A professor from an online university is found murdered in a suburb of Rome. The investigations focus on the university, and Inspector Terzani and Rex explore the variegated world of the online Faculty, which has bases in Rome, Novedrate and Messina. The professor had taught cultural anthropology, and it is this discipline which puts the inspector on the track of a mysterious spiritual community which the professor had suggested as the subject of a graduation thesis on the method of "participating observation".