Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Four Jesuses
"Why can’t they solve it?"
"Hmm, that’s a good question."
"I’ll tell you for the sake of that duck leg."
Xu Huo leaned back in his chair, looking at the old classmate he hadn’t seen in ages. She still had that dazed look about her; she was probably working a desk job.
"Two reasons."
"The people are too old, and the equipment is too outdated."
"That’s it?" Chu Xi looked baffled, completely confused.
"Is that not enough?" Xu Huo shrugged. He’d been a cop in his past life, which was why he’d chosen the police academy for college in this one. He’d been a police officer in two different eras, and they weren’t even in the same league.
"The people are too old... But aren’t older criminal investigators supposed to be more experienced and more skilled?"
Chu Xi furrowed her delicate brow. She reached out, propped an elbow on the table, and rested her cheek in her hand as she watched Xu Huo.
"And what’s wrong with the equipment?"
"Isn’t criminal investigation about intelligence?"
Xu Huo chuckled, amused. He looked at the confused young woman and, after a moment’s thought, decided to answer.
"The professional investigators who graduated from the academy haven’t earned a voice yet. They lack the real-world experience to turn their knowledge into actual skill."
"The old guard relies solely on experience. Without special abilities, an old-school investigator’s work is pure luck. If they’re lucky enough to find a clue, they solve the case. If not, it becomes a cold case."
"As for equipment... you wouldn’t understand. Investigators need a ton of gear, and it’s not as simple as patrol cars, batons, magnifying glasses, and flashlights..."
He paused briefly before continuing, "You remember what our academy instructors taught us about the ’Celestial Eye System’ that’s being built in the country, right?"
Xu Huo began to explain the concept of the Celestial Eye to her.
The Celestial Eye, literally an ’eye in the sky,’ was a system being built by the police. It linked space-based information systems like small satellites and the Beidou Navigation Satellite System with a dense, ant-like network of surveillance cameras on the ground.
Its arrival would elevate the police’s ability to investigate murder cases by more than just a single notch!
"If they ever get that thing built... the clearance rate for criminal investigations will increase exponentially!"
Chu Xi was stunned into a daze. The thought of tracking criminals on the ground from space felt like something out of a science fiction movie.
Xu Huo smiled. The power of the Celestial Eye was beyond what words could describe.
Let’s use some data to back it up.
Take murder cases, for instance.
Back in ’03, ’04, what was the murder case clearance rate for the old-school investigators? The ones with ten or twenty years of service, the ones who seemed impressive but were just ordinary?
Forty percent!
A murder case had only a forty percent chance of being solved. And that figure was padded—about ten percent of those were improperly filed cases. Take that away, and you’re down to thirty percent. And that thirty percent still included the cases that were closed at lightning speed.
A human life, unjustly taken, and there was only a thirty percent chance the crime would ever be solved.
Does thirty percent sound high? To someone who doesn’t know any better, maybe it sounds decent, but...
What about in the year ’23?
For an investigator with the Celestial Eye System and systematic training, what’s the clearance rate?
A number so staggering it’s almost unbelievable.
The murder case clearance rate is 99.94 percent!
That’s right. Out of every ten thousand murders, only six would go unsolved, and even those might be solved the following year!
In other words, in ’23, if you were murdered, the police were virtually one hundred percent certain to catch the killer. Anyone who dared to kill you would face justice!
But in this current era, out of a thousand murder cases, six or seven hundred of them will become cold cases...
Six cases, compared to six or seven hundred...
What’s more, in ’23, while maintaining a nearly perfect clearance rate, they could still find the time to handle 5,300 cold cases from previous years!
And where did those cold cases come from?
They were stockpiled from this very era!
Experience?
Before the wave of high-precision machine factories, the manual laborers at the screw factory who were about to be replaced also thought their skills were everything!
"Why don’t you join?"
Chu Xi snapped back to reality and looked at Xu Huo. "You graduated first in our class. Why didn’t you join the force?!"
"Being a private detective pays a lot more than being a cop."
Xu Huo smiled. In his previous life, even before the Celestial Eye System existed, when other people’s clearance rates were hovering around fifty or sixty percent, he had maintained a one-hundred-percent clearance rate on all criminal cases in his district for six consecutive years!
The entire police department treated him like a god of wealth.
He’d finally made it to the era where the Celestial Eye System was widespread, but before he could enjoy it for long, some ’Child of Fortune’s’ great luck had knocked him all the way back here...
After realizing this era was no different from the ’03 of his past life, he’d resolutely quit.
"Finding people’s lost pets pays way more than being a cop."
Xu Huo talked about his clients. "Catching a cheating spouse can earn you more than a police officer’s entire annual salary!"
Chu Xi looked down and began to sulk. She crossed her arms over her chest... tried to cross them... tried again... but couldn’t, so she just used her arms to support her chest instead.
She turned her head away, refusing to look at Xu Huo.
After a long while, her anger seemed to have subsided. She turned back to Xu Huo and said:
"Are you re~ally sure you don’t want to investigate? You a~re a suspect, you know. What if some clue leads back to you..."
She was trying to scare him, but her voice lacked any real threat.
Xu Huo almost wanted to laugh.
But then, his expression turned serious. He paused, and a pale blue screen materialized before him.
[Congratulations, Host. You have triggered the mission: Compose the plot for the ’Modern Jesus Case!’]
[(Incomplete)]
[Composition Time: Four days]
This was a mission from the system, the only one he’d received in twenty-three years, and it only gave him four days to compose the plot...
If the police had forcibly detained him for three days, plus the one day that had already passed, he would have perfectly missed the composition window.
Furthermore... ’A plot? What kind of plot am I supposed to write?’
Xu Huo wondered internally. ’The killer’s autobiography? The victim’s life story? Or the police investigation?’
He was certain that he couldn’t just write whatever he wanted and complete the mission. After all, the reward had requirements.
If it had to revolve around the case, then no matter the perspective, the prerequisite had to be...
Solving the case!
If he missed this case, there was no telling when the next one would come... He couldn’t just keep using the system as a tool for lucid dreaming!
"It’s not entirely out of the question, but..."
Xu Huo had just started to speak, not even getting the chance to state his conditions.
The next second, Chu Xi shot to her feet, her eyes shining.
"Really!?"
"I’ll go tell my master!"
Without a moment’s hesitation, she turned and ran out.
"Hey, I have two conditions! I have conditions!" Xu Huo quickly shouted after her, wondering if she’d even heard him.
Xu Huo chuckled, shaking his head.
A few seconds later, however, his expression sobered. He sat on the soft cot, hands clasped, and fell deep into thought.
An image surfaced in his mind.
The scene at the rainy intersection: four corpses, nailed to crosses, kneeling and looking up with vacant expressions, their faces veiled by the fine drizzle...
"Modern Jesus..."
"Heh, interesting."
...
...
「September 2nd. 12:37 PM.」
A dreary, rainy day.
Flashes of interwoven red and blue light glinted off a damp, black raincoat. Li Jianye looked up at the endlessly drizzling sky, his brow furrowed.
He lowered his head, scanning the scene around him.
Countless figures in raincoats moved back and forth, splashing through the water. A yellow police tape cordon. A few police cars, hidden in the rain but betrayed by their flashing lights.
The light rain pattered in his ears, soaking everyone and blurring their vision until faces became indistinguishable.
This was the Torch Road intersection in Jiangsan City.
The crime scene!
A crime scene cordoned off by police tape. Countless figures moved about, and at the very center of them...
Li Jianye paused. He turned his head to look at the middle of the intersection.
There, the police had erected a tent. Underneath it were...
Four corpses. Their faces were deathly pale, their expressions twisted and rigid. They were nailed to crosses, kneeling on the ground, staring at the sky with vacant eyes.
The four bodies faced north, south, east, and west.
"Whoa, the bodies are still here. When did this happen?"
"Who knows? They were here when we woke up yesterday... Tsk, look at that. Imagine how much it must have hurt to have your hands smashed through like that..."
"Do those four bodies remind you of anything?"
"What?"
"Like... four Jesuses."
The murmurs of local residents drifted over. They stood outside the police tape on their tiptoes, whispering amongst themselves and occasionally glancing toward Li Jianye. Their voices were a rustle of sound.
Li Jianye paid them no mind.
He squatted down. With a rubber-gloved hand, he gently probed the corpse’s stomach, which looked like a slab of scored pigskin.
It was empty. The intestines had long since spilled out like flowing noodles, the intestinal fluids mixing with the rainwater in a pile on the ground that had already been collected by the police.
A slight touch of the pallid skin sent a piercing chill through his fingertips.
Li Jianye took a deep breath. He stood up, glanced at the busy figures around him, and his face darkened.
"What’s the status on evidence collection!?"
"If you drag this out any longer, the damn bodies are going to get soaked until they’re bloated and pasty!"
The people around him paused. A few men in raincoats stood up, wiped the rain from their faces, and replied in bitter tones:
"Chief, this rain is making things impossible. Any clues have either been hidden or washed away."
"We can’t find a single useful clue!"
In this line of work, nature was always the number one enemy of criminal investigation. Especially fire and water—those things could turn a murder full of holes into a seemingly flawless crime!
A light rain had fallen on the morning of September 1st. The crime scene had few clues to begin with, and the rain had blurred them even further...
"Can’t even use the equipment," another man muttered, looking up to curse the heavens.
A day and a half...
Their entire division hadn’t found a single useful clue!
Their efficiency was appallingly low, not even a third of what it would be on a normal, clear day!
But there was nothing to be done. The weather forecast in this era was basically just looking up at the sky. If it was raining, they’d say it was raining. If it was sunny, they’d say it was sunny. There was no reliability.
You could still investigate normally after a fire, but in the rain, you were truly helpless...
They couldn’t even use a magnifying glass. The moment they took one out, it was covered in water. They had to rely on their own two eyes, stinging from the rain. How the hell were they supposed to find anything?!
"Dammit!"
Li Jianye grunted, a suffocating frustration brewing in his chest.
It had been almost two days...
And they had absolutely nothing in the way of useful clues!
The golden seventy-two-hour window for solving a case was more than halfway gone, and they had nothing!!!
It would be one thing if they simply lacked the ability, but this was a completely unforeseen disaster!!!
If this continued, the case would most likely become...
A cold case.
A cold case involving four human lives...
Li Jianye felt a wave of suffocation. It wasn’t just him; most of the others around him felt it too, and they all fell silent.
Until...
"Master, time to eat."
A voice called out.
Comments