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Countdown to Death Live
墨書 Inktalez
"Three minutes left." The blood-red bullet screen pierced through the frenzy of the live broadcast, and the hem of the Lolita dress was already stained with the mud beneath the Seventeenth Floor.
I zoomed in on the 0.3-millimeter pinhole in the dead person's earlobe, and suddenly, the ultraviolet light illuminated the fluorescent glow along the wardrobe's sliding track. That was the lubricant unique to a serial murder case from three years ago, and in the surveillance footage, a "repairman" wearing a Longines watch was wiping a bloodied scalpel with my daughter's amulet.
I stared at the timestamp in the lower right corner of the monitor—August 12, 2023, 11:47 PM. This number was etched into my memory like a brand. The torrential rain hammered against the tempered glass of the criminal investigation team's duty room, and Old Chen suddenly kicked open the door with a loud bang that startled me, causing me to spill half a cup of cold espresso.
"Everyone come here! Someone might die at Cultural Road Jinxiu Apartment!" He slammed his tablet onto the table, coffee dripping down its edge onto his mud-stained pants.
In the live broadcast, a girl in a black velvet Lolita dress was laughing, her skirt adorned with silver bells jingling as she twirled. Behind her stood a two-meter-tall peach wood wardrobe, its carved doors painted with golden images of angels and demons in a medieval style.
"Welcome to Xue Tu Jiang's Midnight Wonder House~" The girl lifted a Skeleton Bride Doll that was half her height, her rhinestone-studded nails brushing against the stitching on the doll's neck. "Tonight's special segment is..."
Old Chen suddenly hit pause and zoomed in on a close-up of her left hand's knuckle: "See that? The edge of her nail polish is chipped, and there's redness on the second segment of her middle finger—this is friction injury caused by repeatedly clenching her fist."
A wave of pink hearts declaring "Wife is so beautiful" floated through the bullet screen until a blood-red message pierced through the virtual revelry: "Three minutes left." The ID was a string of garbled text, but the avatar depicted an inverted cross on a pure black background.
"Tracking team!" Old Chen slammed his thermos down heavily on the metal table. "Lock this user's IP and check all speaking records!" The sound of technician Xiao Wu's keyboard echoed in the silent room.
I pulled up the original data stream from the live broadcast platform and discovered that the sending time of that blood-red bullet screen was exactly seven seconds earlier than what the system displayed—clearly indicating someone had tampered with the server's timestamp.
At 11:52 PM, Lin Xue began showcasing gothic accessories from inside the wardrobe. When she pulled out her third pearl necklace, a creaking sound erupted from the speakers as if wooden structures were groaning. The girl's eyelids, adorned with deep purple eyeshadow, twitched violently, and her rhinestone-studded false eyelashes trembled before the camera like an afterimage.
"The bullet screen is going crazy about the wardrobe moving!" Intern Xiao Liu pointed at the rapidly scrolling comment section on the right. "Someone said there's metallic reflection from under the door..."
I rewound ten seconds on the progress bar and activated sixteen times slow motion. At 11:54 PM and 17 frames, indeed, a cold light flashed from inside the wardrobe door, like a surgical blade gliding across a mirror. "Old Chen" suddenly snatched away my mouse to zoom in on the bottom left corner of the image: "Look at her shadow!"
As Lin Xue turned at the sound, the ceiling light cast her silhouette against the left wall. The shadow of her figure, which should have been complete, had an eerie indentation at the waist, as if an invisible wire were tightening around her flesh.
When the blood-red countdown in the barrage reached "00:01:00," the obsidian earrings on her earlobe suddenly flickered with a ghostly afterimage.
"Gravitational acceleration anomaly!" Xiao Wu exclaimed as he pulled up the physical trajectory simulation program. "The swing of the earrings during a normal head turn shouldn't exceed 15 degrees, but here..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the live broadcast shook violently. Lin Xue's scream erupted simultaneously with the sound of metal snapping, and the dull thud of the camera crashing against the window sent a jolt through everyone in the control room.
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