Chapter 1 Catching the Murderer?

Chai Cuiqiao suddenly lost interest, pursing her lips. But for the sake of the new phone, she obediently钻进了(zuan jin le – entered) the Soul-Guiding Banner disguised as a black umbrella.

The prerequisite for the Soul-Guiding Banner to nourish spiritual bodies is to absorb yin energy. These past few days, Li Ang had been taking the black umbrella to cemeteries, even buying several bunches of plastic lilies to pin on his chest for disguise.

"I wonder where the police officer responsible for monitoring my safety is..."

Li Ang muttered to himself, dragging the landline phone to the carpet at the door, adding a voice-activated component, and setting it to automatically call Li Ang's cell phone whenever it heard 70 decibels, in case the police officer knocked on the door to inquire.

Then, he put on his hooded night clothes, gloves, and rain boots, donned the red-faced Guan Gong-style face-changing mask, stuck an axe bishou in his waist, and carried the black umbrella on his back, climbing out the window.

In order to avoid any other beings with spiritual senses in Yin City, Li Ang didn't immediately summon Chai Cuiqiao. Instead, he used his fingers to grip the cracks in the wall, stepping on the external unit of the air conditioner, and climbed up to the rooftop, one level at a time.

The wind on the rooftop was cold and strong. Li Ang pulled up his collar and took out his phone.

To catch the murderer, one naturally had to collect evidence first. Although most of the evidence had already been scoured by the police, there was still some "evidence" that couldn't be moved.

"The bicycle parking shed downstairs from 2084, and the surveillance cameras used by the supermarket at the entrance of the neighborhood, are both 720 Drop Cameras produced a few years ago."

Li Ang swiped his phone screen, muttering to himself, "Modern surveillance cameras mostly have networking functions. Stores, residential areas, office buildings, even private rooms, hotels, and major road arteries, every place's surveillance camera has the risk of exposure. As long as you go through the exposed public network IP, anyone can scan those network cameras whose firmware or system hasn't been updated for a long time, whose ports haven't been closed, and which don't have any protective measures. You can even directly export surveillance data and watch the surveillance footage in real time.

"And the 720 Drop Camera, which sells itself on 'free hardware', takes 'insecurity' to the extreme. Every 720 Drop Camera sold to merchants at extremely low or even free prices will monitor and broadcast the surveillance footage on 720's Shuidi (Water Drop) live streaming platform—you don't even need hacking skills, just log into the Shuidi live streaming platform to watch the recordings."

No matter how brain-dead or detrimental to consumer interests the 720 Shuidi live streaming platform's ideas are, it makes it a lot easier for Li Ang to collect clues. He directly played back the surveillance footage from the bicycle shed downstairs from 2084 at 10x speed on his phone, and with the help of fast-forward, quickly discovered an anomaly.

Starting six days ago, whenever Zeng Weiming or Wang Fangni walked out of the building and threw a black garbage bag into the downstairs trash can, within 10 minutes, a portly man wearing a yellow sanitation worker uniform and a mask would drag away the entire trash can, and put the empty trash can back in its place within minutes.

He's... collecting trash?

Li Ang frowned slightly. The criminal suspect clearly possessed extraordinary abilities and could easily kill Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni, who were ordinary people. Why did he still need to collect household waste? Was it to figure out their daily routines? Is this a revenge killing?

Li Ang continued to fast-forward.

Over the past six days, the man had persistently collected the household waste of Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni, sometimes even pushing over a small cart full of mud and lifting the entire trash can away.

"He appears within 10 minutes of Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni throwing away their trash, which means he can maintain real-time surveillance. Either he's very rich and idle, or he doesn't have a proper job or works the night shift.

"The place he stays during surveillance is very close to the 2084 building, and every time he appears, he comes out from the west gate of the neighborhood. The small cart is covered in mud, and the new boots he's wearing today also have fresh, damp mud on them, which means the path he takes to the neighborhood passes through an unpaved road."

A 10-minute walk, a road under construction, a residential setting where one can enter and exit without attracting attention while pushing a small cart and carrying garbage bags...

Li Ang quickly searched for the surrounding terrain in his mind, and quickly locked onto an area.

The urban village next to the open-air parking lot construction site on the southwest side of the residential area...

Li Ang exhaled a mouthful of turbid air, ran down the stairs, and in the two-story gap hidden from surveillance cameras, rode the bicycle he had placed there beforehand.

The presence-weakening effect of the face-changing mask activated. Even if he was dressed like a serial killer, he wouldn't be noticed by passersby. As long as he avoided the cameras along the way, he was invisible in this city.

Li Ang's feet pedaled faster and faster. Everything he could discover, the police had no reason not to notice. The killer, who was clean and left no traces, dared to leave the surveillance video without deleting it. Either he was confident that he would have moved away before the police found him, or he was so crazy that he wasn't afraid of being pursued, and even wanted to go head-to-head...

No matter which possibility it was, Li Ang, with his mission, didn't want to see accidents happen. He traveled through the shadows between the streetlights, the sound of the wind whistling past his ears.

The urban village shantytown, here.

This was a relatively low-rise flat area. The houses were at most two or three stories high. The buildings were old and dilapidated, the pipelines were chaotic, the drainage and sewage were poor, the garbage was disastrous, and the streets and alleys were narrow and crowded, like cages.

Compared to the surrounding modern, brightly lit high-rise buildings, this shantytown was like an isolated island forgotten by everyone.

Living in the shantytown were the literal bottom-level residents.

Urban white-collar workers and young people on campus, who have social discourse power, enjoy modern technological products, play Douyin, mobile games, watch blockbusters, eat snacks, discuss fashion trends, and are full of yearning for the future.

The vast majority of people are unaware that there are many invisible people in the same city as us who do not have the right to speak.

Sanitation workers who wear masks and go out early and return late, retired construction workers with disabilities, workers who deliver goods to supermarkets, old people without children to support them...

Living in the shantytown is the true meaning of the social bottom. No one cares what happens here, and no one cares what people here need.

Poverty, backwardness, hardship, struggle are the eternal themes of this isolated island.

Li Ang parked his bicycle on the side of the road, looked up at the "一线天(yi xian tian – a line of sky)" flat buildings that stood face-to-face and were tightly attached to each other, sighed, stepped over a muddy and stinky sewage pit, passed a pile of plastic bags filled with garbage, smelled that foul odor, and walked straight into it.