Chapter 279

"The flue!" Qi Fei thought immediately, then put on gloves and dismantled the exhaust pipe of Sister Wang's range hood. Over the years, the damper of the exhaust pipe was covered with oil and could no longer be closed. This meant that the gas discharged from elsewhere into the flue would flow backward into Sister Wang's home.

"Then we have to investigate the owners of this entire building." Qi Fei said, looking at the half-open damper.

"I wonder how the investigation into the source of the gas in the shop is going?" Zhong Kui reminded him intentionally or unintentionally.

Qi Fei hurried to call Wu Shanqiu to arrange an investigation while returning to the recycling station with Zhong Kui.

In the shop, the testing personnel were still braving the high temperature to find the source of the gas.

"How is it? Did you find it?" Qi Fei asked anxiously, sweating.

However, the testing personnel were puzzled: "It's strange. This gas doesn't seem to have a specific leak source. It's like it's seeping out from everywhere, a diffuse type..."

Just as they were talking, Zhong Kui walked into the shop without wearing a mask.

Qi Fei hurriedly took the protective gear to chase after her: "What are you doing? That's hydrogen sulfide!"

But Zhong Kui was carefully smelling the odor: "It's not quite the same as that one."

Qi Fei didn't have time to ask what she was talking about and pulled her out of the foul-smelling shop first: "What are you doing?"

"The smell here is different from the smell in Sister Wang's exhaust pipe." Zhong Kui said.

"Are you sure it's the smell of a corpse?" Qi Fei leaned in and asked in a low voice.

Zhong Kui glanced at him: "This is a smell carved into my DNA; I won't get it wrong. It's just that the smell in this recycling station doesn't quite look like the smell of a human corpse. Hmm, or rather, sometimes it smells like it, and sometimes it doesn't. This is also the first time I've encountered this situation. How should I put it? Half-human, half-beast."

Qi Fei couldn't help but laugh when he heard this: "This, how did it turn from a horror movie into a fantasy movie?"

Zhong Kui didn't think it was funny: "As long as it becomes a corpse, how it's mixed is all possible, isn't it? It's the same principle as cooking."

"Uh, are you talking about dismemberment? Can we not use cooking as an analogy?" Qi Fei said speechlessly.

Zhong Kui finally took the protective gear from Qi Fei's hand, put it on, and returned to the recycling station. She looked around, went from the front door to the back door, and inside was where the Sheng family lived. Eating and living in the recycling station, the environment was evident.

One of the bedrooms still had baby bottles, diapers, and such things. It looked like where Huang Ruifen and the child lived.

"Taking the child back to her maiden home, and not even bringing the milk powder and milk bottles?" Zhong Kui said while looking.

Outside the bedroom was a simple kitchen, and an old green refrigerator was placed there.

Qi Fei's heart jumped to his throat. He had experienced a case where the victim was dismembered and hidden in such a green refrigerator.

Out of experience, he opened the refrigerator door and rummaged through it. It was all home-style ingredients, which made him breathe a sigh of relief.

However, Zhong Kui on the side had a different discovery: "How much does this family like eating viscera? These things don't taste good after being quick-frozen."

Qi Fei almost forgot that Zhong Kui was a hidden cooking expert. She was talking about some pig viscera in the quick-freeze compartment, which looked like pig lungs and pig intestines. Because he had already seen the receipt left on the plastic bag just now, coupled with some preliminary judgments on the characteristics, he could basically determine that these were not human organs.

Zhong Kui also seemed to believe that these were pig viscera, but she felt strange about this storage method. In addition, she glanced at the receipt: "It seems they only froze a part of it. They bought enough; there's more than this."

Reminded by her, Qi Fei also noticed that the supermarket receipt for pig lungs, pig liver, pig intestines, and such added up to twenty catties.

"Are they going to open a braised food shop?" Zhong Kui said with suspicion.

Qi Fei was thoughtful, muttering the sentence Zhong Kui said earlier: "Half-human, half-beast..." That ominous premonition became even stronger in his heart. He suddenly had an idea and then returned to the recycling station's shop. The cardboard boxes that had been compressed, packed, and arranged neatly caught his attention.

He took a utility knife to cut the packing rope and flipped through the tightly pressed cardboard boxes one by one.

He hadn't flipped through many before he discovered something unusual. As the cardboard boxes were lifted, the stench exploded in the room. Even with a protective mask, it was difficult to resist the invasion of the smell.

These cardboard boxes looked no different from ordinary waste on the surface, but as Qi Fei flipped open the folded parts, large black stains appeared in front of everyone, as well as viscera fragments that had been pressed into a film. It seemed that those pig viscera that hadn't been put into the refrigerator had been found.

They mobilized everyone's strength to finally flip through all the waste piled on the three walls. These viscera were stuffed in hidden places, constantly rotting in the hot and humid weather, emitting a nauseating stench.

Qi Fei looked at the large patches of stains and muttered: "No wonder we couldn't find the source of the stench. This entire room has become the source."

"Brother Fei, the work you give is always quite exhausting." As soon as Xiao Tao saw Qi Fei arrive at the forensic room, he said immediately, "The snake island matter last time took up a lot of my time, and this time I've become a garbage man again."

"I can only say the modus operandi is too disgusting, and that's not my fault." Qi Fei smiled bitterly, "How is it? Have all the stains we brought been tested?"

"Guess if I slept yesterday? Hmm, I stayed up all night. They have all been tested and confirmed to belong to different viscera of pigs." Xiao Tao said.

"Mainly because the weather has been hot recently, and we haven't seen many flies, otherwise these things would have been discovered long ago." Qi Fei was a bit annoyed.

Xiao Tao felt it was very normal: "In the recent high-temperature days, generally, temperatures in the sense of 40 degrees Celsius will reduce the hatching ability of flies by 80%-90%. All factors coincided. This family is quite interesting. Normal families deodorize their homes, but how is this family the opposite, as if they are afraid their home isn't smelly enough."

"Hmm, this has to be asked of the hostess of this family." Qi Fei said coldly.

The supermarket receipt full of pig viscera was placed in front of Zhang Yingdi.

"This was found in your refrigerator. Did you buy these things?" Qi Fei asked.

Zhang Yingdi held the receipt and shook her head blankly: "What is this? Pig what? I don't really know how to read."

"There are a lot of pig viscera in the quick-freeze compartment of your refrigerator. This is a supermarket receipt I found on a plastic bag. You can't not remember this, right?" Qi Fei asked with suspicion.

Zhang Yingdi remembered only after hearing this: "You're talking about those things. I put them in the quick-freeze. That day I saw someone had stuffed them in the corner. These things are easy to spoil in the hot weather, so I hurriedly froze them."