The man waved a discarded medical syringe, as if lost in a hallucination. He screamed insanely, a mix of laughter and sorrowful wails.
"Hahaha, that woman is a ghost! A ghost! It's those damn animals, coming to get their revenge on me! I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of anyone! What can you do to me? I'm the king here..."
Beneath the filth, the man's eyes, once dim, began to brighten.
It was only then that everyone noticed the face hidden beneath his filthy, long hair was surprisingly delicate and handsome. But just as strangely, while his frame was gaunt with clear male characteristics, he had a pair of slender, long legs.
Like the deformed doll he clutched in his arms, everything about him exuded an eerie strangeness.
"Captain, he's acting completely insane. We can't get close."
There was no telling what viruses might have contaminated a discarded syringe like that. It wasn't that they were afraid of getting hurt, but the risk was simply too high.
Just as Mu Zimo was debating whether to order the use of a tranquilizer dart, a nocturnal cry shattered the silence.
Outside, what little moonlight had been filtering through was now completely blocked. Countless black crows had landed on the edge of the window frame, lined up in neat rows, letting out chilling caws.
Xie Shan, somewhat afraid of the creatures, quietly hid behind Mu Zimo.
"Is this man the guy Mao Mao is looking for?"
"He's stinky and wearing weird shoes. It must be him."
"Hehe, found him, found him!"
Having found their target, the crows flapped their wings happily, which in turn terrified the already unhinged man.
"They're here, they're here! The demons have come for my life! You lowly animals, why do you get to be liked by others? Why can't I?!"
"Hahaha, whatever! I'm the king here! I am the king, and I won't let you bully me!"
The crazed laughter stopped abruptly. The man plunged the long syringe into his own neck. The motion was fast, precise, and ruthless, leaving no room for hesitation. His carotid artery ruptured, and a torrent of blood gushed out, instantly staining the deformed doll red.
He had no attachments to this world, yet his last breath was a sigh.
'If there's a next life, I want to be a child who is loved...'
Mu Zimo was the first to rush over. In this situation, no amount of first aid would be enough, but out of humanitarian principle, he still had an ambulance dispatched.
But getting the man out presented another problem. The mountains of trash were impossible to cross, forcing the officers to carry the stretcher and move him out little by little. During this process, the man's heart stopped completely.
Just then, a crow suddenly swooped down and landed on the man's body.
"Huh, this guy's dead. Can we still trade him for food?"
The countless crows circling overhead let out mournful cries, looking as if they wanted nothing more than to dive down and peck at the man's corpse.
A helpless expression on his face, Xie Shan could only step forward to shoo them away. No matter what he did, the flock of crows refused to leave, not until he spotted a familiar figure.
"Hey, Captain, does that owl look familiar?"
The last time Qiao An rode in the police car, she had been holding an owl. Xie Shan had observed it for a long time back then, especially the very conspicuous tuft of white feathers on its body.
Mu Zimo's brow furrowed again. Too many strange things had happened tonight, and he still hadn't managed to make sense of any of it.
"You know it?"
Xie Shan wasn't sure, so he just shook his head, deciding he was probably overthinking things.
Only at the owl's call did the flock of crows reluctantly depart.
With the crows no longer in the way, the man's body was quickly taken away. Mu Zimo, however, didn't leave. He remained standing at the edge of the landfill, lost in thought.
"Captain? Captain!"
After Xie Shan called out to him several times, Mu Zimo slowly came back to his senses. He began to take off his protective suit, letting out a long breath.
"Have the medical examiner run an autopsy. I want to know what caused the wounds on that guy's body."
Based on his experience, such sharp, thin wounds, especially with barbs, were uncommon. They looked more like they were left by an animal.
"Captain, there might be other things buried under all this trash. Should we have it all cleared out?"
Clearing out such a massive mountain of trash would take an unknown amount of time. But Xie Shan didn't seem to mind; he naturally had his own ways of handling things.
Mu Zimo understood the hidden meaning in Xie Shan's words. Only then did a hint of a satisfied smile appear on his face. He nodded and said, "I'll leave it to you, then. Can you handle it?"
The Xie family was wealthy and powerful, with countless business ventures. It was only natural that they'd have a hand in a gold-digging enterprise like waste recycling.
"Don't worry, leave this kind of thing to me. It'll be no problem at all!"
Countless things had happened tonight, and the curtain had finally fallen on this part of it. Mu Zimo led his team back to the station. The first thing everyone did was wash up and change clothes, but the stench seemed to cling to them, ruining any appetite they might have had.
Mu Zimo was the first to return to his office, only to see a local community worker from the old district explaining something to an officer, a worried look on their face.
"What's wrong?"
The young officer also looked troubled. "Captain," he said quietly, "we can't confirm the deceased's identity..."
This kind of oversight was a serious issue, but in an Urban Village, it seemed to be all too common.
"He's a 'ghost household,' status: person not found. We were able to find his father's information, though."
Flipping open the old case file, the handwritten records were blurry and required careful examination to decipher. The worker's verbal account was clearer.
"Zhang Wu. Not the 'Wu' from martial arts, but the 'Wu' from 'one, two, three, four, five.' His parents weren't educated, just bottom-of-the-barrel scrap collectors. They originally worked at that abandoned landfill, but after it failed inspection, the boss just took off. The couple stayed on, living there. After Zhang Wu was born, they did bring him in to register his information."
"Later, after his parents passed away, he continued to live by scavenging and collecting junk. We wanted to help clear out the trash, but Zhang Wu wouldn't cooperate. He said it was all his private property and wouldn't let us touch it."
As time went on, the neighbors, disgusted by the overwhelming stench, started dumping even more of their own trash into Zhang Wu's place, both for revenge and for convenience. This made the situation even worse. No one wanted to cause trouble for themselves, so they just let it be, which is how it got to be the way it is today.
"Besides Zhang Wu, you're telling me you didn't know anyone else was there?"
The place reeked. Everyone habitually kept their distance. Who would go in there to check if anyone else was living inside?
"It's true we hadn't seen Zhang Wu in a long time, but people said they'd occasionally see him scavenging, hunched over. We all just assumed it was him. Who knew he was long gone..."
The suspect had already committed suicide, presumably to escape justice, yet the police hadn't learned the most basic information about him. He didn't even have a name, which filled Mu Zimo with a sense of impotent rage.
When the autopsy report came in, Mu Zimo's brows furrowed even tighter.