coldness. Perhaps it was because there were no more guests in the villa after the dismembered body case, and the atmosphere was depressing.
Jiang Chunwen was a skinny but spirited old man. He was paralyzed and sat in a hover wheelchair. He personally received Xia Fan and Chu Yan in the living room.
"I won't die." Speaking of his precious granddaughter's death, the old man said with a voice full of hatred, "It doesn't matter if it's ten years or twenty years, as long as I haven't avenged my granddaughter, I will not die. I must live until the day the truth is revealed!"
Xia Fan was slightly taken aback. He was impressed by the determination of the bedridden old man. Although he said that, based on Xia Fan's observation, the old man did not have much time left.
Chu Yan nodded. "Let's go to the crime scene first."
Jiang Chunwen nodded lightly. "Sure. Everything in the basement will remain the same. My butler will take you there."
After saying that, he slowly closed his eyes, probably because he was a little tired. The old maid quietly covered him with a blanket.
The butler, whose surname was Feng, led Chu Yan and Xia Fan to the basement of the villa.
It was obvious that this used to be a children's playroom. The children played hide-and-seek, trampolines, and there was even a fireplace and a small swimming pool.
The basement was already covered in dust, and the bloodstains on the floor had merged with the carpet, revealing a dark red color. Under Jiang Chunwen's strong request, everything in the basement was kept the same as it was four years later. Nothing had been touched.
Chu Yan said to Xia Fan, "This is the place. One summer four years ago, Jiang Xiaohan and 37 of her classmates had a party. It was raining that day, so they played games in the basement."
"When night fell, they slept together in the basement. The children did not want to be disturbed by adults, so they closed the basement door."
The next morning, when Butler Feng delivered breakfast to them, he found 38 children, who were only seven or eight years old, lying in a pool of blood. Their bodies were mutilated, and each of them had a limb or an organ removed.
The coroner confirmed that 38 human organs could be combined to form a complete human body. Jiang Xiaohan's head was removed.
Xia Fan shuddered. He could not believe that there was such a vicious person in the world who would kill 38 children and use their organs to form a complete human body. The murderer was not just a sociopath, but a complete psychopath.
"Did you find any clues?" Xia Fan asked.
Chu Yan shook her head. "No. A large-scale investigation has been going on for half a year, but nothing was found. There was no DNA information left by the murderer, no witnesses, and the surveillance cameras were damaged due to the heavy rain and lightning."
Xia Fan nodded. "I understand. You can go out for a while."
Chu Yan then stepped back and closed the basement door.
Only Xia Fan was left in the room. Looking at the dried blood on the floor, Xia Fan seemed to see the cruel scene from four years ago, when the innocent children were drugged and their organs were removed.
Xia Fan squatted down and whispered, "Smell, open!"
* Huff *
As he took a deep breath, a large amount of olfactory factors entered Xia Fan's nasal cavity and were converted into recognizable signals that were sent to his brain.
The sense of smell was one of the superpowers of perception. Usually, people would think that having a developed sense of smell was not a particularly powerful superpower, but the truth was the opposite. Developed sense of smell allowed Xia Fan to capture special information that others would never be able to understand, and from there, he could conduct deeper investigations.
It had been four years. So much time had passed, and the remaining smell was very faint. Xia Fan had to work very hard to identify what the smell was.
Slowly, a strange image formed in Xia Fan's mind. These dead children had eaten cherry pie for dinner, some of the little girls had put on perfume, and the smell of silk came from their pajamas. It was like Xia Fan had been there on that heart-stopping night four years ago. Everything that happened that night slowly appeared in Xia Fan's mind through the recombination of smell and information.
"This smell is so strange …" Xia Fan frowned slightly and thought to himself, "It seems to come from the sea, but this is a mountainous area and the nearest ocean is more than a thousand kilometers away. Why would the smell of fish appear here?"
"The children didn't have fish for dinner, so this smell probably didn't come from them."
"So, it was left behind by the killer? The smell is still clear after four years. It must be a special kind of pickled fish … "
.....
Xia Fan left the basement and returned to the living room to tell Chu Yan about the situation.
"It's a special kind of pickled fish. The taste is very special. A lot of lemon must have been added during the pickling process to maintain the freshness of the fish. Maybe it's a favorite of fishermen in some places," Xia Fan said to Chu Yan.
Chu Yan nodded. She was no longer surprised by Xia Fan's sense of smell, which was better than a dog's.
"I'll go check. The Special Task Force has an artificial intelligence analysis system." Chu Yan sat on the sofa and turned on the tablet computer that she carried with her, which allowed her to log into the Special Task Force's intranet.
Jiang Xia was pacing aimlessly in the living room when an oil painting caught his attention. The little girl in the painting should be the victim, Jiang Xiaohan. She had a neck as white as a swan and a sweet smile. She was a very likable little girl.
In the painting, she was sitting with her hands on her knees, looking like a little lady. There was a sapphire hanging around her neck. The sapphire was rare and looked like a key.
Sigh …
Steward Feng sighed behind Xia Fan. "This was the last portrait of the young lady before she died. The old master bought a strange-shaped sapphire pendant from an auction. The young lady liked it very much and wore it with her all day long. She even hired an artist to paint this portrait of herself."
"Who would have thought that something like this would happen the day after the portrait was painted."
Oh?
Xia Fan blinked. "So, the young lady was killed not long after she got the sapphire?"
"About a week. The old master used to attend the summer auction of the Zither Sea Auction House every year. This sapphire was bought at the auction four years ago. At the time, it cost about 8.5 million Alliance dollars. It was quite expensive, but the old master always had a good eye. He felt that the sapphire itself was not worth that many years. The key was that it naturally formed the shape of a key, which was rare."
"After the killer killed the young lady, he stole the sapphire. Most of the young lady's classmates were children from wealthy families. They lost a lot of money, but the police speculated that the theft was just a coincidence. The real cause of death was that the killer was a psychopath."
Xia Fan nodded slightly. As if he had thought of something, he quickly approached Chu Yan and said, "I want a detailed report of the summer auction held by the Zither Sea Auction House four years ago, including a list of all the people who participated in the auction."
"What do you want this for?" Chu Yan looked up and asked, puzzled.
Xia Fan said lightly, "Don't ask for now. I also want a detailed report on the origin of the key-shaped sapphire."
.....
The investigation quickly fell into a dilemma.
According to the information, almost all the coastal cities and islands of Brecnia had the habit of using lemons to pickle fish. This special lemon was a special product of the planet and could be used as a natural preservative. From this point alone, it was impossible to narrow down the list of suspects.
Xia Fan and Chu Yan left the villa and went to Florence, a medium-sized city more than two hundred kilometers away. In the city center, they found a supermarket that specialized in all kinds of seafood.
Walking into the supermarket, Xia Fan sniffed and quickly led Chu Yan to an open counter in the corner that specialized in selling pickled fish. There was a glass bottle of pickled fish on the counter. The transparent glass bottle contained many small silver fish that were not even the length of an adult's finger. According to the packaging information, it was a pickled Short-tailed Flying Fish.
"This is the pickled fish," Xia Fan said to Chu Yan.
Chu Yan began to search again. Not long after, she seemed to be triggered by something and her expression became serious. She said, "Look, the area with the highest sales of pickled short-tailed flying fish is concentrated in the northern cities and islands in the northwest sea."
"This is Hump Island. The islanders have a tradition of eating pickled short-tailed flying fish. The sapphire that Jiang Xiaohan wore before she died is called the Ocean Code. It was also fished from the southern sea of Hump Island."
Xia Fan smiled and quickly walked out of the supermarket with Chu Yan and boarded the hover car.
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