Chapter 365: Devoted Little Fangirl

When Li Yunfei lifted the bag of ice cream, he felt a pang of sympathy.

He originally intended to buy some ice cream for Xu Mo and the big guys at the Police Station to cool off, and to let Xu Mo rest a bit, not to push himself so hard.

Before buying, he specifically asked the clerk if there were slightly more expensive ice creams; after all, Xu Mo was the guest, so he had to buy the pricier ones for him, otherwise it would be improper.

The clerk pointed to this brand of ice cream, and when it came time to pay, Li Yunfei was stunned—he never expected that the bag would be that expensive!

But the clerk was a rather pretty girl, so he felt embarrassed to put it back and could only grit his teeth and pay…

After taking the ice creams out of the bag and giving one each to Xu Mo and Zhang Sitong, Zhang Yunfei didn't forget to pat Xu Mo's shoulder and say, "Take a break, don't push yourself so hard."

"Thanks," Xu Mo said as he took the ice cream, then picked up the portrait he had already drawn from the table: "It's finished; go try matching this portrait in the Facial Database to see if anyone looks the same."

"Finished?" Zhang Yunfei was initially stunned, then took the portrait from Xu Mo's hand and examined it for a while.

"You rest first; I'll take it to compare," he said, then hurried away with the portrait and a bag of ice cream that hadn't been fully distributed yet.

After Li Yunfei left, Zhang Sitong looked at Xu Mo again, blinking her beautiful big eyes.

"You came to the Police Station to help investigate that buried‑body case?"

"Hmm," Xu Mo nodded.

"What were you just doing? Drawing a face based on the shape of a skull?"

"I draw the skin from the bone, reconstructing the deceased's appearance from the skull. Since the victim's identity hasn't been confirmed yet, I'm trying to see if I can help restore the face."

Xu Mo's words confirmed Zhang Sitong's earlier guess; she had been wondering if Xu Mo was reconstructing the victim's pre‑death appearance from that skull, and it turned out to be exactly that—drawing skin from bone, impressive!

The case occurred at their school, so she naturally knew about it and came to the Police Station to check on the investigation's progress. In the previous days, the officers had no clue about the case, not even the victim's identity, let alone how to investigate.

Because of that, the atmosphere throughout the Police Station had been heavy these past days; without even the victim's identity, how could they investigate? If Xu Mo could truly restore the victim's face, it would be a huge help to the Police Station.

Soon, Li Yunfei returned, excited: "Incredible! The person you drew from the skull could actually be the victim! I checked; the girl you painted is from the neighboring city, disappeared ten years ago at age 20, never found—likely killed. All those details match the victim's situation… If she's from the neighboring city, it explains why we couldn't match her in our city's ten‑year‑old missing persons list; she wasn't from our city at all!"

As he spoke, Li Yunfei placed Xu Mo's portrait next to the photo he had taken with his phone after matching in the Facial Database: "Except for the hairstyle and a mole on the face, everything else is identical! Look!"

Zhang Sitong, standing nearby, looked and saw that Xu Mo's portrait and the girl in the photo were identical except for the hairstyle and the mole; the eyes, nose, mouth, face shape… were exactly the same—it's literally the same person!

She couldn't help but look at Xu Mo beside her, thinking how amazing this was; at that moment, Zhang Sitong had become Xu Mo's devoted little fan.

With just a single skull, he could conjure a face, and the fact that this face matches someone in the Facial Database rather than being a non‑existent record shows Xu Mo wasn't drawing randomly—he got it right!

Moreover, the missing time and age of the person in the portrait match the victim, so the person Xu Mo drew is most likely the corpse found in the Small Forest beside the Public Security University track.

Upon hearing this, the other officers in the station were shocked and gathered around.

"Drawn? Let me see!"

"Whoa, it really can be drawn!"

"Let me see, let me see, is it really the same?"

"……"

The officers who gathered glanced at Xu Mo's portrait and the photo Li Yunfei had taken on his phone, and were momentarily stunned.

Even the station's portrait artist widened his eyes, looking at Xu Mo and then at the portrait he had drawn.

Good fellow… so Xu Mo really wasn't bragging; he truly can reconstruct a victim's face from just a skull!?

Where the hell did he learn that? The portrait artist said he also wants to learn!

"The person in the portrait looks exactly the same as the person in the Facial Database, but if—if I may say—could it be possible that the portrait's subject isn't the victim, but someone whose skull matches the victim's, a twenty‑year‑old girl who disappeared ten years ago, not the victim we're looking for?" Soon a police officer voiced his thought: "If the person Xu Mo drew isn't the victim, then investigating based on this person would lead us nowhere."

At that moment, the portrait artist spoke up.

"It's not that coincidental; two people's skulls can't be identical. When I was at art college I drew countless skulls and never saw identical ones. You're just being argumentative."

As soon as he finished speaking, the other officers nodded.

"Two identical leaves never exist in the world; identical skulls are even more impossible."

"Exactly, where do so many coincidences come from? The victim must be the one Xu Mo drew. If you ask me, we should start our investigation from that person."

Seeing everyone say that, the officer who had spoken earlier scratched his head, a bit embarrassed: "I already said it's a 'what if', I didn't mean anything else…"

……