Chapter 77: New Year’s Eve—Off to See Tiger Mom!
“I’ve noticed you seem to enjoy hanging people up. Why? Is it because you want to treat them like livestock—hang them and bleed them out?”
“And you really like hammers, don’t you? Do you think the sound of a hammer hitting bone—bone cracking—is especially crisp? Or does it just feel good in your hand?”
“I checked the blood patterns on the ceiling. That doesn’t look like spray from a beheading. Did you use that hemp rope to bind their hands and feet behind their back, hoist them under the ceiling, and then smash the victim’s head with a golf club? That would indeed splatter blood onto the ceiling.”
As Lin Jiangye calmly laid out one possible killing method after another, he placed corresponding photos—of the victims’ bodies, the suspected weapons, and the blood evidence—right in front of Zhang Weian.
His voice was steady. His tone was unnervingly even, as if none of these brutal deaths shocked him, or angered him at all.
Inside the room, it was only him and Zhang Weian. Outside, everyone—Shang Fuyan included—was already stunned. A chill ran down their spines.
“Director Zhou… he…” The head of the Economic Investigation unit couldn’t hold back anymore. He started to speak, but Director Zhou raised a hand to stop him.
“Lin Jiangye is our partner now. Whatever his past may be—as long as he hasn’t broken the law in China, the past stays in the past.”
But what if he’s a born killer too? What if he’s killed many people before?
The Econ-Invest captain’s fear wasn’t baseless, but Director Zhou trusted the capital’s assessment more.
They must have investigated that small country already. If Lin Jiangye was still standing here, then it meant his past wasn’t something they needed to pursue.
Inside, Lin Jiangye kept talking. When he finished describing the likely ways those sixteen victims had been killed, he looked up at Zhang Weian.
“Am I right?”
Zhang Weian stared at the photos in silence. After a long moment, his body began to shake.
Shang Fuyan’s nerves snapped tight—half expecting the man to lunge.
“HAHAHAHAHAHA!” Zhang Weian suddenly burst into loud laughter. The more he laughed, the more deranged he became—until he grabbed the photos and planted several wet kisses on them.
It wasn’t just disgusting to everyone else. Lin Jiangye’s face twisted with pure disdain.
“You understand me so well…”
That line instantly made Lin Jiangye’s fist clench.
Shang Fuyan pressed a hand to the young man’s shoulder and whispered urgently, “Calm down, calm down, calm down! There are cameras in here!”
Alright. Understood.
Lin Jiangye took a deep breath, his finger joints cracking as he squeezed them, but Zhang Weian didn’t seem to care at all.
“You really understand me,” Zhang Weian said, eyes lifting, eerie and hollow. “Have you done it before? Otherwise how could you know so clearly?”
Director Zhou had been watching him the whole time. The moment she saw this, she immediately had someone check all of Zhang Weian’s medical records.
She suspected dissociative identity disorder.
Lin Jiangye snorted, folded his arms, lifted his chin slightly, and stared down at him with contempt.
“I’ve met plenty of freaks before. Compared to them, your methods are crude.”
In the Abyss, “humans” were a limited resource. For those monsters, even torture wasn’t done this bluntly—because once you broke the toy, finding the next one wasn’t easy.
So even when they “played,” they stretched out the toy’s usable life as long as possible.
“Then tell me…” Zhang Weian’s breathing sped up. His pupils dilated; his ears flushed red. “What method is best?”
Lin Jiangye watched him for a moment, then smiled.
“So you’re admitting the victims were killed by you.”
Zhang Weian didn’t answer—only smiled wider and wider. After a long while, he finally said softly:
“If you won’t tell me, I won’t tell you.”
Outside, brows tightened. No one expected this lunatic to still have a shred of restraint.
Lin Jiangye didn’t panic at all.
“If you won’t tell me, I won’t tell you either.”
He leaned back and quietly studied Zhang Weian’s reaction.
Zhang Weian held out too. The two of them just stared at each other.
Nearly half an hour passed. The people outside were starting to think the interrogation had failed—
—when Shang Fuyan suddenly lifted his hand and scraped a fingernail hard across the metal tabletop.
That screeching sound stabbed straight into both their ears.
Lin Jiangye only frowned slightly.
But Zhang Weian reacted like he’d been struck—clutching his head and screaming in agony.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!”
Lin Jiangye shot Shang Fuyan a confused look.
Shang Fuyan didn’t explain. He only raised an eyebrow and flicked his gaze toward the interrogation-room door—I’ll explain outside.
Fine.
They watched like spectators as Zhang Weian screamed for a while. When he finally calmed down, his forehead was slick with cold sweat.
“You did that on purpose!” Zhang Weian glared at Shang Fuyan—eyes vicious enough to want to chop him into eighteen pieces.
“Did I?” Shang Fuyan said coolly. “I just scratched the table by accident. I didn’t touch you.”
It was blatant shamelessness. But Zhang Weian couldn’t do anything about it.
Not that he had no way to retaliate.
His gaze slid over Shang Fuyan with malice. Then he snorted, slammed forward onto the table with a dull thud, and lay there—half like he’d fainted, half like he’d fallen asleep.
After a long moment, he slowly pushed himself upright again, looking utterly drained.
“What did you do to him?” This Zhang Weian looked “normal” again—exactly like the one they’d seen before.
Lin Jiangye and Shang Fuyan exchanged a glance. By now, they could pretty much confirm it: dissociative identity disorder.
“I’m curious,” Lin Jiangye said. “Are you the main personality, or the alter?”
Zhang Weian’s body trembled. He knew his secret had been exposed—and that the other personality had probably revealed plenty.
So he refused to answer, only kept his head down.
“The personality just now already admitted the murders. Sixteen lives. Even if you’re mentally ill, you’re not dodging the death penalty,” Shang Fuyan pressed on. “But I’m curious—who helped you?”
During the time those sixteen people vanished, Zhang Weian had airtight alibis.
But he pursued alibis too hard—so hard that it only convinced the police he had something to hide.
The moment “death penalty” was mentioned, fury flashed across Zhang Weian’s face.
“Why should I die?”
“Why is it fine when they bully me—but I can’t retaliate?”
His furious, absurd accusation echoed through the room.
Shang Fuyan leaned forward slightly.
“Who told you the only form of retaliation is murder?”
Retaliation was one thing. As long as you didn’t break the law, the police couldn’t touch you.
But this was sixteen dead people. Sixteen.
This wasn’t about revenge anymore.
Zhang Weian turned his head away, lips pressed tight, resisting their scrutiny.
“If you won’t talk about that,” Lin Jiangye cut in suddenly, “then let’s talk about the killing methods.”
Zhang Weian’s pupils shrank sharply. He barely got out the first syllable of “Don—” when his expression rapidly shifted—
—but Lin Jiangye wasn’t actually trying to coax the second personality out to “discuss” anything. The instant the switch began, Shang Fuyan casually dragged his nail across the table again.
That shriek tortured the second personality. It tried to switch away—
—but Lin Jiangye and Shang Fuyan now held the “switch” like a remote: click on, click off, on, off—until Zhang Weian was in such pain he could barely breathe.
“N-no… don’t…”
His mind collapsed. He wilted completely.
“I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything—just stop torturing me like this.”
The rapid switching left him so dazed it looked like he’d pass out any second.
But Shang Fuyan didn’t rush to take a statement.
“Take him back to rest. We’ll interrogate again tonight.”
If Zhang Weian later claimed in court that he’d confessed while mentally unstable, it would create trouble.
Shang Fuyan wasn’t giving him that opening.
“Let me talk! Please—let me talk!” Zhang Weian begged wildly this time.
No one softened. They dragged him out anyway.
Only after Zhang Weian’s voice faded did Lin Jiangye step out with Shang Fuyan.
“Didn’t expect him to actually have multiple personalities.”
He’d only been testing the man’s “level of perversion.” He hadn’t expected to yank out a second personality on the first try.
An unexpected bonus, really.
“What now?” Lin Jiangye asked, looking from Shang Fuyan to Director Zhou.
Both of them smiled and shook their heads.
“Nothing. Rest. Tonight, when we interrogate again, he’ll spill everything.”
He’d already been broken by the two of them. Next time, he’d talk.
Even if the alter looked vicious and ruthless, personalities like that were often fragile—push them a bit and they folded.
“Besides,” Shang Fuyan sneered, “he knows it himself. Once sixteen bodies have been dug up, he’s got no way out.”
“I’ll order afternoon tea,” Director Zhou said. “You’ve both worked hard these past two days.”
Cheers erupted immediately. Everyone knew Director Zhou was generous.
Lin Jiangye scanned the wildly varied orders and, after thinking, picked a milk tea for himself.
Then he sat beside Shang Fuyan and nudged him lightly with his shoulder.
“Do you have any time off coming up?”
Shang Fuyan’s heart jumped. He seriously ran through his remaining annual leave.
“What’s up?”
Lin Jiangye rubbed the tip of his nose, chuckled, and told him about the dream he’d had that morning.
When Shang Fuyan heard about the corpses in the dream, his brows knotted hard—he wondered if Lin Jiangye had been shaken by what they’d seen.
Corpses weren’t all the same. The island scene could break even veteran detectives.
In that moment, Shang Fuyan’s brain short-circuited completely, forgetting the things Lin Jiangye had said to bait out the alter earlier—words no normal person could casually say.
But then he heard the dream’s biggest twist: a tiger paw smashing the corpse flat, then countless little paws tearing it apart—
—and his expression eased instantly.
He didn’t have to think long to understand what Lin Jiangye was really asking.
“You miss Tiger Mom.”
Not a question. A statement.
Lin Jiangye’s face lit up with a bright, almost childlike smile. He leaned closer, clear eyes reflecting only Shang Fuyan.
“So? Do you have time to come with me?”
This time, Lin Jiangye didn’t plan to bring Bixi and the others. But he might take Yuheng, Kaiyang, and Tianxuan and Tianji.
They couldn’t be released into the wild—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t visit it.
Yuheng and Kaiyang were adult North American gray wolves. On Taibai Mountain, aside from Tiger Mom, they’d have almost no rivals. As long as they stayed within Tiger Mom’s territory, nothing would happen.
As for the lynx and the cheetah—those two were a bit smaller than the wolves. He’d keep them near him.
Of course, all of this depended on whether the local Forestry Bureau would approve him taking the animals out.
Shang Fuyan was tempted, but… he couldn’t be sure.
“I’m not sure. It’s close to New Year—petty theft goes up, and sometimes we’re short-staffed, so we get pulled in.”
Right—New Year was coming.
Lin Jiangye started weighing it: go before New Year, or after?
In the end, he decided: before—and he’d go alone if needed.
He’d spent New Year’s Eve with the animals at home. Then he should spend Lunar New Year’s Eve with Tiger Mom.
It wasn’t that animals understood the meaning of New Year’s Eve. They didn’t.
But he did.
“I’m going to spend Lunar New Year’s Eve with Tiger Mom.”
A reunion night should be spent with family.
Decision made. If Shang Fuyan ended up coming later, Lin Jiangye would just buy another ticket.
“All right…” Shang Fuyan lowered his eyes, quietly calculating duty schedules.
If he left early on New Year’s Eve morning… he might still make it back in time for a reunion dinner.
He didn’t say it, but his mood visibly lifted. Even with a blank expression, Director Zhou only had to glance at his eyes to ask:
“What’s got you so happy?”
Shang Fuyan turned away, and under her stare, he still couldn’t help smiling.
“Nothing.”
Director Zhou looked at him like he’d grown a second head. Maybe check the smile on your face before you talk?
She shook her head, shot him a disgusted look, and walked off.
That night, when they interrogated Zhang Weian again, he was far more obedient. Ask a question, get an answer.
He tried to lie and cover parts up a few times, but Shang Fuyan caught him every time.
The sixteen victims really had been killed by him—more precisely, by the alter. The main personality had personally killed only two people: his father-in-law and mother-in-law.
But that didn’t matter.
No matter how many personalities he had, legally he was still one natural person.
Those sixteen people—his in-laws included—didn’t even have deep hatred against him. The alter was simply cruel to the core, convinced only torture could vent the rage inside.
“I tried to stop him…” Zhang Weian put on a harmless face. “But he wouldn’t listen.”
Shang Fuyan dropped a stack of files onto the table.
“You think you’re innocent? Then what about the people you killed when you were a kid—were they not innocent?”
That one sentence shocked everyone inside and outside the interrogation room.
When he was a kid?
Yes.
According to what Shang Fuyan had dug up in Zhang Weian’s hometown, he’d shown abnormal tendencies from childhood.
Not only animal torture—he’d deliberately shoved other children into ponds, or “accidentally” bumped them at crosswalks…
But he was young. No one believed it was intentional. It wasn’t until middle school that people began to realize something was wrong.
Even then, when teachers warned his parents, the family didn’t care.
In the elders’ words: Zhang Weian was the only male heir for four generations. As long as he wasn’t literally committing arson or murder, what did it matter?
So Zhang Weian escalated—more and more.
But in high school he learned how to hide it. Then college took him to a new place, and the old rumors gradually faded.
As for his fear of the sound of fingernails scraping metal—that came from after middle school graduation, when some victims had retaliated against him using that very sound as “practice.”
That incident made him more gloomy and cautious than ever.
Zhang Weian clamped his mouth shut, refusing to speak.
But Shang Fuyan wasn’t finished.
Even if Zhang Weian admitted murder—who had helped abduct the victims? And who had arranged the bodies in those ritual-like formations?
“It… it was them.”
“Who?” Shang Fuyan sat straighter. Outside the room, ears rose instinctively.
“The people from the church…”
A church? Which church—Holy Spirit Church?
Meanwhile, a group of blond, blue-eyed foreigners received the news and began packing for the airport.
“Zhang’s been arrested. He’ll expose us—leave now!”
“But where can we go?” They were wanted abroad too. That was why they’d used Zhang Weian’s influence to enter China in the first place.
They’d finally gained a foothold here—if they moved again, everything they’d built would be wasted.
After a moment of thought, one of them decided on the northwest.
“Go there. We have a believer there. He’ll shelter us.”
And by sheer coincidence, several international officers also arrived at Yue City Airport.
They’d received intelligence: Holy Spirit Church members—tracked for a long time—were hiding in China.
They’d applied to cooperate with Chinese police for ages, and only now had it been approved.
The moment they got off the plane, they rushed straight to Yue City’s police headquarters. When they learned Director Zhou was currently at a district branch, they hurried over to Wen’an District.
But as soon as they arrived, they were told that Director Zhou—along with officers from the two district branches—had already gone out to track down members of the Holy Spirit Cult.
“What?!” They were a step too late again? No—wait. Does that mean China has already got a lock on those criminals’ whereabouts?
In response, the officers at the branch all wore the same knowing smile, leaving the international officers completely baffled.
“In Yue City, if we want to find someone, there’s no such thing as ‘can’t find’.” Unless the person has already left Yue City.
And if they want to leave Yue City, they’d have to slip past the cordon first.
Huh? What were they even talking about? The newcomers understood less and less, so they asked bluntly where they could go to find Director Zhou.
“We don’t have Director Zhou’s number either. How about this—I’ll contact Captain Shang for you. He’s our Criminal Investigation unit captain, and he’s on the operation with Director Zhou.”
The international officers hadn’t expected something like this to happen the second they landed, so of course they hadn’t even prepared a local number for domestic calls.
Once the branch managed to reach Captain Shang—and then, through him, Director Zhou—her voice on the line was downright scornful.
“International police? Hah. You come early, you come late—of course you show up exactly when we’ve already caught them?”
Isn’t that just here to claim the credit?!
“Wait—caught them? Already? That fast?!” The branch officers were stunned. They’d assumed the suspects wouldn’t get away, sure—but they never imagined they’d be caught within half an hour.
On the other end, Director Zhou sounded delighted.
“Well, obviously. Advisor Lin is right here with us.”
For some reason, the crows were acting like they’d been injected with adrenaline—one after another, fired up out of their minds. A massive black wave surged in, blotting out the sky. Not long after, the crow boss came over and reported they’d found the targets.
“Oh, and tell the cafeteria they can start working,” Director Zhou added.
That line might sound random to outsiders, but every district branch in Yue City knew exactly what it meant.
The “kids” helped out. Reward details aside, you at least had to prepare a proper meal to thank them, didn’t you?
“Got it! I’ll tell them right now!” The cafeteria uncles and aunties were old pros at this. Who ate what, what suited which “kid”—they could turn it into an art form. Every dish came out refined, nutritious, and tailored.
No wonder—after being fed by the police cafeteria, those crows had gotten even sleeker and shinier.
The branch gave the international officers an address. When they arrived, they saw several faces straight off the wanted posters—cult members—pinned hard to the ground by two wolves.
Most locals, at first glance, would’ve taken them for big wolf-dogs. But to these officers from North America, the sight hit differently.
Those were beasts that could go toe-to-toe with bears. How were they here?
More importantly… why were they so obedient?
