Teacher Wang told Chen Ge about a serial murder case from over twenty years ago, and parts of the case details matched information Chen Ge already knew.
For instance, the killer had drowned a victim at the Donggang Reservoir. Another time, the killer lured a victim into the Bailong Tunnel. Residents had also witnessed the killer pushing a victim off a tall building.
Because the incidents happened so far in the past, witnesses had never been able to make out the victims' faces clearly. All they knew was that every victim was a young child. They wore different clothes, yet their builds and heights were strikingly similar — almost as if the same person had been killed over and over again.
Listening to Teacher Wang, Chen Ge felt a storm surge within him. During the Black Phone's trial missions, he had witnessed these very scenes.
That child who had been killed countless times in every imaginable way — that was him.
He pressed a hand to his temple, veins bulging at his forehead. The fragmented memories in his mind were reassembling, and his head throbbed with pain.
"Teacher Wang, are you certain the last victim's name was Chen Ge? Did you ever find his body?"
"I never found his body, but I was there the moment he was killed." Teacher Wang's eyes were filled with guilt and remorse. His fists clenched tight. "After investigation and analysis, we identified three children in Hanjiang who resembled the silhouette in the photograph. We determined the killer's next target was likely one of those three."
"So you set up surveillance around those three children?"
"That's right. We were short-handed at the time, and I was urgently recruited — assigned to Unit Seven by the district bureau leadership. We were responsible for guarding a private orphanage on the eastern outskirts of Hanjiang." Teacher Wang paused briefly, and fearing Chen Ge might not follow, he added, "The three children we identified — one lived in downtown Hanjiang and came from a very well-off family. One lived on the western outskirts, the child of a manager at the Luo Group real estate company. The last child lived in the orphanage on the eastern outskirts."
None of these three children's information matched Chen Ge's background. He remembered clearly — at the time, he had been living with his parents in the Jiangyuan residential complex on Hanjiang's eastern outskirts.
The three children the police had flagged were clearly not him. So why was the last victim's name Chen Ge?
"I still remember it vividly to this day. The police only told the truth to the orphanage teachers and the director. The children knew nothing — they played as usual and then went to sleep."
"After dark, everything was normal, right up until midnight. The child we had flagged vanished."
"I don't know how the killer pulled it off. Even today, I still can't figure it out."
"The moment the child disappeared, I reported to my superiors immediately, and the entire Unit Seven went searching for him."
"In the end, I found the child with Officer Yan — who had just started working at the time — in an abandoned building on Hanjiang's eastern outskirts." Teacher Wang's voice trembled. Many years had passed, but even now, recalling it made it difficult to control his emotions. "The child had been terrified. He was badly injured, his eyes filled with a desperate longing to live. He begged Officer Yan and me for help. He said his name was Chen Ge, that he wanted to see his parents. But just as the child was about to say his parents' names, the killer walked in."
"The child told you himself that his name was Chen Ge?" Chen Ge had absolutely no memory of this. He couldn't recall a thing.
"Every word I'm telling you right now is the truth."
"What happened after the killer entered?"
"The killer was wearing a white coat and a grotesque demon mask. He seemed to have filled the room with some kind of sedative in advance. Officer Yan and I started losing our faculties. The killer exchanged a few words with the child, then forcibly took him away." Teacher Wang's expression twisted with pain. "If only Officer Yan had fired his gun decisively back then."
"Did you catch them in the end?" That was what Chen Ge cared about.
"According to officers from the other units, they cornered the killer by the river in the end and witnessed him throwing the victim's body into the river with their own eyes." Teacher Wang took a deep breath. "The police arrested the man in the white coat by the river. Everyone saw him kill — he was the killer! But there were several problems when they caught him. First, the man in white they arrested by the river was a lunatic, muttering over and over, 'Don't come back, don't come back.' Second, the white coat on him didn't fit — it didn't seem to be his own. Third, judging by the way he committed the murder, he was extremely clumsy — nothing like a serial killer."
"A switcheroo? The real killer found a lunatic and staged the whole thing for you to see?" What Chen Ge really wanted to say was that the victim might have been swapped too.
The killer and victim that Teacher Wang and Officer Yan had encountered were the real killer and the young Chen Ge. The main police force by the river had only seen what was arranged in advance — that killer was an imposter, and the body thrown into the river might not have been Chen Ge at all, but a child from the orphanage.
"That's right! You're thinking exactly what I was thinking!" Teacher Wang's gaze sharpened. "Officer Yan and I had seen the real killer face to face. Even though he wore a demon mask and we never saw his face, that cold, sinister aura about him was completely different from the man the police arrested!"
"Did you ever find the body of the child from the orphanage?" Chen Ge asked another question.
Teacher Wang shook his head. "In the entire serial murder case, not a single victim's body was ever recovered."
Hearing this, Chen Ge formed a theory.
The doctors at the Cursed Hospital had killed him over and over again twenty years ago, but they discovered that no matter what they did, he simply wouldn't die. In the end, they even attracted the attention of the police.
To divert the police's focus, they deliberately staged this scene right in front of the officers, allowing the police to arrest a scapegoat.
Both the victims and the killer in this serial case were still alive in this world. But aside from a handful of people, no one even knew the case existed anymore.
The truth doesn't change with the passage of time, but it can be buried by it.
"Did you find any information on the earlier victims?" Chen Ge leaned against a streetlamp, his head bowed.
"No information found, no bodies recovered. Even hair and bloodstains had been cleaned up by the killer — not a single trace was left behind." Teacher Wang's expression was grim. "I can tell you with absolute certainty: this was a serial murder case. But when the Hanjiang district bureau closed the case twenty years ago, the fact that no bodies were ever found led them to classify it as a single-instance violent homicide."
"What's the difference?"
"A big one. But there's no point in discussing it now."
In the unfamiliar city, Teacher Wang and Chen Ge stood by the roadside. Pedestrians came and went around them, each going about their own lives. No one paid any attention to what they were discussing.
"You came to Xinhai to reinvestigate this case?"
"Yes. The white coat the killer wore was identical to the uniform of a private hospital in Xinhai. Also, Officer Yan and I heard the real killer's voice — he spoke with a slight Xinhai local accent."