Chapter Sixteen: The Mysterious Slime!

Li Xingchen immediately jumped up in fright. “Oh no, it short-circuited.”

I stopped him and reminded, “Hurry, check if the data was saved.”

Li Xingchen quickly examined the computer and finally looked at us both, helpless. “It’s over, it’s completely over. The CPU, hard drive, and motherboard are all fried. We’re finished.”

“How is that possible?” I looked at Li Xingchen skeptically. “It was working fine just now. How could it short-circuit at such a critical moment?”

Tang Jingjing was nearly beside herself with anger. “You… If you don’t give me a reasonable explanation, I’ll chop you up and feed you to the dogs.”

Li Xingchen protested, “How is this my fault? I told you before that this computer was no good, but you didn’t believe me. Now look, running at full capacity all night—of course it couldn’t handle it.”

I replied that I’d never heard of a computer running over capacity and burning out the CPU.

With that, I leaned over to inspect the case.

I noticed the case was open, so I asked Li Xingchen what was going on.

Li Xingchen explained that he’d been worried about overheating last night and opened the case for better cooling.

I stared at him, dead serious. “Are you going to say again that you did nothing last night?”

“Uh… Fine, I admit I played games.”

“And?” I pressed further. “Did you watch any Japanese films?”

“What are you talking about?” Li Xingchen protested. “Look at this place—there are corpses stacked not far away. No matter how perverted I might be, I wouldn’t dare do that here. Even if Aoi Sora herself stood in front of me, I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Then how do you explain this slime?” I asked.

“What slime?” Li Xingchen was taken aback and hurried over, with Tang Jingjing coming to look as well.

“Ugh, you pervert!” Tang Jingjing cursed at a glance.

Li Xingchen, however, was dumbfounded. “Oh my god, whose is this? You have to believe me—I absolutely didn’t do anything last night.”

“Swear it?”

Li Xingchen swore immediately. “If this is mine, may I be struck down by heaven.”

He didn’t seem to be joking, so I asked if he’d stayed awake all night.

Li Xingchen assured me he hadn’t slept.

“Did anyone come in here today?”

Li Xingchen scratched his head sheepishly. “Well… I was so tired earlier, I dozed off for a bit… I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Staring at the nearly invisible slime on the motherboard, I grew confused. No doubt, it was this slime that had caused the short circuit. There was some on the memory chip too—the connectors were already scorched black.

I quickly called Xia Feng over to collect samples for analysis and told Li Xingchen to check if the memory chip was still usable.

Li Xingchen said it should be fine. At worst, the connectors were burnt, but the chip inside was hard to destroy. Still, it would have to be sent to the manufacturer for recovery—he couldn’t help any further.

Tang Jingjing scolded, “You call yourself a professional hacker and can’t even fix this?”

Li Xingchen, on the verge of tears, replied, “I’m a hacker, but only on the software side. I can’t do anything about hardware issues.”

Tang Jingjing cursed him for being useless.

Xia Feng collected the slime and left to investigate, while Tang Jingjing was still venting her anger on Li Xingchen. I had to persuade her to calm down, then gathered Lin Lao and the others to inform them that the computer had been destroyed.

Li Xingchen, for once, proactively admitted his mistake, blaming his own carelessness.

Lin Lao asked me where the slime had come from.

I replied that we weren’t sure yet, but someone was analyzing it and we’d have results within three hours.

Lin Lao said there was no doubt the perpetrator had deliberately destroyed the chip.

I nodded. “I asked Li Xingchen. He said no one had entered.”

“What about the surveillance footage? Has it been checked?” Lin Lao asked.

“Tang Jingjing already called the surveillance team, but they haven’t started work yet and we don’t have the key to the monitoring room,” I answered.

Lin Lao nodded.

Not long after, the surveillance staff arrived and notified us to come and view the footage.

Passing through the reception hall, my attention was suddenly drawn to a case file on the desk.

It looked like a regular file, but there was a trace of slime on it—and even a bit of blood.

I grabbed the file and was shocked to see the complainant’s name: Song Yuanhai.

What the hell? Had Song Yuanhai’s ghost come to file a report?

I didn’t believe in ghosts, but my subconscious couldn’t help drifting in that direction.

Not wanting to cause public panic, I immediately went to ask Officer Sun, who was in charge of reception at the station, about this case file.

Officer Sun was a woman in her thirties with a notoriously irritable temper. She’d worked five or six years in the reception team because of it, and the longer she stayed, the more dissatisfied and short-tempered she became—a vicious cycle.

She barely acknowledged me and complained that the Major Crimes Unit should focus on real cases instead of meddling in trivial matters.

I realized she probably looked down on me as a mere intern forensic specialist and explained that this might be related to our investigation.

Only then did Officer Sun say, “A little while ago, someone came in—couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman—reporting their puppy was stolen. Honestly! I told them we’re the city police, not in charge of dog theft—go to your local precinct.”

“But they insisted their dog was worth over three hundred thousand, and the precinct just pushed them off, so they had to appeal to the city bureau.”

“I really didn’t want to take the case, but that person just wouldn’t let up, so I had them fill out a report. I was just about to attend the morning meeting, so I left, but when I got back, they were gone…”

A sudden idea struck me—could that person have snuck into the computer room and destroyed the hard drive? And clearly, the slime belonged to the culprit.

I immediately asked why she’d said the person didn’t seem like a man or a woman.

Officer Sun explained, “The person had delicate features and was bundled up tightly, wearing sunglasses—thought they were some kind of celebrity. They even deliberately deepened their voice. I could tell right away it was a woman pretending to sound like a man. Either a mistress too ashamed to show her face or some third-rate actress. I hate dealing with people like that.”

“So you think the person was a woman?” I pressed.

“Of course,” Officer Sun said. “Nowadays, you can’t even tell a person’s gender unless they strip.”

It was obvious, even without much thought, that the mysterious woman had been here. She didn’t dare show herself openly, so disguised herself as a man and sneaked into the computer room at the right moment.

As for using Wang Chenhai’s name to file the report, that was just a smokescreen.

I hurried to the monitoring room, where the staff had already pulled up the footage.

The video showed someone with their face wrapped in clothing slipping into the computer room while Li Xingchen was asleep.

I immediately called for a pause.

The staff paused the video and looked at me, puzzled.

“Look at her hand—there appears to be slime!” I pointed out.

Prompted, the staff zoomed in. Sure enough, slime seemed to be dripping from her hand.

“Rewind a bit…”

The footage rewound, and I saw her hand emerge from within her coat.

Her chest was noticeably bulging—clearly, she’d hidden something there.

“Damn, this person is bold,” Li Xingchen cursed in anger. “To actually sneak into a police station.”

I asked, “What do you think she was carrying in her coat?”

Everyone shook their heads.

Lin Lao spoke up, “Sticky like that… What part of the human body produces such mucus, without blood?”

He looked at me as he finished.

I hesitated, took a deep breath, and replied, “The uterus. There’s no other organ in the body that produces mucus like this.”