Gong Yingxian took Ren Yi to another office area. It was a very large room, with an entire wall at the front covered by LED panels. Rows of desks were filled with computers and equipment Ren Yi didn’t recognize, and more than half the staff were still working overtime.
Gong Yingxian walked toward a desk in the corner and called out to a broad-backed figure.
“Xiao Tan.”
The figure jolted. A mouthful of Coke sprayed out, splattering half the keyboard. He hurriedly stood up and grabbed some tissues to wipe it off.
Gong Yingxian shook his head. “It’s already after hours. If you want to eat something, you don’t have to hide it.”
The man turned around and gave an embarrassed smile. “Dr. Gong, you scared me.”
He looked to be in his early twenties, fair and chubby, with large, round, clear eyes. His skin was so tender it looked like you could pinch water out of it. He had a gentle, harmless smile, and if he lost some weight, he would definitely be a handsome guy.
“This is Captain Ren Yi of the Phoenix Fire Station. Captain Ren, this is our colleague from the Cybercrime Division, Tan Haochun. He’s a very skilled hacker.”
“N-No, I’m not that good.” Tan Haochun smiled shyly and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Captain Ren.”
“Nice to meet you.”
Ren Yi had just reached out his hand when Tan Haochun suddenly pulled his hand back as if he had been electrocuted.
“Sorry, my hands are dirty. I’ll go wash them first.”
Gong Yingxian stretched out his long arm and blocked Tan Haochun’s face. He took out a bottle of disinfectant from his pocket.
“Sit down. Save some time.”
Tan Haochun obediently sat down, extending his hand like an elementary school student waiting to be punished by his teacher.
Gong Yingxian sprayed disinfectant onto his hand. Tan Haochun rubbed it in, then wiped it dry with a tissue.
Ren Yi held back his laughter and coughed softly.
The two of them shook hands again. Tan Haochun blinked at Ren Yi.
“I’ve been hearing the female officers mention Captain Ren a lot lately. You really are just like they said—tall and handsome.”
Ren Yi laughed. “Really? I’m that popular at your precinct? Maybe I should find out sometime whether police officers or firefighters make more money. I might change careers.”
Tan Haochun burst out laughing. “Captain Ren, you’re really funny.”
Gong Yingxian lowered his head and looked at the potato chips, dried beef, sunflower seeds, and Coke stains scattered across Tan Haochun’s desk.
Tan Haochun hurriedly cleaned up everything he could, wiped everything he could wipe, and then looked nervously at Gong Yingxian.
Gong Yingxian pointed to the side. “Bring over two chairs.”
The two of them turned around at the same time to get the chairs.
Gong Yingxian sat down.
“Xiao Tan, you said just now that you had some progress. We can interrogate Zhou Chuan tomorrow, so I need some useful information now.”
“Right.”
Tan Haochun switched the screen. A website with a deep-red background and flame patterns appeared in front of them.
The entire website was in English. At the top was a human-faced serpent with six wings, its body wrapped around a sword and surrounded by blazing flames.
Beneath it was a line of small text:
Seraph.
Unlike what Ren Yi had imagined, the homepage of this dark web was extremely simple. He had thought the dark web would look like those yellow pop-up websites, with information exploding everywhere and every attention-grabbing thing imaginable crammed onto a single page.
But this homepage didn’t even have a single picture. There was only the website logo, its name, and several category selection boxes.
The first option was Live.
“This is Seraph.”
Just looking at the dark web made Ren Yi feel oppressed.
“This website was specifically created for arsonists?”
“More precisely, pyromaniacs,” Tan Haochun said. “Not every pyromaniac has the guts to commit a crime. Everything on this website is related to fire. Things you can imagine and things you can’t imagine—there’s everything. There are live streams of people playing with fire and committing arson, photos and videos, tutorials on arson and making explosives, discussion forums… Almost everything related to fire can be found here.”
“Are there many people like Zhou Chuan?”
Tan Haochun nodded. “People like Zhou Chuan are called bounty hunters on this website. They make money by satisfying pyromaniacs. For example, footage of a fire scene after the fire, like the Fourth Perspective incident, can sell for at least ten ‘quarks’ for a set of photos and videos.”
“‘Quarks’?”
“Quark is a physics term. It’s the smallest known particle.”
Tan Haochun nodded. “Yes, but the ‘quark’ mentioned here is the name of a virtual currency, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Of course, it isn’t worth nearly as much. One quark is roughly equivalent to… twenty to twenty-five U.S. dollars.”
“So Zhou Chuan could make one or two thousand yuan from one set of photos?” Ren Yi sneered. “But he was detained for forty-eight hours. Was it worth it?”
“Yes. But live streams cost much more,” Tan Haochun said. “A live stream of the aftermath of a fire starts at more than two hundred dollars for five minutes. Of course, that money usually isn’t paid by one person. The viewers participating in the live stream pool their money together. And if they make special requests, they have to pay extra.”
Gong Yingxian said grimly, “A live stream of the ruins after a fire is probably considered a relatively low-level category on Seraph.”
“What about the higher-level ones?” Ren Yi subconsciously clenched his fists. “Live streams of arson itself?”
Tan Haochun’s expression became unpleasant.
“There are… all kinds of live streams on here. Some of them… some of them are things no human being should be capable of doing.”
Gong Yingxian said expressionlessly, “There are live streams of burning all kinds of objects, and also… burning people.”
Ren Yi sucked in a breath, his voice trembling.
“How can a website like this still exist?!”
Tan Haochun gave a bitter smile. “Because it’s too difficult to take down. Their servers are scattered all over the world. To destroy a dark web like this, police from several countries would have to cooperate on the case. That’s practically impossible. Unless you capture the technicians, but the programmers behind this website are incredibly skilled—world-class hacker level. I spent three days trying to break into it before I found a vulnerability in the firewall. I was inside for only three minutes before they discovered me.”
“Did you find anything useful?”
Tan Haochun scratched his head.
“I’ll show you a video first. You two should prepare yourselves mentally.”
“…What?”
“This video has been in Seraph’s top three by views recently. At one point, it was ranked number one.”
Tan Haochun looked at them, somewhat hesitant.
Gong Yingxian said, “Play it.”
Tan Haochun switched to another webpage.
The two of them stared at the frozen frame of the video. It already looked somewhat familiar, and an ominous feeling rose in their hearts.
He pressed play.
The dark background gradually came into focus. A yellow sedan appeared on the screen.
It was a car they could never forget.
Everything that happened afterward was perfectly clear to Gong Yingxian and Ren Yi because they had been there themselves.
They felt cold all over as they heard their own voices enter the recording. Then the black-clad man set the car on fire, the flames rushed toward Zhou Chuan, Zhou Chuan fell to the ground, and the camera began shaking.
Ren Yi still remembered the laptop mounted on the tripod, with its camera pointed directly at the car.
The tripod had burned for quite some time before it finally collapsed.
Which meant…
Which meant that before the tripod fell, both he and Gong Yingxian had appeared on camera!
At the time, they had been frantic trying to rescue people, save the cat, and put out the fire. The scene had been chaotic, and they had completely overlooked the camera.
And that camera had silently continued filming, recording, and livestreaming the burning car.
The expressions on both men’s faces grew increasingly grim.
Although their faces were difficult to make out clearly in the video, they remembered very clearly that they had called each other by name.
It wasn’t until Gong Yingxian dragged Ren Yi away from the front of the car that the camera fell to the ground.
Ren Yi felt his mouth go dry. He couldn’t even say what he was feeling at that moment.
Gong Yingxian’s gaze was dark, his entire body radiating a chilling, murderous aura.
Tan Haochun secretly glanced at the two of them.
“I’m going to open the comments now. You should be mentally prepared…”
Gong Yingxian said coldly, “I don’t need to prepare myself. Don’t waste time.”
Ren Yi said quietly, “Don’t be like that. Xiao Tan is helping us.”
Tan Haochun waved his hand. “It’s okay.”
He opened the comments.
In an instant, line after line of scrolling messages appeared across the video, most of them in English.
Ren Yi’s English wasn’t particularly good, but he had at least passed the CET-4 exam for his credits.
He saw people saying the video was great.
Some said one of them was a police officer and the other a firefighter.
Some said they wanted to hear the two of them screaming in agony inside the car.
Some said that watching their handsome faces become charred would be the most beautiful sight in the world.
Then Ren Yi saw his own name, age, phone number, location, address, position, and firefighter ID number appear in both Chinese and English across the comments.
Then came Gong Yingxian’s information.
He felt his hair stand on end.
Gong Yingxian narrowed his eyes.
“They can find this much information from a single video?”
“This video already reveals quite a lot,” Tan Haochun said. “For a hacker, it isn’t difficult. But you don’t need to worry too much. Even if people overseas know this information, it’s difficult for them to harass you. As for people inside the country, more than half of them wouldn’t dare either. It would be easy for them to expose themselves. Have you received any harassing calls or anything like that these past few days?”
“No.”
Gong Yingxian sneered.
“I’m not worried. Most arsonists are timid and weak. In society, they tend to be quiet, shy, and antisocial. They use fire to conceal and strengthen themselves. Subconsciously, they believe that the bigger the fire, the more powerful they appear. It’s a typical coward’s mentality. Most of them don’t have the courage to approach police officers or firefighters.”
“They may not have the courage, but most of the bounty hunters who make money by satisfying them aren’t pyromaniacs. Some of them are genuinely dangerous criminals, so you still need to be careful.”
Tan Haochun lowered his voice.
“Right now… someone has already offered a high bounty for information related to the two of you.”
Ren Yi gritted his teeth.
“I’ve been worried that I wouldn’t be able to catch these bastards. If they’ve got the guts, then fucking come at me.”
“Let me see.”
Gong Yingxian said, “Maybe we can use this to catch someone.”
“Right. That black-clad man.”
Tan Haochun switched webpages again.
“The bounty is right here. The first one has raised nearly forty thousand U.S. dollars through crowdfunding. All they need is… either one of you. But don’t worry. It’s been several days, and nobody has dared to take it.”
Gong Yingxian carefully examined the bounty board as he spoke.
“That black-clad man was doing this for the first time. He probably wasn’t working with Zhou Chuan.”
“How do you know?” Ren Yi asked.
“I repeatedly watched the video we recorded on our phones. That black-clad man was clumsy, hesitant, nervous, and frightened. From a lot of his body language, it was obvious that he was unwilling. He wanted to finish as quickly as possible. And he never looked at the livestream from beginning to end. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in the tips. He only cared about hiding his face and identifying features. He doesn’t look like someone who came for money. He looks like someone who was forced to come.”
Ren Yi thought back.
“But he didn’t hesitate at all when he set the car on fire.”
“He set the car on fire to create chaos and escape,” Gong Yingxian said. “As for the bounty on us, nobody has taken it.”
“Yeah. There still aren’t many Chinese people on this website. And Tianqi has such good public security that attacking a public servant carries too much risk. Even though forty thousand dollars is already a very high bounty.”
Tan Haochun paused.
“Anyway, you two should still be careful, just in case.”
Ren Yi asked, “What do bounties at this level usually involve?”
“Burning living people to death, or burning large, important, well-known targets. Burning people is more common. Buildings and things like that are difficult to take on even if the price is high, especially in developed countries. The targets are too large, so it’s easy to get caught.”
“What a bunch of psychopaths,” Ren Yi cursed.
“What useful clues did you find?” Gong Yingxian asked. “Is it only our video?”
“No. There’s information about that livestream, as well as some things I dug up about the website itself.”
Tan Haochun said, “There’s one thing that really caught my attention. I found a particular type of post on their forum.”
“What kind of post?”
“Dr. Gong, do you remember the famous fast-food restaurant bathroom murder case in Utah, USA, a few years ago?”
“I remember. Two high school students who exchanged murders.”
Gong Yingxian’s expression changed.
“You mean they’re arranging exchanges of arson targets on the forum?!”