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My whole-body tense. My first instinct was to slam Lily Johnson’s bedroom door shut.
But as I moved toward the door, the one across the hallway flew open — and a black shadow burst out, accompanied by a blood-curdling scream.
A chill shot up my spine, my scalp tingling with fear. But muscle memory from the police academy kicked in — I landed a solid blow and sent the shadow crashing to the floor.
At this time, I could clearly see the full view of the black shadow. And what I saw made my legs buckle — I stumbled backward in sheer terror.
It was John Miller. The man who’d been dead for weeks!
He was soaked , still dressed in the same filthy clothes from the sewer. His exposed skin was a sickly gray-green, covered in bloated, rotting lesions and clusters of corpse spots. That face could still vaguely be recognized as human-shaped, but the facial features were horrible. Not only were they all distorted to varying degrees, but the eyeballs were only left with a pale white color, without pupils!
A scream erupted behind me. My heart nearly burst from my chest as I staggered and grabbed the bed for support.
So it was true — when terror hit, your legs really did give out.
John Miller lunged at me again. I was too terrified to think. All I could do was fight back — fists and feet flying, pure instinct.
As he came closer, I suddenly threw a punch straight at his face.
But the moment I hit him, I froze.
John Miller's face was warm!
Someone who’d been dead for half a month — even if his ghost had reanimated the corpse — there was no way his body should still be warm.
Note even if the King of Hell could explain that kind of warmth.
I clenched my jaw. When he instinctively covered his face, it hit me — This wasn’t a ghost. This was a living person pretending to be John Miller!
Rage surged through me. I tackled him and executed a full arrest maneuver.
I pinned him to the floor and slapped the cuffs on him!
When I turned to check on Lily Johnson, she had already fainted from fright.
I leaned in to see who this imposter really was — but then, a woman’s hysterical voice erupted from the figure.
"You really came back.Hahaha, I killed you once — I’ll kill you again! I'll kill you!"
As she screamed, the body went limp. The head slumped to one side, and heavy gasps escaped the mouth.
In just a few seconds, there was no more movement at all.
I reached out to feel his breath.He was out of breath.
Later, I called in backup to secure the scene.
That’s when we discovered — John Miller had been dressed up by Emily Green.
And with our team’s relentless work, the truth of the entire case finally came to light.
Medical scans revealed damage to the central nervous system in Emily Green’s brain —
and her system was flooded with stimulants and hallucinogens compounds.
According to the investigation, Emily Green was a makeup artist by trade. She was active in hundreds of beauty-related WeChat groups — a woman obsessed with appearance, chasing perfection at any cost.
Over the past year, Emily Green had been in contact with a so-called foreign beauty expert — from whom she’d been buying “eternal youth” drugs. Every so-called business trip was a drug pickup.
There was no doubt that Emily Green had been duped by fraud. The so-called anti-aging formula was loaded with banned substances. Long-term use caused severe side effects.
These sequelae included, but were not limited to, visual and auditory hallucinations, irritability, nervous breakdowns, and extreme emotional instability.
It was also from Lily Johnson that I finally learned the real truth behind John Miller’s death.
Their mother and daughter had long set their sights on the honest and simple John Miller. He lived alone and had no relatives around him. The only relative he had was a distant cousin who had always lived in the countryside.
He was simply the perfect cash machine.
During Emily Green's interactions with John Miller, she deliberately but subtly revealed to him that as long as he was willing to buy a personal accident insurance, she would agree to marry John Miller.
In order not to arouse John Miller's suspicion, Emily Green specifically listed the name of his distant relative, Jack Miller, as the beneficiary.
And just after John Miller purchased the personal accident insurance, Emily Green began tampering with his diet. Through that foreign beauty professor, she obtained large quantities of banned substances and administered them to John Miller in multiple doses, gradually causing him to develop symptoms of senile heart disease.
Finally, Emily Green disguised herself as her ex-husband, who had died many years ago, and stalked and intimidated John Miller, triggering a heart attack that killed him. She then waited for the opportunity to obtain a death certificate and claim a large sum of money.
But later, for some unknown reason, the side effects of Emily Green’s long-term drug use suddenly flared up, causing her to lose her mind and even hallucinate ghosts.
In the end, she died in the very web of lies she had spun.
