Chapter 123: The Attacks on Huang Xiaotao (1/2)

I asked Xiaotao if Yuanchao had found anything suspicious in Professor Li’s background. She replied that Professor Li had a clean record. She grew up with her parents in Inner Mongolia until they died in an accident. She was then left with her elder brother Li Wenhai, who was ten years older than her and had looked after her ever since. He worked hard to support her. In fact, Professor Li’s college tuition was paid for by Li Wenhai’s hard-earned money. Unsurprisingly, the siblings seemed to have a very close bond with each other.

Li Wenhai made great achievements in psychology, especially in the field of hypnosis. In addition to his post as a university professor, he was also a renowned clinical psychologist. In the eyes of the public, he was a modest but successful scholar; but in truth, he would use hypnosis to trick many beautiful female patients to go to bed with him.

One day, one of his colleagues found out his dark secrets and threatened to report him to the authorities. He quickly grabbed the colleague’s throat and ordered him to jump off the building using hypnosis.

Because the colleague’s death was ruled as a suicide, Li Wenhai managed to escape punishments for his first murder. Unfortunately, this incident only proved to awaken his evil nature and was the start of his murderous rampage!

After that, he was no longer content to just deceive people or trick women to have sex with him. He began to use his skills to murder people. Anyone who dared to annoy him would end up dead. Once, when a take-out delivery man gave him a different soup from what he ordered, Li Wenhai hypnotized that man and caused him to walk straight into busy traffic and he died after he was hit by a car.

As time passed on, he began to kill just for the sake of it. In one case, he bumped into a beautiful woman on the street, so he hypnotized her into following him to an isolated place and had his way with her. After that, he made her commit suicide by hypnosis.

Within half a year, Li Wenhai killed close to a dozen people, all of whom died of accidents or suicide. The only thing that these victims had in common was that they were in contact with Li Wenhai in one way or another before their deaths, and that was why the police started to suspect him.

Perhaps the power he had over other people’s actions corrupted Li Wenhai’s heart over time, and gradually turned him into a monster. When Xiaotao first met him, she shuddered in terror even though he was only smiling at her. The police task force spent a whole month gathering enough evidence and finally arrested him.

“How did you manage to acquire convincing evidence to incriminate him?” I asked.

“Through a video recording!” she answered. “I personally acted as a bait for him to hypnotize and recorded the whole process.” The unpleasant memories connected to the incident made Xiaotao shiver involuntarily.

“That case caused me a lot of psychological trauma,” she continued. “I had to see a psychiatrist, and even then, it took me a long time to recover fully.”

The next few days were uneventful, and there were no breakthroughs in the case. Shiwen was transferred to the prison to await trial. I felt guilty for not being able to help him, so I paid him a visit together with Dali.

He cried as he was taken out of the police station. Xiaotao patted his shoulder and comforted him, “Don’t worry, I’ve asked someone to protect you in prison. You’ll be fine.”

The van that was to transport Shiwen drove up to the entrance. Apart from him, there were other prisoners to be transported to prison too. Before he got into the van, Shiwen suddenly knelt down on the ground. We were all taken by surprise. It turned out that he was kneeling in the direction of the college.

“Yanyan!” he shouted. “Wait for me! I’ll be accompanying you to the afterlife soon!”

Dali and I were shocked to hear that. The officers began to urge him to get up, but Xiaotao stopped them.

Shiwen knocked his head on the ground three times, then slowly stood up. All of a sudden, I heard the crisp sound of fingers snapping. Instantly after that, I saw the look in Shiwen’s eyes change and he started to charge towards Xiaotao. Then he grabbed her neck with both hands and choked her. Xiaotao tried to fight him off and they ended up falling to the ground.

“What are you doing, Shiwen?!” I shouted, frightened.

Xiaotao’s eyes had started to roll backward. She would soon lose consciousness. The police officers and I rushed up towards them and tried to pry Shiwen’s hands off of Xiaotao’s neck. Shiwen had never been a physically fit person, but strangely enough, even the six of us couldn’t move his arms at all.

Xiaotao desperately fought Shiwen off by scratching his arms. They were now bloody and full of scratches, yet Shiwen remained unfazed. I noticed that his eyes looked glazed over. At that moment, I could hear the bones in Xiaotao’s neck crack.

“Stop it right now!” I shouted, while kicking at Shiwen’s ribs as hard as I could. I was sure that I’d broken one of his ribs, but he just wouldn’t let go.

Finally, an officer tased Shiwen with a high-voltage stun gun. He trembled like a leaf in the wind before letting go of Xiaotao’s neck, then collapsed to the ground with his mouth foaming.

Xiaotao gulped the air and coughed violently. She vomited out a pool of gastric juice. There were two red palm prints on her neck. Everyone was still confused about what had just happened. I asked, “Did anyone hear the sound of fingers snapping earlier?”

“I heard it!” a few people answered.