Chapter 198

Thud. Thud.

Ahead, the sound of gunfire rang out again.

For the police officers involved in the case, the six-body murder was also slightly nerve-wracking.

The officers issued firearms this time had received prior training; though ordered to fire cautiously, they were permitted to shoot.

But these two shots were still purely deterrent.

Wang Guoshan's attempt to drive the tractor into the mountains was clearly unacceptable.

Wang Guoshan stomped the accelerator, eyes bloodshot, screaming.

Police officers arriving in succession blocked the road with their vehicles and surrounded him on foot.

Wang Guoshan turned the tractor's head instinctively toward Jianjiang City, his familiar destination, only to be blocked again by two more cars.

Wang Guoshan knew his tractor well—he knew he couldn't ram through—and so he steered it off the roadbed; but as his speed dropped, police officers closed in beside the vehicle.

He sat in the cab, pulled out a screwdriver, waved it twice in the air, and forced back a special police officer trying to climb aboard.

Seeing it was only a screwdriver, the special officer's expression instantly relaxed.

Several veteran detectives nearby, faces grim, whispered among themselves: "No gun."

"Thought he might have at least a nail gun or something."

"Stop the vehicle!"

"Let go of the pedal!"

Amid the chaotic shouts, several special police officers bravely scaled the tractor.

Wang Guoshan looked strong in his upper body—he managed to twist backward and grab at the first officer who seized his arm—but the detectives behind quickly moved in, leaving him no chance to resist further.

From pulling out the screwdriver to surrendering, Wang Guoshan's fierce resistance lasted only two minutes.

Hssss…

The tractor came to a complete stop; Wang Guoshan was lowered to the ground, held by several officers.

Like in many TV dramas, Wang Guoshan could lift two or three detectives and move with them—purely because of his weight, equivalent to a 100-kilogram athlete fighting desperately.

The first officers on the scene were mostly young graduates from police academy, most weighing only sixty to seventy kilograms.

Even so, once three or four officers clung to him, Wang Guoshan's strength rapidly drained away.

"Wang Guoshan, do you know why we're arresting you?" Branch Chief Shen Feihong stepped forward and demanded sharply.

Wang Guoshan ignored him entirely, face set in stubborn defiance.

"Take him away." Shen Feihong, seeing his corpse-like expression, felt no pity.

Detectives sometimes encounter cases with mitigating circumstances—but they also encounter cases as utterly monstrous as this.

By the time Shen Feihong returned to the agricultural machinery cooperative, yellow police tape had been fully stretched; Jiang Yuan and his team had already begun the crime scene investigation.

"How's it going? Is your young brother injured?" Shen Feihong asked about the victim first—showing proper protocol.

"The ambulance took him away. The doctor said it's not too serious, but we don't know the full details yet," Jiang Yuan replied conservatively, to avoid jeopardizing Mu Zhiyang's chances for commendation.

In the U. ., injured officers get the Purple Heart. A police officer injured while bravely confronting a violent criminal and protecting his comrades deserves at least a commendation when awards are distributed.

If even this little honor is withheld, who will step forward next time?

Shen Feihong nodded. "Good kid."

Then he asked: "How's it going here? Any chance of finding evidence?"

Jiang Yuan grunted. "The right-side color-coated steel shed—he used it to dismember the bodies. There's still blood inside."

"This…?" Shen Feihong had expected a massive, exhaustive search—never imagined evidence would be this easy to find. He pressed: "Is it human blood? Any other evidence?"

Jiang Yuan nodded. "There's a chainsaw, a bone saw, an axe, and a large freezer. I took a quick look inside—the freezer holds about one and a half bodies."

"One and a half?" Shen Feihong's skin prickled with goosebumps.

As a city-level criminal investigation branch chief, he'd seen plenty of brutal cases—especially from earlier years, cases steeped in primal, animalistic cruelty.

But this case still chilled him to the bone.

In modern society, when people commit murder, it's usually driven by intense emotion or deep financial conflict. That's why, when a wife dies, the husband is suspected first—and vice versa—because marital bonds are intensely emotional and financially entangled.

But from any angle, six dead bodies plus the corpse fragments in the freezer mean eight people died violently. Wang Guoshan was just a small-town individual merchant—how could he possibly have had emotional or financial conflicts with so many people?

Jiang Yuan himself had felt intense physical revulsion upon first seeing it.

But he recovered quickly; now, deliberately pushing the horror aside, he continued: "There's also a stove in the shed—the kind rural folks use for heating. Wang Guoshan likely used it to burn the bodies."

"Fuck!" Shen Feihong cursed, immediately moving to enter the color-coated steel shed.

At the entrance, Jiang Yuan handed him a shoe cover and added: "We need two people posted to keep others out. All evidence must be secured—don't let it get contaminated…"

Shen Feihong grunted in response, slipped on the shoe cover, and stepped inside.

The first thing that hit him was the smell of bleach, mixed with a faint odor of burning.

The room wasn't large; the floor was steel plates. Nearby lay the chainsaw and axe, along with a sharp double-edged knife.

The freezer was unusually large. When opened, a chilling blast of cold air emerged; the corpses inside were frosted over.

Shen Feihong's eyes immediately landed on a human buttock. He flashed back to a short video he'd watched last night and forced down his nausea, peering through his gloves.

Below it was another buttock—sure enough, one and a half bodies.

"Can't cut through it, can you?" Shen Feihong pointed at the chainsaw, his face grim. "You can't thaw it out first."

Frozen corpses are extremely hard; cutting through them directly means slicing through bone—much harder.

Jiang Yuan pointed to the corner. "There's a bone saw inside."

He lifted a plastic sheet—sure enough, there was a bone saw.

The bone saw was all stainless steel, with a base for bones. You could drag it over, place the bone on the platform beneath the vertical steel blade, push forward, and it would slice cleanly in half. Similar equipment costs only a thousand yuan today and is commonly used to cut beef bones or frozen steaks.

"So, the heads of victims five and six were processed here?" Shen Feihong realized.

Jiang Yuan had thought the same.

"Cut first, then burn?" Shen Feihong glanced at the stove. "This kind burns slowly, right?"

"I'm not sure, but judging from the condition here, it was definitely slow-burned," Jiang Yuan replied mechanically—he simply couldn't express his emotions properly.

Nothing in this color-coated steel shed had ever been used normally.