An Xiaoyu didn't expect the fourth case to come so suddenly.

The fourth case, of course, refers to the case completed according to the crime scene of Wu Youya's novel. These days, the imperial capital has been staring at Wu Youya closely, making sure that he has never gone out, never visited, and never communicated with others.

But when his novel was published, the local garrisons, who had already been instructed by the central government of the imperial capital, immediately screened the recent cases against the content of the novel, and sure enough, they really found one of them. But the strange thing is that the year between the first and the second is actually blank.

According to the garrison, the first case was the first time that the other party committed a crime.

The suspect should have seen the setting of Wu Youya's novel by chance, and then came up with the idea of killing people according to the novel. After the first attempt, he felt an unprecedented sense of freshness, and only after a year did he commit crimes according to the content of the novel in a planned manner.

However, as for how the other party knew the content of Wu Youya's novel, it is unknown. All the content of the novel was written by Wu Youya alone, and there was no other person in his family, let alone being monitored, and there was no rumor, how did the perpetrator know the content of the novel in advance?

Wu Youya said that he didn't know either, and his attitude towards the garrison was very bad.

The fourth case took place in Gyeongbuk Province, and the deceased's name was Xia Ou, this time a woman, and a young woman.

The cause of Xia Ou's death was suffocation, but this suffocation does not appear to be man-made. By the time Xia Ou's body was discovered, half of her had already been buried in one of the walls of the room. With your back to the world and facing the wall, the whole person is embedded in the wall, as if blending in.

Facing the wall and being injabed, of course, it is impossible to continue breathing, Xia Ou was judged to have died under pure suffocation, and when she was pulled out of the wall, she still had a satisfied smile on her face, but her body was stiff as if it was poured with cement, and she maintained a hugging posture, which was very weird.

This strange way of death is of course provided by Wu Youya, and the new novel is called "Shadow Lovers".

Shadow lovers are a popular saying. According to psychology, this is a symptom of paranoia caused by the extreme emptiness of the heart. Because of extreme loneliness and fragile tolerance, or what kind of stimulation is added, some people regard their shadow as their daily life companion.

Such people often turn on a lonely lamp at night, and then talk to themselves in their shadows, as if there is really a lover by their side, to fill the hole in their hearts. In the past, An Xiaoyu always felt that such an existence was a bit ridiculous.

But now it seems that such people still exist.

In the story of "Shadow Lovers", such a mental illness is first introduced to people, and then a guard with slight shadow dependence is used as the main clue to tell the story of solving a mystery with Detective Xiao Ke.

The case happened on a dark night, a female employee who was recognized as having a brain problem died in her apartment, and the death was the same as Xia Ou's: the whole person was in a state of embrace, embedded in the wall, and suffocated to death.

When Xiao Ke and the police officer arrived at the scene, the body had already been lifted out of the wall, the strange smile on the corpse was creepy, the suffocation caused her face to be very ugly, the body was still stiff, and the forensic doctor couldn't break it by all means.

One of the guards couldn't help but say that this was the appearance of the soul being sucked out of the body alive, and only the body where the soul suddenly disappeared would become such a stiff state. Of course, this statement was ridiculed by colleagues, who preferred to believe that the woman had been drugged.

According to their speculation, this woman must have offended someone, drugged her, made her the way she is, and then posed like this, and embedded her in the wall. The stiffness of the body and the smile on the face are the result of the drugs, otherwise who would be so walled into the wall without even struggling?

Of course, no clues were found at the scene, and the police officers who arrived later also agreed with the statements of several colleagues and wanted to close the case and then find the murderer. But Shook said that the woman's death was actually suicide.

At the time, they all said they didn't believe it, but Detective Shook did not give up on continuing to investigate the case, and he believed that his judgment was right. Because in the past, when he was very young, he had also seen such a case, and remembered it vividly.

It was a case from more than 20 years ago, and the deceased was also embedded in the wall and suffocated like this woman. The person in charge of the case at that time was Shock's father, the old guard who had died on the job many years ago.

The cause of Shock's father's death is the main clue of the entire Detective Shock's horror novels. Shock's quest to become a detective is also driven by the search for the cause of his father's death, and he is keenly aware that his father's death is not an accident and involves a mysterious organization.

Of course, in order to ensure that the entire novel series can endure, the main plot is explained very slowly.

And this time, Wu Youya revealed some clues about that organization, because his father had fought with the organization when he was investigating the case back then. It was also because of that incident that Xiao Ke affirmed that this case was still a suicide case.

However, in terms of the method of death, it is suicide, but in terms of the motive for suicide, it is not.

As the protagonist of the novel, the police officer with shadow dependence disorder is very dismissive of Shocke's claims, but stubbornly joins Shock's investigation. They visited their neighbors, listened to their testimonies, and questioned the victims' colleagues and leaders.

Neighbors and colleagues all said that the victim was a very introverted person, and rarely talked to people in normal times, and even when they met them usually, they only said hello a little. This is especially true at work, many people like to bully her, handing over the work that was supposed to be their own to you, and the boss is very tired of this kind of stuffy staff.

However, the boss was considerate of her, and he told Xiao Ke and the police officer that the victim was not such a person at the beginning, but became like this after some changes, otherwise an employer like them would definitely not recruit such a person, and it is estimated that the interview will not pass.

The incident happened about two years ago, the victim was originally a person who was not very cheerful but not quiet, an accident two years ago, which led to the death of the victim's parents, and most of the family's property was awarded to his younger brother who did not work.

Later, because of the loss of financial support from the family, the victim's father-in-law promised to buy a car and a house was of course gone. His fiancée parted ways with her because of this, and she became a person ever since. It's something that everyone around knows about, and the boss doesn't know much about it.

All he knew was that since this incident, the victim had become more and more silent. For the sake of working for the company for so many years, the boss is already very merciful that he did not fire her. Even later, because of the decline in work efficiency, the company also assigned an extra person in her department to share the work she couldn't finish.

The boss expressed great sadness about what happened to the victim, but also said that it had nothing to do with him.

Colleagues talked about it, and they all said that the victim actually had something wrong with his brain. Since that incident, the victim has become more and more gloomy when he is in front of people, and he has no intention of communicating with people at all. However, some people have seen that in the corner where no one is around, the victim often says something to the ground or wall with a fluttering eyebrow.

Someone in the unit couldn't stand it, for fear that something would happen, and finally a few female colleagues who had a good relationship with her before introduced her to a partner. But the victim did not appreciate it, insisting that she was married and her husband was by her side.

After hearing such words, several colleagues were terrified and boldly told the victim that her fiancé had left her, and then faced the victim's frantic insults and sharp shouts, which frightened them into not daring to talk to her anymore.

Since then, the victim's condition has become more serious.

They didn't dare to meddle in their affairs, and they didn't dare to report to their superiors, but in the end they still sympathized with this woman. She had lost everything, and if she lost her job and income because of their reporting, it would definitely not end well, so two years passed like this.

When these people heard the news of the death, they couldn't help but think, the madman couldn't have committed suicide, right?

After they got the news, they were still confused. The police officer still insisted on his murder, but Xiao Ke asked, is there no possibility of suicide in such a mental state? But the officer thought, how can a person inset himself in a wall? Even the wall paint is smeared.

Shook had no way to answer the officer's questioning. But the case from twenty years ago has always hovered in Shock's heart, telling him that such a case is not simple. These two cases, if not both related to that organization, must be related to the same mysterious principle.

What exactly is this principle? Shook felt that it was related to the victim's mental illness.

The police officer said that he knew a psychiatrist and was willing to take Xiao Ke to learn about the victim's symptoms to dispel Xiao Ke's idea of continuing the investigation. Shock, of course, was happy to get some useful clues, after all, he was not a psychologist.

So they found the psychiatrist known to the police officer, who told them that the symptoms of the victim before his death were likely shadow dependence. Because of the death of both parents and the departure of her fiancé, the victim regards her shadow as someone who is always by her side to fill those who have left.

Schock immediately thought of the connection between the shadow and the wall, and it was only when there was a curtain that the shadow could take shape and become close to the person. Immediately afterward, they returned to the victim's room. While on the road, Shook noticed a strange phenomenon.

That is, the police officer next to him will also look at the shadow around him, consciously or unconsciously, and sometimes when he talks to him, he will bring words like "we". At first, Shook thought it was a personal habit, but now it seems that this is not the case.

It was already night when I came to the victim's room, and the whole room was pitch black, and the police officer tried to turn on the light, but was stopped by Xiao Ke. Arriving at the victim's bedside, Xiao Ke turned on the lamp at the head of the bed, and two shadows appeared on the wall.

Walking to the side of the wall, Xiao Ke stretched out his hand and made a state of hugging, and standing next to the wall, the shadow on the wall also changed to a state of hugging Xiao Ke.

The police officer said that this was simply ridiculous, and he could no longer stand Shock's whimsy, and returned to the police station overnight to close the case tomorrow. Xiao Ke turned back to the psychological counseling center and stopped the psychiatrist who was about to leave after work at the gate.

After hearing Xiao Ke's doubts, the psychiatrist did not hide that the officer did have a slight shadow dependence. During a mission, the officer's partner was shot by a gangster and eventually died, and decades of friendship eventually turned into ashes.

Since then, the officer has developed mild shadow dependence. At first, it didn't affect his work, but later, when the garrison wanted to arrange another partner for him, the officer said that his partner was still there, but then said that he was good enough for the job.

Later, the garrison gave him a psychological test in the form of a global survey, and then found that he did have some problems. The last psychiatrist chosen by the garrison was this doctor, who had been counseling the officers for several years, and so far, the condition was quite good.

Shadow dependence is a magical mental illness.

In a mildly ill person, like a police officer, the contradiction in his body exists in two ways. On the one hand, he can occasionally realize that he treats the shadow as another person and keeps his heart clear, but he can't help but do this, and he can't suppress his inner thoughts at all. On the other hand, although he can realize his abnormality, he doesn't think it's a strange idea, and thinks it's a very normal phenomenon, just like a conversation between two people, so he doesn't know that he is sick.

The most important thing in treating such a patient is not to let him really realize that he is sick, after a long time of guidance, he only needs to heal the wound in his heart, and he will naturally heal without treatment. As for patients with more serious conditions like the victims, they should be sent to the hospital for medication-assisted treatment.

And the position of a police officer is also suspended, so he will be late in the morning, and the people on the scene will show a strange attitude towards him. At that time, Xiao Ke felt that the guards who handled the case were actually complimenting, and even brought some coaxing inside.

They were even relieved when the officer followed Shook away.

After learning this, Shook had a clear understanding of shadow dependence in his mind, and then he further asked a deeper question - will the distortion of the mind somehow produce the distortion of reality? According to the inner thoughts, change the existence of some kind of reality.

The psychiatrist's face was a little strange, but after thinking about it for a long time, he finally nodded. He told Shook about his young experience of following his teacher to a remote area to treat a mentally ill patient, an experience he will never forget. 、

At that time, the doctor was still an apprentice who had just come out of medical school, and because of his excellent grades and talent, he was appreciated by an old psychiatrist and accepted as an apprentice. Since then, he has often followed Master to treat different cases.

That experience also began under such a premise.

They received an urgent communication from the local area that a very serious mental illness patient had been admitted to the hospital, but they were at a loss for such a disease. They didn't say specifically, but the doctors were still curious, why not just take people to a better hospital by car?

But when I arrived at the small psychiatric hospital in that remote area, I realized why this patient could not be transferred. Because the patient's condition has reached an unbelievable level, there is a distortion around him that anyone who approaches him will be affected by this distortion.

The doctor recalls the scene and describes it this way: "I only saw a mess of colors, and I didn't realize that it was a reversal of space, and everything around him would become chaotic with his movements, voices, and thoughts, and so would people. ”

When the doctor and the master saw the patient, they were equally at a loss, and even the master did not tell the doctor what kind of disease the patient was. The only thing that is certain is that mental illness, which has always been regarded as a psychological abnormality, can completely affect the existence of the real world under certain circumstances and to a certain extent.

In the end, the patient left a huge hole in the ward, and everything around him, including himself, was torn and swallowed by the twisted heart. This incident deeply shook the doctor's heart at that time, and there were even several psychiatrists who could not believe such a fact, and turned from doctors to patients.

Leaving the drunken doctor behind, Shook went to the officer's house alone, where he heard the officer's muttering at the door. Then, pushing open the hidden door, Xiao Ke saw a startling scene-

The officer leaned against the wall, snuggling up to his shadow, one arm already deep into the wall, as if holding the shadow's shoulder, and the arm disappeared into the wall as if it were immersed in water.

The sound of the doorway was heard, and the officer did not move.

The shadow looked up and smiled at Shock.