“What? What rabbit?” Chen Yanfan was utterly baffled.
“Let me ask the simplest question — what is the most fundamental condition for all these cases to occur?” Hua Yitang asked.
Zhang Huai: “A dead person?”
Chen Yanfan: “A killer?”
Hua Yitang rolled his eyes.
“It’s—” Ling Zhiyan narrowed his eyes, “the killer and the victim crossing paths.”
Hua Yitang nodded repeatedly. “My Sixth Brother is still the smartest one.”
Chen Yanfan shot a sideways glance: Since when did my Sixth Brother become yours?!
“The killer and victim having a point of intersection — that is the prerequisite. So if we want to catch the killer, we only need to find the answers to the following questions.” Hua Yitang snapped his fan shut, its tip tapping rhythmically against the tabletop. “First — where did the killer and victim first cross paths? In this case, where exactly did the killer abduct the victims? Second — why did the killer choose these particular victims as targets? In other words, what do they all have in common? Third — what mode of transport did the killer use? Fourth — where is the actual murder site?”
Ling Zhiyan: “The victims’ shared characteristics are quite obvious — they were all young women of exceptional beauty.”
Lin Sui’an: “The transport used to abduct the victims was a carriage, while the bodies were clearly disposed of by boat. As for the murder site — given how elaborate the killer’s method of body preparation is, he would need a safe, fixed location to commit the murders. Most likely, it would be within his own residence.”
Zhang Huai: “We already know all of this, yet none of it is of any use.”
Hua Yitang: “That is not so. We only need to combine the earlier clues with today’s findings to deduce the location of the killer’s home.”
The moment those words left his mouth, everyone was visibly shaken. Chen Yanfan even cried out in astonishment, “You little brat — who do you think you are, some kind of deity? How could anyone possibly calculate that?!”
Lin Sui’an’s eyes went wide and round. A guess had surfaced in her mind, but she felt it was too absurd to believe.
“I am a disciple of the Maoshan Sect — our secret art is divination by counting on one’s fingers.” Hua Yitang seemed to thoroughly enjoy everyone’s shock, growing even more insufferably smug. “The logic is simple. A person’s habits are fixed — what time they rise each morning, when they eat their meals, when they take tea, when they leave the house, go to work, return home, sleep — these time intervals never vary by much. In the same way, a person’s usual routes follow a certain pattern, revolving around their home, their regular shops, the markets, commercial districts, workplace, and so on.”
“Take Sixth Brother Ling, for example — he lives in the northern district of Dunhou Ward, and works at the Court of Judicial Review inside the Imperial City every day. Each morning, he would set out from the north gate of Dunhou Ward, pass through Lüshun Ward and Daoguang Ward, and enter the Imperial City through Xuanren Gate. For daily shopping, he goes to the North Market — he rarely sets foot in the South Market, and visits the West Market even less. Of course, as a Court Investigator at the Court of Judicial Review, Sixth Brother is fairly familiar with all one hundred and three wards of the Eastern Capital — but the places he knows best are still Dunhou Ward, the Imperial City, and the North Market. These three places are where he feels safest and most at ease.”
Hua Yitang dipped his fan in tea and drew a small circle on the tabletop, tapping it with a finger. “The killer is the same. He too has a psychological comfort zone — a safe territory — which is invariably the place he knows best, and that is most likely where the killer’s home is located.”
Everyone listened in a haze of confusion. Lin Sui’an, on the other hand, drew one sharp breath after another. She had already sensed what was coming — what Hua Yitang was using was none other than criminal geographic profiling, a forensic investigative method capable of deducing the most probable residence of a criminal based on the spatial relationships between crime locations. If she remembered correctly, this method required the immense computational power of computers as a supplement — good heavens, was he planning to calculate this with his human brain?!
“Wait a moment!” Zhang Huai knocked his head with his knuckles. “We don’t even know who the killer is — what you’re calling a ‘zone’ is entirely beyond our reach!”
Chen Yanfan: “A load of nonsense! This is completely putting the cart before the horse!”
Hua Yitang pressed his fan against his forehead and rolled his eyes, muttering under his breath, “What an idiot — how can anyone be this dim?” Chen Yanfan slapped the table and shot to his feet. “Who are you calling dim?!”
“What Hua Yitang means is that the killer won’t hunt within—” Lin Sui’an searched for the right word, “—within his own safety zone.” She paused. “For one thing, he fears running into someone he knows and exposing his identity. For another, he worries that if a case breaks, he’ll fall within the scope of the authorities’ investigation. Deep down, the killer doesn’t want to disturb this safety zone — so whether it’s abducting victims or disposing of bodies, he would never choose this area.”
Hua Yitang flashed Lin Sui’an a bright, gleaming smile. “Exactly. This is the principle that a rabbit won’t graze near its own burrow.”
“I understand now!” Ling Zhiyan said. “We need to think in reverse — the areas where no bodies have been found are actually the more suspicious ones.”
“That would be the southwestern district!” Zhang Huai pointed to the lower-left corner of the map, where almost none of Hua Yitang’s markings appeared.
“Not so, not so,” Hua Yitang shook his head repeatedly. “The southwestern district is the least likely of all.”
Ling Zhiyan: “And what is the reasoning behind that?”
“To the killer, the safety zone is inviolable — but equally, an area that is completely unfamiliar to him would trigger psychological panic, making it far from ideal as a hunting ground.” Hua Yitang used the same term Lin Sui’an had, then drew a large circle on the table with his fan, enclosing the small circle he had drawn earlier, and tapped it. “This killer has committed multiple crimes. His methods are seasoned and cautious — he is highly sensitive to the unknown and to risk. Therefore, he would not venture into unfamiliar territory to act.”
“For instance — his first body disposal was in the Luobei district, and it succeeded. This formed a particular psychological imprint in his mind: this area is his lucky ground. The second body disposal was again in Luobei, which only reinforced the imprint. So every time he changed his killing method and selected a new disposal site, he remained within Luobei — this is no coincidence, but an unconscious choice.” Hua Yitang smacked his lips twice. “The fact that each body was discovered in a different waterway is because, at the level of specific disposal locations, the killer would never repeat a choice — doing so would increase his risk of exposure.”
Chen Yanfan scratched his noticeably receding hairline. “Good lord, the more I listen the more confused I get! Hua Family’s fourth son, can you just give us a straight answer?”
“Not too close, not too far, never repeated—” Lin Sui’an dipped her finger in tea and drew a medium circle on the table between the large and small circles, dividing the space into three concentric zones. She pointed to the innermost ring. “The killer’s hunting ground is not within the safety zone.” Then she pointed to the outermost ring. “Nor is it in the danger zone.” Finally, she pointed to the middle band. “But in the comfort zone — neither too near nor too far.”
Hua Yitang: “To put it another way — if we wanted to find a stone that has dropped into water, we could calculate its position from the ripples it creates on the surface. The comfort zone is the ripples on the surface, and the killer’s home is the stone hidden beneath the water.”
Three question marks materialized over the heads of Ling Zhiyan, Zhang Huai, and Chen Yanfan simultaneously.
“Ah, I see.” A cool, flat voice emerged from behind them, startling Chen Yanfan into a yelp. Fangke, who no one knew had woken up, was propped up on one arm, eyes half-lidded, gazing at the map with a faint, unreadable smile. “Our current objective is to deduce the ripples, then use the ripples to find the stone. That is why you sent Jin Ruo to locate the places in those paintings.”
Zhang Huai: “What paintings?”
Ling Zhiyan’s eyes went wide. Fangke glanced at Lin Sui’an and said nothing.
Lin Sui’an scratched her forehead. It seemed she could no longer keep it from Elder Fang.
Hua Yitang shook his fan in mounting irritation. “Jin Ruo is taking far too long — truly useless, as expected of a child.”
“Hey, hey, hey — I heard every word of that, Hua.” Jin Ruo strode into the Records Hall at a brisk pace, the little beggar boy perched on his back, and tossed a scroll onto the table. “It’s all here.”
The little beggar boy raised his hand. “It’s all here!”
What Jin Ruo had brought were precisely the nine drawings Hua Yitang had made based on Lin Sui’an’s golden finger visions — now annotated with detailed addresses.
“Finally of some use.” Hua Yitang’s tone was dismissive, but his hands moved with startling speed.
Ling Zhiyan watched intently as Hua Yitang transferred the addresses from the drawings onto the map, growing more puzzled by the moment. “What exactly are these drawings—”
“Naturally, they were derived through the secret arts of my Maoshan Sect — divination by counting on one’s fingers.” Hua Yitang spun the lie without missing a beat. “These are the last places each victim visited before their deaths.”
Zhang Huai was dumbstruck. Chen Yanfan’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.
Ling Zhiyan: “……”
Among the nine newly added location markers, Zhou Xinghong’s memory scene was on Quxiang Street in Sishun Ward. The remaining eight points were distributed across Fushan Ward, Yongtai Ward, Yanfu Ward, and various alleys throughout the South Market, forming a pattern concentrated in the South Market area with scattered points across the surrounding wards.
Hua Yitang studied the map with narrowed eyes for a long moment, then picked up his brush and continued adding markings — this time, fifteen wards in total. Eleven in the southern city of Luo: Congshan, Ancong, Gong’an, Daohua, Dunhua, Shangxian, Guangli, Renhe, Hejie, Furen, and Liren. Four in the northern city of Luo: Yuji, Shanglin, Jide, and Wenya.
Ling Zhiyan: “Are these… the home addresses of the fifteen victims?”
Jin Ruo: “I had my brothers confirm it again — those fifteen girls genuinely had no connection with one another, and their families had no dealings with each other. Zhong Xue is the same.”
Hua Yitang’s fan moved faster and faster, sending his sideburns fluttering wildly. Then, abruptly, he set the fan down, rolled up both his sleeves, and sprawled across the map. Gripping a charcoal pencil, he first connected the nine golden-finger memory points to their corresponding victims’ home addresses, measured distances with his fingers, and drew nine circles of varying sizes, each one overlapping the others to some degree. He then connected the memory points to the corresponding body discovery sites and drew another nine circles of varying sizes. After that, he linked up the remaining body discovery sites. His hand was extraordinarily steady — the straight lines as precise as if drawn with a ruler, the circles as perfect as if guided by a compass. Combined with the rings and arcs he had drawn earlier, the right half of the map was now buried under layers of tangled dots, lines, and overlapping rings — an absolute chaos of marks.
Zhang Huai tilted his head. “What on earth is all this?”
No one could answer, not even Lin Sui’an.
They had now entered the computational phase of the criminal geographic profiling. In her own world, this stage was carried out almost entirely by computers, specialized software, and vast databases. She genuinely could not follow it, and could only stare at Hua Yitang’s hands wearing the same blank, bewildered expression as everyone else.
Hua Yitang’s fingers were blackened with charcoal. They flew across the map’s web of dots, lines, and circles, rapidly drawing new lines. The Records Hall fell into an uncanny silence — even the little beggar boy did not dare draw a large breath — and the only sound was the dry whisper of charcoal scraping against paper. Then, abruptly, his hand paused. He threw down the charcoal pencil and extended an open palm. “Brush. Ink.”
No one reacted fast enough. Fangke made a soft sound of impatience, produced a brush, dipped it in ink, and passed it over. Hua Yitang held his wrist suspended over the map and pressed tiny dots the size of grains of rice onto the paper. “Based on the Eastern Capital’s water-flow records over the past five years, the terrain and current conditions at each body discovery site, and the weather in the days preceding and following each discovery, I can roughly deduce the locations where these fifteen bodies were originally disposed of. This year’s rainfall has been heavy, so there may be a margin of error — I can only hope it is not too significant.”
Ling Zhiyan: “When did you look at the water-flow records?”
Hua Yitang: “Last night, in passing.”
Jin Ruo: “You can actually memorize something like that?!”
The little beggar boy: “What’s a water-flow record?”
Zhang Huai’s jaw dropped. Chen Yanfan was scratching his hairline frantically. “My prized map! It’s completely ruined!”
Hua Yitang raised his elbow a fraction, then let it descend slowly, pressing down a second set of dots one by one. “These are the locations where I have deduced the killer and victims crossed paths, based on the victims’ movements during their final days — the killer’s hunting grounds.”
Everyone: “!!”
Lin Sui’an: Good lord!
Hua Yitang returned the brush to Fangke, then said, “Cinnabar.”
Fangke switched to a fresh brush, dipped it in cinnabar, and handed it back.
Hua Yitang’s gaze was sharp and intent, his brushstrokes deliberate and sure. He drew four circles of varying sizes in vivid red across the map, then slowly connected the various points with lines. “Based on the hunting grounds and body disposal sites, I have worked out two versions of the killer’s safety zone and comfort zone — one for the land ward map and one for the waterway map. This is broadly consistent with our earlier deductions. The killer used both carriage and boat to commit his crimes, which is why two separate sets of zones have formed—” he smiled slightly, “—layering the two zones on top of each other greatly narrows the range of possible locations for the killer’s home.”
Everyone held their breath as one.
The crimson wolf-hair brush tip drifted slowly across the map, passing over layers of charcoal lines, threading through the red circles — and finally paused, then pressed gently down.
On Fujiao Ward.
“The killer’s home is within this ward.”
The morning air of the Eastern Capital in the eleventh month was damp, carrying the scent of dew — cool enough to cut through to the bone and make one want to sneeze. The early morning sunlight was a deep gold, filtering through the carriage window in thin, pale rays that fell across Hua Yitang’s striking features like a thin glaze of honey. He leaned back against the embroidered brocade cushion, the tip of his fan propped against his temple, his languid robes swaying gently with the motion of the carriage. He appeared to be asleep — his long arms and legs sprawling across half the carriage.
Lin Sui’an, Fangke, and Jin Ruo, who was holding the little beggar boy, were crammed into the other half. For once, no one complained. All four wore expressions that defied description.
Hua Yitang’s almost supernatural deductive performance had inflicted enormous psychological shock on everyone present. Chen Yanfan’s jaw still had not closed. Zhang Huai was faring slightly better — though his eyes had practically fallen out of his head. On the whole, it was the least experienced of them all, Ling Zhiyan, who appeared the most composed — probably because he had been shocked so often he had grown accustomed to it. He had even proposed a plan for a covert, thorough search of the area. After all, Hua Yitang had only narrowed it down to a single ward — the concrete investigation and search would require coordination from multiple parties, especially the cooperation of the Pure Gate Sect. (Zhong Xue’s whereabouts were still unknown, and the killer must not be provoked.)
At a quarter past the Hour of Mao, the group set out together. Barring any complications, they would arrive at Fujiao Ward just as the ward gates opened. Under normal circumstances, having gone another sleepless night, everyone should have been catching up on sleep in the carriage — yet including Fangke, everyone was wide awake and alert.
Fangke’s expression remained blank as ever — it always was — except that his gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Hua Yitang. The little beggar boy was curled up in Jin Ruo’s arms, staring at Hua Yitang with undisguised reverence. Jin Ruo’s eyes looked as though they wanted to take a long, slow lick of Hua Yitang all over. Lin Sui’an appeared the most composed on the surface, but internally she had been detonating for a while, cycling endlessly through two questions.
Was this person really not someone who’d traveled through time from the future?
Was this person really not a computer that had achieved sentience and reincarnated?
Suddenly, Hua Yitang let out a quiet laugh, opened his eyes, smoothed his sleeves, and shifted into a sitting position. His gaze drifted about with fluid ease, his feet crossed at a rakish angle. “Let Hua Yitang hazard a guess — what is everyone thinking right now?” He cupped the fan over his mouth and pulled an exaggeratedly theatrical expression. “Oh my, to think that a person of such unparalleled brilliance and divine foresight exists in this world! My goodness, to think there exists a man of such outstanding talent and magnificent humility! My goodness gracious, to be able to travel alongside a talent so overwhelming in both looks and genius — truly, this must be the karmic reward of three lifetimes’ worth of merit and ten generations of virtuous deeds!”
Everyone: “……”
Fangke: “I genuinely want to cut open his skull and see what is actually inside.”
Jin Ruo: “Probably a few lumps of pig brain.”
The little beggar boy slurped his saliva. “Brain. Smells good.”
Lin Sui’an: “……”
This person is absolutely NOT from the future! She would rather die than claim this insufferable idiot as a fellow traveler from her era!
Hua Yitang was utterly indifferent to everyone’s contempt, fanning himself with outrageous self-satisfaction. It was a cold, damp morning — wasn’t he afraid of catching a chill? “Come, come, Little Jin Ruo — let’s do a quick review.”
Jin Ruo: “Is that really necessary?!”
Hua Yitang: “I’m worried that walnut-brain of yours won’t remember.”
Jin Ruo rolled his eyes and recited stiffly, “The suspect we are looking for has the following characteristics: resides in Fujiao Ward, male, approximately twenty to forty years of age, financially well-off, owns a boat, a residence, and a carriage, has connections through which he can obtain expensive imported aromatics from overseas, is familiar with the waterways of the Eastern Capital, and is most likely a merchant — of pleasant appearance, amicable manner, and polished conduct.” He paused. “Hey, hey, hey — the first few details I’ll grant you, but those last ones are a bit much. How could you possibly know what the killer looks like? Don’t tell me that was divination by counting on your fingers as well?”
“Every single victim boarded the killer’s carriage without any apparent wariness, and was subsequently drugged — also while completely off guard.” Lin Sui’an said. “All the victims were young women. They would not willingly board a stranger’s carriage, so the killer must have had some particular method of putting them at ease. Perhaps his appearance was benign and trustworthy, perhaps he had a specific status or occupation, or perhaps—”
A sharp chime rang in Lin Sui’an’s mind as she suddenly recalled a well-known case from the modern era. In an instant, a cold sweat broke over her entire body.
The carriage creaked to a halt. Fujiao Ward had arrived.
(Author’s Note: I’ve posted the Eastern Capital map with the case markings on Weibo and Bilibili! As for Hua Yitang’s criminal geographic profiling calculations — the theory is absolutely real, mind you (I hate looking up sources) — but I cannot draw the map myself (I am terrible at maths)! The calculation process is also pure improvisation!)