At first, Li Yunlong thumbed through the case files with painstaking care, but the further he read, the faster his fingers turned the pages. By the time he reached the end, his frustration had boiled over into sheer contempt.
«You call this investigative material?» he demanded, looking up from the documents. «Local police might have limited capabilities, but you FBI agents actually wasted your time chasing these useless leads? Anyone with half a brain can see this 'Mirror Game' case is far from normal. Once or twice might be understandable-after all, solving crimes requires evidence, and every anomaly has to be vetted. But youve already consolidated these cases into a single investigation! How are you still just running in circles without a single fresh idea? No wonder this thing has dragged on so long without being solved!»
Agent David clearly disagreed with his harsh assessment. «Mr. Brook Lee, my colleagues and I are ordinary people. We don't possess mystical powers like yours, nor do we have any background in occultism. We can only do our best using conventional methods. Speaking from a professional standpoint, I can assure you that everyone involved has put in their full effort.»
«'Put in their full effort'?» Li Yunlong scoffed. «Or did they just go through the motions? Youve watched detective movies and read mystery novels, haven't you? Have you never tried putting yourselves in the killer's shoes? The culprit hides their tracks flawlessly every single time. After so many incidents, you haven't managed to catch even a single slip-up-doesn't that tell you something is fundamentally wrong?»
«Thats precisely what baffles me!» David replied. «I wasn't directly involved in the previous investigations, but the police handled the Wesley house case impeccably. Agent Gillian and I were worried the local officers might have overlooked something, so our first day here was spent re-examining their entire process from top to bottom. I can guarantee there were no mistakes.»
Is this really the standard of the FBI's elite? Or are these two just complete incompetence disguised in suits? Li Yunlong stared at him, sinking into deep skepticism. «Have you ever considered other possibilities?» he asked aloud. «A mirror can't just walk up to a victim on its own and say, 'Hey buddy, take me home so I can kill you!' And if it really did, it wouldn't just sit there quietly at the crime scene afterward!»
David scratched his head, visibly troubled. «We considered that too. The police went so far as to build detailed timelines and victim relationship charts, but after a thorough screening, they didn't find a single anomaly.»
«Are you trying to whitewash their incompetence, or just shifting the blame?» Li Yunlong's voice cut through the air. «Agent David, if you genuinely want to solve this case, drop that mindset immediately. Your timeline is utterly worthless. Aside from leading you down a dead end, I don't see what good it serves.»
«Why do you say that?»
«How did the local police construct that timeline in the first place?» Li Yunlong countered.
«By interviewing everyone who came into contact with the victim,» David explained, «compiling their statements, and corroborating them with secondary evidence collected at the scene.»
«You ought to know better than I do that police manpower is limited,» Li Yunlong said. «Just how many resources could they realistically throw at a case like this?»
David maintained a firm defense of the local department. «You don't need to worry about that. The officers are professionally trained. If there were any issues, they would have caught them.»
«Really?» Li Yunlong sneered. «Chemical interference, hypnotic manipulation, cult operations… setting aside supernatural forces for a moment, an ordinary person could think of a dozen ways to commit a crime like this. Are you genuinely confident those local detectives could spot any of those?»
David hemmed and hawed for a long moment, unable to offer a firm rebuttal, before finally conceding. «The possibility exists… but if that's the case, the police investigation hits a complete dead end.» His voice slowed as the harsh reality sank in. The cold cases of the Mirror Game were suffering from that exact predicament. «Then what are we supposed to do? If the killer concealed their tracks to that extent, its practically impossible for us to find them.»
«There are plenty of ways,» Li Yunlong said calmly. «It just depends on whether you're willing to commit the necessary resources. To put it bluntly, it's a matter of money.»
«When human lives are on the line, money isn't an issue!» David blurted out.
«Every step leaves a footprint!» Li Yunlong declared. «The moment a crime occurs, you launch a massive dragnet. Using the scene as ground zero, you perform an indiscriminate sweep of every person and object within a multi-mile radius. You analyze every single piece of trace evidence you can scrape up, aggregate the data, and compile it. Do that, and you're guaranteed to find a lead.»
David fell silent. It was a long time before he finally spoke. «A mobilization of manpower and material on that scale? Unless the chief of the LAPD goes completely insane, they'd never authorize it for a minor case like the Mirror Game.»
The Los Angeles Police Department boasted the title of the second-largest department in the nation, second only to the NYPD. It was a massive organization boasting tens of thousands of personnel-including administrative and support staff-equipped with specialized units ranging from air support and harbor patrols to SWAT teams. But the total sweep Li Yunlong described meant concentrating every bit of available manpower and material to conduct an exhaustive investigation at all costs. While such a crude, brute-force tactic would indeed flush out any clues left by the killer, the LAPD's jurisdiction spanned over 1,200 square kilometers, covering a population exceeding 3.8 million people. The department's high command suffered daily headaches just trying to manage their perpetual shortage of officers on the beat.
Faced with Li Yunlongs dry, mocking question, Agent David had instinctively shouted out a noble slogan: When human lives are on the line, money isn't an issue!
Shouting slogans felt great. Dealing with reality was another matter entirely.
As an elite FBI agent, David was no stranger to field work. Anyone with actual boots on the ground knew that when human lives were on the line, money was always the issue. Setting aside how many people lost their lives over money every single day, or how corrupt government officials turned a blind eye to the plight of ordinary citizens, official statistics alone showed that an average of 220 people died daily in America from gun violence and traffic accidents. Throw in sudden disasters like train derailments, wildfires, shipwrecks, or plane crashes-which could claim dozens or even hundreds of lives in an instant-and public resources were stretched to the absolute limit. Police departments simply did not have unlimited operational capacity.
American law enforcement officers did not have it easy, either. Base-level officers worked grueling schedules for their paychecks; LAPD patrol officers, for instance, worked twelve-hour shifts three days a week, and ten-hour shifts for the remaining four. Against that backdrop, the cold cases of the Mirror Game-which had claimed only Alice's life in Burbank, and accumulated barely three victims a year overall-amounted to little more than a minor criminal matter. Sure, the killer was cunning, moving from place to place, and the victims died horrific, bizarre deaths that left unsettling corpses behind. But from a big-picture standpoint, those were minor details. In a vast world filled with strange people and bizarre events, the Mirror Game was barely a drop in the bucket. Neither the LAPD brass nor the FBI leadership viewed it as anything more than a small, isolated case. It was simply not worth-nor even possible-devoting a massive influx of manpower and resources to solve.
Seeing that David realized the truth, Li Yunlong didn't press the agent on his empty grandstanding. «If you can't commit enough personnel and budget in time, my personal advice is to drop this case entirely. The Mirror Game is far too dangerous for people like you.»
«We know it's dangerous,» David replied, his jaw setting. «But we're FBI agents. If we don't handle it, are we just supposed to stand by and let innocent citizens become victims?»
Li Yunlong gave a slight nod. At the very least, he couldn't fault the agent's attitude. Since David drew a paycheck from the FBI, he had to shoulder the responsibilities that came with it; the occupational hazards met during an investigation were just part of the job, nothing to whine about. «If you're set on pursuing it, I have nothing more to say. Let's go to the station and inspect the evidence. We only need to look at two things: first, the victim Alice's body, and then the mirror itself.»
The two agents drove Li Yunlong to the morgue, where he finally saw Alice's remains in person. It matched the photographs he had examined earlier-her body looked as though every drop of blood had been drained straight out of her, leaving behind nothing but skin and bones. Her death had clearly been excruciatingly painful; her limbs were severely contorted, and her skin had turned a dark, withered black covered in heavy wrinkles. But unlike looking at a photograph, standing beside the corpse revealed a palpable, bone-chilling coldness-a chill that went far deeper than the ambient temperature of the room.
Li Yunlong observed the remains for a long time before breaking the silence. «Agent David, how will the victim's body be handled?»
«Once the autopsy investigation is complete, she'll be released to her family,» David answered. «Is there something wrong with the body?»
«There is a minor issue,» Li Yunlong said. «The deceased was murdered by having her soul and life force forcibly extracted through dark magic. Because of the corruptive influence during that process, her corpse has essentially been turned into a raw material for black witchcraft. My personal recommendation is to find a genuine holy practitioner to purify her remains.»
«Are you saying we should get a priest to perform an exorcism over the body?»
Li Yunlong sighed slightly. The trouble with talking to laymen was having to spell out the obvious. «The victim's body has already become a magical component. How exactly do you plan to 'exorcise' it? I said purify. Ask your contacts if they know anyone from the Inquisition. Though I doubt you can even tell the difference between a true holy practitioner and a simple preacher. The people from the Inquisition are far more adept at this kind of work. If you can get them to take over this aspect of the case, itll save you a lot of trouble.»
David's expression darkened. Christianity was the dominant faith in America, and David was a believer himself. While the church had its organizations, it certainly didn't have an infamous entity like an «Inquisition» operating in the open. The Catholic Church had an Inquisition historically, but owing to its terrible reputation, they had renamed it long ago-it was now known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. David wasn't insane; why would he go out of his way to provoke an institution like that?
«I'll arrange for someone to handle the body,» David said evasively. «Next, let's go check the mirror.»
«We're not going to 'check' it-we're going to use it,» Li Yunlong corrected him. «Find an empty basement with no people or extra clutter in it. Set up a table and a couple of chairs, and bring the mirror there.»
David frowned, utterly bewildered. «What are you planning to do?»
«Since you lack authority and resources, yet still insist on solving the case, I have no choice but to try an unconventional method,» Li Yunlong said coolly. «I will use that mirror as a medium to cast a spell, allowing you to peer into its secrets through the eyes of the deceased. In the ancient East, this art is known as… spirit summoning.»