Chapter 154: Cold Heart

The air conditioning in the forensic office was cold, but Jin Haoguang's heart was colder.

He stood nervously against the wall like a schoolboy who had misbehaved, while Li Cheng stood across from him, holding a Glock pistol, frowning as he examined the female corpse on the autopsy table.

From her appearance, the female corpse was undoubtedly Jiang Shaoxi, the wife of Jiang Wanyong, who had vanished mysteriously a week earlier; the clothing she wore matched the photos in her phone album.

Li Cheng suddenly asked: "Did the person who delivered the body mention Jiang Shaoxi's time of death, cause of death, or location of death?"

Jin Haoguang's heart jolted; he answered instinctively: "Yes, they said the time of death was one day ago, the cause was an overdose of sleeping pills, and the location was an abandoned apartment in Gangnam District, Seoul—where Ms. Jiang had lived when she first got married."

Jin Haoguang recited a string of addresses; Jiang Wanyong's phone album indeed contained photos of the young couple living in a small, shabby house, poor but happy, shortly after their first daughter was born.

Li Cheng observed the dried vomit residue at the corpse's lips, lost in thought.

Sleeping pills contain emetine and other emetic agents during production; small amounts are harmless, but a single large ingestion triggers violent vomiting.

Those attempting suicide by swallowing sleeping pills often vomit while half-asleep, then choke on their own vomit and suffocate—the entire process is far from peaceful or painless, let alone dignified.

Li Cheng reached out and pinched the corpse's arm; the texture was rigid, but not the rigidity of rigor mortis.

He raised an eyebrow, and before Jin Haoguang could react in shock, he casually grabbed a dissection scalpel and sliced downward along the midline beneath the corpse's jaw.

The scalpel was razor-sharp, cleanly cutting through clothing, skin, pleura, and diaphragm, exposing the thoracic and abdominal cavities.

Clatter.

Jin Haoguang turned deathly pale, stumbled back two steps, and in his panic, swept his hand across the table, sending paper and pens crashing to the floor.

The organs—every single organ inside Jiang Shaoxi's thoracic and abdominal cavities—had vanished entirely.

"Don't panic. This isn't a person. It's just a human model."

Li Cheng reached into the model's abdominal cavity and pressed; it felt like silicone. The eyeballs were special glass prosthetics, the bones were fiberglass and carbon fiber, the hair was a high-end wig glued on.

Such hyper-realistic, top-tier human models cost at least tens of thousands of dollars to produce; only a handful of studios worldwide—including Hollywood special effects teams—could make them.

But the question is: was this necessary?

Jiang Wanyong and his wife were ordinary people who moved from a small town to the big city; they had no extraordinary wealth or background, and never provoked anyone they shouldn't have.

Why would the mastermind behind Jiang Shaoxi's disappearance spend so much money and effort to create a human model as a decoy corpse, just to mislead people?

Wouldn't it be simpler to just let Jiang Shaoxi remain missing?

South Korea is a nation of missing persons; annually, over fifty thousand adult disappearances are officially reported. On average, five bodies of missing people are recovered every day across the country.

Jiang Shaoxi was just one among them—why go through the extra trouble of staging a suicide scene, increasing the risk for no reason?

【Stage One Task Objective Completed】

【Stage Two Task Objective: Find Jiang Shaoxi】

【Task Time Limit: 2 Hours】

【Task Reward: 100 Experience Points】

【Task Failure Penalty: Stuck in the Script World】

Li Cheng heard the system announcement sound at the right moment, stowed the human model into his backpack slot, then suddenly turned to Jin Haoguang: "Director Jin, are you afraid of the cold?"

Jin Haoguang's face grew even paler; he stammered: "P-please don't kill me, I have a family, and I only know Song Canhui and his people—I never did anything wrong with them."

Li Cheng ignored his rambling, delivered a sharp chop to the side of his forehead, knocking him unconscious, then took his phone and car keys, bound his wrists behind his back with plastic zip ties, and dumped him into a refrigerated corpse storage compartment near freezing, shutting the door.

To prevent Jin Haoguang from waking up mid-process and screaming for help, Li Cheng stuffed a towel into his mouth—some movies and TV shows show kidnappers using rags to gag hostages, but that won't work; hostages can easily spit them out.

The towel must be balled up tightly and packed fully into the hostage's mouth; with limited jaw opening, the mouth cannot generate enough force to expel it.

At the same time, the towel's softness and position relative to the tongue must be balanced to avoid choking the hostage or pressing the root of the tongue and triggering vomiting.

The principle is essentially the same as not putting a lightbulb in your mouth.

Li Cheng left the morgue, went to the surface parking lot, got into Jin Haoguang's sedan, and drove into the bustling city.

——————

Gangnam District, Seoul's most important and prosperous commercial zone.

Beneath white ceiling lights in a basement, rows of long tables lined up; men and women wearing only underwear and breathing masks sat behind them, processing and packaging white powder like workers on an assembly line.

Although South Korea has always boasted itself a "drug-free nation" and a "clean drug country," that's just a slogan.

Post-WWII U. S. military bases in Korea spawned the illicit industries of vice, gambling, and drugs; Korea's own rapid economic growth and oppressive, hyper-competitive social atmosphere further ignited the market.

As a result, every sewage treatment plant across the country detects banned substances including methamphetamine and ketamine.

Beneath the calm surface, evil grows silently.

Song Canhui, a middle-aged man who once served as Chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Department, surveyed the underground factory like a boss, then suddenly pointed at a Southeast Asian woman and ordered: "You. Come with me."

The Southeast Asian woman trembled violently, stood stiffly, and followed Song Canhui toward a hidden room at the end of the underground factory.

South Korea has a large population of foreign laborers, most of whom are forced into so-called "3D" jobs—dirty, difficult, dangerous—that Koreans refuse to do. Because Korean policy requires foreign workers to obtain employer approval to change jobs, they are perpetually at a disadvantage, routinely exploited, discriminated against, and abused.

The hidden room's furnishings were simple: a bed, and a rudimentary bathroom separated by a glass partition.

"Go take a shower."

Song Canhui's tone left no room for refusal; he shoved the Southeast Asian woman into the bathroom.

The odor from the drug production line was foul; requiring employees to wear only underwear was not only to prevent drug smuggling, but also to make it easier to remove the stench from their bodies.

'Today, I went to the police station.'

While waiting for the woman to rinse off, Song Canhui stared at the ceiling bulb, his eyes slightly glazed, recalling his youth over twenty years ago when he had just graduated from Seoul Police Academy.

Back then, he was full of ambition, dreaming of fame, glory, and upholding justice—but reality slapped him hard.

All his colleagues tacitly accepted coercing confessions from suspects without connections; senior officers colluded with wealthy businessmen and powerful elites. Petty, sycophantic men rose rapidly, while his principled police mentor was constantly sidelined and oppressed, eventually dying on the front lines of crime fighting, and even after death, his family received no proper support or compensation.

After witnessing all this, the idealistic Song Canhui had already died; slowly, he blended into the darkness, slowly, he sank into corruption.

He stepped down from his position as police chief, was hired by a business associate, and now managed this underground drug factory. Everything felt so natural.

Snap.

The light suddenly went out; the room plunged into darkness.

Song Canhui froze, leapt up from beside the bed, and rushed to the door, peering out.

To prevent accidents, the drug lab had specifically purchased a backup diesel generator capable of seamless power supply.

The lights outside also went out.

The male and female employees, clad only in underclothes, had no idea what was happening. A dozen or so factory security guards each held a flashlight in one hand for illumination and a cleaver or baseball bat in the other, ordering everyone to stay quiet.

At the entrance at the far end of the factory was a flight of stairs leading upward to a heavy blast-resistant iron door, beyond which there should still be several more guards. Their job was to let no one in or out.

In the suffocating dead silence, fresh blood seeped in from beneath the blast-resistant iron door, spreading continuously down the descending stairs, quickly pooling into a puddle of blood.

Creak— ya—

The blast-resistant iron door slowly opened. Due to the blind spot, all they could see at the top of the stairs was a pair of police boots.