How You Can Sue Me for My Crimes in Dreams

The dismembered old man, the child strangled to death, and the woman who was disemboweled and then strangled.

Without exception, all of this proved the killer’s hatred for the victims.

”What did the victims do to the killer?”

Xu Huo murmured the question, frowning as he looked at the others.

Such a gory method could no longer be explained away as a simple crime of passion.

It had to be hatred. An endless, bottomless hatred!

In a crime of passion, you might get into an argument, lose control, and swing a knife. Maybe you even cut their head clean off. But after that one blow, you’d most likely snap out of it, filled with regret and remorse.

But this crime scene was different.

The perpetrator was here for one reason: to unleash their hatred.

In other words, the conflict appeared, intensified, and finally erupted. These three stages built up over time; this wasn’t a process that concluded in a brief moment, like a crime of passion.

That meant there must have been a long period for that emotion to fester and turn into pure hatred.

’How long did it take? A month? Two? A year? Two years?’

Wang Hu frowned. He thought for a moment before looking down.

”Besides,” he said, ”judging by how brutal the scene is, there was more than one killer. That’s going to make the search even more difficult.”

At the crime scene, the old man had been dismembered, the child strangled until he bled from his eyes, nose, and mouth, and the woman’s lower body had been mutilated into a bloody ruin.

The killers had carelessly trampled through the blood from the bodies, leaving clear footprints on the floor after it began to dry.

Based on the footprints, there were at least five killers!

And during the murders, Zhou Dapeng was still alive.

Based on information from the explosion site, he had most likely been subdued by the killers and forced to watch as his family was brutally murdered...

’Who were these five people?’

’What was their conflict with Zhou Dapeng about!?’

’And...’

”Building a time bomb...”

Xu Huo’s brow furrowed as he observed his surroundings for a long moment.

”A simple explosive device can be cobbled together by anyone with a bit of experience.”

”But a time bomb involving electronic components is a different story!”

Building a time bomb is far more complex than making a regular one. The electronic components alone are enough to give an ordinary person a headache.

Furthermore, what the bomb had been used for also baffled Xu Huo.

”Why did they blow up Zhou Dapeng?”

Wang Hu murmured, voicing the very question on Xu Huo’s mind.

”Based on the evidence, Zhou Dapeng’s entire family was home on the day of the murders. The killers managed to sneak in and murder his wife and family, so they could have just as easily killed Zhou Dapeng quietly.”

”Why drive him to a busy downtown area and use a bomb—such a high-profile method—to kill him!?”

The perpetrators wanted Zhou Dapeng dead more than anything.

And yet, they wasted time on this baffling, inexplicable act.

’What was the point?’

To the police, the act seemed inexplicable.

But that wasn’t necessarily true for the perpetrators.

The crudely modified vehicle, the time bomb, the bindings, the target location... all of these things, when combined, had to follow some kind of clear logic!

Which brought them back to the same question.

Why go to all this trouble?!

You have to understand, the difference between a case with a bomb and one without is night and day.

”Without the explosion, this would be, at worst, a tragic case of a gang wiping out an entire family.”

”But with a bomb, it’s a whole other ball game. If civilians had been caught in the blast, it would have been completely reasonable for the higher-ups to call in the armed police.”

That was the difference: a horrific, bloody crime versus an act of terrorism. They were two completely different things, handled by different departments.

”Are they idiots? No. Anyone who can build a time bomb has enough technical knowledge to understand the consequences.”

”So why do it?”

No one could figure it out. The entire team fell silent, lost in thought.

If the killers were so blinded by hatred that they’d become antisocial and wanted to lash out at society, then setting off a bomb would make sense.

But the footage from the scene clearly showed that they had deliberately limited the bomb’s power.

’My god, did they just take the bomb out for a joyride?’

’What was the point of that?’

”Let’s pull the files.”

Xu Huo suddenly shook his head and sighed.

They had found just about all the information they were going to get from the murder scene.

He could smell their genders and even how many of them there were, but the trail was too cold to follow.

Wang Hu nodded. ”I’ll keep investigating the scene here.”

Xu Huo didn’t object. He walked right out, got into a car, and headed for headquarters.

There was nothing else of value at the scene. He needed to look at the files.

’The current information points to a group of killers who harbored a mortal hatred for the victim.’

’The victim was the owner of a chemical plant. As a boss, he dealt with hundreds of people.’

’If we follow the lead about a conflict, there’s no getting around the background checks. We’ll have to investigate not only Zhou Dapeng but also his employees, his neighbors, everyone.’

The higher someone’s status, the more people they’re connected to.

And the more people, the more potential for conflict.

Sometimes a boss might not even know what’s going on when his management team offends a rank-and-file employee, and then he’s the one who ends up brutally murdered.

The workload was immense.

That was why the administrative staff had been working overtime on the background search ever since they’d identified the victim’s file that morning.

’If I head back now, I might get a look at the preliminary report.’

Xu Huo was thinking this over as he sat in the passenger seat, watching the scenery fly by.

The car came to a stop at a traffic light...

Xu Huo’s eyelashes fluttered, and he froze for a second.

Through the window, he saw a car parked on the side of the road begin to emit a brilliant radiance, like a sudden burst of daylight. The light grew brighter and brighter, until...

...it filled his entire vision!

Xu Huo’s expression changed drastically, but before he could say a word, in the next instant...

”BOOM!!!”

A massive explosion thundered. The powerful shockwave lifted their police car into the air, sending it flying backward before it slammed back down onto the road.

Everyone inside felt a moment of weightlessness as they were violently thrown around.

Before the car had even come to a complete stop, Xu Huo tore off his seatbelt and shoved the door open.

Qian Hua shook his head to clear it, his face a mask of astonishment at the sudden turn of events. Once he regained his senses, he followed Xu Huo out of the car.

But the moment he stepped out and saw the scene before him, Qian Hua froze. His mind went blank, and he could only stand there, stunned.

Before him was a sedan engulfed in a raging inferno...

The flickering fire blazed before them, the heat so intense they could barely keep their eyes open, their faces stinging from the searing air.

Qian Hua swallowed hard and stammered in a daze:

”Wh-what’s going on?”

This was...

The second explosion!!!

...

...

At 9 PM on October 4th, the first explosion occurred in Linlan City, Hanhai Province.

At 12 PM on October 5th, as Xu Huo was heading to headquarters, the second explosion occurred as they passed Lanhe Road!

The explosion took place at a busy intersection, but there were no bystander casualties. The only victims were the killers’ intended targets, and this time, there were two of them.

The victims, a man and a woman, had been killed in the same manner as Zhou Dapeng.

The remains of two alarm clock time bombs were found at the scene, and the vehicle had been modified...

Drawing on their experience from the Zhou Dapeng case, the Linlan City police efficiently identified the victims of the second explosion.

By 4:30 PM that afternoon, the police had pulled the files on the two victims.

At the same time, Xu Huo and Wang Hu arrived at the victims’ respective homes and pushed open the doors.

And as the doors slowly swung open...

...the thick, putrid stench of blood washed over them once again!