Late at night.
The visibility was very poor. Clearly, the three men had chosen to come to this construction site knowing there were no cameras nearby.
Arthur held the binoculars in both hands. Through the infrared lens, he could see the car parked firmly at the entrance of the construction site, strategically blocking any other vehicles from entering.
Click.
The bald man with the gold necklace stepped out of the car with a cold expression and opened the rear door.
In fact, Arthur had seen this scene countless times during the deduction process, so much so that he could imagine the sounds in his mind.
"Move!"
"Stop whining!"
While cursing, the bald man pulled the woman out of the car. She was bound and had a black plastic bag over her head to block her sight. They dragged her toward the construction site.
Behind him was a man wearing glasses, carrying a laptop and glancing around warily.
The tall, stout man grinned excitedly: "We didn't catch anyone, but we caught a woman!"
The three of them headed directly to the second floor of the abandoned construction site, where an extremely subtle and interesting scene unfolded.
The stout man, impatient with the woman's slow pace, picked her up and carried her to the exit on the second floor.
It was as if fate were guiding them.
There was an unseen hand controlling their every move.
Arthur saw immediately that small sections of steel rebar were jutting out from the column wall.
"That's the spot!"
They hung the woman on one of the protruding steel bars.
There was no way they could have known that the place had been prepped in advance.
Far away, atop a building more than a thousand meters distant, the corners of Arthur's mouth curled up slightly. That's right, the protruding steel bar had been intentionally created by him, using a hammer to knock out part of the wall. Then, he had used a drill to weaken the support structure inside.
Finally, he'd reinserted a small section of rebar into the hole. The extension was just the right length to hang something on.
He had designed this spot after observing the big man's movements during the deduction process.
Inspiration struck naturally.
At that moment, a mental image of the building's internal structure and its stress points under deformation appeared in his mind.
The woman's weight pressed down on the steel bar, creating a downward force, much like a seesaw, which in turn generated an upward force inside the cement-filled support column.
As the men tortured her, punching and kicking, lateral forces would be applied.
Time would pass as the interrogation continued.
The steel bar would further weaken the already damaged internal structure, making cracks appear in the seemingly solid construction site.
Naturally, one person's weight couldn't bring the whole structure down.
But don't forget.
Arthur had also gone to the top floor and moved two large piles of sand to an unfinished area.
Positioning the sand piles at the farthest point of the structure's base caused severe stress to the entire building.
After two days of rain, the weight of the sand had increased steadily.
This provided the perfect conditions for the building's collapse.
...
Smack!
A slap echoed as the bald man hit the woman across the face.
He cursed: "I'm telling you, who asked you to pick up this package? Is it really that hard?"
"I don't know, I really don't!" Ms. Yan sobbed.
The bald man sneered: "You don't know?"
"There was more than 200,000 cash inside, and you're telling me you don't know?"
"Do you think someone just gave you that money for nothing?"
"I'm telling you, you'd better talk now. We're covering your head for your own good!"
"Otherwise, if you see our faces, you won't live much longer!"
"While we're still in a good mood, you'd better tell us—where's the person who asked you to pick up the package? How are you supposed to make the handover?"
"Don't lose your life over a little bit of money!"
No matter how much they pressured her, they couldn't get any answers.
Frustrated, the stout man's eyes widened in anger. "Damn it! If you keep wasting time, the handover will be over, and that guy will realize something's wrong and take off!"
He grabbed the woman's throat and growled, "You're still not talking?"
"Are you sure you've got nothing to say?"
Like tossing out garbage, he dragged the woman to the third floor, the highest level of the abandoned building.
Seeing this scene unfold, a flicker of heat ignited in Arthur's eyes as he glanced at his watch.
"Perfect timing!"
"Ten seconds left!"
"10!"
"9!"
As Arthur counted down, the stout man dragged the woman step by step toward the pile of sand in the distance.
"8!"
"7!"
The stout man stepped directly onto the sand, yanking the woman's collar with one hand, and tore off the hood covering her head.
"6!"
"5!"
Suddenly, a terrified scream echoed through the night.
The woman was completely horrified, realizing she was being lifted with her feet no longer touching the ground.
She was on the third floor, and could fall at any moment.
The big man, filled with frenzied excitement, threatened: "I'll give you one last chance—are you going to talk or not?"
She shook her head frantically, shouting in fear, "I really don't know!"
At that moment, a subtle change occurred.
The sand pile was already very heavy, pressing down on the half of the building that was unfinished. With no cement reinforcement, it was incredibly dangerous.
The construction workers hadn't dared to place anything heavy there. But Arthur had spent hours moving the sand himself.
Crackling sound!
A crack suddenly appeared in one of the second-floor columns, damaged and weakened by the additional weight. The crack spread out like a spider's web.
Chunks of caked concrete splattered everywhere!
"3!"
"2!"
"1!"
It was too late.
The abandoned construction site had reached its stress limit. When the big man stepped onto the sand pile, it pushed the structure past its critical point!
The combined weight of both the man and the woman was the final straw.
No one could have predicted what happened next.
Suddenly, boom—it all came crashing down.
The column pierced by Arthur's drill was the first to break, causing a partial collapse of the second floor.
The load of a building is ideally distributed across well-designed support columns, but this abandoned site had never been fully completed. With two of its pillars now overloaded, the balance was lost.
Once one pillar gave way, the system's original balance was destroyed, triggering a collapse similar to a landslide.
It was as if a house had been knocked down from afar.
"Ahhh—"
The big man trembled in terror as the ground began to sink beneath his feet!
Meanwhile, the two men climbing the stairs were caught off guard and thrown to the ground.
Within just two seconds, the entire abandoned building was collapsing.
The site covered an area of nearly 300 square meters.
A massive chunk of debris fell directly onto the back of the [computer guy] wearing glasses, and hundreds of kilograms of building material crushed his spine.
And this was only the beginning.
The entire third-floor wall collapsed, crashing down toward him.
The weight of the wall was immense, and he could even hear his bones breaking beneath it.
The bald man with the necklace was horrified as he lost his footing and fell forward, causing a heart-stopping moment.
He hit the ground headfirst. It was clear that in the next moment, his neck would snap.
At the very moment of the collapse, the stout man—who had been the last straw—subconsciously let go of the woman. She fell directly from the third floor.
Her body was quickly buried by the rubble, and her fate remained uncertain.
The stout man's eyes widened in shock as he made a desperate leap toward the sand pile below.
Although it was a three-story drop, the sand pile could provide some cushioning.
Arthur had initially lured the group of elementary school kids to the site with the promise of a family bucket meal, getting them to jump into this very sand pile.
But they had jumped from the second floor, not the third.
The third floor was much riskier for an adult, but at least it offered a chance to survive!
With one leap, the stout man dived into the sand pile.
A deafening crash echoed as the building collapsed completely, sending dust swirling into the air.
The entire structure was reduced to rubble.
On the other side, the stout man managed to escape death. His eyes were wide with fear, his breath heavy. Just as he thought he had escaped disaster, something strange and coincidental happened.
A steel bar that had been propped up by bricks at the edge of the building suddenly slid with a loud clang!
Like the spear of death, it plunged directly into the stout man's body, piercing through his back and emerging from his abdomen, drenched in blood.
The man spat out a mouthful of blood, unable to believe what had happened. He stared in horror at his wound, his mind racing with fear and confusion.
He still didn't understand what had happened, even in death. Why…?
Why did it end this way? He had already escaped.
An indescribable sense of dread overcame him, as though someone had been watching him from afar. But he didn't know who or where they were.
A cold breeze blew through the scene, as the shocking collapse of the construction site finally came to an end.
The loud crash drew the attention of drivers passing by, and frightened passersby immediately called the police.
"Hello, police?"
"I'm here..."
"Yes, the construction site just collapsed. It looks like someone was trapped inside."
"Exactly."
...
Meanwhile, on the roof of a building more than a thousand meters away, Arthur turned away from the scene, walking off calmly and waving goodbye to the disaster he had orchestrated.
With the sound of footsteps slowly fading away and a strange song made of whistles being heard,
A symphony, which in the future would be known by all as... the Symphony of Death.