Chapter 75: Full Mobilization!
Everyone on the island was cleared out—not only the dating show’s crew, but also the staff who normally worked there.
When the director heard that two bodies had been found on the island, his vision went black—again and again.
Still, it gave him the perfect excuse to pause production. It wasn’t that his invited guests had gotten into trouble; it was that the pre-booked location had issues. And while waiting for a new location, the guests “felt unwell” and chose to withdraw.
So as the director, was it a problem if he invited new people to join? Of course not.
The other guests had already gone home. The director and screenwriter, however, were still staying at a hotel near Qingze District’s coast.
While they were discussing what to do next, the director, sitting on the balcony, suddenly let out a surprised sound and pointed toward the pier in the distance.
“Isn’t that Lin Jiangye?”
The screenwriter followed his finger—and sure enough, Lin Jiangye was walking toward a mid-sized boat.
But aside from him, the other “passengers” weren’t humans.
They were animals.
At first it was just ordinary cats and dogs—though the last three dogs were clearly huge, and one looked like the one they’d seen yesterday.
But after those three large canines boarded, what came down from the truck next were medium and large felines—one after another.
“Lions and tigers? What is he bringing those on the boat for? Wait—where did he even get that many beasts?!”
The screenwriter was stunned. By the time he tried to get a closer look, the animals were already aboard and the boat was leaving the pier.
The director stared too, dumbfounded, as they watched the boat head toward the island.
“What is he doing?”
“No idea!”
“Where did he get so many large carnivores?”
“No idea!”
“Won’t those animals attack him?”
“I really have no idea!”
The screenwriter shot the director an irritated look. How could this man know nothing?
“Didn’t you say you watched his livestream? Weren’t those animals already in it?”
The screenwriter had gone back to watch clips after the director mentioned it yesterday—he had seen a whole pack of big beasts surrounding Lin Jiangye.
The director finally recovered enough to blurt out, “Holy crap… it’s all real?!”
He had watched that livestream—that was why he’d been thinking about Lin Jiangye’s traffic yesterday. But like most viewers, he’d assumed that even if Lin Jiangye could understand animals, the big carnivores on stream had to be staged somehow. Otherwise how could they be so obedient? They even cooperated with other animals in the ball fight.
But now it seemed… reality was very different from what he’d imagined.
“What a pity,” the screenwriter muttered. “We can’t go to the island. Otherwise we could find out what he’s doing with all those beasts.”
And yes—what happened on the island was very interesting. Just… possibly a bit too heavy for mainstream tastes.
After Lin Jiangye landed on the island, he saw Ai Rong and Yan Keke waiting for him.
The moment Yan Keke spotted Tian Shu, Tian Xuan, Tian Ji, Tian Quan, and the others, it was like she’d swallowed a miracle tonic. All the exhaustion from staying up overnight vanished instantly—she launched herself at the big tiger.
“Tian Shu—aaaah! I missed you so much! Let me kiss kiss kiss!!!”
She hugged the Amur tiger and planted kisses all over him. After kissing the tiger she kissed the Asian lion. After the lion, she kissed the lynx. Not a single one was spared.
Ai Rong immediately looked up at the sky in secondhand embarrassment.
Lin Jiangye didn’t mind. He understood Yan Keke well. He was always friendly toward humans who genuinely loved animals.
And Tian Shu and the rest weren’t surprised either—they’d already experienced Yan Keke’s passion on New Year’s Eve.
Besides, Lin Jiangye had told them these humans were trustworthy.
And for rescued animals like Tian Shu—animals who’d endured abuse—Yan Keke’s overwhelming warmth might actually be what their hearts had been craving.
Just look at Yuheng and Kaiyang—both tails were wagging like crazy.
Meanwhile, Ai Rong was briefing Lin Jiangye on the information Shang Fuyan had left behind.
“Captain Shang suspects the island was used by Zhang Weian as an execution ground.”
Lin Jiangye choked. “Execution ground? What do you mean?”
Ai Rong lifted her tablet. On it was a summary of missing-person cases over the past year.
“Look at the disappearance dates. They all happened within this year—more precisely, after Zhang Weian bought this island.”
If it were only that, it might still be coincidence.
“But we found that these people all had some connection to Zhang Weian. Some bullied him in the past. Some offended him. Others were employees of Qinghu Group.”
Those links made it hard not to read into it.
Lin Jiangye stared at the data, remembering the disgust in Shang Fuyan’s voice yesterday when he spoke about Zhang Weian.
As the head of a criminal investigation unit, Shang Fuyan had seen countless criminals. He’d seen vicious ones too. Even when they cracked that Taibai Mountain case with eight deaths, Shang Fuyan hadn’t shown this level of contempt.
So this was why—he’d long suspected Zhang Weian had blood on his hands.
If it was all true… death would be too light a sentence for someone like that.
“You’ve been watching him for a long time, haven’t you?” Lin Jiangye asked. This didn’t look like information gathered overnight.
Ai Rong shook her head. “Not us. Just Captain Shang. He’s been investigating that man quietly for a long time. These files were something he suddenly produced yesterday.”
Not only Lin Jiangye—everyone had been shocked. No one expected Shang Fuyan to have started investigating Zhang Weian that early.
So the motive for calling it an “execution ground” was becoming clearer.
Wait—
“Does he suspect the missing people are buried here?” The timeline fit too perfectly: disappearances began only after the island was bought.
Ai Rong spread her hands. No clue.
“Captain Shang didn’t say. He just told you to come and check.”
But since they were involving Consultant Lin… Ai Rong felt there was an eighty percent chance.
Lin Jiangye’s eyebrow twitched. The morning call had come from Li Wei, but the real person inviting him was Shang Fuyan.
So why hadn’t Shang Fuyan told him directly?
“…Fine. So we can wreck the place a little?” Lin Jiangye asked. “If you’re bringing large carnivores, you can’t expect everything to stay intact.”
Ai Rong gave him an OK sign and even thumped her chest. “Don’t worry. As long as you don’t blow up the whole island, Captain Shang can clean up after you.”
That was all Lin Jiangye needed to hear.
He waved a hand. All the kids who’d been letting Yan Keke smother them with kisses immediately abandoned her and obediently came to him.
“Go. Find anything that feels wrong. Or anywhere that smells rotten.”
Then he raised a hand to call Diamond over.
“Bring the crow boss. I need the crows’ help.”
They were going to use the crows’ sensitivity to death to see if they could detect more bodies on the island.
Lin Jiangye glanced at the info in his hand. Judging by the decay level of the first two bodies, anyone who died within the past six months wouldn’t be fully skeletonized.
That meant if those missing people were dead here, nearly ten bodies might still be in the rotting stage.
Perfect timing—crows were extremely sensitive to that kind of odor. With them, they should be able to locate the spots.
And if some bodies were hidden behind sturdier structures, that was fine too. Once his kids broke certain barriers, the scent would leak out.
Diamond nuzzled Lin Jiangye’s cheek, then flew straight toward the shore.
Lin Jiangye unclipped every leash and let all the kids roam freely.
“Are there other officers on the island? Did you tell them big carnivores are coming up?” Lin Jiangye didn’t want some unlucky cop getting startled and reacting badly.
Ai Rong made another OK sign. “Relax. All our people.”
Sure enough, as Lin Jiangye searched elsewhere, he saw Qi Gaoyang and the others.
They clearly wanted to pet the animals—the desire was written all over their faces—but since the kids were officially “on duty,” they stood still and behaved, not daring to mess around.
Soon the crows arrived too.
Lin Jiangye explained what he needed. When the crow boss heard it was just “sniff around,” it sounded dissatisfied.
[That’s it? Just this little request?]
Every crow in Yue City knew: the more demanding the job, the bigger the merit. The bigger the merit, the better the reward they could negotiate.
Crows weren’t easy to fool anymore. They knew that “shiny things” had tiers.
They’d helped ordinary police stations before, but those humans asked for little, so the rewards were mostly food or random items. Even when “shiny” was offered, it was usually tiny and man-made.
But for serious jobs, the district bureau would call them in.
And the bureau where Lin Jiangye worked—those humans were ridiculously generous. That tall human would give them natural, high-grade shinies—rumor said even diamonds.
Lin Jiangye rubbed the crow boss’s head and explained patiently.
“The request is simple because you might not even be able to find any hidden bodies, and honestly, we don’t know what’s on this island either. But if you do find bodies, or weapons, or evidence—anything important—I’ll give rewards based on how valuable what you found is.”
In other words: the reward depended on what they dug up.
Yan Keke chimed in, “Captain Shang will also contribute to the reward this time.”
Shang Fuyan had wanted to catch this man for a long time—he’d just never had the chance. Now they’d found bodies on Zhang Weian’s island, including his parents-in-law—this finally gave them the excuse to investigate thoroughly.
If he didn’t get to the bottom of why over ten people had gone missing, he didn’t deserve his position.
The crow boss didn’t fully understand—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he understood the reward would be very bright, very good “shinies.”
[Go! Make money and buy shinies!]
With a single command from the crow boss, over a hundred crows spread out across the island.
And honestly—Shang Fuyan’s plan was correct.
Animals’ sense of smell was far stronger than humans’. Canines were excellent trackers. Felines could pick up a wider range of scents. And crows were uniquely sensitive to rot and death.
After less than half an hour of searching, the first suspicious spot was found.
It was on the far side of the flower sea—a stretch of beach covered in fine white sand.
“Does it look like there’s something here?”
Tian Shu was digging furiously at one spot. The Amur tiger’s paws were huge; in no time, he’d clawed through the white sand and reached the black mud underneath.
But it still wasn’t fast enough. Ai Rong and Yan Keke joined in. Before long, they’d dug down over a meter beneath the beach.
Buried there was a metal box—large, about a meter long, half a meter wide, and roughly forty centimeters high.
Once the humans had found it, Tian Shu sprang back up to the surface in a single leap.
Yan Keke and Ai Rong planned to haul the box up first, but the moment their hands touched it, both of them felt something was off.
It was slick. Sticky. And when they leaned closer, they caught a faint, intermittent stench.
They knew that smell. It was the rot that comes from a body left too long—almost identical to what they’d smelled yesterday, only lighter.
The odor was coming from inside the metal box.
With the smell and the texture combined, they suspected decomposition fluid had seeped out.
Thankfully, they’d put on gloves early. Otherwise, that single touch would’ve been enough to ruin their hands.
“Careful—there’s probably decomposition fluid inside.”
They warned their colleagues above, then lifted the metal box up together.
The instant they raised it, Ai Rong and Yan Keke exchanged a look. The box wasn’t just heavy—there really seemed to be liquid sloshing inside. It shifted when they moved it.
When the box was carried onto the beach, Tian Shu—who’d been standing near Lin Jiangye—instinctively backed away several steps.
“Ao ao ao!” [So stinky, so stinky, so stinky!]
It wasn’t just him. Even Bixi and the other crows that had flown over to watch all spread their wings and retreated in unison.
Lin Jiangye’s nose wasn’t as sharp as the animals’, but it was far sharper than most humans’. While others could only sense a vague stink, he immediately put on a gas mask—and told Tian Shu to stay farther away.
Seeing how seriously he was taking it, Ai Rong’s expression hardened. She first ordered everyone nearby to back off, then put on a gas mask herself, grabbed a hammer, and smashed the lock open.
The moment she lifted the lid, a dense wave of rot surged outward and swallowed the area.
“Ugh—ugh!!!”
A few people who’d been thinking Lin Jiangye was overreacting dropped to their knees on the spot, gagging from the smell.
“Back up! Put on masks!” Yan Keke dragged her colleagues farther away.
That fluid was toxic. The vapor carried toxins too—anyone without a gas mask was absolutely not allowed near it.
Tian Shu had already been five meters behind Lin Jiangye; now he quietly retreated again, stopping only when he was more than ten meters away, then started gulping air.
He couldn’t take it—he was going to suffocate.
Lin Jiangye leaned in to look.
Inside the not-too-big metal box lay six heads, arranged neatly—each one half-rotted.
And besides the heads, the box was half-filled with a thick, unidentified viscous liquid.
A preliminary guess: decomposition fluid.
Once everyone had masks and gloves on, they examined it and found that three of the faces were still faintly recognizable.
“They’re on the missing-person list.” Everyone’s hearts sank.
The missing list Shang Fuyan had provided contained sixteen names. Ten of them vanished in Yue City after the island was purchased. The others disappeared on their way home.
There were six heads here. The three that were recognized were among those who vanished in Yue City—so who were the other three?
And where were their bodies? Why keep only the heads here?
They’d found the remains, but the questions only multiplied.
Once they’d identified half the victims, Lin Jiangye quietly withdrew from the crowd and walked off into the distance.
He opened his mask and took a deep breath of fresh air—only to catch the faint corpse-stink clinging to his clothes.
These clothes were done for. Before he left, he’d have to get Jiang Xin to bring him a clean set to change into.
He absolutely refused to bring that smell home.
Not long after, a new report came from the other side: the lynx and the cheetah had found something too.
Lin Jiangye led people over to check and found a guillotine-like chopping blade.
It had been dismantled and dumped among random debris. Normally no one would look twice—maybe not even police would recognize it as a guillotine blade.
“The edge is rusted…” Yan Keke’s mood turned strange as she stared at the mottled blade. She couldn’t stop wondering: did it rust after killing, or was it already rusted before it was used?
She sprayed luminol along the edge—and a broad blue-green glow flared up.
“Good thing the killer left it in a storage room,” Ai Rong said quietly. “If it had been outside, we might not have been able to detect anything.”
No one knew when the blade had been used. If it had been exposed long-term—wind, rain, sun—even blood traces might no longer react.
But either way, it was another find.
Lin Jiangye rubbed the lynx and cheetah’s heads and kissed them lightly.
“My kids are amazing.”
The officers around them praised them too. Without Lin Jiangye and his kids, how could they have found bodies and weapons so quickly?
After that, other kids began pointing out places they felt were “wrong.”
One by one, the police confirmed them—most were murder tools that had been stained with human blood.
Three hours later, Lin Jiangye and the officers stared at the more than ten weapons spread across the ground, all of them silent.
These weren’t ordinary knives. They were hammer heads, axes, hemp rope, narrow boning knives—every kind of tool imaginable.
And among them, many suspected that the narrow boning knife was the weapon used to torture and kill the Yuan couple.
When the sun reached its peak, the crow boss and Bixi flew to Lin Jiangye together.
[Human! We found a place!]
Bixi dove straight into Lin Jiangye’s arms and rubbed his chin gently.
[That house smells bad. We think lots and lots of humans died in there!]
Lots of humans? The primary crime scene?
“Let’s go. Take a look.”
Bixi and the crow boss led them to a guesthouse on the island—one of the locations the dating show had used for filming.
“No way…” Yan Keke’s eye twitched. If that director and those guests knew they’d been filming a romance show in the primary crime scene… it would be absolutely explosive.
But after checking around, they didn’t see anything obviously wrong.
Lin Jiangye looked down at Bixi. Bixi looked at the crow boss. The two crows exchanged a glance.
The crow boss, clearly annoyed, flew to a corner and cawed sharply.
[The smell is coming from here!]
Lin Jiangye crouched where the crow indicated. The wall covering at the base looked slightly lifted.
He put on gloves, pinched the raised edge, and peeled it back—then stripped off the wall covering from that section entirely.
“Caw caw caw!” [The smell is stronger now!]
With the covering removed, Lin Jiangye reached out and felt the wall. It was smooth—like it had been repainted.
He pressed close and sniffed carefully.
A faint scent reached him: diluted blood and rust.
Rust?
His heart sank.
He reached his hand back, about to speak—when something cold dropped into his palm.
He turned. It was a shovel, handed to him by Shang Fuyan.
“When did you get here?” Lin Jiangye glanced at the time. It was exactly noon.
“I just got Zhang Weian locked up at the bureau and came to see if you’d found anything. The moment I got on the island, Yan Zhou told me you’d already found heads and weapons.”
Shang Fuyan looked like he’d rushed over. His hair and clothes weren’t as neat as usual, and there was dark bruising under his eyes—he’d clearly gone all night without sleep.
Lin Jiangye frowned and shoved him aside.
Shang Fuyan froze, panic flickering across his face.
“You… I…”
He thought his messy appearance had disgusted Lin Jiangye and that Lin Jiangye didn’t want him close.
He was about to explain when Lin Jiangye asked, “Do you want to sleep for a bit? There’s probably a lot you’ll need to handle later.”
“…Ah.” Shang Fuyan swallowed everything he’d been about to say. His emotions lurched like a freefall ride.
He inhaled hard, calmed the sudden panic, and shook his head.
“No. I can hold out a while. We can only detain him for twenty-four hours. As long as we get results before this time tomorrow, it’s fine.”
Besides, he was too preoccupied to sleep anyway.
“Alright, then.” Lin Jiangye nodded. “Since you’re here—help me scrape off the outer layer. I suspect the inside was stained with blood.”
The island had been purchased about a year ago, after the plane accident. The “internet-famous” renovation had only been completed a month ago.
And the last missing person had disappeared over two months earlier—after that, no new names were added.
“With enough money, they can finish in a month—half a month even. And it’s far from the mainland; even working at night wouldn’t disturb anyone.”
In other words, Zhang Weian could have renovated the whole island after killing the last victim.
There hadn’t been enough time to erase everything.
“Or he thought renovating once would cover all traces,” Lin Jiangye said, carefully scraping off a patch of wall.
Shang Fuyan nodded.
“Yan Zhou told me the guillotine blade was dismantled. I went to look—the dismantled form really doesn’t look like a weapon at all.”
And the other weapons had been scattered in “appropriate” environments. Without luminol, no one would guess those tools had ever killed.
If the island later became crowded with tourists and those tools got used frequently, even luminol wouldn’t help.
After they scraped a small area, someone shut the lights and doors, then sprayed the reagent on the wall.
In seconds, that familiar blue-green glow appeared.
“As expected…” Ai Rong murmured. “Keep going. Scrape the rest.”
They compared scraped and unscraped areas. Even the unscraped parts showed faint traces.
Once everyone began working, Lin Jiangye moved from wall to wall, pressing close and sniffing carefully.
And then he realized—every wall here carried that same rust-blood scent.
Lin Jiangye fell silent.
This was a guest room. Excluding the bathroom, it was over twenty square meters.
What had the killer done—what kind of scene had happened here—to make every wall smell of blood?
Shang Fuyan leaned in, curious.
“What did you find?”
Even though everyone kept working, their ears were practically standing straight up.
Then they heard Lin Jiangye say something that made the air freeze:
“All these walls… still smell like blood.”
“……”
Everyone stopped and stared at him in disbelief.
But the gravity on his face made it clear: he wasn’t lying.
And that made it even more terrifying.
“A room this big… and it’s all blood?” Yan Keke’s voice caught.
Lin Jiangye pressed his lips together, took a slow breath, and nodded.
“Yes. All of it.”
He hadn’t expected this either. But if they started from that fact—if all sixteen missing people died in this room, and were tortured to death—then everything suddenly made sense.
He lifted his gaze to Shang Fuyan. Shang Fuyan lowered his. Their eyes met for a second, and Shang Fuyan instantly understood what Lin Jiangye was thinking.
Rationally, it was possible.
But—
“It’s horrifying.” Lin Jiangye muttered. “If that’s true, he tortured sixteen people to death… he’s a demon walking among humans.”
A “phoenix man,” a live-in husband, swallowing a family’s fortune—none of that was rare. People gaining power and taking revenge on those who looked down on them—fiction and reality were full of it.
But cases where someone’s mind twisted to this extent after “marrying up”… were extremely rare.
“If that’s the case, we need to investigate his hometown,” Shang Fuyan said. “I think I underestimated Zhang Weian.”
Lin Jiangye understood: if Zhang Weian had always been antisocial and only hid it before he had power, then what about when he was young—before he learned to hide?
Had something monstrous already happened back then?
Shang Fuyan clicked his tongue and rubbed his brow. The case was getting uglier by the minute.
But to buy time, he left the island immediately, heading toward Zhang Weian’s hometown.
Back on the island, once everyone understood that every wall had blood traces, they worked even more carefully.
This time they weren’t just proving blood existed—they needed to extract it for testing.
So luminol couldn’t be used. They switched to a new domestic “Blue Shadow” reagent, which revealed blood without destroying DNA.
Soon everything was ready.
They sprayed the entire room—including the ceiling.
A little while later, the room lit up with blue blood traces everywhere.
Just as Lin Jiangye had suspected—floor, walls, ceiling—everything bore spatter patterns.
Facing those dense blue stains, Yan Zhou and the others felt as if they were being wrapped in blood. Even their noses seemed filled with rust and iron.
“Ugh—” Someone turned pale from imagined scenes and fled the room, covering his mouth.
Ai Rong and Yan Zhou looked grim. To them, these traces felt like a hard slap across the face.
More than ten people had been killed… and they’d discovered nothing.
Well—not nothing. At least Captain Shang had been watching Zhang Weian in secret.
“But… can one person really kill that many people, repeatedly, without leaving even a thread?” Yan Zhou murmured. He couldn’t believe it.
He wasn’t boasting—Captain Shang was meticulous. If Shang had watched him this long and still couldn’t find hard evidence, then Zhang Weian would have to be a criminal genius for it to make sense.
Unless—
“Unless he had an accomplice,” Ai Rong said. “Someone close to him. Someone who met him often without raising suspicion. Someone who helped cover his tracks.”
Yan Keke listened quietly, but her gaze stayed on Lin Jiangye.
Lin Jiangye hadn’t spoken. His dark eyes were fixed on the blood stains, as if he were reconstructing something.
Yan Keke walked over and stared at him for a while, then looked where he was looking.
Finally she couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“Consultant Lin… what are you looking at?”
“You’ve been staring so long you could burn a hole through the wall.”
Lin Jiangye pinched his chin, hesitated, then said, “I’m reconstructing the blood-spatter scene.”
“Huh???”
Several people jumped. Then they crowded in.
“You can tell from this?”
Lin Jiangye pointed at the uneven density of the marks.
“I don’t really understand how your reagent works, but to get blood all over an entire wall like this—and to form those star-like fine endpoints—it means the victim was pinned against the wall while being killed.”
Everyone went silent again, staring at him.
But that was only the appetizer.
Next, Lin Jiangye calmly explained several possible killing methods that could produce this kind of wall-wide spray.
And the way everyone looked at him became… deeply complicated.
“Consultant Lin… you…” Something’s off about you…
Lin Jiangye met their stares without the slightest guilt.
Just tell me whether I’m right.
The others exchanged glances, swallowed their doubts, and began seriously considering the killing process he described.
To be honest, once you assumed Zhang Weian tortured his victims, those methods really could explain the patterns.
Lin Jiangye gave the room one more look. As he stepped outside, he received new updates from the other crows.
[We found a body!]
“Found a body!” Lin Jiangye shouted. Yan Zhou and Qi Gaoyang charged out immediately.
“Where? Where?!”
The crows led them to the island’s famous “couples’ holy site”—a small chapel hidden in the woods, surrounded by flowers.
Lin Jiangye felt like he’d never be able to look at a flower sea the same way again. Now whenever he saw flowers, his first thought was what might be buried underneath.
But this time, the hiding place wasn’t in the flowers.
It was inside the chapel.
“What?!” Lin Jiangye stopped short, almost thinking he’d heard wrong.
[Underneath!]
Lin Jiangye jumped back so fast he nearly stumbled.
“No—what do you mean ‘underneath’? Say it clearly!”
He was starting to suspect the crows were learning bad habits—always speaking in half-sentences like frogs, hopping after a poke.
One crow landed on his shoulder and rattled off what happened.
They hadn’t detected a body at first.
But earlier, the Amur tiger and Asian lion had come through. The two started roughhousing—and Tian Shu slapped the floor so hard he cracked it.
[Then we smelled it!]
The cracked spot was near a statue. Lin Jiangye stepped closer and, sure enough, caught the faintest whiff.
He pointed to the floor. The officers put on masks and began digging.
Like the bodies buried beneath the flower sea, they dug nearly two meters before they reached it.
Six headless bodies, arranged in a six-pointed star.
It looked grotesque.
Lin Jiangye suddenly felt Zhang Weian wasn’t just antisocial and brutal.
That man was sick in the head.
Beheadings. Bodies pressed under a deity statue.
Was he running some kind of cult ritual?
Not only Lin Jiangye—Yan Zhou and Qi Gaoyang had the same thought.
Then they found the remaining bodies—this time buried outside the chapel, still headless.
An hour later, they found ten severed heads.
They were sealed in two metal boxes, placed at two locations, forming a southwest–north alignment with the first box.
When everything was laid out together—bodies, heads, weapons—the weight in everyone’s heart sank into something cold and heavy.
All sixteen missing persons—sixteen bodies—had been accounted for, every last one matched.
