Chapter 108: The Bullet Ants

“But still, we’re surrounded by the ants!” exclaimed Xiaotao.

“No worries,” I replied. “I’ve got the magic weapon right here!”

I grabbed another fistful of sugar and flung it to the corner of the room. No matter what kind of ants they were, they wouldn’t be able to resist sugar.

The sea of ants that were about to engulf us immediately receded and rushed towards the sugar. When they all clumped together near the sugar, they formed a raised bump on the floor. I then understood why I saw the woman’s head earlier.

I led Xiaotao out of the room when the bullet ants around us had all gone after the sugar sprinkled on the floor instead. When we got out to the hallway, we saw that it was full of bullet ants too, so I sprinkled sugar at the end of the hallway to lure them all there.

Had Dali not carelessly bought white sugar instead of salt, we might have actually all died in that mansion that night!

When we reached downstairs, I saw Dali rolling on the floor. His body was covered in a swarm of bullet ants. I quickly took off my coat to chase the ants off of Dali. I slipped the Mind Clearing Pill into Dali’s mouth. A few seconds later, he shouted, “So there’s no fire after all!”

“Get up! We have to get out of here now!”

We ran out of the mansion in one breath and were so tired by the time we got out that we collapsed on the ground.

Xiaotao looked at her finger and cried with distress, “Will this leave a scar?”

I almost snorted at her reaction. Was that her first thought after escaping death just seconds ago?

“I’m much worse off than you, Xiaotao-jiejie!” lamented Dali. “Look at me! I’ve got ant bites here, here, and here…” He continued to point out all the spots all over his body. He was even about to take off his pants, but I stopped him in time.

I assured them that it was nothing to worry about. The bullet ant’s sting only contained formic acid. All they had to do when they got back home was apply baking soda on the bite wounds and they would heal perfectly after a few days.

Xiaotao wanted to go back inside and collect a few ants as evidence. I suggested that it would be better to come back tomorrow because the ants were in an aggressive mode right now. Both Dali and Xiaotao wondered why and how they could mistake the ants for flames and blood. I had an answer in mind, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about it yet. All I said was that I would explain everything tomorrow.

The next day, we returned to the mansion to re-investigate the scene and collect evidence. The forensics team broke down the walls and found a huge ant nest filled with thousands and thousands of bullet ants. Fortunately, they were all in a dormant state, so Xiaozhou could safely collect a few of them to take back to the lab for testing.

I told him to scrape some of the wall paint and bring it back to the lab. It was a major negligence on my part for not noticing this earlier. I should’ve noticed that although the whole house was in a state of disrepair, the paint on the wall actually looked fresh! Obviously, not all knowledge could be gained from the books but must be gleaned from experience instead.

Xiaozhou compared the formic acid in the bullet ants with the acid found in the victims’ bodies and discovered that they were a match. This confirmed that the victims were both killed by the stings of the ants.

He also found some suspicious unknown substances from the chemical analysis of the wall paint. I wrote him a list of Chinese medicinal herbs and told him to compare those with the substances found on the wall paint. They turned out to be a match as well.

Everyone was busy until noon. Xiaotao couldn’t resist it any longer and asked me, “Can you explain what exactly went on last night now?”

I laughed and quipped, “But you still owe me a meal!”

Huang Xiaotao glared at me. “Fine. I’ll invite everyone in the task force to the lunch and you can reveal the key to the case there. You’d better make sure you earned the meal!”

“Yes, ma’am!” I smiled and nodded.

Xiaotao booked a restaurant nearby and invited everyone there. Once we were all seated, I began to lay out all my findings.

“The bullet ant originates from South America and is considered one of the world’s ten most venomous creatures,” I explained. “It secretes a highly corrosive acid named formic acid. People who are killed by bullet ants would have marks on their skin that are completely identical to burn marks. This case completely befuddled me for so long because my ancestors had never encountered this kind of insect which came from another continent.”

“Okay,” interjected Xiaotao. “But we knew all of this. What we’d like to know is the reason behind our hallucinations in the mansion!”

“It was caused by a drug called Midnight Potion,” I replied.

“Midnight Potion?” echoed everyone in whispers.

I went on to explain that Midnight Potion was a secret drug that prostitutes and courtesans in the ancient times would mix with their perfume. The drug itself was colorless and odorless, but it could produce a strong hallucinogenic effect on anyone who caught a whiff of it. The reason why it was called Midnight Potion was because this drug could only work at night and was completely ineffective during the day.

“That’s probably because the chemical composition of the drug is extremely unstable,” Xiaozhou interrupted. “During the day, the relatively high temperature probably broke it down to harmless water and carbon dioxide.”

“Stop butting in!” snapped Xiaotao. “Go on, Song Yang.”

I continued to say that once exposed to the Midnight Potion, a person’s psyche would be vulnerable and very impressionable. What we saw was in fact all hallucinations. I asked Dali if he remembered how I saw nothing the moment I came downstairs. It was only after he told me that there was a ghost behind Xiaotao that I suddenly saw the female figure.

In truth, the ghosts we saw last night were all in our minds. We were the ones who made them appear!

Dali saw the house on fire, while Xiaotao saw the blood oozing from the walls. This was because they both had gone to the house with different information about its past. Like the general public, Dali thought that the house had been burned about a decade ago; yet Xiaotao knew that it was all just a rumor thanks to Wang Yuanchao’s investigation.

The victims must have done some investigation into the mansion’s past before they stayed there. But because they were only civilians, the only information available to them would’ve said that the house had been on fire. So, when the swarm of bullet ants attacked them, they saw it as a raging fire in their minds. They must’ve run in panic from one room to another but they couldn’t escape because the ants surrounded them. Therefore, they were tragically ‘burned’ alive.

Dali sighed with relief and asked, “So, the house isn’t actually haunted at all?”

I laughed. “I don’t dare to assert that claim. All I can say is that the ghosts we saw last night were all in our minds.”

Xiaotao slammed the table.

“That means this is a premeditated murder case!” she exclaimed. “But how are we going to catch the murderer, Song Yang? It seems he hasn’t shown up from beginning to end!”

“It’s simple,” I replied, my eyes gleaming. “We’ll let the bullet ants take us to the murderer!”

“The bullet ants?” Xiaotao asked confusedly.

I explained that the reason why the murderer was able to manipulate so many bullet ants was because he had the ant colony’s queen in his possession. When the black SUV was parked near the house last night, the murderer must’ve brought the queen ant with him in the car too, and the bullet ants must’ve detected the chemical signal released by the queen ant which sent the ants into aggressive mode. They probably sensed that their queen was entrapped and possibly in danger.

Xiaotao asked the police officers if they were able to track down the black SUV. They all shook their heads. No such car had been found even though officers had been sent to every auto repair shop in the city.

“Let the police officers on standby at the auto repair shops return,” I said. “From now on, the three of us are more than enough to catch the murderer.”

“Let me join you too!” Wang Yuanchao spoke up.

“Right!” cried Xiaotao, standing up spiritedly. “Let’s not even finish the meal! Let’s go now!”

“Be patient,” I interrupted her. “Bullet ants live in the tropical regions of South America. The days are too hot there, so they are usually only active at night. We should wait until then before we take action too.”

“But...” Xiaotao hesitated. “What if the murderer attacks us again?”

“I need you to get something for me,” I said. I then whispered a few words into her ear.

Xiaotao was shocked.

“But that thing is illegal!” she exclaimed. “If I find out that you acquired that thing yourself, I won’t hesitate to arrest you!”

“Please, I beg you! We really need this thing!”

I then noticed that the police officers around us were all staring at us and whispering and smiling slyly. Xiaotao blushed and slammed the table with her fist.

“Stop it!” she shouted at them. “We were discussing serious matters!”

That evening, Xiaotao, Dali, Wang Yuanchao, and I went to the haunted mansion. I gave everyone the Mind Clearing Pill so they wouldn’t succumb to the hallucinatory effects of the Midnight Potion. I cut out a plastic bottle into a makeshift spade and used that to scoop out a number of bullet ants from behind an exposed wall brick. Because there was no distress signal from the queen, the ants were quite docile compared to their behavior last night, so I was in no danger of getting stung. Xiaotao and Dali were still traumatized by their last encounter with these small creatures though, and I could clearly see them shrink away from the ants in fear.

We walked to the place where the black SUV was parked last night and I put the ants down on the ground. They then immediately began to crawl towards the same direction away from the mansion.

“I still don’t get it,” Xiaotao remarked. “Why didn’t they just leave the mansion to go find the queen? Why stay in there?”

“I’ve thought about that too,” I replied. “But I examined the perimeters of the house earlier and detected signs of camphor being sprinkled all around mansion. The murderer must’ve done that to trap the ants inside.”

“What a cunning murderer!” Xiaotao exclaimed.

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