Chapter 8: The Race Between Good and Evil (1/2)

Apart from the pictures of these four people, there were pictures of other people as well. Officer Sun assumed that these were the murderer’s next targets!

But they had been waiting for a long time, but the two officers and the landlord had not yet returned. They didn’t even answer calls. Officer Sun knew then that something bad must’ve happened, and he immediately sent a big team of police officers to follow them.

But at the parking lot, they found the dead bodies of the two police officers, and in the landlord’s house they found the landlord, dead as well. Even the house had been left in a state of chaos as if a storm had hit it. This time the murderer did not use his mysterious legendary killing method, but instead opted to sneak up on the two police officers and slit their throats from behind. The landlord, on the other hand, was stabbed to death with a knife.

This proved that Jiangbei Daggers had panicked, and had rushed to cover up his tracks. This meant that Grandpa had been on the right track!

Even so, there was no denying that the police had taken a misstep which cost them the lives of two officers and the landlord. Officer Sun was hit hard by this and he shouldered all the guilt himself. When Grandpa arrived at the landlord’s house, he chased everyone out of the house and was in there all alone for about an hour. After that, when the door was finally opened again, clouds of smoke spilled out, carrying a scent like that of Chinese medicine. In places where there were no traces of anything at all previously, suddenly bloody footprints appear, there was even a bloody handprint on the wall!

Now with footprints and handprints, there were more leads to follow – the murderer’s weight and height, the murderer’s fingerprints, the murderer’s habitual movements, even the kind of shoes that the murderer wore.

Officer Sun mobilized all of his officers, and they worked all round the clock without rest, until in the end, they found an image of the murderer from a surveillance video of a supermarket. Although the face of the murderer was obscured by his hat, he was with a woman who seemed to be in an intimate relationship with him.

The police were able to identify the woman through the image. She was a worker in a textile factory and was most likely the murderer’s wife or girlfriend.

Officer Sun led his team to find the woman immediately, but before they got to her, she was already dead. Her death’s circumstances were exactly the same as Jiangbei Daggers’ previous victims. Needless to say, the murderer had panicked again and in order to cover his tracks, he even went to the lengths of killing his lover!

So Grandpa had now cornered the murderer twice. Although the police were not able to capture him, it could be said that in this race between Grandpa and Jiangbei Daggers, each side had both victory and defeat.

This also proved one thing to the police: Jiangbei Daggers was not invincible. He had weaknesses and it was possible to defeat him!

After that the members of the task force had their motivations fired up and they began to hunt down the murderer with new fervor.

But just then, one by one the members of the task force were killed off mysteriously and brutally. In the end, a total of five police officers lost their lives, and they all died just like the victims did, with their hearts extracted from their chest in a clean, bloodless way while they were still alive. Not long after, Grandpa announced his withdrawal from the investigation. This incurred the wrath of Officer Sun, who not only was still determined to hunt down the murderer, but who had also lost too many of his officers. He tried all his might to make Grandpa continue on with the investigation, but Grandpa was unmoved in his decision to leave.

Without Grandpa’s help, the investigation basically ground to a halt, and the case became an unsolved cold case even to this day.

When he reached the end of the story, there was already a small pile of ash accumulated in the ashtray in front of Officer Sun. I was suddenly reminded of a memory from ten years ago that sent shivers down my spine.

One night, ten years ago, Jiangbei Daggers had visited Grandpa!

At the time, I was only seven years old. I remember that someone visited Grandpa when it was late at night. I was curious, as it had never happened, so I went over to his room’s door and asked him who it was. Grandpa had always been kind and gentle-mannered around me, but in that instance, he yelled at me to go back to my room and not to interfere with adult matters. I was so surprised by this treatment that the event stuck in my mind ever since.

The mysterious person stayed at our house for about two hours before leaving. What were they talking about? Now that Grandpa was dead, this question would remain a mystery for the rest of my life.