Chapter 34: Puzzle Patterns

At 2:45 a.m., the television screen suddenly lit up on its own.

The ghostly cold light illuminated the dark living room, where flickering black and white snowflakes vaguely revealed several faces.

Han Fei slightly relaxed, his palms and back drenched with sweat. He had been quite frightened when hair had first appeared in the gap of the blanket.

"Only twenty minutes left."

Finally, this hellish time was almost over. Han Fei didn't know how he had endured it, but he saw a glimmer of hope in the long night.

On the living room sofa, five figures sat with their backs to the bedroom, all staring at the old square box television as if something incredibly captivating was happening on the flickering snow screen.

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

The sound of the electronic clock's hands moving mixed with Han Fei's own heartbeat. He struggled to keep calm, knowing he was at the critical moment and couldn't afford any mistakes.

His gaze swept over the silhouettes on the sofa and finally rested on the TV screen.

The sound of static mixed with a man's voice, unclear as if a madman was muttering to himself.

Han Fei concentrated, the man indistinctly seemed to have mentioned words like dismember, chrysalis, liberation, beauty.

"1044 is a haunted house, it holds the victims of the Human-body Puzzle case. I've seen Wei Youfu and Amay here with my own eyes. But, the man speaking on TV doesn't sound like a victim; rather, he seems more like the murderer."

The deceased in the Human-body Puzzle case were all ordinary people. Han Fei had seen all their photos taken right before they died, each filled with despair and pain; they couldn't possibly be uttering these meaningless words at the brink of death.

To solve the case, Han Fei memorized everything the man on TV said.

"The murderer's behavior during the killings was strange, almost like conducting some kind of ritual," recalled Han Fei from the information in his mind regarding the Human-body Puzzle case.

The police took this case very seriously. Even after ten years, Xinhu Police were still investigating; all evidence was preserved and they still indefinitely offered rewards for information from the public.

Han Fei also learned some insider details from the information released by the police.

Typically, serial killers can be broadly categorized into types: illusion-driven, mission-oriented, hedonistic, and controlling. Xinhu Police categorized the Human-body Puzzle killer as mission-oriented and extremely violent and controlling.

The victims of the Human-body Puzzle case were mostly women and children, leading many to believe the killer might not be physically imposing. His physical capabilities determined that his targets would be those weaker than himself.

He sought to obtain something from those weaker than him to satisfy his twisted inner self.

Of course, the police couldn't disclose all information before solving the case. The data Han Fei found included some he had gathered from the internet himself, not necessarily accurate, but it offered him a direction.

Initially, he had thought along these lines, but after hearing the words of the man on the television, he realized the killer's motives were not simple and there might be deeper reasons behind the killings.

"Chrysalis? Butterfly?"

Han Fei had obtained a piece of information in the game that the police were unaware of: Meng Chang'an, the suspect in the refrigerator corpse case, had predicted the Human-body Puzzle case.

Moreover, Meng Chang'an himself was not a normal person. During his first murder, he told his family that he was influenced by something, driven to do such crazy things just to clearly see the butterflies in his mind.

"Both the refrigerator corpse case and the Human-body Puzzle case are related to butterflies. What exactly does this butterfly symbolize?"

Meng Chang'an was once lured by butterflies, guided by the voice of a man on TV, and it seemed that the murderer in the Human-body Puzzle case was also influenced by butterflies.

"Just by looking at the crime scene, one might think the Human-body Puzzle case murderer leans towards being a mission-oriented serial killer, but having heard his chilling and cruel voice, this madman seems to have fallen into some kind of illusion. His motive for killing is very complex."

Han Fei was not a professional detective; just a few days ago, he was still pondering how to make his audience laugh. Reasoning and analysis were subjects he had only recently started learning.

His gaze shifted to the figure on the couch. Han Fei looked at the five blurred figures while information about the victims of the Human-body Puzzle case surfaced in his mind.

"Looking at the order of the murders doesn't seem to reveal anything, but if we look at the ages of the victims..."

At fourteen minutes past midnight, the first child appeared in the room and bore a strong resemblance to the youngest victim in the Human-body Puzzle case.

"Cui Tianci, 12 years old, who had worked as a child model. His time of death was between eleven at night and one in the morning."

Then, Han Fei looked toward the second ghost to appear on the sofa, the long-haired woman who had passed by the door to Han Fei's bedroom at forty-four minutes past midnight.

"Cui Caixi, Cui Tianci's older sister, 18 years old, with very pure and beautiful eyes, a pupil model who had done photoshoots for many contact lens stores."

His gaze slowly moved to the short-haired woman holding a fruit knife, Han Fei recalling the photos of the deceased in his mind: "Xiao Qing, 20 years old, a university student who worked part-time as a tutor. She was academically and morally outstanding and privately worked as a leg model. The money she earned not only financed her education but also supported her family's medical expenses."

Sitting next to the short-haired woman was a short woman wearing high heels, her skin pale as death.

"Zhang Lingfan, 23 years old, not very famous live-streamer. Her hands were fair and pretty, often featured in nail advertisements, a hand model. Her time of death was around one in the morning, which matched the time she was seen."

"By age, the next victim would be 25-year-old Amay, who had posted lipstick trial photos on a commercial shopping platform and many lip photos on social media; many people wanted her as a lip model."

"The next closest in age to Amay was Wei Youfu, 26 years old, whose time of death was around three in the morning. He was the only victim who didn't possess any remarkable physical attributes. The police concluded that Wei Youfu was killed because he wandered into the murder scene by mistake, and it was also the killer's first crime, which, combined with other factors, led to his demise."

"Besides Wei Youfu, there was another male victim among the deceased, existing as the oldest victim. His name was Gu Ye, 29 years old, a former fashion model, and his time of death was between three and four in the morning."

The Human-body Puzzle case had a total of eight victims. Apart from the eighth victim, whose information had not been identified yet, the death times of the remaining seven were all connected to their ages.

The older the victim, the later the death time.

From midnight to four in the morning, from the deepest night to the break of dawn.

From twelve years old, when the human body formally enters puberty, to thirty years old, when physical capabilities begin to slightly decline.

Each victim in the Human-body Puzzle case seemed to have been meticulously chosen; this was not random killing, but a premeditated crime.