Special Forces Medic-Chapter 667 - 629: What Are You Looking For?

Xiao Lin leapt out of the kitchen window, three Silver Needles barely making metallic and solid clashing sounds, while one was so subtle it was inaudible. With his keen hearing, he climbed up to the window. Xiao Lin was certain he had hit the target; in the dim light, he could only deduce the approximate distance the bullet traveled.

The surveillance camera was still functioning, yet the man who had been stationed behind it had already fled, leaving the equipment behind. The window was wide open; a few bullet casings lay on the ground, warm from being fired when Xiao Lin picked one up.

In the empty room, there was a lingering smell of smoke. Ignoring it, Xiao Lin turned on the light, observing the cigarette butts and electrical wires scattered across the floor. He stood in front of the surveillance camera, getting a clear view of Tang Xiaoxia's room through its lens. From this spot, the bullet shot through the kitchen window, creating a bullet hole and shattered glass.

Tang Xiaoxia feared for her life and used bulletproof glass for the windows, which were cracked but not shattered. Thinking this, Xiao Lin turned and left the room, only to find the entire building had been vacated.

Following the stairway down, Xiao Lin easily inspected the entire structure as it matched Tang Xiaoxia's apartment layout. Upon entering the kitchen, distracted by the light, he stepped on a soft object and momentarily froze before retracting his foot, retreating to the doorway to turn on the light.

A male corpse lay on the ground, facedown, with its head and body rotated. Its fingers pointed in a specific direction. Initially, Xiao Lin thought it might be a resident, but quickly dismissed the notion due to the man wearing a military uniform stripped of insignia, with a grayish tint that made it difficult to identify its unit.

Xiao Lin did not touch the body; regardless of whether one of the Silver Needles he shot hit this person, he immediately reported the discovery to Wu Shuang.

The police arrived half an hour later, by which time Xiao Lin had thoroughly searched the entire apartment again. The surveillance camera remained as he had found it, positioned as before. He sat at the doorway awaiting Wu Shuang's arrival, the cigarette butts on the floor suggesting his mind was somewhat blocked.

"Where's the body?" Wu Shuang asked upon seeing Xiao Lin at the door, feeling resigned by the frequency of corpse discoveries lately.

"In the kitchen." Xiao Lin discarded the half-smoked cigarette in his hand, not having seen Mu Rongyun. "Did the forensic specialist come along?"

"He took the day off." Wu Shuang entered the kitchen with colleagues to examine the scene. Xiao Lin stood aside, exclaiming in surprise as the body was finally flipped over. "What is it?" Wu Shuang was close enough to clearly hear his soft utterance.

"Hold off on handling the body; come with me." Xiao Lin stopped the staff from moving the corpse, taking Wu Shuang's hand and heading toward Tang Xiaoxia's villa.

"Is this Tang Xiaoxia's residence?" Wu Shuang thought it inconvenient to ask certain questions in front of colleagues earlier, but as Xiao Lin led her to another building, she had already guessed why he was in this remote area late at night. "That corpse has no relation to you, right?"

"Not sure; no direct relationship, but there's an indirect one." Xiao Lin didn't intend to deceive Wu Shuang, noting the small pinhole on the body's neck as it was turned over.

Without worrying if Wu Shuang understood, Xiao Lin had her sit on the living room sofa on the first floor. "Tang Xiaoxia was constantly under surveillance. The angle from behind your current seating position points to the room where the corpse was found. I'm unsure who was observing her, but Wang Zhanting is highly suspect. Meanwhile, someone with a head start already ransacked the upstairs bedroom."

"What about the smoke..." Wu Shuang turned towards the villa behind her, unable to see anything and relying solely on Xiao Lin's account.

"The smoke is still there; I found it, though what they sought in the room probably wasn't smoke. This can only be answered by asking Tang Xiaoxia." Xiao Lin led Wu Shuang into the kitchen. "The cigarette was found in the fridge. After Tang Xiaoxia was hospitalized, surveillance continued here. Upon finding the cigarette, a bullet shot through the kitchen window." He pointed at the glass above the sink as the evening breeze blew through the bullet hole. "The body has a pinhole, attacked when I fired three Silver Needles. Two were found in the room, the third embedded in the body. Here's my question: the shot was fired from the second-floor room while I stood here, resulting in the bullet hole above the window. Then I hid under the table, where bullets must've hit twice at the table legs, evidenced by wood shavings here."

"You're saying if your Silver Needle caused the death, the body should have fallen in the second-floor room, not in the kitchen; is that right?" Wu Shuang analyzed what Xiao Lin attempted to convey.

"Definitely, what I mean is why did the perpetrator go to such trouble." While waiting for Wu Shuang, Xiao Lin repeatedly simulated such a scenario, considering how it's normal for a hit accomplice to flee, but why relocate the corpse to the kitchen?

"Let's go back to see if we find anything new." Wu Shuang, after surveying the surroundings, felt the issues were still rooted in that building.

The corpse was set aside; for the first time since its discovery, Xiao Lin observed it up close: no fatal external wounds, thus no direct lethal weapon caused the death. The neck had a minor injury, exactly the size of Xiao Lin's Silver Needle.

"This is the main artery. If struck by my Silver Needle, he couldn't possibly have walked here." Xiao Lin confidently stated, unbuttoning the corpse's shirt, meticulously searching.

"What are you looking for?"

"This needle wound wasn't caused by me. I'm looking for the spot where he was first hit." Xiao Lin discovered the issue while carefully examining the needle wound on the neck. He shot from a distance, urgently firing in the dark, so there would be discrepancies in accuracy from different angles. Even if it were possible to pierce the main artery, the focus point of the needle wouldn't be this large and deep.

"Not caused by you? Then who would it be?" Wu Shuang gazed blankly at the needle wound on the corpse's neck. "Aren't you the only one who uses a needle as a weapon?"

"That's right, but there's blood at the break of this needle wound, and the entire needle is buried in."

Xiao Lin pressed his two fingers on the edges of the needle wound and pressed down hard, raising the part where the needle entered to the surface. "Even the needle tip is inserted under the epidermis; this kind of force can only occur at close range."

"Why do this?" Xiao Lin didn't answer Wu Shuang, and he began to tear open the corpse's pants. "Hey, what are you doing?"

"Found it!" There was a red dot on the corpse's knee. "This was caused by me. It seems he was killed by his accomplices to prevent us from catching him alive. How ruthless."

Xiao Lin stood up, feeling quite disgusted by this mutual killing. "Are you going back to the station now?"

"Yeah!"

"Borrow me the basement for a while." Xiao Lin wanted to analyze the components in the cigarette overnight.

Mu Rongyun sensed the presence of others in his basement as soon as he returned from outside. He hurried down the stairs to see the lights in his laboratory blazing, with Wu Shuang's figure moving inside, and in front of his experiment table, Xiao Lin was buried in the test tubes.

"What are you doing here?" Mu Rongyun noticed the liquid bubbling under the alcohol lamp in the test tube. "Are you doing a breakdown?"

"Yeah!" Xiao Lin didn't lift his head; his first attempt at decomposition failed, unable to accurately isolate other components from the tobacco. He was trying another method.

"For what?" Mu Rongyun picked up a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes. "Tang Xiaoxia?"

"A corpse was just discovered at Tang Xiaoxia's residence." Wu Shuang pointed to the body in the freezer. "The cause of death is known, but the identity is yet to be verified."

Mu Rongyun put down the cigarette and opened the freezer, revealing a grey military uniform in front of him. "This is a division formed by retired special forces." He pushed the body back into the freezer. "If you want to know the identity, someone will come looking for you later."

Xiao Lin raised his head from the experiment, glanced at Mu Rongyun's calmness, and buried himself back in the test tube.

He took out a bit of tobacco, placed it in a dish, dropped a few reagents on it, and when it was fully soaked, he put it in the burning test tube. The clean water turned yellow-brown as the tobacco bubbled. Xiao Lin observed the color in the test tube, waiting for it not to darken with temperature, then turned off the alcohol lamp.

"Is it done?" Wu Shuang came over when she saw this.

"We'll only know after it cools down." Xiao Lin removed his glasses, threw his gloves into the trash. "Did you just mention a division?" He had never heard of it.

"Naturally, you haven't heard of it. Besides Dragon Soul, there are certainly other small organizations." Mu Rongyun didn't mean it disdainfully; he casually found a place to sit. "Dragon Soul is directly managed by the central government, not subject to local command; you are exalted, having dominance, but for local people, naturally there are their own small teams. If they can't enlist you, they have to cultivate their own, understand?"

Wu Shuang sensed a rather unusual atmosphere between them; she worriedly glanced back and forth between the two. "Has Zhang Qiang's death report come out yet?"

Mu Rongyun locked eyes with Xiao Lin, then diverted his gaze first. "It's already on your desk."