Ren Yi stared wide-eyed. “You mean Purple Flame is inside the venue?”
“Not necessarily Purple Flame. Purple Flame has so many followers; he probably wouldn’t take the risk himself.” Gong Yingsheng analyzed the situation. “There are currently six radio stations and one online network broadcasting this concert live. To ensure the stability of the live broadcast signal, the venue will restrict other satellite signals. This means remote control of the bombs is impossible. And if we use a signal jammer to block all signals, the bombs would only have their timer function left. In that case, Purple Flame would lose the ability to detonate the bombs early. He wouldn’t leave such a loophole. So there must be someone on-site who can manually detonate the bombs even if all signals are blocked.”
“Manually? Doesn’t that mean that person would also have no way to escape death?” He Gu frowned. “From listening to your conversation, it sounds like this is some kind of cult.”
“You guessed correctly.” Ren Yi said coldly. “Several cases that happened over the past six months have been connected to them.”
Thinking about everything that had happened over the past few months—the innocent civilians who had died unjustly, the firefighters, police officers, and doctors who had been killed or injured in the line of duty, as well as the suffering left behind for their families and the panic among the public—Ren Yi ground his teeth with hatred toward this bunch of psychopaths.
“If that’s the case, then to ensure that one person can detonate all the bombs, the first explosion must be capable of triggering a chain reaction.” Gong Yingsheng looked at He Gu. “That would be easier to accomplish through the equipment systems, right?”
He Gu nodded. “It’s just that this still doesn’t narrow the range down enough for us to find them within…” He looked at his watch. “Forty minutes. Many of the pipeline systems run throughout the entire venue.”
Gong Yingsheng glanced at his phone. “Sister Yan is here. Captain Zhang’s team has made progress too. Let’s go over first and consolidate the clues.”
The three of them arrived at the conference room, which had already become an emergency command center.
Qiu Yan waved them over. “Come here. We found something in the surveillance footage.”
Tan Haochun, sitting in front of the computer, turned around to greet them. “Hi, Dr. Gong, Captain Ren.”
“What did you find?”
Tan Haochun’s fingers flew across the keyboard as he quickly showed them a sped-up segment of footage.
Several people stared at it for a long time, but there seemed to be no change in the footage.
“What is this?”
“This is an example. These are the images from several surveillance cameras between 9:30 and 10:00 tonight. They look as though nothing changed, as if no one passed by. Actually, they were frozen.”
Gong Yingsheng frowned. “The system was compromised a long time ago.”
“Of course. Otherwise, how would they have gotten the venue’s blueprints? Captain Zhang’s people are currently watching all the surveillance footage from the past week at the highest speed. They’re working backward chronologically and have already reached four days ago, but they haven’t found anything unusual yet.”
Tan Haochun grabbed a large handful of French fries and stuffed them into his mouth, then secretly glanced at Qiu Yan. “Sorry. I have to eat when I’m nervous.”
Qiu Yan smacked him on the head. “Keep going.”
“I analyzed the surveillance and found no traces. There are two possibilities. One is that the surveillance footage was tampered with. The other is that they simply haven’t reached the relevant footage yet. The further back we go, the less likely the second possibility becomes, so I’m leaning toward the first.”
“I wrote a program that can detect traces of modifications to surveillance footage, but there are several terabytes of surveillance data, so there’s no way it can finish processing everything this year. Just now, Dr. Gong said in the group chat that the criminal was very likely inside the venue, so I used the program to process only today’s surveillance footage. It quickly turned up something.”
Tan Haochun took a gulp of Coke and pulled up a somewhat complicated data-analysis program. Several bar graphs showed peaks.
“Through cross-referencing, we can see that the surveillance footage has been intermittently modified ever since the concert began. To avoid arousing suspicion in the surveillance room, the hacker only selects portions of the footage to modify each time, and the modifications aren’t continuous either. Based on the locations of the cameras the hacker modified and the times they were modified, we can map out a person’s movement trajectory.”
Tan Haochun’s fingers nearly flew off the keyboard. Very quickly, a floor plan of the venue appeared on the screen. Lines representing routes appeared one by one across the floor plan, with different colors corresponding to different times.
There were eight routes in total, crisscrossing and extending in all directions, looking somewhat chaotic.
The group stared silently at the screen.
“These routes are difficult to see any pattern in at a glance. And it would be almost impossible for one person to complete all these routes within those time periods.” Gong Yingsheng said, “The hacker is using this method to confuse us and conceal the criminal’s actual movement trajectory.”
Qiu Yan said, “But at least it proves that the criminal really is inside the venue, and his movement trajectory must be somewhere within this web of lines.”
Gong Yingsheng thought for a moment. “That’s right. And it also proves that the bombs were planted after the concert began. The bombs must have entered the venue in a vehicle.”
All the audience members entering the venue had gone through security checks, but the vehicles entering the parking garage had not.
“And they were the organizer’s vehicles.” Qiu Yan said, “To prevent audience members from going backstage and bothering the celebrities, once they enter, they’re completely separated from the other areas and cannot move around inside the venue. But if they’re staff members associated with the concert, they could not only hide bombs inside the vehicles belonging to the organizers, guests, equipment crew, or media crew, using various equipment cases or supplies to conceal and transport the bombs into the venue, they can also use work credentials to move freely throughout the venue.”
The head of security immediately said, “Their vehicles are parked in a separate area from the audience’s vehicles. There are more than two hundred vehicles in total, all parked on B1.”
Gong Yingsheng said, “Immediately take test strips and conduct ion-mass-spectrometry testing.”
Qiu Yan called Cai Qiang over and sent a team to test for explosives.
Nitro-based explosives were currently one of the most common types of explosives. As long as the explosive material had previously been in contact with an object, nitrate, ammonium, sulfonate, and other ions could be detected within a short period using test strips together with instruments.
Tan Haochun murmured, “I hope Brother Qiang can catch the person quickly.”
“Even if he catches the person, that only eliminates the danger of the bombs being detonated early.” Ren Yi glanced at his watch, anxious beyond words. “There’s only a little over half an hour left. We don’t even have enough time to evacuate the crowd now.”
Tan Haochun let out an “Ah,” nervously shaking his leg as he stuffed large handfuls of snacks into his mouth. He whispered, “W-We definitely have to find them.”
He Gu pointed at the screen. “Print me a copy of this movement-trajectory map. I want to compare it with the blueprints. At the very least, we can rule out some areas.”
“Sure.” Tan Haochun looked at him curiously. “Who are you?”
“I’m the stadium’s engineer.”
At that moment, Ren Yi’s radio crackled.
Xu Jin said, “We’ve already checked the structural columns, boiler room, electrical distribution room, backup power generators, and other areas. We haven’t found any explosives. As expected, the criminal wouldn’t put explosives in such obvious high-value targets. But just to be safe, we’ll continue searching. What progress have the police made?”
“They should be able to identify the vehicle that brought the bombs in very soon.” Ren Yi glanced at Gong Yingsheng. “We’re still eliminating the suspicious locations.”
“Okay. Keep in touch.”
Gong Yingsheng sat off to one side, both hands clasped over his head, repeatedly recalling every word Purple Flame had said in the video. He was even carefully analyzing every change in the man’s tone.
Ren Yi looked at Gong Yingsheng’s tightly furrowed brows and pale face, feeling deeply worried, yet painfully realizing that he no longer had the position to express his concern.
Qiu Yan walked over to Gong Yingsheng and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t rush. Calm down and think.”
Gong Yingsheng nodded.
“Purple Flame… Is he that person?”
“No.”
“You’re that certain?”
“According to Liu Dayong’s description, that person had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. Purple Flame has not displayed any tendencies toward OCD.” Gong Yingsheng said in a low voice. “Moreover, Song Juhan is a young singer. Since Purple Flame listens to his songs, he should be no older than thirty-five. Purple Flame introduced himself as a ‘humble’ messenger, yet said that he was conveying the will of God. Subconsciously, he believes that the only being above him is God, while in the human world, he is God’s representative. He is utterly self-centered and considers himself supreme. His words are also filled with arrogance and narcissism.”
“This video of his and the planning of this bombing, including the gestures and movements accompanying his speech, all demonstrate his intense need for control and his desire to perform. All these psychological profiles do not match the characteristics of the arsonist from back then.”
“That arsonist disappeared without a trace for eighteen years, even going to great lengths to conceal his own existence. If he were Purple Flame, he would wish for the entire world to know about his great deeds.”
“This psychological need to stand at the center of the world stage, freely express oneself, and obtain everyone’s attention and worship is a common characteristic of cult leaders. It is also one of the sources of their charisma. So the two of them are not the same person.”
After hearing Gong Yingsheng’s analysis, Ren Yi drew a sharp breath.
This complicated crime that had spanned eighteen years—what kind of terrifying truth was hidden behind layer upon layer of fog?
“What confuses me now is…” Gong Yingsheng pondered. “Exactly what standard does Purple Flame use to determine whether a person’s soul is ‘evil’?”
Everyone was stunned by the question.
Gong Yingsheng muttered to himself, “We can only determine his actions by starting with his motives.”
They had never considered this question before. In the consciousness of ordinary people, everything the cult did was insane and irrational, and it was difficult to understand through normal human thinking.
But now, they had to understand it.
Tan Haochun said, “Aren’t they basically an arsonist cult? Arson itself is their faith, isn’t it?”
Gong Yingsheng shook his head. “Perhaps that’s what Purple Flame thinks. Perhaps that’s what the others think too. But when a cult controls people, it must use some kind of righteous justification.”
“Purple Flame needs such a justification to unite the group and use that justification to brainwash everyone, causing them to lose their individual personalities and possess only a group mentality.”
“The group also needs such a justification to constantly find a supposedly correct starting point for its own actions. When outside forces strike at them, they will use this righteous justification as an excuse for themselves, making their cohesion even stronger.”
“So Purple Flame would never say, ‘We kill people because it’s fun.’ He would only say, ‘We use fire to purify evil souls.’ He would repeat it again and again, continuously, until both he and everyone else believed it.”
Tan Haochun sat up straight. “I’ll pull up all the arson cases from the past ten years and see if I can find cases committed by this organization. Maybe we can figure out their criteria for judging an evil soul.”
“They couldn’t have concealed themselves for that long without leaving traces. I believe the organization truly began to take shape because of the reach of the website Blazing Angel.” Gong Yingsheng said, “So narrow the range down to five years.”