Chapter Six: The Party’s Restless Spirits

Yan Xue watched the girl on the screen. While her face was unfamiliar, there was an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if she’d seen her somewhere before, yet she couldn’t quite place the face.

“Do you feel like she looks familiar?” Kong Ge seemed to have heard Yan Xue’s silent question, speaking quietly by her side. “I bet it’s her clothing style that reminds you of someone.”

With this prompt, Yan Xue immediately realized why the girl seemed familiar—it was just as Kong Ge said, all because of her outfit. If she recalled correctly, back when they tried to lure the charlatan Duan Yong, Kong Ge had borrowed a few of his sister’s clothes. Though not the same, the styles were very similar, almost as if they were from the same collection.

The girl in the footage was of medium height, slender, her features not very clear, and she wore a flamboyant sports tracksuit with an obvious brand logo emblazoned across it.

“For such an upscale community, why are the elevator cameras so poor in quality?” Yan Xue stared at the screen for a while, finally unable to hold back her comment.

The property staff beside her gave an awkward laugh. “Back when this place was first built, the cameras were quite decent. But now the complex is getting old, and some equipment just hasn’t been updated yet…”

The girl exited the elevator on the first floor, returned fifteen minutes later carrying a large, bulging bag, its contents indiscernible. Another hour passed before she appeared again, this time not in the same tracksuit but in a white dress with a flared skirt, reminiscent of a fairytale princess. Her hair, once draped over her shoulders, was now elegantly coiled into a bun, adorned with a white feathered headpiece like those worn by ballerinas, her graceful neck exposed—evidently the result of careful grooming.

This time, when she went downstairs and returned, she was not alone but led a large group back with her. They all crowded into the elevator, packing it so tightly there was hardly any room to turn.

What stood out was that, as these people crammed into the elevator, Yan Xue found she couldn't make out a single face—not because her eyesight failed or the camera was that blurry, but because everyone was in full costume and makeup.

The men and women wore outlandish outfits, resembling characters from haunted houses or stage plays. Some, slightly more conservative, had headpieces hinting at the costumes hidden under their coats. Others, apparently unfazed by the cold, attended in full regalia without so much as a jacket.

One particularly tall man, standing diagonally across from the camera, was swathed in a black cape with an exaggerated collar, his hair slicked back with pomade, styled flamboyantly, face painted deathly pale—clearly a deliberate vampire getup.

Though their styles varied, all wore heavy, theatrical makeup. Some of the girls even had sequins or rhinestones on their faces, making it impossible to discern their real features.

The group exited at the top floor. To protect residents’ privacy, the camera’s field of view outside the elevator was limited, but fortunately, with only one residence per floor, their destination was clear.

Afterwards, the white swan-like girl went out several more times, each time returning with more guests. This continued until after six or seven in the evening, at which point she was seen no more, and neither did any of the guests leave. The elevator camera recorded no further trips to the top floor for quite some time.

“Halloween… hasn’t that already passed?” Yan Xue found the costumes puzzling. “Why are they still throwing these wild masquerade parties?”

“It’s just for fun. Even if they held this on Halloween Eve, it’s not really about the holiday!” Kong Ge laughed. “Now I understand what Qi Tianhua meant by ‘a grand spectacle.’ Judging by the numbers, it must have been quite the chaotic scene.”

The footage fast-forwarded to between two and three in the morning, when people began leaving the scene of the incident on the top floor. Most appeared heavily intoxicated—staggering, hair and clothes disheveled, far from their earlier glamour.

The guests had arrived in groups and left in waves, but whether all had departed was impossible to determine from a quick scan of the footage. At least one thing was certain: it was not until after five in the morning, when the cleaner entered the elevator—soon dashing downstairs in panic—that the police arrived.

From the last time the swan-girl brought guests upstairs the previous evening, she was never seen again. Both Yan Xue and Kong Ge understood what that meant.

“Do outsiders always need to be escorted in by residents here?” Yan Xue asked the staff on duty.

He waved a hand. “Not always. If it’s just a few people, the resident can call the security office, otherwise it’s too much trouble and people complain. But for gatherings like theirs, with that many people in those getups, the resident must come meet them at the gate. If we let them in and something happened, we couldn’t take the responsibility.”

Yan Xue nodded in understanding. Remembering the camera she’d glimpsed earlier in the stairwell, she added, “Do your stairwells also have surveillance? Please save that footage for us as well.”

“No problem! I’ll get it for you right away!” The property staff readily agreed.

When the two of them returned to the scene with the surveillance footage, the forensic work was still underway, just as Qi Tianhua had predicted, so they waited outside a while longer.

By then, Luo Wei had arrived, having just assisted inside and feeling rather astonished.

“I always thought ‘a feast of debauchery’ was exaggerated, but after seeing the state of things in there, maybe I just haven’t seen enough!” He pointed inside and said to Kong Ge and Yan Xue, “You haven’t been in yet, have you? Let’s put it this way: I didn’t witness last night’s revelry, but judging by the sheer amount of trash and empty bottles inside this morning, you can well imagine! Such a nice, beautiful apartment, now turned into a garbage dump, a complete mess. When the wealthy decide to indulge, it’s truly on a different level!”

“What about the victim? Has her identity been confirmed?” Kong Ge asked.

“Yes. The deceased is a female, appearance matching the family photos, so we can be fairly certain she was the daughter of the household. Her ID was also found—name: Lin Zhen, twenty-four years old, a local.” When it came to business, Luo Wei’s earlier levity vanished. “Cause of death: external injury. Estimated time of death is between three and five in the morning.”

Yan Xue sighed. Three to five—the very window when most guests, drunk, had left. If the killer slipped away among them, identifying the culprit would be a real challenge.

After a while, the forensic work inside was largely done, so Yan Xue and Kong Ge entered to inspect the scene. Upon crossing the threshold, Yan Xue realized that neither Qi Tianhua nor Luo Wei had exaggerated—a house this size had been trashed by the partygoers to the point where stepping on a clean patch of marble floor was nearly impossible.

Beside the entryway was a bedroom converted into a storage room, cluttered not just as a result of the previous night’s festivities but seemingly always in disarray. Moving further in, they reached a spacious area—one side a semi-open kitchen and dining space, the other a living room.

The décor was studio-style “European,” the high ceilings in the living room forming a dome via a dropped ceiling, accentuated by strip lighting and ornate plasterwork, and a vintage, elaborate chandelier. Though slightly ostentatious, in such a vast space it didn’t seem too out of place.

The living room’s floor was inlaid with some sort of marble pattern, but the amount of trash made it impossible to see. The deep brown leather sofas were strewn with beer cans, disposable plates, and on one, the backrest was smeared with chili oil or something similarly greasy, making for a sorry sight.

In front of the sofas stood a square coffee table, larger than a desk, covered in upended paper cups, ashtrays, crumpled tissues—some cups still held unfinished liquor, now spilled into sticky puddles.

A large terrace lay beyond the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows, its doors flung open to let in the cold, unrestrained wind. Near the threshold was a rolled-up, badly soiled carpet.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t bother looking,” Qi Tianhua quickly warned Yan Xue, seeing her gaze fall on the carpet that clearly didn’t belong outside on the terrace. “It’s been checked already—there’s only a puddle of vomit inside. That’s probably why someone rolled it up and tossed it out there.”

Yan Xue frowned and decided to head straight for the room where the body was found. Given the overall state of the house, it would be nearly impossible to spot anything suspicious—nothing about the scene was as it should have been.

The room where the victim lay was at the far end of the apartment. Yan Xue had expected it to be the master bedroom but discovered it was a small guest room opposite the master, whose door remained closed.

“Small” was relative; in a home of this size, the guest room was as large as a master bedroom in a small apartment. The walls were papered with pale green floral wallpaper, a dark walnut wardrobe stood against one wall, and in the center was a four-poster bed with Roman columns, draped in pristine white linens.

The victim lay face-down on the bed, still wearing the white dress seen earlier in the elevator footage. The dress was undamaged, scarcely stained, just as it had appeared on camera. Her feathered headpiece was gone, her bun slightly loose but otherwise tidy, with no signs of struggle—more as if she’d removed it herself.

At the nape of her pale, delicate neck, just below the back of her head, a long metal skewer was thrust deep. Blood had run down both sides of her neck, staining the white sheets beneath her face with a dark red bloom—like a crimson flower blossoming in a snowy field.

Her limbs lay quietly on the bed, the sheets around her undisturbed by any obvious creases. But for the skewer in her neck and the deepening bloodstain, she might have been merely exhausted, collapsed there in sleep, with not a trace of death’s contortion on her features.

“Dr. Zhang!” Kong Ge called to the police forensic examiner at work on the body. “Was this a fatal blow?”

“Yes, there was no chance to struggle,” Dr. Zhang replied, pointing to the metal skewer. “Here, at the junction of the skull and neck, the weapon was thrust in all at once. As a result, all the body’s muscles lost control due to the severed nerves, leading directly to asphyxiation, rapid drop in blood pressure, and death.

Most importantly, in this process, the victim had no strength to resist, nor could she call for help. She couldn’t control her legs or her vocal cords—hence, no signs of struggle or combat at the scene.

To put it simply,” he concluded, “this was a beheading—with the head still attached.”