Chapter 181: Xiao Hei

At four in the morning, the moonlight was diluted into a gauze curtain by the fog, falling on the lush tree canopy.

The Nancheng Zoo was pitch black. Even the nocturnal animals were just opening their glowing eyes, climbing and walking silently, waiting for the noise after dawn. Only the beasts in the Lion and Tiger Mountain were pacing anxiously in their iron cages, as if they had smelled the scent of an intruder.

In the only security room with lights on, the old security guard on the night shift was grinning foolishly, his mobile phone screen rotating through various funny short videos, leaking noisy laughter into his earphones.

A black shadow fell, interrupting the old security guard's rhythm of happily scrolling through videos, giving him a start. When he saw clearly what this black shadow was, he immediately put down his phone...

The sound of police sirens startled the white egrets in the trees, flying toward the brightening sky in the morning mist.

Wu Shanqiu walked off the police car yawning, stretched her waist, and said to Qi Fei, who followed closely behind: "If Xiao Kui were here, we could have hot coffee by now."

Qi Fei missed Zhong Kui even more than Wu Shanqiu, and he knew how to find her—he was the only one who knew the location of the wooden house on Zizai Shan.

However, he couldn't selfishly bring her back just because of his own longing.

He now understood why Zhong Kui would find a place to live in the deep mountains; it was to escape Xi He's entanglement and also to repair her riddled mind.

Liu Tong didn't know when he had stood between Qi Fei and Wu Shanqiu, deliberately unscrewing his thermos and taking a sip of hot tea with enjoyment.

"Oh, Captain Liu," Qi Fei teased, "Rare, appearing at a crime scene so early in the morning."

Liu Tong was smiling as usual: "I am very considerate of you. The last case tired you out enough. Shouldn't I come to support this kind of early morning work?"

"Captain Liu, I remember, during last year's team building, you said you really wanted to come to the zoo to play, and I even said you were childish," Wu Shanqiu ruthlessly exposed him.

"Tsk tsk, as a leader, it's inevitable to be misunderstood. I have a sincere heart for you. Let's go, let's go see what's going on." Liu Tong tightened the lid of the thermos and walked toward the Bai Niao Yuan.

The administrator swiped the access control, and a heat wave mixed with a sour stench rushed toward them.

On the wet bluestone path, water droplets condensed from dew were teetering on the tips of banana leaves.

Under the glass dome, bionic cement branches, artificial waterfalls, macaws, flamingos, peacocks, ravens—colorful birds were disturbed by these sudden strangers and fled in all directions.

In this indoor space, to simulate a tropical environment, the temperature and humidity were much higher than outside. The bird droppings accumulated overnight emitted a sour, fishy stench, making people feel nauseous.

Wu Shanqiu turned her head and saw that Liu Tong had already silently put on a mask. She couldn't help but step forward to tease: "Captain Liu, you're a bit of a Ye Gong Hao Long 【a person who claims to love something but is actually afraid of it】 here, aren't you? Who said they liked the zoo?"

"Go do your work~" Liu Tong pointed through his mask. Only then did they see a corpse lying on its back on the ground full of bird droppings under the bionic wetland boardwalk in the southeast corner of the Bai Niao Guan.

This was a man who looked to be in his early forties, wearing a light gray jacket. His exposed neck and the backs of his hands were covered with bird pecks of varying depths. Several birds similar to vultures stared at these humans who visited at dawn with timid cruelty.

The wallet on the man was still there. Qi Fei, wearing rubber gloves, opened the black leather wallet and took out an ID card, showing the deceased's name was "Chen Hao," and there were several of his business cards.

"'Jitong Aviation Ticketing Company Sales Manager'?" Qi Fei read the title on Chen Hao's business card.

"Aviation ticketing? Isn't that just selling plane tickets?" Wu Shanqiu leaned over and said, "What is he doing here in the middle of the night? The things in this world that need plane tickets the least are birds, right?"

Xiao Tao was elusive; he didn't know when he had already started examining the corpse before them.

Looking at the three people discussing these peck marks, Xiao Tao said: "Stop looking. These bird pecks were all done after the person was completely dead. The edges of the wounds are too clean; there isn't even subcutaneous bleeding. If a living person is pecked by a bird, the skin will contract and bleed, the same principle as being pricked by a needle. This pot can't be thrown to these birds; at most, it counts as damaging a corpse."

Qi Fei looked at the deceased's relaxed face, as if he hadn't struggled at all before death, and couldn't help but ask: "Then what is the cause of death?"

Xiao Tao examined the deceased's eyelids and limbs: "There are no obvious fatal external injuries on the body. Preliminary judgment, poisoning cannot be ruled out. We'll only know after taking it back for an autopsy."

On the other side, an old security guard, wearing his uniform crookedly, stood there with a fearful face. It seemed he was the one who discovered the deceased.

"You reported the case?" Qi Fei walked up to the old security guard and asked.

The old security guard nodded like a garlic pounder: "It's me, it's me, it scared me to death. I, I came to hand over the shift at 9 o'clock, and I checked everything! There was no problem!"

Qi Fei looked at the record: "You called 110 at four in the morning. Did you discover it while patrolling?"

The old security guard swallowed: "We usually don't go into this hall to check. I'm just a gatekeeper. If you have to say who discovered this person, it's not me, it's Xiao Hei!"

"Who is Xiao Hei?" Qi Fei frowned.

The small conference room of the zoo management center was temporarily vacated as an office for police investigation.

Three pairs of eyes were simultaneously watching a black bird.

Its whole body was as black as ink, with two clusters of snow-white markings blooming at the tips of its wing feathers, and golden eye sockets wrapped around round, amber pupils.

Liu Tong said with suspicion: "Tsk, the eyewitness you mentioned, oh no, eyewitness bird, is it?"

"Sigh!" Qi Fei muttered, "The security guard who discovered the deceased said it was this bird that made him discover the deceased. He said he discovered this bird running out of the Bai Niao Guan at four in the morning. He just wanted to send it back to the birdhouse, but after going in, he discovered the deceased."

"This is no ordinary bird; it's the internet celebrity myna, Xiao Hei, of the Nancheng Zoo," Wu Shanqiu opened her familiar field and introduced it eloquently, "I used to scroll through its video sharing account for a while; it's so fun."

"What's so good about a bird." Qi Fei said disapprovingly. Just as his words fell, a voice suddenly came from the opposite side, as if someone was speaking with a pinched throat: "Idiot!"

The three were startled, and the myna on the opposite side shook its wings.

Qi Fei couldn't believe his ears: "Was it talking just now?"

Just as his words fell, the myna's yellow beak opened: "Idiot!" Clear and distinct, authentic.

"Hey? Why does this bird curse people as soon as it comes up?" Qi Fei touched his nose, never expecting in his life to be cursed by a bird. ===== CHAPTER 182 =====