March brought a fine, silken rain that shrouded everything in a hazy mist. The air was cold and damp, the kind of weather that made going outside an exercise in frustration.

The moment Senior Police Inspector Xing Meilu of the Center City North District Inspectorate stepped into the hotel room, she was hit by an acrid, metallic stench—the unmistakable smell of a massive hemorrhage.

“Captain Lu.” A few colleagues who had arrived first greeted her before immediately returning to their investigation.

Xing Meilu nodded. She wore a white T-shirt and a black baseball jacket. She wasn’t very tall, just barely meeting the Inspectorate’s minimum height requirement for officers (158 cm), and had a somewhat cherubic face. But when she put on her stern, unsmiling expression, she could be intimidating.

After pulling on white latex gloves and slipping on shoe covers, Xing Meilu entered the guest room where the victim lay.

It was a suite in a five-star hotel. Despite its rating, the hotel had squeezed the space to maximize the number of rooms, so this one, with its simple yet modern decor, was not particularly large. Four investigators were currently busy at work inside.

The floor was covered with a thick, machine-woven industrial carpet. Directly opposite the entrance was a large, floor-to-ceiling window covered by heavy white curtains that blocked out the light. To her left, Xing Meilu saw the bathroom and habitually took in its layout. It was larger than in most hotels, with a sink on the left facing a large bathtub. Opposite the glass sliding door were a separate shower and toilet stall.

The bathroom light was on, casting a bright but soft orange glow that gave the space a high-end feel. It was a semi-open design; behind the bathtub was a white curtain, which had already been pulled aside by the investigators. A quick glance revealed that the bed, where a woman lay long dead, was directly opposite the tub, separated only by the curtain.

There had been more and more homicides like this lately.

Xing Meilu sighed inwardly, her thoughts turning to the serial murder case she was currently investigating. She pulled her gaze away from the bathroom.

She moved to the bedside and saw that the deceased was a woman of about thirty, neatly dressed in a white terrycloth bathrobe. She had been shot once between the eyebrows and once in the chest, and was lying face-up on the bed. The blood that had flowed from her wounds had oxidized and turned black, staining the white sheets and her clean robe a gruesome sight.

Xing Meilu then looked at the woman’s face. Her fine features were frozen in an expression of terror, her eyes wide and lifeless, as if she never expected the killer to strike so suddenly.

“Has the victim’s identity been confirmed?” Xing Meilu asked her assistant, Shen Fan.

“We have it. The deceased is Cheng Lina, thirty-one years old. She was previously imprisoned for fraud and was released just last year.”

“Hotel surveillance shows she entered with another woman, but that woman was wearing a mask, so we couldn’t see her face. We’ve learned they attended a costume party at a nearby bar and left midway through.” Shen Fan knew his superior’s personality. He reported the information as it came in on his phone. “It’s still unclear whether they met at the party or knew each other beforehand.”

“Whose Citizen ID was used to rent the room?” Hotels now required identification, and the technology to verify the authenticity of Citizen IDs had been implemented across industries like hospitality and transportation. Xing Meilu asked this as she circled the room, carefully observing the scene.

It appeared to be an ordinary hotel room. The killer had shot the victim twice and then left calmly. There were no signs of a struggle.

“According to the front desk staff, a man came to rent the room a day in advance. We checked the records. The man’s name is Yang Lian. He was previously held in a detention center for theft and has close ties to Cheng Lina. He has since disappeared.”

“Sounds like a premeditated operation. Did the killer leave any information?”

“Guests in nearby rooms said they didn’t hear anything unusual, so we suspect the killer’s gun had a silencer. We also collected several fingerprints from the surface of the hotel-provided bottled water, the bathroom doorknob, and other places. After comparing them with the database, well…” At this point, Shen Fan looked deeply puzzled. “You remember the two fingerprints we found at the Wang Qiang murder scene?”

“The case connected to the serial killings? Are they related to the prints collected here?”

“Yes.” Shen Fan nodded affirmatively. “Those two prints belong to the same person, and they match the fingerprints left by the suspect who shot Cheng Lina.”

Xing Meilu’s eyelids twitched slightly as she carefully recalled the details of the major case currently on her desk.

Two years ago, an elusive killer appeared in Center City. Their kill rate wasn’t high, and the victims seemed to lack any connection, making it difficult to link the cases at first. But starting in January of this year, in just three short months, the killer had already murdered two people. The manner of their deaths was identical to the previous victims—killed with extreme brutality. This was what allowed Xing Meilu to finally connect the cases.

Furthermore, in the Wang Qiang murder, one of the two cases from this year, Xing Meilu’s team had discovered two fingerprints that didn’t belong to the victim or anyone else likely to have been at the scene.

Though she couldn’t be one hundred percent certain, Xing Meilu suspected those two prints most likely didn’t belong to the serial killer. But she had never imagined they would belong to the perpetrator of an entirely different murder.

“Captain Lu, Cheng Lina doesn’t seem like the other victims in the serial murder case.” Shen Fan offered his opinion. In the serial killings they were investigating, all the victims had been murdered with extreme cruelty—decapitation, immolation, dismemberment… It was as if the killer held a blood feud against them.

But in today’s case, the victim was dispatched cleanly and efficiently.

Xing Meilu didn’t answer Shen Fan, only looking silently at the victim on the bed. The blood from the wound between her eyebrows had trickled down the sides of her nose to her chin, where it had dried into black scabs, creating a gruesome and tragic sight.

“Find Yang Lian as soon as possible. His and Cheng Lina’s actions were likely premeditated.”

That much was obvious. Yang Lian rented the room in advance, and then Cheng Lina brought a strange woman to stay there. Both Cheng Lina and Yang Lian had criminal records. What good could they have been up to?

“Right. Oh, and Captain Lu, Cheng Lina’s phone and personal belongings weren’t taken. We can’t unlock the phone right now, but we’ll take it back to the institute and have the tech department take a look,” Shen Fan said quickly.

Xing Meilu frowned again. She had assumed that with such a clean and efficient killing method, the murderer must be a seasoned professional. He or she would have taken the victim’s belongings and cleaned up any traces they left behind.

But the killer had done nothing of the sort, not even the slightest bit of cleanup.

Was the person confident they wouldn’t be caught, or just an idiot?

“Let’s head back to the institute for now.”

Seeing her subordinates systematically collecting evidence, and with the scene offering few useful clues for the time being, Xing Meilu prepared to leave. She wanted to check if this victim had any connection to the previous serial murder cases.

After removing her gloves and shoe covers, Xing Meilu walked out of the hotel room in silence, her mind churning with the details of the serial killings, trying to connect them to the case before her.

“Captain Lu, why do you think the killer murdered Cheng Lina?” Shen Fan asked, following behind her.

“The method this time was very clean and direct—one shot between the eyes, one to the chest. It’s completely different from the MO of the serial killer.” In the cases Xing Meilu had been investigating, the victims had all been killed in brutal, bloody ways. Some were nearly decapitated, with blood splattering the entire crime scene. It was enough to make one suspect a god of slaughter had descended, and the only word to describe the scenes was horrific.

“Considering Cheng Lina and Yang Lian’s criminal backgrounds, I suspect they were planning some kind of blackmail, and it cost them their lives.”

“Judging from the hotel footage, the person who came in with Cheng Lina was also a woman. If it was a honey trap blackmail scheme…” Shen Fan’s mind started racing.

“If it was blackmail, Cheng Lina and Yang Lian would have likely kept an open line of communication while she was in the room with the female killer,” Xing Meilu continued. “So unlock Cheng Lina’s phone as soon as possible. There’s bound to be useful information on it.”

“So the killer in this case isn’t the same person as the serial killer, but she was investigating the serial killer, and this is a case of thieves falling out?” Shen Fan momentarily set aside the idea of a woman-on-woman setup and continued to ask his more experienced senior.

“We can’t be certain yet. We need to see if Cheng Lina has any connection to the other victims,” Xing Meilu murmured, walking ahead of her much taller colleague with a heavy heart as she entered the elevator.

“Hmm…” The burly, bear-like Shen Fan followed her in and pressed the button. “Could it be that the killer discovered Cheng Lina’s honey trap scheme and killed her in a fit of rage?”

Shen Fan decided to stick with the topic of women, honey traps, and the like.

“Cheng Lina’s bathrobe was on neatly, so they probably hadn’t had sex yet.” Aware of Shen Fan’s penchant for gossip, Xing Meilu knew what he was thinking. She watched the floor numbers on the display. “And it’s unlikely Cheng Lina would try to blackmail her before anything happened. But we’ll have to wait for the autopsy report for the specifics. Oh, and issue a warrant for Yang Lian’s arrest.”

“Okay. Maybe Cheng Lina was a hardcore top? That would explain why she was fully dressed.”

“A what?” This bit of gossip was outside Xing Meilu’s scope of knowledge, and she didn’t quite get it at first.

“The dominant one, the one who plays the man’s part.” His superior seemed to be lacking in this area of knowledge. Shen Fan found it amusing but kept his face serious as he explained. Although his boss was short, anyone who knew her wouldn’t dare underestimate her. “That could also explain why her clothes were neat.”

“That’s certainly a possibility.” Xing Meilu quickly understood. “Check her phone for chat logs. If they were planning a honey trap, there would definitely be records of conversations with accomplices. We might find information about the female suspect in there.”

“Got it.”

“Also, check Cheng Lina’s recent call history. Make a list and see if there’s anything suspicious.”

“Will do, Captain Lu.”

“Did the surveillance footage of the killer leaving the hotel also fail to capture her face?”

“No, she never appeared on camera after the murder. The hotel staff said there’s a service staircase with no cameras installed. She probably left that way.”

“Right, we did get the surveillance video of her entering the hotel. Do you want to see it, Captain Lu?” Shen Fan said, tapping a few times on the tablet in his hand before passing it to Xing Meilu.

She took it and saw Cheng Lina holding hands with a slender woman wearing a white rabbit mask, laughing and talking as they entered the hotel lobby.

It was hard to imagine that one of them was a con artist planning a honey trap blackmail scheme, and the other was a murderer.

After watching the surveillance footage twice, Xing Meilu handed the tablet back to Shen Fan, her mind still racing. No matter how she looked at it, today’s murder didn’t seem premeditated. But she still couldn’t figure out the motive. Even if you discovered someone was trying to set you up in a honey trap, was it really necessary to fly into a rage and kill them?