"Did you really pick up that bag of monkfish from the trash? Can you even find something like that in a garbage can?" The manager was shocked by the procurement officer's words.
While monkfish prices may not compare to those of luxurious seafood like Australian lobster and king crab, they are still far from cheap.
Who would throw a bag of monkfish into the trash? Especially when the fish were still relatively fresh and not yet spoiled, it was practically the same as throwing money away.
But soon, the manager figured it out.
There were human hands inside the monkfish!
The fish were problematic, which was why they were discarded in the trash. Any normal monkfish would never be thrown away like that.
Once he understood, the manager's lungs nearly exploded with anger. The hotel was now involved in this mess, and the procurement officer would have to take the blame!
If it weren't for him picking up these suspicious monkfish, would this have happened?
"Damn it, I'll fire that idiot later! What a jinx!" The manager glared viciously at the procurement officer.
Xu Mo and the other officers also realized this after the procurement officer spoke.
The bag of monkfish was thrown into the trash because the seller knew there was something wrong with the fish. They didn't dare to sell them openly.
"Be more specific, where did you find them?" Xu Mo asked again.
The procurement officer thought for a moment, "I can't really describe the place, but I can take you there. I remember the way."
Xu Mo looked at Chen Ke and said, "Take two people with you and go with him. Check the area."
Afterward, he turned to the manager, "Do you have gloves and sealable bags?"
"Yes, yes! I'll go get them for you!"
After Chen Ke left with two officers and the procurement officer, Xu Mo put on gloves and placed the hand found on the cutting board into a sealable bag. He then instructed the manager to pack the remaining monkfish to take back to the police station.
Since a murder case was involved, the hotel's kitchen needed to be sealed temporarily. The hotel would not be able to operate until the case was resolved.
The hotel manager and all the chefs were taken to the police station for routine questioning.
...
At the police station.
In the autopsy room.
The forensic examiner was cutting open the monkfish one by one, while Xu Mo watched from the side. He wasn't keen on getting his hands dirty.
"I've never had to 'autopsy' fish in an autopsy room before... This is really bizarre. After so many years as a forensic examiner, I've never seen such a method of disposing of a body. Who would chop up a person and feed them to fish? How twisted must someone be to do something like this?" The forensic examiner remarked.
The autopsy room was filled with a nauseatingly strong fishy smell.
The forensic examiner had seen many gruesome scenes, and while the smell was unpleasant, it wasn't the worst he had encountered. So, despite the pungent odor, he continued working without flinching.
Xu Mo smiled wryly, "I've never seen such a method either."
After half an hour, the forensic examiner had finally cut open all the monkfish brought from the hotel. Inside, they found more fragmented body parts and managed to piece together as much as possible.
"We've only found these body parts, mostly chopped-up limbs. There isn't much of the rest of the body, so we can't fully reconstruct the corpse. But based on what we have, the victim appears to be a young female, slender, and petite. She looks like she might not even be an adult yet."
Xu Mo nodded. What the forensic examiner said was consistent with what he could see.
However, this information wasn't particularly useful. With only limbs, they couldn't even identify the victim's identity.
From the fragmented body parts, neither Xu Mo nor the forensic examiner could find many clues. They couldn't even determine where the fatal injury was.
To find more clues, they would have to rely on Chen Ke's progress.
Just as he was thinking this, Xu Mo's phone rang. It was Chen Ke.
After answering, Chen Ke's voice came through the phone.
"Captain, I'm at the location now. I've taken a quick look. The trash can where the procurement officer found the monkfish is by the seafood market. There's a surveillance camera right across from the trash can. Maybe we can find something from it. I'm about to check the footage now."
"Okay," Xu Mo responded.
If there was a surveillance camera by the trash can, they might be able to find out who threw away the monkfish, and the case could move forward.
Ten minutes later.
Chen Ke finished checking the footage and sent the copied video to Xu Mo, along with a voice message.
"This person threw the fish away around 2:00 AM. He was well-wrapped, so we can't see his face, but based on his build, he seems to be a man."
Xu Mo watched the video Chen Ke sent and found that, as Chen Ke said, the person who threw away the monkfish was indeed well-wrapped, and his face couldn't be seen.
Chen Ke could only find this much. Afterward, he returned to the police station with the officers and the procurement officer.
Meanwhile, the officers in charge of interrogating the hotel chefs and manager had also finished their questioning.
The results of the interrogation matched their initial suspicions. The chefs were completely unaware of the situation and had no involvement. They only discovered the body parts inside the fish during the process of cleaning them.
Since they had no use keeping the chefs at the station, Xu Mo decided to let them go after instructing them not to disclose the case.
Aside from the chefs, the procurement officer also had little suspicion. The surveillance footage could prove his innocence.
The footage showed that the monkfish were thrown into the trash at around 2:00 AM, while the procurement officer picked them up at around 6:00 AM. Comparing the footage, it was also clear that the procurement officer was slightly smaller in build than the person who threw the fish away, so he was not a suspect.
...
The police station was filled with smoke.
The large office area was eerily quiet, with only the sound of cigarettes burning in the officers' hands.
The officers were all focused on reviewing the surveillance footage, not a single word spoken.
Since the victim's identity couldn't be determined, to solve the case, they had to start with the man captured by the surveillance camera near the trash can.
The monkfish containing body parts were thrown away by this man, making him the primary suspect. It was highly likely that he was the killer!
Although the surveillance footage only captured his figure and not his face, that wasn't a problem. At 2:00 AM, the seafood market was nearly empty, so it was easy for the officers to track him down in the various surveillance videos without needing to match his face.
After half an hour of tracking through the surveillance footage, the officers found where the man went after leaving the seafood market—an old residential area.
"This must be his home!" Li Chen perked up.
"Probably. Let's go check it out!" Xu Mo decided.
The group immediately set off for the old neighborhood...
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
ine. During your journey, you save an abandoned baby girl and become her elder brother】 【You rely on each other, becoming each other's support】 【At the end of the simulation, you shield the now-grown girl with your life, sacrificing yourself to block numerous demonic cultivators. You die, and the light in the girl's eyes fades】 …… 【Second Simulation: You are transported to a world where steam and magic coexist】 【You immerse yourself in the study of magic, obsessed with its research. One day, while out, you encounter a half-blooded demon girl wandering the streets. You take her in as your student】 【You teach the demoness what it means to be human, show her the beauty of the world, and nurture her into a miracle that surpasses even the gods】 【At the end of the simulation, you die of old age in front of the nearly immortal demoness due to your mortal lifespan】 …… One simulation after another, one encounter after another. Xu Xi suddenly felt something was off: "Wait, you said you're coming to the real world to find me?"
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
