The phone on the nightstand started ringing.

That flat, mechanical tring-tring sound echoed through the lavish room. On the oversized European-style bed, a man and a woman lay back to back. The man’s hair was already gray at the temples. The girl, clearly jolted awake, still looked dazed, like her brain hadn’t fully booted up yet.

The phone just kept going. Finally, the girl couldn’t take it anymore. She turned over and gently nudged the man’s shoulder. “Mr. Bell? Mr. Bell, wake up.”

The man didn’t move.

His body felt stiff, like he was sleeping way too deeply. The girl pushed him again, then a few more times. At that moment, the assistant came in. The second he saw her kneeling behind the man, a flicker of contempt crossed his face. Young girl, wasting her youth, selling her body for shortcuts... that was obviously what he was thinking. But he was well-trained, so he kept his mouth shut. He walked over, switched off the alarm, and said coldly, “I’ll handle things here. Miss Thorne, you may go.”

As he bent down, he called, “Mr. Bell? Mr. Bell?”

“Okay.” The girl lowered her head and got out of bed. She had just started toward the bathroom when the assistant suddenly let out a shriek so sharp it was almost hysterical.

“Ahhh—!”

She whipped around in shock.

And then she saw it.

Across the man’s face were broad patches of purplish-red lividity. His lips were a vivid, unnatural scarlet, stretched open in a shape that looked almost like a grin.

A chill shot straight down her back. Her scalp went numb. Her whole body locked up on the spot, frozen so hard she couldn’t even twitch.

No matter how wild her imagination got, she never could’ve guessed that the old man who had shared a bed with her the night before... was now a corpse.

...

Zora Thorne jerked her eyes open and started gasping for air.

Ten years.

And every detail was still burned into her mind like it happened yesterday. The way he had lain flat with his legs bent. The dark red lividity. Those bright red lips. Even that weird alarm tone. Every time she remembered it, her heart still lurched like it was being yanked off a cliff.

Back then, the case had exploded all over the city. The whole thing was a mess. She had been treated like a murderer and investigated for a long, long time. In the end, she wasn’t prosecuted because of insufficient evidence, but that didn’t mean she got her life back. The insults, the gossip, the curses—they stuck to her like shadows.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

That cold, creeping dread, the kind that made your spine go icy for no reason, haunted her for years. She dropped out of school. Moved away. Broke up with her first love. Even now, she could still remember his bloodshot eyes, the way his fingers had clamped around her throat as he snarled, “Zora Thorne, you expect me to believe you slept in the same bed as some old man and nothing happened? What, do you think I’m an idiot?”

Zora let out a faint, bitter laugh and turned to look out the window.

Honestly, even she hadn’t expected this.

In this lifetime, she still had the guts to come back.

The man sitting beside her immediately seized the chance and, for what had to be the nth time, tried to chat her up again. “Hey, beautiful, bad dream just now? You okay? Traveling alone? What’s your last name?”

Zora steadied herself. Figuring she might as well use this to drag her mind away from the nightmare, she gave him a polite smile. “Thorne.”

He hadn’t expected her to actually respond. The guy lit up at once. “Oh, nice, nice. My last name’s Mercer. Patrick Mercer.” He stuck out his hand, then kept talking without pause. “Beautiful, are you heading to school? What’s your major?”

“No,” said Zora. “I’m already working.”

She reached out and shook his hand.

The man deliberately didn’t let go. His puffy eyes slid over her with gross, suggestive interest as he put on an exaggerated look of surprise. “Really? No way, I couldn’t tell at all. You look like a college student. Seriously, young and gorgeous. So what do you do for work?”

Zora tried to pull her hand back, but couldn’t. So she simply looked him straight in the eye and smiled.

“Forensic pathologist.”

The guy’s face froze. He yanked his hand back like he’d been shocked, and even his complexion changed. “A forensic doctor?”

“Yes.” Zora Thorne was kind enough to explain, nice and patient. “I was transferred over from Mervis. I’ve been working four years already, just got promoted to chief forensic examiner, and I’ve personally dissected several hundred bodies…”

His face turned even uglier. The hand that had just shaken hers scrubbed hard against his pants like he wanted to peel off a layer of skin. He forced out an awkward laugh. “Cough, cough… impressive.” Then he covered his mouth and dry-heaved. “R-Really can’t tell at all!” He couldn’t hold it anymore, jumped to his feet, and bolted out.

At last, peace and quiet.

Zora smiled faintly, pulled out a wet wipe, and carefully cleaned her hand. While she was at it, she glanced at the people nearby who were openly enjoying the drama. This trick seriously never failed. Absolute top-tier move for dealing with random creeps hitting on her.

A little over an hour later, she got off the high-speed rail, hailed a cab, and went straight to the Qingshi Municipal Bureau to report in to a director surnamed Chen.

Mr. Angeles was an old forensic veteran, currently overseeing the forensic department. The moment he saw her, his eyes lit up. “It’s really great that you came. We’re badly short on people here. Right now it’s just me and Dr. Dodgson holding things up. The second anything happens, we have to apply for outside support from higher up…” He went on with the usual polite welcome for quite a while, then changed tone. “Why don’t you get settled first? Do you have a place to stay locally? If not, we’ve got staff housing. I can take you over and get you settled in first.”

Zora thanked him and followed.

The bureau’s staff housing had obviously been converted from a residential building. Every unit had three bedrooms, one living room, and two bathrooms, and depending on the room size, tenants paid a small amount of rent according to what they chose.

Without hesitating, Zora picked the sunny master bedroom. She’d shown up with just one small suitcase. Everything else had been packed and shipped through a logistics company, and somehow it was even slower than she was. She was about to head out to buy daily necessities when, just after stepping out of the dorm, she got a call.

Mr. Angeles sounded hesitant. “Uh, Xiao Tang, well… this…”

He honestly felt awkward saying it. The girl had just arrived, hadn’t even properly planted her feet yet, and now they were already asking her to go out on a case scene? But Dr. Dodgson had been working nonstop for two straight days and had only just gone home to catch up on sleep. Calling him back now would be way too inhumane.

Zora caught on fast. “There’s a case, right? Where is it? I’ll be there right away.”

Mr. Angeles let out a relieved breath and gave her the details. After hanging up, he couldn’t help saying to the others in the car, “The new girl looks delicate, pretty and all that, but her personality seems solid. She works fast too. Once she settles in, we’ll finally be able to breathe a little.”

Before he even finished the sentence, Zora was already running over from the other side. She didn’t waste a single word, just pulled open the door and got into the car. The door slammed shut behind her, and the vehicle started moving at once.

Mr. Angeles said, “A man reported that his father died suddenly at home. He suspects homicide.”

Zora nodded.

For some reason, she had the weirdest feeling that something was off. Almost instinctively, she looked toward the front passenger seat, where she could only see half a shoulder.

Mr. Angeles said, “Look at me, I forgot the introduction. This is our newly arrived beautiful forensic doctor, and this here is the captain of our Criminal Investigation Unit, the famous ace detective of our bureau…”

He kept rambling on and on, but the man in the front seat never turned around.

The air inside the car slowly stiffened, inch by inch, until it became almost painfully awkward. Then the man suddenly turned his head, lifted one eyebrow, and said, “Well, hello there.”

Zora’s eyes flew wide open. Her heartbeat almost stopped.

In that instant, what rose in her chest was weirdly close to one thought: what goes around really does come around.

Looking at those dark brows and eyes, her mind went completely blank. For a long moment, she had no idea how she was supposed to react.

She had imagined this reunion countless times before. So when it finally happened for real, it still didn’t feel real at all. It felt like a dream.

Then she suddenly curved her lips and gave him a flawless, untouchable smile.

“Captain Callahan, hello. My name is Zora Thorne.”

Rhett Callahan let out a cold laugh. "Well, look who it is. Dr. Thorne." He stressed every single word, his dark eyes so sharp they almost burned. Seeing how calm she looked, he drew in a long breath, then put on a fake smile. "Dr. Thorne sure has one of those familiar faces."

"Really?" Zora Thorne smiled back, easy and steady. "I’ve got one of those super generic faces. Everybody says I look familiar."

Mr. Angeles, who clearly hadn’t noticed a thing, chuckled warmly. "Oh, Xiao Tang, you’re being way too modest. I just called your Chief Zhou. He said you’re one of the bureau’s top people, a real backbone in the field. Said you’ve even got some nickname, something with 'loli' in it. Plenty of young guys have been chasing after you too. Honestly, why would someone like you come to our Qingshi? Total waste of talent, what a waste."

The two of them were still locked in a silent standoff.

Rhett gave another cold little laugh. "Yeah, Dr. Thorne. Why leave the provincial capital and come all the way to our backwater dump?"

Zora smiled. "Because I like... the sea."

She paused in the middle on purpose, like she meant it and didn’t at the same time, then lifted her chin a little, straight-up provocative.

Rhett ground his teeth so hard the muscle in his jaw tightened. Up front, Felix Aubert, who was driving, glanced at the rearview mirror and immediately sensed the vibe was off. He quickly changed the subject with a grin. "Director Chen, come on, you can’t drop gossip halfway. What loli exactly?"

"Heh." Mr. Angeles looked at Zora, saw that she was still smiling and didn’t seem offended, and only then continued, "I heard it from Chief Zhou too. I think it was... Savage Loli."

Zora gave a faint smile.

She had a baby face by nature, the kind that fooled people hard. Two years ago, a rookie cop fresh on the job had stuck to her every day, trying to flirt. Then one time she was standing over a pot, boiling a skull to strip away the soft tissue, and he came over all cheerful and asked, "What are you cooking? Smells good?"

Zora said "skull" three times, and the guy still didn’t get it. In the end, annoyed, she just snapped, "A human head."

The poor kid was scared so badly he nearly peed himself on the spot. After that, he gave her the nickname Savage Loli. Somehow, it spread like wildfire.

That weird, tense atmosphere in the car lasted all the way to the crime scene.

The case was in a mid-range apartment complex. There were already quite a few officers downstairs, plus a cluster of onlookers. In the middle of them was someone crying and getting worked up, probably family.

In an instant, Zora switched fully into work mode. Carrying the scene kit, she followed behind Mr. Angeles upstairs. She stopped at the doorway to wait, then glanced into the open bedroom.

On the big bed facing the door lay the body of a man in pajamas. Because of rigor mortis, both legs were bent up at a strange right angle. One side of his face was covered in dark purplish-red lividity. It was obvious he’d originally been lying on that side.

The moment she saw it clearly, Zora’s head buzzed.

She jerked a step back.