Puzzle Madness

Chapter 176 Autumn is the Hunting Season (Part 12)
There were no remaining building materials in the trapezoidal room; all the scrap that could be used as weapons had disappeared; not even a plastic sheet remained.

Unless they removed the bones from Da Tou Hong's corpse and sharpened them into spears, the group could only use the flashlights they were holding as sticks.

They stared wide-eyed at the deep passage; for a moment, no one spoke. Faced with an unknown threat, these people were practically unarmed.

Suddenly, the sour soup bak kut teh wiped the blood off his feet, dried himself off, and then broke the silence:

"Wait a minute. Um, Ai Xi. It's not that I completely agree with Huang Youtian, but..."

"I want to know. Why—why did you come here at such a convenient time? And here in the air-raid shelter?"

"Did you know people would die, that this would happen?"

Trembling, Huang Youtian opened his eyes wide, and the boy with the glasses sitting on the ground looked up: they both cast their gazes at him—some wary, some suspicious.
-
Ai Xi's head was still peering into the downward-facing corridor, her voice sounding ethereal due to the echo:
"Of course, I know there's definitely something wrong with the air-raid shelter. As for the time... let me put it this way."

"Actually, it's just because I come here every day."

Ai Xi didn't turn her head, but instead held up her fingers one by one. She spoke slowly, and her words were extremely lengthy:

"Alright, I'll just tell you the whole story from the beginning; otherwise, I'll keep rambling on."

“There have been many more missing persons cases in Mong Cai, which have occurred in the past month or so.”

"First of all, the vast majority of the missing persons are tourists. But this is very strange: generally speaking, if you're on vacation, you need to be missing for a longer period of time before someone reports it to the police."

"Of course, it's possible that they communicate with their families by phone every day. But it's relatively rare; especially since many missing persons are long-term travelers who use postcards and letters to let their families know they're safe."

Huang Youtian raised his hand and frowned, as if he wanted to interrupt and say something—but Ai Xi's explanation didn't stop at all, and he barely left any room to breathe.

"Furthermore, we must consider that there are very few tour groups coming to Mong Cai; most of the tourists are young people and university students traveling independently; many of their families don't even know they're out traveling."

"As a result, within a month, several anonymous missing persons cases suddenly emerged, with the disappearances lasting from one to three weeks. At the same time, it was confirmed that the missing persons were real people."

"So it was a special case that the police were called: it's a common trait among murderers to want to show off and demonstrate their crimes; they want others to know what they did, but they don't want to use methods like disposing of the body that could easily expose clues. Once that was determined, the next step was to narrow down the search."

She lowered her hand and stuffed it back into her pocket. The smell of Big Head Hong's corpse grew stronger, but Ai Xi seemed oblivious.
“My first suspicion is that hotel workers: there are many guesthouses and hotels in Mong Cai; they are more likely to come into contact with tourists, and it is certainly easier to prepare the location for the crime.”

"Due to economic considerations, many tourists tend to choose cheaper places to stay that do not have strict identity registration; they don't have to spend much time looking for a place to stay."

“But after the report is filed, the police will definitely investigate the accommodation first. The risk of exposure is higher, and there are too many hotels in Mong Cai, I don’t have enough resources and energy to check them one by one.”

"So I ruled out that approach for now and instead started with other possible crime scenes."

Ai Xi leaned out, her gaze sliding down the steps; a faint echo came from within.

She continued talking, the most she had ever spoken so far:
"The most important thing for a serial killer is stealth. What kind of serial killer are you if you get caught after killing just one or two people?"

"So targeting tourists makes sense; transient populations are definitely more suitable murder targets; at least they're less likely to attract attention." "Where else in Mong Cai can easily find tourists while also maintaining secrecy?"

Ai Xi turned back. Her words echoed down the long, downward path:

"Changshan Beach is closed and there are basically no tourists—even when it's open, it's packed with people; there's also no shelter around it: it's definitely not a good place to go. At least I wouldn't choose it if I were in that situation."

"The same goes for the downtown shopping district. A nightclub recently opened there, and there were some deaths among its staff—the hostesses and such—but that's a separate case, and it's already been resolved."

Ai Xi paused briefly. Behind her were the sounds of swallowing saliva while eating sour soup and bak kut teh, and the dripping sound of blood flowing from Da Tou Hong's pool.

"After thinking it over, the air-raid shelter is the most suitable place: and the time when the legend started is not too far off. Whether it is using the [man-eating air-raid shelter] as a cover, or it is a smokescreen put out by some people; at least it makes sense logically."

"Once the location was roughly determined, we considered the possible time to commit the crime."

“It’s easier to think about this from the perspective of tourist movements: because hunters follow the movement of their prey. The entrances to air-raid shelters in the city are basically sealed off and guarded, so you can only exit but not enter; the only truly convenient entrances are the few in the suburbs.”

"It basically eliminates the possibility of going there while sightseeing in the city; according to the itinerary plan, it requires setting aside separate time."

"It takes about two or three hours to walk through the entire air-raid shelter. There are no restaurants or convenience stores in the surrounding wilderness, so it's not convenient to eat. And of course, you can't get a taxi. It's obviously not worth spending a day here."

"So two options are more suitable: one is to have lunch in the city and then come over, walk directly from the air-raid shelter back to the city for dinner, which will take an afternoon."

She finally turned around and pointed to a few listeners whose eyes were fixed on her; her eyes were full of scrutiny:

"You guys chose this kind of plan, right? It's a reasonable plan, a good choice."

"Another option is to come over after dinner in the evening and explore at night—I guess that would be more adventurous, since most of the people who come would be readers of 'Super Psychological Exploration'."

“We basically don’t consider coming late at night: taxi drivers won’t accept orders from people coming in the middle of the night because this place is too gloomy and unlucky, and you have to drive a section of unlit dirt road back at night, which is easy to have an accident; the last bus you can take is also far away, and it stops running around 8:30 pm.”

"We don't consider taking the bus in the morning either: there's a rush hour in the morning, taxi drivers have to change shifts and won't be able to pick up passengers, so if they come and can't pick up passengers who need to go back from here, they'll definitely earn less money; buses might be stuck in traffic for half a day, and by the time they arrive it'll be around noon."

"So if I come closer to evening, I can cover people who choose both options at the same time—and it coincides with my school dismissal time; so I only need to come once after class."

"Even if the serial killer was actually a taxi driver, he would still have committed the crime and disposed of the body in an air-raid shelter; because it's not cheap to get here from the city center, and most of the time it's a group of travelers splitting the fare."

"It's not suitable to take action in the woods outside, and it would be difficult to deal with multiple victims who are trying to escape at the same time in an open area. But we can't be sure."

"Because what I'm least certain of is the modus operandi—we haven't found a single actual crime scene yet; so it's possible the murderer was carrying a gun, but the forest has a lot of cover, so it would definitely be inconvenient to shoot; unless they were a frequent hunter."

"That's about it -- so I come here every day after school. I run a lap around and back, just for exercise; anyway, I run fast, so it only takes me a little over an hour."

"I've been here for several days now, so I know the way pretty well. I don't need to use a flashlight. Do you understand?"

(End of this chapter)