Chapter 6: Jiangbei Daggers (2/2)

The eyes behind the mask were pitch black, it didn’t reflect light the way normal human eyes would somehow. That made me wonder if this figure was even human!

The black shadowy figure twisted my wrist effortlessly. It made a clicking noise and suddenly an unimaginable pain reverberated throughout my body, completely incapacitating me.

“Your courage is commendable!” the shadowy figure nodded. “But you’re nothing but a stupid boy! I won’t waste my time and energy killing a clueless suckling like you! Maybe I’ll let you live till the day that you find out how I killed your grandfather, then I’ll come back and strike you down! Remember this: I will always be the bane of the Song family!”

As he finished the sentence, he started making a strange gesture and came for the point right in between my eyebrows. I felt dizzy instantly, and everything turned black before my body even hit the ground…

I was woken up by the sound of sirens. A big heavy hand kept slapping at my face. I looked around groggily and noticed that I was surrounded by strangers. The only familiar face was Officer Sun, who was kneeling in front of me, and it was his hand that had been smacking my face. Memories of what happened before I blacked out rushed back to me, and I started to panic.

“Grandpa!” I blurted. “What happened to Grandpa?”

“Kiddo,” said Officer Sun dejectedly, “your grandpa’s already…”

So the nightmare was real, I thought. I wasn’t completely shocked by it though, I just felt numb and depressed. Anger, shame, humiliation – all these emotions run through my mind and were entangled together, completely clouding my mind. I bit my lips so hard that I didn’t realize I was bleeding.

Officer Sun dropped a coat over my shoulder. Only then did I notice that I had caught a slight cold, which was unsurprising considering I’d spent a whole night in the chilly warehouse.

The two bodies had been taken away, and Officer Sun told me that my aunt was looking for us the whole night, but now that she knew I was fine, she was relieved.

Officer Sun asked me to accompany him to the police station in the city to record my statement. I told him everything I knew, then asked him a few questions that had been troubling my mind like who was Jiangbei Daggers, how did Grandpa die, and who was that fat man?

“I know there must be a thousand questions running through your head right now,” replied Officer Sun, “but since your Grandpa advised you to stay away from these matters, I think it’s best that you don’t involve yourself in this case any further.”

“How can you expect me to do that?” I stood up in anger, gnashing my teeth. “My grandfather was murdered! I have to seek justice and vengeance!”

Officer Sun sighed heavily.

“All right,” he finally said, “I’ll tell you everything I know. But you must take this to your grave and never mention it to anyone else!”

He then lit a cigarette and was about to speak, when suddenly a police officer arrived at the door, holding a document. He saw me in the office and began to step back, but was stopped by Officer Sun.

“It’s fine,” said Officer Sun. “Say what you have to say.”

The officer took a quick doubtful glance at me, but then obeyed Officer Sun’s order anyway.

“Sir…” he muttered, “the coroner’s report is here.”

“Give it to me.”

Officer Sun glanced over the report and his face suddenly turned stony and severe.

“So it really is the same person,” he said.

He handed me the report, and I proceeded to read it. Although it was my first time reading an official coroner’s report, and there was, in fact, many technical and medical jargon in it, I could nevertheless grasp the content without much effort, because the main principles of modern forensic science were largely similar to what I had been learning from Grandpa.

According to the report, the first victim, meaning the fat middle-aged man, showed no signs of injuries on his body and no signs of poisoning. In fact, apart from the eyes being gouged out while he was still alive, causing a break of the nerve at the back of the eyeballs, his body was in almost perfectly normal conditions. Apart from that, his heart was missing in his chest, suspected to have been removed using a sharp instrument. But the skin around the chest and all the bones showed no signs of cuts or injuries at all. The heart that he was holding in his hand had been analysed in the lab, and it was shown that it was his own heart.

I drew a sharp breath when I reached this point in the report. Was it really possible to gouge out a human heart without damaging the body?

Meanwhile, Grandpa’s death was caused by large perforations of the heart valve, suspected to be done by a sharp object. The direct cause of death was the stopping of the heartbeat, and just as it was for the first victim, there were no other injuries found on his body, no signs of struggle, and no signs of poisoning.

I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak. Officer Sun took the report back out from my hands.

“The only person who could do this,” he said, “is the same Jiangbei Daggers from ten years ago. It seems that he’s returned to take revenge on the Song family.”

And so Officer Sun began the account of the as yet unsolved case from ten years ago…

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