★Acclaimed by masters of suspense: Zijin Chen, Zhou Haohui, Jiu Dianshui, Cai Jun, and Cai Bigui!

★A groundbreaking suspense thriller that defies conventions! A chilling tale of ritualistic copycat crimes—where catching the killer doesn’t guarantee solving the case.

★At its core, this novel dissects "imitation crimes", probing not just motives but also societal ills and human frailty. Set against a backdrop of dark web dealings and privacy breaches, it weaves a labyrinth of ritualistic horror and intricate plotting.

★One investigative journalist vs Two detectives vs Six criminals vs Eleven dark web assassins.
What’s copied is the ritual—not the crime itself.

★Every heart harbors a beast of sin. The question is: When will it break free?

This story holds up a mirror to society’s deepest scars and the moral struggles within us all. It exposes how no crime exists in isolation—each is tangled in the fabric of our world.
The mastermind’s arrest? Just the prologue.
Finding the hostages? Far from the finale.

Journalist Cheng Xirui has vanished without a trace.

Her boyfriend, police detective An Xiaofeng, embarks on a desperate search, only to discover that before her disappearance, she had been investigating the case of a missing female college student. Just as he begins piecing together the connection between the two disappearances, the student’s body is found—subjected to a bizarre and brutal form of hanging. An Xiaofeng is convinced: his girlfriend’s disappearance is directly linked to the murder.

But even after identifying and arresting the prime suspect, there’s still no sign of Cheng Xirui. Worse, following the suspect’s capture, the city is struck by a series of new murders—each replicating the same twisted method. An Xiaofeng realizes that to stop this "imitation crime" spree, he must find his missing girlfriend. Yet, though he repeatedly feels her presence nearby—almost within reach—she remains frustratingly, terrifyingly out of sight...

FAR-AWAY, male, real name Jin Xiaoxu, is a young producer, screenwriter, and writer. He has worked for several top companies in the industry, including screenwriters, directors, producers, project development directors, and literary directors. Currently, he mainly engages in film writing and television scripts, original literary novels, and founded the Smart Dream Factory Film and Television Culture Studio. The novel works include the "Missing" series, "Shadow Killer" series, "The Secret of the runway", "Don't Shoot in July", "Dream Universe", etc.

Prologue / 001

Part One: An Xiaofeng / 008
Chapter 1 The Missing Journalist...009
Chapter 2 The Vanished Girlfriend...015
Chapter 3 The Last Contact...023
Chapter 4 The College Student Disappearance Case...031
Chapter 5 The First Hanging...041
Chapter 6 Initial Verdict: Suicide...048
Chapter 7 An Impossible Suicide...056
Chapter 8 Evidence of Murder...063
Chapter 9 The Two-Year-Old Kidnapping Case...071
Chapter 10 The Missing Suspect...078
Chapter 11 Tracing the Suspect...086
Chapter 12 The Suspect's Scheme...093
Chapter 13 The Suspect's Shadow...100
Chapter 14 The Suspect Captured...107
Chapter 15 Murderous Memories...116
Chapter 16 The Second Hanging...125
Chapter 17 The Mysterious Smile...131
Chapter 18 The Third Hanging...139
Chapter 19 The Disappearing Phone...148
Chapter 20 The Copycat Killing Mission...156
Chapter 21 Deadly Surveillance...165
Chapter 22 The Assassination Video...173
Chapter 23 Did You Think the Case Was Solved?...180
Chapter 24 The Hidden Accomplice...187

Part Two: Cheng Xirui / 194
Chapter 25 The Special Interview...195
Chapter 26 The Cybersecurity Expert...202
Chapter 27 A Fatal Privacy Leak...209
Chapter 28 The Wealthy Wife's Murder Case...216
Chapter 29 Witness to a Kidnapping...224
Chapter 30 Shot Dead on the Spot...231
Chapter 31 A Mother's Grief...238
Chapter 32 The Vanished Hostage...246
Chapter 33 The Missing Partner...253
Chapter 34 Staying Off the Grid...261
Chapter 35 The Invisible Signal...268

Part Three: The Copycat / 276
Chapter 36 Crushed Hopes...277
Chapter 37 The Abandoned Hostage...284
Chapter 38 The Suspicious Hiker...290
Chapter 39 Beauty as Bait...297
Chapter 40 Gazing into the Abyss...304
Chapter 41 Twisted Affection...311
Chapter 42 The Nature of Revenge...318

Epilogue / 327

"If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough to the action."
This famous quote by 20th-century Hungarian war photographer Robert Capa had profoundly influenced Cheng Xirui and her generation of journalists, becoming their professional creed. Yet journalism had evolved into one of the world's most dangerous occupations. Over the past decade, more than 700 reporters had died on assignment globally, with countless others imprisoned, beaten, or subjected to violence.
However, fear wasn't the primary source of Cheng Xirui's unease at this moment.
Her dilemma was one of sequence:
Should she contact the police first, then investigate? Or investigate first, and only alert authorities if she found something suspicious?
The mere existence of this question revealed her lack of confidence in tonight's reconnaissance.
Her suspicion about this factory had arisen from sheer coincidence. An abandoned electronics manufacturing plant—yet it had accrued unpaid electricity bills for months. How could that not be strange?
Sitting in her car, Cheng Xirui mentally catalogued plausible explanations. The most likely: someone was stealing power—nearby factories, residents, or even squatters. There was a high chance this excursion would prove fruitless; an abandoned factory with mysterious energy usage might have no connection to her current investigation.
Cheng Xirui was working on “Disappeared”, a weekly investigative series that had run for over half a year with explosive public response. The reports focused on women, using missing persons cases to examine victims' living conditions, how their families' lives fractured after loss, and the emotional toll of endless searching.
Recently, a local college student had vanished. Though the girl's mother reported it promptly, scant clues left the case unsolved. Typically, Cheng Xirui waited for resolutions before publishing—but this time, she'd broken protocol, covering the story from day one.
The case gripped her, both as a journalist long immersed in disappearance coverage and as a woman. While no body meant hope remained, each passing day dimmed the likelihood of the 20-year-old's survival. Someone so young, with life just blooming—how could society allow such darkness to touch her?
Through her reporting, Cheng Xirui hoped to mobilize public attention, spurring both tip-offs and police action.
Yet she never imagined that while investigating this disappearance...
...she would become the next name on that tragic list.
Twenty minutes remained until Cheng Xirui vanished. Still seated in her car, she'd already made her decision.