Genius Detective

After the old man displayed his skills, he abandoned the shocked audience and walked away with a flick of his sleeves. Chen Shi chased after him. "What do you want before you will cooperate with us? What are the rules you said you’d break if you cooperated with us?" 𝒇𝘳𝐞𝚎𝓌𝑒𝑏𝒏𝑜𝙫ℯl.c𝚘𝒎

The old man asked in reply, "What kind of police officer is a bad police officer?"

"One that doesn’t behave oneself and doesn’t attend to one’s duties." 𝘧r𝗲𝑒𝔀𝘦𝙗𝓃oν𝑒l.𝐜𝗼m

"Yes, if he scams money using his own abilities, he is behaving himself. If he does things other than cheating money, like tricking people into having sex, murder, betraying the precepts handed down by his master and predecessors, then he isn’t abiding by the rules. I can only help you if he doesn't abide by the rules. It's not that I can't cooperate with the police, but I must have a reason. Of course, I must also be paid."

"As long as we prove that he has another motive, you’re willing to cooperate with us?"

"You can understand it like that." The old man patted Chen Shi on the shoulder, ready to leave.

Lin Dongxue stopped him. "Old sir, we have other questions to ask you."

"I'm tired. I'm going home to eat."

"We will treat you to a meal!"

The old man smiled slyly. "Okay!"

The restaurant that the old man picked was quite expensive. The waiter brought the stir-fried vegetables, pork ears with mushrooms, fresh shrimps with chives and eggs to the table. When kk and Sun Zhen were about to reach out with their chopsticks, the old man poured all three dishes into his own big bowl of plain noodles in a lightning-fast manner. He mixed them all together and then added in some peeled garlic before happily ingesting everything.

kk said angrily, "Eat slowly, don't choke to death."

The old man just immersed himself in eating, making noises like a pig eating its feed. Chen Shi and Lin Dongxue could only drink tea, waiting patiently for him to finish eating.

The bowl of plain noodles quickly disappeared. The old man wiped his mouth with the tablecloth and said, "Ask!"

"This case hasn’t been made public yet, so please keep it secret…" Lin Dongxue said.

"I understand that!" The old man waved his hand.

"Someone’s been collecting human organs. He has only killed people born on February 19th, 1973. Two victims have had their liver and heart harvested respectively. We suspect that he will continue to commit crimes, or has already committed more crimes. Is collecting these internal organs related to some kind of cult ceremony?"

The old man kept stroking his long beard. "This looks like the ‘Five Elements Reincarnation Secret Method’."

"What is that?!" Lin Dongxue exclaimed.

kk said disapprovingly, "As soon as you hear such a juvenile name, you can guess what it is. It must be for bringing people back to life."

The old man narrowed his eyes at kk momentarily before continuing, "This is a spell formation mentioned in the "Divine Jade Scroll". The heart, liver, spleen, stomach and kidney correspond to the five elements, and a ritual altar is set up to arrange these five internal organs together. At 12:00AM, a certain deceased person can be brought back from the underworld, but this is just borrowing from someone’s lifespan. That person can only live for one day in the world of the living, and after one day, he will turn into ashes. Of course, this is very detrimental to your karma, so the person who conducts the ritual will have their lifespan shortened."

The old man's tone was mysterious. Lin Dongxue was subconsciously mesmerized and swallowed her saliva nervously.

Then the old man laughed. "Of course, there are no ghosts in the world, moreover there is no underworld. These are all fake. They’re for the fire points. This is the doorway for us - telling the fire points how difficult this work is and pretending to be reluctant in order to induce the other party to add money, wait for the other party to be fooled, then start the ritual after they have given enough money. It’s impossible to use real human internal organs. They usually use pig and sheep organs. Then they mysteriously put on a show with special smoke effects, duang[2]. The deceased then gets brought back from the underworld! We usually find a body double for them. It’s good if they look similar, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t. They can just put on makeup and blacken their face, saying that they had been burnt by karmic fire when they were in the underworld. The key is to be able to say the right things to the fire point. This requires constant testing of the waters, and understanding of the dead person’s character and life experiences. The body double and the fire point will spend a day with each other. Then they’ll use a secret door to let the body double turn to ashes in front of the fire point accompanied by special smoke effects and duang, this ritual will be considered over! This trick is relatively advanced, because it’s easily exposed. Generally, people who don’t have too much skill won’t touch this type of ritual."

Chen Shi and Lin Dongxue were confused when they heard this, and kk translated, "The fire point refers to the rich. The doorway is the way to make money, and testing the waters means to sound out the other person."

The old man picked his nose, "It isn’t worth it for me to tell you this even if you treat me to a hundred meals. There’s a saying in Jianghu. One would rather give up a gold ingot than reveal all the tools of the trade. I have even told you the trade secrets. You can regard it as an old man like me displaying benevolence today." As he said this, he smiled at Lin Dongxue, revealing his big yellow teeth.

kk said, "Old man, if you guys from Jianghu hadn’t been unwilling to impart the tricks, the artform wouldn’t have been lost. It’s better for it to be promoted and developed!"

The old man sneered, "Then do you want to write it into a novel or make it into a movie, letting the whole world know? Then we won’t be able to make a living!"

"You’re still treasuring the junk from a few hundred years ago. Tch!"

Chen Shi said, "That is to say, when you people teach this to your disciples, you will say that it’s all fake, right?"

"How can it be true?! Take Liao Chunhuang as an example. The table levitated because a special stand had been tied to his hand and he could lift it up with one hand. It couldn’t be seen because it had been hidden by his sleeve. The spells moved up the walls because they had cockroaches stuck behind them; as for writing with smoke, hehe…" The old man didn’t say anything more. "Everything was part of our act. Outsiders treat us as masters and half immortals because they don’t know these tricks. How could the actors end up fooling themselves?"

"Who gets to read this "Divine Jade Scroll"?"

"Only people who are in this trade, but…" The old man grimaced as if he had a toothache. "Over the past two years, information networks have become developed. There are some little bastards who don't abide by the ancestral precepts. They learn some shallow tricks and talk about them on the Internet. For example, gambling tricks were exposed by some prodigals and now they’re all for naught. A few years ago, there was a novelist who somehow found this book and wrote an online novel based on it, which made me seethe with rage until even my liver hurt. Therefore, I issued a Jianghu order to summon my fellow disciples in the sect to teach this scum a lesson and scold him in the comments below his damned novel. However, the more he was scolded, the more popular the novel became. It was so annoying."

Chen Shi smiled. "What is the name of the novel?"

"It's actually called "Divine Jade Scroll". That motherfucker used people’s livelihood to write a book. He has no morals at all. However, this guy is an outsider after all, so he couldn’t understand the real tricks of the trade. He really regarded it as a strange story with ghosts and deities. It’s ridiculous! The book "Divine Jade Scroll" was written by our founder Zhuge Liang. There are incantations behind each spell formation, such as ‘The nine levels of heaven issue the order. Inform Yuqing. Hurry and summon 1000 deities. All will meet at the Emperor’s court.’ That, in your layman's terms, is a password. You can’t understand it without a master’s teaching. You can only conduct a ritual and earn money if you understand the true tricks of the trade!" He rubbed his thumb, index and middle fingers together to indicate money. "Those who don't understand this will just see this book as something full of nonsense with no reference value."

1. Scroll full of tricks of the trade in Taoist scams. ?

2. This onomatopoeic word means “to add special effects” and is a viral meme that came from a commercial in which Jackie Chan was endorsing Bawang shampoo. ?