A roaring Honda off-road police car arrived. With a beautiful fling of its tail, the car stopped in front of the law enforcement building. When the car door opened, a pair of slender legs casually got off. The person who arrived was a young, tall woman whose lean figure was not less than 175 cm. She had fine short hair, looked cool and composed, and was clad in plain, somewhat wrinkled white shirt. For most of the night, her mood seemed exceptionally good, her eyes showed determination and strength.
She walked into the building. The gate guard uncle walked out immediately to check who arrived, then he casually laughed and greeted: “Team Leader Gu, you came for Forensic Investigator Zhuo, right?” Gu Yun nodded and replied: “Hmm.”
Gu Yun just smiled, shoved open the door leading to the staircase and started to walk up towards the thirteenth floor. Even under normal circumstances, she was disinclined to take the elevator. Although she was not claustrophobic, it was just that she was simply too lazy to wait for it.
Entering the thirteenth floor, the light in the hallway was also still on, but all office doors were locked already. Gu Yun did not go to the autopsy room, instead she leaned on Zhuo Qing’s office door waiting while thinking deeply about the series of murder cases recently occurring.
“How are things? Is the autopsy report ready to come out?” Approaching the office just now, they immediately stopped! Seeing the energetic Gu Yun leaning against the doorframe, Xing Lan wailed! “Team Leader Gu, you’re too much! It’s middle of the night, it’s 3:00 o’clock in the morning!”
Feeling defeated, Xing Lan dropped her shoulders and reluctantly replied: “So you wait for a while, I’ll go and finish it. The report will certainly be out before dawn!” No wonder Team Leader Gu and Doctor Zhuo can become good friends, these two people are both workaholics!
Zhuo Qing opened her private office on the opposite side, Gu Yun immediately followed her inside, before she could open her mouth, Zhuo Qing with her unique low voice unhurriedly said: “What, on this long night you’re not in the mood to sleep ah?”
Zhuo Qing casually pulled out the fountain pen which she used to fix her hair, immediately her waist-long hair dangled down, she tiredly sat on the couch, half-squinted her eyes as if she had something in mind, idly asked: “Yesterday, was there any thrill in the results of the provincial level martial arts competition?”
Narrowing her eyes lightly, Zhuo Qing with her sluggish voice, yet always clear and cold, said: “This dead person and the first three murder cases indeed had things in common, they were all strangled in the trachea and died of suffocation. Moreover, all the ten fingernails were removed. The murders were committed using the same technique, if indeed this is a serial murder case, according to the degree of decay of the corpses, this is the first female victim.”
Walking over to Zhuo Qing, Gu Yun asked: “What’s this?”
Zhuo Qing sat up straight, replied: “It was found in the victim’s pocket, after waiting for colleagues in the laboratory department to examine it, it will be submitted to you.”
A trigram (bagua) map; photo from take5moment.com
Strange, just a moment ago the color was clearly golden, how come it looks red now?! Is the opposide side the golden one? Turning it over for a closer look, the other side has the same blood red trigram map, the entire small disk seems to glow a faint trace of red light, how is this possible?!
Zhuo Qing got up, walked up behind her and asked: “What’s wrong?”
The cut on the finger was deep, blood still steadily dripping, Gu Yun’s indifferent look made Zhuo Qing frown, bringing absorbent cotton from the nearby shelf to cover the wound, Zhuo Qing coldly snorted: “Press the wound!” Gu Yun rolled her eyes, it’s just a little scratch!
What made the always cold and arrogant Forensic Investigator Zhuo to be shocked ah! Gu Yun also curiously leaned her head, took a glance below, she was also startled and softly cried out: “Blood … soaked in.”
“Oh, no!” After staring speechless at each other, both cried out in unison: “This time it will be difficult to write the report.”
When the blood fell into the center of the disk, at that exact moment, a strong red light suddenly radiated from the trigram disk, Zhuo Qing and Gu Yun were both shocked, before their own eyes they just saw darkness and fell gently to the ground.
The bleeding wound in Gu Yun’s finger instantly healed, leaving no trace of a scar. The golden trigram disk fell lightly beside their bodies, showing nothing of its strange appearance before. Outside the window, on the horizon the moonlight was clear and bright, everything was so tranquil.
[1] The trigram (bagua) (Chinese: 八卦; literally: “eight symbols”) are 8 trigrams used in Taoist cosmology to represent the fundamental principles of reality, seen as a range of 8 interrelated concepts. Each consists of 3 lines, each line either “broken” or “unbroken,” representing yin or yang, respectively. Due to their tripartite structure, they are often referred to as “trigrams” in English. The trigrams have correspondences in astronomy, astrology, geography, geomancy, anatomy, the family, and elsewhere. Learn more about bagua maps here. (Source: Wikipedia)