"So the solution is simple. Just feed the same paper note to everyone." Mo Li lifted her gaze and scanned everyone with her sharp eyes.
Xiao Rui looked at Mo Li beside him. At his height, he could only see Mo Li's long silky eyelashes. However, her presence was not to be underestimated.
"The fact that victims have the paper note in their stomachs doesn't mean that only the victims have ingested them. I'm sure if you cut open a living person, you'll find the paper notes inside their stomachs too."
"That's just ridiculous! Trying to feed paper notes to specific individuals is already so hard, much less feeding everyone!" Jia Han thought Mo Li was spouting nonsense. He shook his head.
"It's not that hard really.. It's all part of the killer's plan. Remember the components that I mentioned earlier?" Mo Li explained as she turned to the uncle who sold the milk tea. "The uncle sets up his stall in front of 22 High School but that doesn't mean his customers are only students and staff from the school. However, the victims so far are all from 22 High School, other than Wei Lan, who has also visited the school. Why is that?"
Kang Zhi and Si Lin were confused.
Mo Li continued, "The answer is simple, the killer has found a way to feed every student at 22 High School the paper note without them realizing it."
Mo Li took out a plastic evidence bag. Si Lin gasped. "Wait, wasn't that from... And I thought you were kleptomaniac!"
The clear plastic bag had 3 pills, only one of them had blue and white stripes.
"Wait, those are the brain-empowering medicine designed by the school for our students!"
"That's right, these pills will be distributed to the students every month. The latest distribution was on August 15th, 2 days before Wei Lan's death." Mo Li crushed one of the pills and pulled out a small paper note from the yellow medical dust.
"While I fail to find a similar note in Wei Lan's stomach, I did find burnt paper trace beside her body and the material is similar to this paper."
Xiao Rui finally realized the truth. "I get it now! No wonder you said this is a random killing! Both the henna legend and the medicine pills are the foundation to help set up the killer's pool of murder victims."
Lu Xuan appeared deep in thought. "Poison dart poison will only be fatal after coming in contact with the blood stream. Probably similar to Qiao Qing, the point of contact for the other victims should be through their mouth cavities too. So the macabre murder method was most likely to cover up the wounds inside the victims' mouth. Zhang Ling didn't have obvious wound in her mouth but her tongue has been eaten by feral cat. The wound might be on her tongue."
"The killer deliberately spread the legend of henna and made use of the pills distributed by the school to set up this killing spree. Do you have any more question?" Lin Jing was rendered speechless by Mo Li. She thought Mo Li was just a pretty face so she didn't expect to be countered with so many logical evidence. As she had no way to refute, she turned her head away with disgust.
"But why would the killer go through so much trouble?" Kang Zhi asked, "Wouldn't it be easier to just kill someone?"
"To answer that, we'll have to turn to the human ashes."
"You know whose ashes those belong to?" Xiao Rui frowned. He didn't expect this case to involve so many things.
"Uncle and you over there, for this next session, I only need you to answer yes or no, I don't need additional explanation or comments."
"Don't worry, if I know the info, I will cooperate. Young lady, you are amazing. How can you know so much?" The milk tea stall uncle was highly impressed by Mo Li.
Jia Han nodded silently.
"Whenever you buy milk tea for Lin Jing, would you always mix medicine inside the milk tea?" This was something Mo Li overheard Kang Zhi discuss with the rest earlier.
"Yes, the medicine is to heal her bone injury. She doesn't like to drink pure medicine, so I came up with this method."