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As he gently tugged at the hair with tweezers, the dark braids unexpectedly fell away in clumps, revealing uneven white roots beneath—these strands had been sewn onto the scalp with needle and thread. "The workers at the Textile Factory are never short of sewing skills," Chen Guohua remarked, pulling out a piece of blue and white sewing thread from the roots, its end tied off with an intricate knot. "The killer used at least three types of stitches: a straight stitch to secure the hair bundles, a backstitch to reinforce the roots, and a whip stitch to finish the edges."
A sudden whirlwind swept through the snow, sending a few leaves from the Sophora tree slapping against the travel case. Chen Guohua looked up towards Zhenxi's head, where stood the only chimney of Qinghe Town's Coffin Shop.
Time rewound to the night before the death. Li Xiuyun stood in front of the mirror in the Textile Factory's women's bathroom, clutching a broken-toothed wooden comb. Steam from a leaking hot water pipe fogged up the mirror; she reached out to wipe away the droplets and suddenly noticed a few strands of silver-white hair at the nape of her neck.
"Sister Xiuyun, why not use my conditioner?" Liu Xiaomei from the same workshop offered her a green plastic bottle. However, Li Xiuyun recoiled as if scalded, causing her comb to clatter into the sink. On the surface of the soapy water floated several long grayish-white hairs.
In a frenzy, she pulled apart her meticulously styled curls and discovered three clusters of glaring white hair on her crown—these were not natural signs of aging but seemed lifeless as if soaked in formalin. Inside her locker, a copy of Shanghai Fashion magazine held a yellowed note sent by her mother from the countryside: "If Yin Fa is entangled, use a Peach Wood Comb dipped in Rooster Blood and comb your hair forty-nine times starting from the hour of the tiger." Under cover of night, she slipped into the factory cafeteria, where a bone cleaver glinted coldly under the moonlight.
Back at the travel case, Chen Guohua dipped a cotton swab into the hair's Sophora wood shavings and sketched a particle distribution map in his police notebook. The edges of these wood shavings were blunt, clearly having been specially polished, contrasting sharply with marks left by ordinary carpenter's sandpaper.
Suddenly rising, he brushed off the snow from his knees. "Let's go to the Coffin Shop." The sign for Qinghe Coffin Shop hung askew above its entrance, weighed down by snow pressing against its bamboo poles.
Chen Guohua retrieved half of a wooden comb and knocked out a coded signal on the door with three long taps followed by two short ones. The scent of aged tung oil seeped through the crack as Zhou Fulai, an apprentice in his twenties, peeked out with half his face visible; dark circles under his eyes suggested he was not well.
"Have you seen this kind of comb?" Chen Guohua placed evidence bag on the coffin board. Zhou Fulai's fingers brushed over the comb teeth but recoiled as if stung. "This is Yin Shu! It needs to be soaked in Thunderstruck Sophora for three years before being carved forty-nine times..." He suddenly bit his tongue as a sharp sound echoed from behind him—the sound of coffin nails rolling on the floor.
That night at midnight, flames erupted from the Coffin Shop. When Chen Guohua and his team arrived, charred beams were collapsing onto piles of intricately carved wood.
The firefighter pulled a curled Charred Corpse from the embers, its carbonized fingers tightly gripping a strand of ash-gray hair—upon testing, it was confirmed to be the bundle of hair cut from Li Xiuyun on the night she went missing.
The forensic expert noted peculiarities in the autopsy report: the wear on the deceased's teeth did not match her age, and there were long-term indentations in the web of her right hand, consistent with holding scissors. According to Zhou Fulai's coworkers, this taciturn apprentice had always used his left hand to grip the planer.
The fluorescent lights above the Autopsy Table buzzed as Chen Guohua used tweezers to lift a strand of Hair. These meticulously woven Braids shimmered with an eerie sheen under the cold light, resembling silk just pulled from a dye vat. He leaned in closer to examine the sewing thread at the roots of the hair and suddenly caught a glimpse of his own face reflected on the scalpel—fragments of Huang Mu were caught in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
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