Chapter 146: Weird Case

In Liao's terror‑frozen gaze, the huge twisted "spider" on the ceiling—his mother—let out a guttural, non‑human cackling laugh.

The laugh was dry and sharp, like two rusty metal plates grinding together.

Then her backward‑bent limbs suddenly went limp.

"Snap!"

A muffled thud.

The whole body fell straight, like a slab of rotten meat with its bones pulled out, crashing heavily onto the floor.

Her belly burst open the instant it hit the ground.

Countless foul, dark‑red‑tinged entrails mixed with unidentifiable chunks of flesh exploded outward, splattering everywhere.

A thick scent of blood and rot instantly filled the entire living room.

She was completely dead.

Her death was a hundred times more tragic than her husband's.

Liao's mind went utterly blank at that moment.

The hellish scene before him seared his retina like a red‑hot branding iron, shattering the last shred of his sanity.

"Ah—!!"

Liao let out a hoarse, pitch‑shifted scream, crawling backward with hands and feet, then rolling toward the door.

He slammed the door open and fled the apartment that had become a hellscape.

The cold night wind flooded his lungs, yet he felt no chill, only the urge to run wildly through the empty street.

Run.

Run.

Run fast!

The thought consumed all of his thoughts.

Liao didn't know how long he had been running, nor where he was heading.

Until his lungs burned with searing pain and his legs, as if filled with lead, could no longer be lifted.

He fell heavily onto the cold, damp sidewalk.

After a long while.

Liao only then remembered something, and with trembling, clumsy hands, fished a phone from his pocket.

He could barely make out the numbers on the screen, but instinctively dialed the number he never wanted to call again in his life.

"Hello......"

The moment the call connected, Liao summoned all his strength and let out a beast‑like whimper.

"Help...... help......"

The shrill siren tore through the London night.

Several police cars roared in, quickly sealing off the ominous apartment building.

The raised yellow‑black police tape separated reality from hell.

Two officers found a dazed, soaking‑wet Liao at the street corner and escorted him back to the precinct.

In the Interrogation Room, the light was pallid.

"Name?"

"Liao."

"Tell us, what happened?" a young officer tapped the table impatiently, eyeing the trembling teen like a sieve, his gaze full of suspicion.

Perhaps another junkie on a high.

Liao lifted his head, his eyes hollow, lips trembling, and began to babble incoherently.

"Doll...... that doll moves......"

"My mother...... she climbed onto the ceiling...... she ate my father...... and then...... then she fell...... her belly burst open......"

The young officer's brow furrowed deeper as he turned to his partner, an elderly detective with graying hair and sharp eyes, his face etched with helplessness.

Detective David said nothing, merely watching Liao, his eyes—having read countless people—glimmering with inquiry.

"Kid, stop spouting this nonsense!" the young officer slammed the table, "The footage shows that from last night until we arrived, no one entered or left that apartment except you and your parents!"

"You have a drug‑use history, right?"

"Did you hallucinate from over‑using, go mad, and kill your parents?"

The young officer's voice was oppressive, each word like a hammer striking Liao's fragile nerves.

"I didn't! Everything I said is true!!" Liao shouted angrily, tears and snot streaming down, "Yes, yes! It's that doll! It's that demon‑possessed doll's doing!"

"Enough!"

The young officer lost patience and stood up.

"We'll take you for a urine test first!"

The interrogation ended.

But the information relayed from the crime scene made the precinct's atmosphere grow increasingly Weird.

"Chief, I swear to God, the scene was god‑damn disgusting." a forensic officer said over the phone, voice trembling, "The male victim's chest was completely cut open, his organs emptied. The female victim...... the female victim fell from a height, her abdomen ruptured, the place was covered with......"

Detective David's complexion grew increasingly solemn with each detail from the call.

A few hours later.

Urgent reports were delivered to David's desk.

He picked up the first one.

【Urine drug test report: Liao Ge Lin, sample negative.】

Dawei's pupils narrowed slightly.

He set the report down and picked up the forensic preliminary autopsy report.

【Male victim, died from a penetrating wound to the chest and abdominal cavity caused by a sharp instrument, hemorrhagic shock. Based on wound analysis, the weapon was a kitchen fruit knife, and the perpetrator is preliminarily judged to be the female victim.】

【Female victim, died from a high fall resulting in multiple fractures throughout the body and internal organ rupture.】

Seeing this, everything seemed to fit the logic of "wife kills husband then commits suicide."

But Dawei's gaze fell on the highlighted passage at the end of the report.

【Special finding: In the ruptured abdominal cavity and gastric remnants of the female victim, a large amount of organ sample belonging to the male victim was detected......】

Dawei's hand stopped.

He lifted his head and stared rigidly at that line of text.

In the stomach...... her husband's flesh?

A chill crawled up his spine.

He abruptly grabbed another scene investigation report and flipped quickly to the last page.

【The ceiling showed multiple deep scratches, irregularly distributed, not caused by human force or conventional tools.】

Dawei's breathing became somewhat rapid.

He picked up Liao's statement transcript that the young police officer had dismissed as "nonsense."

"...... She climbed onto the ceiling...... She ate my dad......"

Those once fantastical sentences now Weirdly coincided with the cold text of the forensic and scene reports.

An absurd thought that made even this old materialist feel a tingling scalp rose uncontrollably.

Could it be......

The kid's "ghost story"......

Could it be true?

Dawei felt his worldview, built over decades, emitting an overburdened creak that could collapse at any moment.

Just as the entire police station fell into a perplexing Weird atmosphere due to this bizarre case.

Liao, locked alone in the break room, had already fallen into a deep sleep from the dual depletion of mind and body.

The one assigned to guard him was that same young police officer.

He looked through the small glass pane on the door at the boy curled on the sofa inside, intending to pour himself a cup of coffee first.

However, at the moment he turned.

His peripheral vision caught a discordant movement in the room.

He turned his head in puzzlement and looked again at the small window.

He saw that Liao, asleep, began to convulse violently without any warning.

The intensity was far beyond ordinary epilepsy.

"Hey, what's wrong with you?!"

The young police officer was about to open the door to check.

The next second, his action abruptly stopped.

Under the young police officer's terrified stare, his eyes bulging as if to pop out of the sockets.

Liao's body, at an angle completely contrary to human anatomy and extremely terrifying, slowly folded inward.

Weirdly, his back arched upward like a bow pulled forcefully.

His bones emitted a tooth‑aching "click click" sound.