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墨書 Inktalez
The musty smell of the archive room mingled with the sharp scent of camphor balls as Chen Yu's police boots crushed the termites emerging from the cracks in the floor tiles.
When he pulled out file number 1996-12, the yellowed cover suddenly oozed a sticky substance, leaving a wet mark in the shape of a comb on the plastic sleeve.
"This was sealed by Captain Chen back in the day," Old Sun said, pushing his reading glasses to the edge of his bald head. "He said we could only proceed once the comb teeth on the window frame had fully grown..." Before he could finish, sparks erupted from the emergency exit sign at the end of the corridor, and a shadow of someone combing their hair flickered in the green light.
Chen Yu used an evidence knife to cut open the seal, and half a roll of Kodak film slid out from the file. Holding it up to the sunlight, he noticed several gray-white strands caught between the perforations of the Kodak film. When he brought it under an ultraviolet lamp, images that should have been blank suddenly revealed scenes from a textile worker's changing room—Li Xiuyun was applying chicken blood to her hair with a carved wooden comb, but her reflection in the mirror showed Zhou Fudi's face.
At the site of the old Qinghe Teahouse, torrential rain washed over the charred beams. Chen Yu's forensic light swept across three remaining window frames. On the inner side of the second beam, twenty-two comb-like notches varied in depth, with the deepest one embedded with a piece of scalp containing hair follicles. He took out his grandfather's bronze compass; the magnetic needle spun wildly before finally pointing towards Zhenxi Huai Tree Grove.
"This comb mark is alive," fingerprint analyst Xiao Wu suddenly stepped back. "There were only twenty-one when I came for evidence last week." His trembling finger pointed at the latest notch, where dark red liquid was seeping from the wood grain, exuding a sweet scent reminiscent of locust flower honey.
Chen Yu dipped a cotton swab into the liquid, and suddenly, the sealed bag became hot and fell away. The liquid pooled at the bottom of the evidence box, forming a line that snaked toward the eastern side of the teahouse ruins. Following the trail, he pried open a charred floor tile to uncover remnants of a lipstick coffin; inside its lid, forty-nine wooden combs were drawn in blood to form a constellation map.
His phone vibrated unexpectedly; an urgent report from the Evidence Department indicated that DNA from Chen Guohua had been detected among wooden combs seized at Zhou Huaisheng Antique Shop. Chen Yu hesitated as his hand moved toward his service weapon—his grandfather had passed away from lung cancer three years ago, yet these skin flakes appeared to have been collected just yesterday morning.
In the midnight morgue, shadowless lights magnified Li Xiuyun's scalp projection tenfold. Chen Yu noticed that those sewing needle holes arranged themselves into a pattern resembling the Big Dipper. As he used tweezers to separate matted hair follicles, a metallic glint suddenly caught his eye—it was half of a sewing machine needle threaded with dark red silk.
"The thread shows traces of tung oil from Coffin Shop and lubricant from Textile Factory," Forensic Expert Zhang adjusted the microscope's magnification. "Even more bizarre..." He switched to infrared imaging, revealing a miniature 'Zhou' stamp at the end of the thread—the very mark of Zhou Huaisheng Antique Shop.
Chen Yu's temples throbbed intensely. He pulled out photographs from the fire scene; an indentation on the charred corpse's right hand perfectly matched that of a sewing machine needle handle. However, when he placed the needle into an impression model, he received a call from Evidence Department: The needle model belonged to a new sewing machine released in 2016.
"Someone is rewriting this case," Chen Yu loosened his tie as cold sweat dripped onto the autopsy report. Under ultraviolet light, Li Xiuyun's fingerprints suddenly appeared—those were unmistakably Widow Lin's current fingerprints!
In Zhenxi Huai Tree Grove, beams from his flashlight pierced through sheets of rain as Chen Yu circled back for the fifth time around a tree stump marked with blood combs. GPS positioning indicated he was going in circles; static crackled through his walkie-talkie as snippets of recordings from 1996 fire scene echoed: "Help... Comb... Rebirth Knot..."
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