Ghost Bear Ridge

[[[The full story is undergoing revisions from time to time. This line will be removed once they’re done.]]]

Pure deduction novella | Small-town serial murders | Two male leads | No romance | Prequel to Cotton Love

One of Elder An’s peak cases, and the only mistake of Cheng Xin’s career.

Ten years ago, a man-eating wild bear appeared on the beautiful, peaceful Cuiao Ridge. The forest ranger’s daughter was mauled to death, and his wife, overcome with grief, drowned herself in a lake.

The poor man, bereft of his wife and daughter, was scared out of his wits. The town’s residents lived in fear, but the bear-hunting team searched the mountain for over a month in the rain without finding a trace. The monstrous bear seemed to have descended like a vengeful ghost, leaving only bloody remains and long, furious roars before vanishing without a trace.

As time passed, people gradually forgot the old tragedy, and everything returned to normal.

But ten years later, strange things began happening in town. A half-man-high black bear statue vanished from an inn, the current forest ranger went missing, and the slender figure of a girl in white, who had died in a bear attack all those years ago, appeared once more around the ridge...

Before the Lunar New Year celebrations were over, a mutilated woman’s corpse was found again in an abandoned factory at the foot of the ridge.

Perhaps that ghostly beast had never left. It had been lurking deep in the mountains all along, watching the coldness of the human world with a chilling gaze.