I See Murders Before They Happen

Chapter 247: Chapter 245: Handled a Similar Case Before

After watching the surveillance footage, Su Miaoyi went to the sketch room.

Lu Zhishen was reconstructing a portrait from the blurry figure.

Su Miaoyi stood behind him and watched for a while. She didn’t really understand, only that his method was different from the usual, where she would provide a description for him to draw.

She couldn’t tell what he was doing now.

She watched quietly for a bit longer, then sat down on the sofa to wait.

The reflection of the figure on the ceramic tiles was very unclear. Su Miaoyi couldn’t make out any facial features at all, only the outline of a face.

And even finding the outline of the face required finding the right angle in the video.

So it was much more difficult than usual.

Listening to the SHUSH SHUSH sound of the pencil, Su Miaoyi sat on the sofa. As she waited, she ended up leaning back and falling asleep.

Not long after she fell asleep, she started dreaming again.

The dream was chaotic, filled with many cases. One moment it was a homicide, the next a fraud case. One moment she was at a crime scene, the next in the municipal bureau’s office.

One moment she was investigating a case, the next she was being chewed out.

Finally, she suddenly fell off a cliff into icy water. She jolted awake, her hand slapping down hard on the sofa.

The sudden movement was so loud it startled Lu Zhishen, nearly making him throw his pencil.

He looked over at her, surprised. "What’s wrong?"

Su Miaoyi, suddenly awake and still a bit dazed, stared blankly for a moment before looking at Lu Zhishen. "It’s nothing. I was dreaming."

"Beating someone up in your dreams again?" Lu Zhishen asked.

Su Miaoyi rubbed her face with both hands. "I wasn’t beating up a person. I slapped the water a few times."

"Who?"

"Water."

"Huh?" Lu Zhishen was starting to get confused too.

Su Miaoyi looked at him. "Water."

"Oh." Lu Zhishen understood. "So you really became a Beautiful Mermaid? Got into a fight with the water in the river."

"The river was trying to drown me, so I was trying to beat it to death," Su Miaoyi said.

Lu Zhishen opened his mouth but said nothing.

Su Miaoyi got up, walked behind him, and looked at his drawing. She couldn’t understand at all what he was drawing on the paper. "Are you almost done?"

"Almost," Lu Zhishen said.

Su Miaoyi didn’t admit she couldn’t understand, just nodded as if she were a profound observer. "I won’t disturb you then. I’m going to go for a walk."

"Okay," Lu Zhishen said. "Don’t get lost on your walk."

"I’m not three years old," Su Miaoyi said.

"But you’re the one who would walk for hours to a strange place."

"Er..." Su Miaoyi immediately changed her tune. "I definitely won’t get lost."

Lu Zhishen nodded.

Zhuang Yanzheng had already spoken with the personnel on duty at the entrance.

If Su Miaoyi went out and didn’t respond when they spoke to her, they were to notify Zhuang Yanzheng immediately.

After leaving the sketch room, Su Miaoyi went to find Zhuang Yanzheng.

Zhuang Yanzheng wasn’t asleep yet; he was reading a case file.

Su Miaoyi knocked on the door, then peeked her head in.

"Is the sketch ready?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"Almost." Su Miaoyi walked into the office and got straight to the point. "Have we handled a similar case before?"

Zhuang Yanzheng looked at her. "You..."

"I haven’t remembered," Su Miaoyi said. "I just had a dream, and it suddenly felt like we might have handled a similar case in the past."

Zhuang Yanzheng stared at her for a few more seconds, then nodded. "We have."

As he spoke, he glanced at the case file by his hand.

Su Miaoyi saw a mix of complex emotions on his face: loss, sorrow, longing, but mostly, resentment.

She had almost never seen so much emotion on Zhuang Yanzheng’s face.

"Five years ago," Zhuang Yanzheng said.

Su Miaoyi glanced at the date on the case file. It was from a little over five years ago.

"It started as a case received by a branch office. A forty-seven-year-old woman had transferred over eight hundred thousand yuan to six different accounts in succession. Her husband reported it, and police officers went to their home to intervene. The woman wouldn’t listen. She insisted on making the transfers, claiming she was sinful, which was why her life was unhappy and difficult. She believed that as long as she transferred the money to the designated accounts, she would atone for her sins, receive God’s protection, and her future would be smooth and prosperous.

"It was a clear-cut scam, but the woman had been so thoroughly brainwashed that she refused to believe the police. She was adamant about transferring the money, and when they tried to stop her, she cried, threw a tantrum, cursed them out, and even started scratching and clawing at people. She said things like they were blocking her path to atonement."

"Eventually, the husband and wife got into a fight. Her husband had to hide her phone to stop her from making more transfers."

"Was the money ever recovered?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"No," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "All the money was ultimately transferred to an overseas account, making it very difficult to trace."

"Initially, the case was handled as fraud. The police visited the woman’s home multiple times to educate and persuade her. It was a long time before she slowly came to realize she had been scammed."

"And during that period of persuasion, fifteen similar fraud cases were successively discovered over a three-month period in nine cities, including Jinghai, Jiangcheng, Luo City, and Xian City."

"All these cases had one thing in common: every victim mentioned sin, atonement, and the need to receive God’s blessing. They believed they had to send away their ’sinful’ money to receive that blessing."

"Around that time, the forty-seven-year-old woman from the first case in Jinghai confessed the entire process of how she was scammed."

"The woman had depressive tendencies, didn’t have many friends, and was unhappy all the time. Then she happened to see an online psychological counseling service and started sessions over the internet. The ’counselor’ kept telling her that money was the root of all evil, and if she sent it all away, she could be happy and would be blessed."

"They used all sorts of manipulative language, mixed in with some psychological counseling techniques, to constantly brainwash her. In the end, they convinced her to transfer her money away, transaction by transaction."

"They knew the source and cause of her depression. For every transfer she made, they would provide a corresponding emotional reward, making her feel happy. This convinced her it was really working and being effective, so she would keep transferring money."

"Mm," Zhuang Yanzheng nodded. "After she gave her statement, we investigated that psychological counseling website. It was purely a brainwashing site, mixing relatively professional counseling techniques with all kinds of brainwashing rhetoric. The other fifteen cases were all more or less the same. Over half of the victims had visited that so-called psychological counseling website, and the rest were brainwashed by offline organizations."

"Following that lead, we eventually tracked down a cult. They were involved in brainwashing, fraud, and even incitement to murder."

"Incitement to murder?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"Yes. It was also connected to two cold cases, both homicides.

Su Miaoyi frowned, remaining silent for a moment before saying, "I remember this case from back then. It was never solved. It seemed like every time we found a small lead or a person of interest, by the time we got there, the lead would go cold and the person would be gone."

She was suddenly starting to remember things.

Zhuang Yanzheng didn’t speak, merely nodding.

Su Miaoyi felt that the complex emotions on his face had grown even heavier.

After a few seconds, he let out a sigh. "We investigated the case for over a year. It still wasn’t solved by the time you left for your mission."

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