The immortal is beside me

Chapter 11 Peach Blossom Spring

The suspect, Wang Moumou, is a 32-year-old male. A month ago, he displayed transvestite tendencies and a fondness for collecting women's clothing. On August 8, he walked the streets wearing women's underwear and attacked anyone who showed signs of surprise, resulting in two deaths and seven injuries.

The suspect, Li, a 27-year-old female, was begging at Liangzhou North Station on August 8th, disguised as a scavenger. Passersby Zhao and Xu offered them alms, but were attacked with a knife by the suspect, resulting in one death and one injury.

The suspects, Zhao, a 19-year-old male, and Liu, a 20-year-old male, went out on the street with sharp weapons on the evening of August 8th, killing three people and dissecting their bodies in public before dumping them in a shopping district.

[Suspect]

The sound of flipping pages echoed in the conference room. The case leader sitting at the front waited for a moment, and only spoke in a deep voice after everyone in the room had finished reading the distributed documents.

"The information you hold in your hands is a collection of this quarter's exceptionally malicious incidents. By now, I believe you are all familiar with this series of cases."

There were whispers of conversation in the conference room, and a few words of traditional Chinese culture could be heard indirectly.

Everyone present was a seasoned criminal, having seen plenty of lawbreakers, but this collection of materials still challenged everyone's understanding of the abstract. There were even a few pages that made people wish they couldn't read Chinese.

Only Lü Zhenhai, the executive director of the Environmental Sanitation Bureau, who sat in the corner, frowned slightly. While these cases were indeed brutal and bizarre, they were ultimately just individual homicides of a more serious nature. Even if they were related to the extraordinary, a special task force would be sufficient.

But now there are nearly a hundred people sitting here looking at the information. Not only the Liangzhou Environmental Sanitation Bureau, but also the police system and even some units with military backgrounds are involved. This has long exceeded the human resources that should be invested in a serial murder case.

He sensed something was slightly wrong, but continued to listen calmly.

"Because these cases occurred very close in time and were similar in nature, we interrogated these suspects together, and they eventually gave us a name."

"Peach Blossom Spring."

The whispers around him became louder, with exclamations, analysis, and doubts, but in Lu Zhenhai's feeling, those noises all became background noise, and only that name echoed in his ears.

Peach Blossom Spring. Peach Blossom Spring. Peach Blossom Spring.
If you only hear the name, most people will immediately think of the famous article "Peach Blossom Spring" written by Tao Yuanming, but when listening to the people present, everyone can hear different meanings.

People with a military background would think it is the name of an armed organization, people in the police department would think it is the code name of a drug trafficking gang, and to Lu Zhenhai who is affiliated with the Environmental Sanitation Bureau, it sounds like an extraordinary force that originated more than a thousand years ago during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties.

In the archives of the Environmental Sanitation Bureau, the name "Taohuayuan" is classified as top secret. Even a senior official like Lu Zhenhai is not qualified to see the full picture, but he can make a rough guess based on some clues.

At the end of the Jin Dynasty and the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the poet Tao Yuanming wrote "Peach Blossom Spring", describing a paradise that seemed to not exist in this world.

The Peach Blossom Spring was written during the rise of the Northern Wei and Southern Song dynasties. In 420 AD, the Southern and Northern Dynasties began, with the Yellow River dividing the two dynasties, and the Central Plains ushered in a period of absurd chaos.

While darkness, bloodshed, and widespread famine are commonplace in troubled times, the Northern and Southern Dynasties stand out among the most chaotic, a distinction largely attributed to their rulers. If the incompetent rulers of other dynasties are like peculiar stars twinkling through history, then the incompetent rulers of the Northern and Southern Dynasties are a brilliant galaxy of humanoids.

Liu Yu, the emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty, ignored state affairs and loved killing people. He often took his servants to visit the people from time to time, killing anyone he saw and performing dissections or craniotomies. Whenever the people heard that he was leaving the palace, they would stay indoors, turning the imperial capital into a ghost town for a time.

Emperor Xiao Baojuan of the Southern Qi Dynasty traveled for more than 20 days a month. Whenever he traveled, he would expel the people in the city, leaving no pedestrians on the streets and shutting down all business in the city. He would also rob people's homes from time to time, and anyone who witnessed his robbery would be killed.

Emperor Gao Yang of the Northern Qi Dynasty worked hard to govern the country in the early years of his reign, but indulged in lust and murder in the later years. He liked to wear women's rouge and run naked through the streets, and executed those who tried to dissuade him. Later, his son Gao Wei ascended the throne and continued to indulge in tyranny. He liked to disguise himself as a beggar and kill those who gave him alms.

In addition, drug addicts, people who abuse and kill their offspring, and people who indulge in lust and violate taboos all appear. Cruelty was the underlying color of that era, and bestiality was the norm, as if all the tyrants of a thousand years were packaged and wholesaled in one day.

With such a beastly king in power, the people naturally suffered from extreme poverty. Cannibalism was commonplace, and even ordinary people risked being hacked to pieces by the royal family for pleasure or taken as playthings simply for leaving their homes. Coupled with the relentless civil unrest, the region's population plummeted by over 50%.

The operation of every dynasty is inseparable from the support of extraordinary forces. The Southern and Northern Dynasties were so absurd that it is self-evident what kind of power the "Peach Blossom Spring" lurked behind them.

Now, a thousand years later, traces of the "Peach Blossom Spring" have reappeared in Liangzhou City, and people with beastly qualities have also appeared. The swallows that used to fly in front of the Wang and Xie mansions now fly into the homes of ordinary people.

What they want to bring back is not just sorcery and magic weapons, or even just a few humanoid beasts, but an era, an era of chaos and disorder, where human life is worthless.

Lu Zhenhai nodded slightly. At this point, he completely understood why this case received such attention.

He slammed the notebook shut with a snap.

"We will do our best to track it down."

The "In Meeting" sign went out, and Lu Zhenhai followed the crowd out of the meeting room. He rubbed his forehead slightly and could feel the blood vessels throbbing under his skin.

Such a major event would definitely require the elite forces of the entire Liangzhou Environmental Sanitation Bureau, including himself.

When he was sitting in the conference room just now, he had already gone through the list in his mind, and the next step was to gather the elites from various departments as quickly as possible.

There is also ideological mobilization, intelligence authority, equipment deployment, and logistical supply.
He opened the metal safe outside and took out the sealed mobile phone from it - because it was a confidential meeting, everyone's mobile phone had to be sealed and the signal isolated before the meeting began, and could not be used again until everything was over.

The signal was restored, and several missed calls from an hour ago popped up on the page, showing that they were from the internal numbers of the Environmental Sanitation Bureau. He clicked call back, and someone answered the call within a few seconds.

"Director Lu, Director Li Yulan just sent us an expedited document stating that a high-ranking target named Zhou Fan has appeared on their side of the country. They're requesting support from the department. The information has been delivered, and I'd appreciate your quick review."

(End of this chapter)