Dual wielding volcanoes, killing through the west

"boom!"

"boom!"

……

You can tell from the rate of fire that the opponent didn't intend to aim at all, but emptied the magazine directly, just to suppress me for a few seconds so that I could buy time to escape.

"Nine, ten, eleven..." Zhang Renfeng secretly calculated the opponent's remaining bullets, and casually grabbed a sharp wood shaving the size of half a palm.

In life-or-death situations, people tend to subconsciously choose what they trust most. He didn't choose the gunfights that only began to shine after he set foot in a foreign land, but instead chose his unique skill—sound localization—which he had practiced hundreds and thousands of times in his childhood and which had become muscle memory.

"twelve."

The gunfire ceased after the twelfth shot, and the heavy, panting breaths of the wounded beast could be clearly heard!

"middle!"

Using his shoulder and elbow to propel his wrist, he suddenly flung the sharp wooden splinter away. A sharp whistling sound was followed by a muffled groan of pain.

While practicing listening to the bridge, he had already mastered the art of sound localization, and his ability to use hidden weapons was naturally quite effortless.

There was no way this dart would miss.

Zhang Renfeng dared not delay. He drew his two guns and, instead of going through the main entrance, quickly crawled out through a hole in the wall.

……

……

"I saw a ghost..."

This was one of the few times he widened his eyes and uttered authentic Mandarin Chinese.

The surroundings were empty, and the entire alley was very clean, just as it had been when he arrived, except for the man in black.

Zhang Renfeng had assumed he would instinctively run towards the black horse at the alley entrance and escape on horseback. But he didn't. The black horse remained quietly tethered there, its tail occasionally swishing. Everything happening around it seemed to have no effect on it.

The ground was spotless, without a single drop of blood. After all, it was a blind throw, and perhaps it didn't hit a vital spot, so the bleeding wasn't much. But it's more likely that during his subsequent escape, he didn't remove the wood shavings but instead left them directly on the wound to prevent blood from splattering and thus avoid leaving any clues at the scene.

"What the hell? Where can it go? It's not like it's the local earth god; does it think it can just stomp its feet and disappear underground?"

Just as Zhang Renfeng was about to chase after it in another direction, he suddenly felt a tightness in his heart and a chill on the back of his neck. He immediately turned back into the house.

"Boom!"

The first door burst open, and even someone as bold as Zhang Renfeng couldn't help but be startled: facing him was a family portrait. There were four people in the picture, but apart from Evelyn, the other three were headless, with only a chaotic vortex in the head area.

In addition, the interior walls of the room were covered with the words "No Exit" written in dense, distorted, and frantic handwriting.

The room was empty; it was clearly where Theonado had lived, but it looked like the underworld.

Zhang Renfeng quickly pushed out of the eerie room, and with another shoulder shove, he slammed open the second door. The scene there was no better—many masks hung on the walls. These masks were all made of wood, and they showed all kinds of lifelike expressions of laughter, anger, and cursing, all frozen in the narrow and dark walls.

It's hard to imagine how one could avoid having a nervous breakdown if they woke up in the middle of the night and saw these things.

The antlers seemed to grow from the ground, branching out, and the girl lying quietly at the top was like the flower and fruit that it bore.

Her breathing was so weak it was almost stopped, as if she had fallen into some kind of deep sleep. Zhang Renfeng did not move her rashly, but squatted down first to judge the length of the antlers that had pierced her body.

Fortunately, the antlers hadn't been there long, and Evelyn was relatively light, so she hadn't completely "sunk" into them; they had only pierced the surface of her skin. Otherwise, if the antlers had pierced her fat and damaged her internal organs a few minutes later, it would have been beyond saving.

----

……

Wait a moment……

Is she still alive?

Why didn't the Australian shrike strangle her like it did its brother?

Chapter 135: You made a good deal hiring me, didn't you?

“I didn’t say it was definitely not the Australian Shrike’s doing. What I mean is, perhaps we should shift our focus and re-examine Theonado’s interpersonal relationships…”

"Oh no, no, that's exactly what you mean. The person who killed that playwright and the person who killed my son are not the same person at all. The Australian Shrike never came back from the beginning; he was just a copycat who happened to have the same precise surgical skills as him! All the time and effort we've invested in him so far has been wasted!"

The older voice was clearly more excited; Evelyn could tell that solving this case was of great importance to him. "And then, how can you be sure that the person who came to kill this young girl tonight was the Shrike himself? Because he was dressed in all black and slipped through your fingers?"

"Calm down." Another voice joined the discussion, sounding quite calm. "There's no point in us arguing here. Things always become clearer the more we think about them. Now we have new clues, isn't that a good thing? Maybe this so-called serial killer is not just one person."

Shh... be quiet!

Another girl's voice suddenly rang out. She held up a finger and checked under her nose, exclaiming in surprise, "She seems to be awake!"

----

Evelyn opened her eyes with some difficulty; her mind was still a bit sluggish, and she seemed to need some effort to understand what she was seeing.

It's grass.

To be precise, it was the soil and grass roots that led me to a campsite in the wild.

"Woo..."

A sharp, piercing pain shot through her back, gradually becoming clearer, like a whetstone sharpening her senses and bringing her back to her senses. However, the more awake she became, the more tormenting the pain intensified. She then realized that her clothes had been removed, and her body was wrapped in layers of white bandages.

“You were the temporary sheriff this morning…” Evelyn recognized Xiaomei immediately upon seeing the distinctive claw marks on her face, and her first question was, “Why didn’t you find a place to stay in town?”

……

Good question.

One question seemed to cast a massive silence spell on the camp, instantly silencing everyone. Igor even rolled his eyes at Zhang Renfeng, as if blaming him for bringing an outsider into the camp. But his reasoning was sound: it was the dead of night, pharmacies and clinics were closed, and only the camp had emergency bandages and medicine to stop bleeding.

Moreover, after this incident, White Torch Town is no longer safe. Regardless of whether the man in black was actually the real Australian Shrike, coming to my house in the middle of the night clearly wasn't for a heart-to-heart talk.

"Mr. Zhang...? I don't remember very clearly. After you left, I felt like I was covered by something, and suddenly I became very sleepy, wanting to sleep uncontrollably. So when I closed my eyes and opened them again, I was in your camp. My back still hurts..."

Evelyn suddenly realized something, touched the wound on her back, and after confirming her guess from the location of the wound, her expression turned somewhat bitter.

"So that's how it is... Even after killing Theonado, he still wouldn't let me go..."

“No, I don’t think so.” Zhang Renfeng’s voice came closer, but he only walked to the tent and did not come in. After all, the girl’s clothes were disheveled. Subconsciously, he still followed the unseen rule of “men and women should not touch each other.” “I mean, the one who comes to kill you tonight may be the real Australian shrike. And the one who killed your brother was just his copycat.”

“Nonsense.” Mike curled his lip, seemingly unwilling to accept the claim. “It’s been the same person from beginning to end.”

……

Seven months have passed since his son was killed and dismembered.

If they were to tell him that "there was more than one shrike in Australia," it would be tantamount to telling him that the person who killed his son might not be the one they're currently hunting at all. The real culprit is already at large and impossible to trace, and that's what truly breaks him down!

As a former mounted police officer, he knew exactly how much control each local police force had over the area.

Putting aside other considerations, couldn't he and Zhang Renfeng simply change their location and names and start living a normal life? If they could do it, why couldn't the Shrike of Aozhou? He has most likely already escaped White Torch Town and settled down somewhere else. In the vast west, who could find him?

It was the appearance of this fourteenth victim that rekindled a glimmer of hope in Mike's heart—this bastard was still in White Torch, never having left. He was waiting for an opportunity to strike again. This was also why Mike was determined to join the investigation; since he hadn't left, he was determined to find this scum and avenge his son!

But now, suddenly they're telling him that this fourteenth case he's been so eagerly anticipating... might have been done by a copycat?!

They say that concern leads to confusion, but in this matter, Mike couldn't help but care, and he couldn't help but be confused.

"Think carefully, how did the victims die in those thirteen cases?" Zhang Renfeng stated his arguments methodically, "They were hung on deer antlers, and their bodies sank little by little due to their own weight, until the antlers tore their bodies apart, causing them to bleed to death, right?"

"This process takes about ten minutes. During this time, he will remove some of the victim's organs as a memorial."

"..." Mike's expression was not good. Among the "cases" Zhang Renfeng mentioned were people he had watched grow up.

But reason prevailed over emotion. The character he had honed through years of gunfire forced him to calm down, and he nodded.

"However, Theonado was strangled. In other words, the subsequent act of impaling his body on the antlers may have been part of the performance. The killer was deliberately imitating the killing method of the Australian shrike, but did not let him die from massive bleeding after the antlers tore his body apart."

Mike's expression changed as he recalled what Gordon had said when he invited him.

The crime scene was very fresh and very clean.

How can it be clean?

The murder scenes in the past were extremely graphic and bloody.

This time, there were indeed some bloodstains on the stage, but they were all flowing down the deer antlers, without any exaggerated scenes. So much so that Xiaomei only felt slightly disgusted when she saw it.

This means that Theonado had been dead for some time by the time the antlers were placed on him, and his blood had already congealed.

----

"If you ask me, you're complicating the issue."

After listening to Zhang Renfeng's account, Igor, who had remained silent throughout, pondered for a moment before finally speaking, "There are now four possibilities: First, the one who killed Theonado was the real person; second, the one who came to kill Ms. Evelyn tonight was the real person; third, both are true; fourth, neither is true, and both are impersonators."

"If neither of these applies, it means that there are at least two copycats of the Australian Shrike in this town. Although both use antlers to kill, their methods of murder are subtly different. However, the killer's abilities are not something that everyone can imitate. Especially when it comes to organ removal, one needs to know the exact location of each internal organ. Only people with higher education can do that."

"In conclusion, I think we can rule out option four for now."

“If it’s the first one, then there’s nothing to worry about. We have clues.” Igor waved the collection of essays in his hand and said in a deep voice, “I’ve already read half of it. It’s a very interesting little thing. From this booklet, I can at least draw one conclusion: this kid has long since lost his will to live. There may be other clues later that we can slowly uncover.”

"We can find more by examining the relationships Leonardo had with people during his lifetime."

"And the second and third are essentially the same—the one tonight is the real deal, and he's already had a fight with Old Zhang. Because you're yellow-skinned, you're easy to recognize. With a little research, you'll know you're the temporary sheriff Gordon recruited."

"Whether he's targeting Evelyn herself or the Dietersdorf family name, he'll inevitably make another move."

"Then his next move is easy to predict: with you as Evelyn's bodyguard, it will be difficult for him to succeed. Therefore, he will definitely try to get rid of you, because you are now a semi-public official, and it will be mostly aboveboard. He will find a reason to get rid of you... If he wants to assassinate you, he probably can't beat you."

"So next, we'll play along—you and Evelyn will appear in public together a few more times, and whoever can't help but show strong hostility towards you is the real Australian shrike."

----

……

Everyone was quite surprised by his expression. Even Evelyn strained to look up and see who had said those words.

He was even more surprised when he saw that Igor was a dwarf.

"So, Old Zhang," Igor continued flipping through Theonado's collection of essays, his tone brimming with undisguised pride and boastfulness, "you got a good deal hiring me as your cook, didn't you?"

Chapter 136: You're Still on That Train

Whoever the murderer was tonight, he was cautious enough, as if he had anticipated this situation. The saddlebags of his black Appaloosa horse contained nothing that could identify him. Only a few short daggers, some gut used for making violin strings, and two rags.

However, judging solely from the price of the horse and the tack, one can infer that he was a fairly wealthy man. Furthermore, the unfinished paintings he left in the house might suggest that he had some artistic talent, perhaps even leaving behind some personal mementos at the murder scene.

If Evelyn is killed tonight, this painting, brimming with murderous intent, might still be mixed in with Theonado's belongings and auctioned off without anyone noticing.

In this way, the murderer mocked the police's incompetence and secretly rejoiced in his flawless plan.

In any case, the worst didn't happen, and this Appaloosa horse was worth some money, so tonight's trip wasn't a complete waste... Zhang Renfeng comforted himself with this thought.

----

The rustling sound of pages turning can be considered a form of white noise, which can help people sleep.

Zhang Renfeng originally thought that Mike was the most resilient person in their camp, but later he realized that he was just an old man who needed less sleep. Coupled with his obsession with avenging his son, he had to open his eyes at four or five o'clock every morning and couldn't fall asleep at all.

The true king of endurance in the camp was actually Igor. Everyone else was asleep, but he was the only one who kept reading Theonado's collection of essays over and over again.

"Aren't you going to rest?"

Zhang Renfeng took a piece of black bread and sat down next to him.

He had been busy all night, and hadn't eaten dinner. He just ate some bread dipped in the stew to fill his stomach.

“We don’t need to sleep that long. Everyone in my family does it this way.” Igor shook his head and laughed self-deprecatingly. “My brother can even sleep only 2 or 3 hours a day. He also told me that all the best ideas come out while other people are sleeping.”

"Sleeping only two or three hours a day and not dying from overwork, your brother is quite an extraordinary person." Zhang Renfeng looked at the collection of essays in his hand. "What's written in this?"

Igor didn't answer immediately, but instead raised his eyelids and looked at him with surprise, "You can't read?"

"I can only read, but I don't recognize many of the words."

“Ha… that’s understandable.” Igor smiled with relief. “After spending so much time with you, I often forget that you’re a foreigner.”

"That guy, what's his name... Theonado, right? I can guarantee that when he wrote this book, he was either completely drunk or chewing coca gum. A sober, normal person couldn't write something like this."

Igor waved the notebook in his hand and continued, "There are almost no real events. The descriptions are sometimes scattered and the pronouns are vague. The gist is that he was constantly suffering from confusion. He only had one or two hours a day when he made peace with himself and accepted that he was Theonado Dietersdorf himself. The rest of the time, he thought he was someone else."

"So, this guy really is... a madman?"

Hysteria has existed since ancient times, but in Zhang Renfeng's hometown, such people almost never have the opportunity to grow up to adulthood. For ordinary families, supporting a hysterical child who cannot work, cannot support the elderly, and makes no contribution to the family is simply a pipe dream.

However, if we were to draw a parallel with Theonado's case, it doesn't seem to be a simple case of hysteria.

“I think… he must be very confused, right?” Zhang Renfeng said in a deep voice. “In his room, I saw graffiti covering all four walls, all with the same word—'no way out'.”