While performing an autopsy on the sixth woman found dead in a red dress, forensic doctor Su Qing discovers a shard of mirror engraved with “006” hidden in the victim’s mouth. It is already the third locked-room murder this month with the same method. Every victim wore a red dress, the ligature marks on their necks form an eerie grid, and deep in each woman’s mouth is a numerical code pointing to a ritual.
When Criminal Police Captain Zhou Yan follows an anonymous tip to an abandoned textile factory, he comes across seven bodies hanging in an underground chamber. Suspended at precise angles, they form a grid, and the ligature marks on their necks exactly match the latest victim’s wounds. Even more horrifying, Su Qing finds a yellowed photograph in a hidden pocket at the collar. Seven women in work clothes stand before an old well. The face of the woman in the middle has been slashed beyond recognition, and the back of the photograph bears the words: “1986.6.15, the cycle begins.”
As the investigation deepens, Su Qing discovers that before each victim died, she used a fingernail to carve a tiny symbol into her palm. Each symbol is an employee number belonging to one of the seven members of the textile factory’s dance troupe who vanished together more than thirty years ago. When the seventh body is found inside a concrete pipe, Su Qing’s scalpel cuts into the back of the victim’s neck and draws out a strand of silver hair tangled with cotton fibers. It matches exactly the note beside “Su Qing (understudy)” on the list of the missing from thirty years ago.
The killer is like an obsessed soul walking between cracks in time, recreating the 1986 tragedy with red dresses, ligature marks, and numerical codes. Su Qing gradually realizes that she bears a striking resemblance to the woman whose face was blacked out in the photograph. This sacrificial ritual, spanning thirty years, is pushing her toward the center of the seventh “well”…
