Chapter 89: His thirteenth year

"...... If this is the last truth I can restore, if this truth can release you at the end."

"......"

"Then I'll tell you."

--

Nineteen years ago.

Yanzhou .

Thirteen-year-old Qingcheng Xie walks down a hutong street in the dead of winter with her school bag on her back.

He had a green screen Nokia in his hand, which was the most valuable thing he had on his body.

His parents have been gone for a few months now.

In the past few months, Qingcheng Xie was like a soul left behind in the earthly world, his heart was empty and rotten from the continuous blows. He had a breakdown, despair, and had numerous heated arguments with people.

But what's the point.

He woke up countless times in the night, dreaming of the day he received notification of his parents' death.

That day, it was raining heavily in Huzhou, and he was in the school classroom, like all ordinary students, taking a math test.

The class teacher suddenly came in, greeted the math teacher, whispered a few words, and the math teacher immediately made a huffing sound.

The students only looked up, looking numb, their eyes even floating with vague images of equations and numbers, then they all looked down again and scrambled on with their problems.

Qingcheng Xie didn't even look up, he was checking the answer to the last big question.

A girl next to him is secretly glancing at him, and I don't know if she's glancing at his answer, or at the handsome man's face.

Suddenly -

A shadow was cast on Qingcheng Xie's test paper.

Qingcheng Xie's pencil was twitched and he looked up with a slight frown at the class teacher who had arrived at his seat.

He is different from other students in that his eyes are very sharp, calm, clear, rarely confused or numb, and he is not tormented by knowledge, but often at ease.

There is no teacher who would not like such a student.

It was the first time - Qingcheng Xie met the class teacher's eyes, but the class teacher was not wearing a smile.

He was slightly stunned for a moment, wondering what was going on; he was the one who wouldn't get into trouble.

" Qingcheng Xie ." The class teacher patted his shoulder with an odd expression, like she was trying desperately to suppress something. Her thick glasses reflected just enough in the fluorescent light to obscure most of her emotions.

But Qingcheng Xie heard a tremor in her voice, the aftershock of a plucked string.

"You come out here for a minute."

Now the students were surprised, and the test was no longer important, they watched with their necks held high as Qingcheng Xie followed the class teacher out of the classroom.

"What's going on ......"

"Why are you calling him out at this time?"

"He's not making a mistake, is he, cheating?"

"What are you talking about ...... does he need to cheat ......"

Everyone was yakking until the math teacher knocked on the table, "What are you all talking about? Exam!"

But after he reprimanded them, his own eyes couldn't help but follow the two who had disappeared at the end of the walkway - and if the students looked closely, they would have noticed that the math teacher's face had peeled away a layer of blood.

The math teacher shakily grabbed the thermos on the table, opened it, and took a sip of the warm water inside.

Hot water trickled down his throat, barely warming up his chest that was suddenly cold when he heard the news.

But he knew-

Qingcheng Xie This child's heart, for a long time to come, I'm afraid it will never get warm again.

"Teacher, did something happen?"

Qingcheng Xie couldn't help but ask this question as she followed her class teacher down the stairs.

The class teacher didn't say anything until she reached the door of her office on the top floor, and only before she pushed the door in did she take a deep breath and look back at this student she had always liked so much.

Her facial muscles were tense, and under the gray light of the sky outside the window, Qingcheng Xie was shocked to find that two lines of tears were rolling down behind her thick glasses.

The teardrop was like an ominous note, and the thunder outside the school building shook the ears and kicked off the tragedy.

Qingcheng Xie's heart thumped.

"There's someone inside ...... looking for you, let them talk to you ......"

The classroom teacher's skin crinkled as her hand rested on the door handle and pressed down.

The door opened.

Outside the window, the lightning flashed, and inside the house was dark as if there were heavier clouds than outside. The thunder and lightning cut through the cumulus clouds outside, and Qingcheng Xie's entrance broke through the darkness inside the house...

A large, sunken navy blue.

Clouds of crowded police officers.

At the head of the group is Uncle Zheng, who has the best relationship with his parents.

When they heard him coming, they all looked back, but no one spoke first.

Qingcheng Xie heard his own voice, hollow like a cocoon shell that had been left behind on a dead tree.

"What happened to my parents."

"......"

He asked, word by word, fixedly, "Uncle Zheng, what happened to my parents."

Qingcheng Xie can't quite remember how he heard Jingfeng Zheng finish talking about the details that day, but his vague impression is that he seemed very calm.

Calmly as if he were dead, standing in place listening to these words, a clay statue, a corpse.

Not only at that time, it seems that for a while, for nearly ten days in a row, Qingcheng Xie was as cold and numb as a walking corpse - except for the moment when he saw his parents' bodies with his own eyes, he broke down and cried, and for the next ten days or so, he was like a machine, like a symbol - constantly signing, signing, signing one uncaring document after another. -signing, signing, signing that one relentless document after another.

Cremation ......

Legacy ......

Notary ......

Living people become words on paper and ashes in the furnace.

My sister is still young and uninitiated, but she knows that her mom and dad haven't been back for a long time, babbling and crying - and -

There are other things that Qingcheng Xie doesn't even want to think about anymore.

When a person is suffering to the point that even the heart of tears are simmering dry, only to find that the original can feel the sadness well, is also a great mercy given by God.

Qingcheng Xie is not even worthy of this little mercy.

--Car moves forward automatically, cockpit explodes after hitting someone ...... How could this be an accident?

His body and soul were destroyed as if by a sudden and tremendous weight, and he could only hold on by one breath. He kept running to the police station, grabbing any aunt or uncle he once knew, and stubbornly repeating over and over that my parents were murdered.

My parents must have been murdered.

I want a truth ......

Please you give me the truth ......

At first, those people will still sympathize, will shed tears, over time, repeatedly by a child so pestered, in the end will still be annoyed.

Someone began to say to him, "I've told you many times that we will definitely investigate carefully, but now there is no evidence whatsoever, and we have to follow the procedures, don't we?"

"Give us a little more time."

But how long is a little time?

Qingcheng Xie later learned that it was a full nineteen years.

He did not know then that the wait ahead would be so long, but by then he had also understood that his parents' death could only be characterized as an accident, and that his mother and father, not wearing police uniforms, could not be buried as martyrs killed in the line of duty.

He finally had to pick out a snow-white shirt for his father, which was the best piece of clothing his father had ever purchased after their family fell out of favor.

And his mother wore a cheongsam hand-sewn by Lai Miaojuan - female police superintendent did not have a long burial by police cars, but the day she left, in addition to colleagues, came a lot of poor, rich, prisoners, victims she had helped during her life ......

She is equal to every life, and she never wears colored glasses to discriminate against any human soul. She is always willing to give her hand to people struggling in the mud, as long as those people are still willing to turn back.

As a result, she has their full respect.

But she didn't get the dust of the truth until she was in the ground.

Qingcheng Xie then went to check it out himself.

Although he was still very young, a high school student, despite the limited clues he got ...... he still refused to give up the trail, he spent all his free time investigating the matter of the cause of his parents' death.

And then, perhaps the sky is the limit.

He found out from an uncle at the police station that his parents had been to one of Yanzhou's most crowded nightclubs before the accident.

"What specifically did, see who, that are secret, we are not very clear, but that soon after, the superiors received a report from the public, that they both embezzled bribes, but also took out some evidence ...... although the chain of evidence is not enough to support the contents of the report, do not exclude the possibility of planting evidence, but that The time is not a strict fight? They were then still demoted and transferred once again."

"The two of them have been suspended twice in these years, before and after adding up, involved in dozens of open cases, which involved hundreds of characters, to count down, thousands of characters may also say, these thousands of people and tens of thousands of heavy relations. Really headless to investigate one by one, it is almost impossible to do."

The uncle patted Qingcheng Xie: "Do not think so much child. There are still us. These things, leave it to us to find a truth."

But Qingcheng Xie wondered when he would have to wait for the truth if he relied on them. Or, he simply can't wait for the day when the truth comes out.

So he settled down with his sister during winter break and went to Yanzhou alone, to the nightclub that his uncle had mentioned.

He wanted to follow the trail and find it.

That's when the accident happened.

He originally contacted a waiter who could not easily know something about the situation, the other party, despite the panic, but in the end, conscience is not dead, see the child is too poor, they agreed to meet in the afternoon of the weekend in a small hot pot restaurant in the mouth of a hutong.

--I don't know exactly who I saw, they came mysteriously, even our boss is not quite sure of the situation. But I was responsible for that private room hygiene cleaning, after they left, I found an earring inside ...... you can come and see if it is your mother's, if not, then perhaps it belongs to the person she met ...... "

Before meeting Qingcheng Xie, the waiter kindly sent him an MMS photo in advance.

At that time, Nokia cell phones were not particularly fast in receiving MMS messages, and they had to be downloaded little by little. After the photos were downloaded, Qingcheng Xie sat at the mouth of the road and clicked on it to see -

It was a very oddly shaped earring.

Earrings pure gold, very showy, bone cross shape, the middle of a circle, the center of the circle set with a blood-red diamonds, diamonds around the three letters: R.I.P

The meaning of resting.

Although the clarity of the cell phone MMS at that time was very shabby, comparable to AV picture quality, but the exquisite degree of this earring is still through the screen, it is exquisite workmanship, is never a randomly bought gadgets on the stalls, and under normal circumstances, such as Chow Tai Fook Lao Fengxiang and other famous gold stores, and never will produce such inexplicable jewelry shape.

It is likely to be customized by the person.

Earrings are different from other things, its pin long contact with the person's ear hole, the above will rub the owner's sweat, secretions, and even skin tissue, if the earrings are brought back to Jingfeng Zheng for testing, perhaps the entire case investigation can be achieved some eyebrows.

"To be honest, I'm really quite a cheapskate, I'm not a good person. I picked up this earring and was planning to sell it for some money, so I never gave it to the foreman, but the other day I heard you talking to the foreman over there ...... and I thought maybe it would be better to give you this earring."

"Nothing ...... my mom went early too, I understand all that."

--

These two paragraphs became the last message the waiter left for Qingcheng Xie.

Qingcheng Xie afternoon before they agreed to meet the hot pot restaurant, they saw the sky-rushing fire burning up, the onlookers like a tidal wave, the sound and heat waves hit his heart cavity. He rushed over and scared several old mothers and fathers.

"Ouch, what is the young man squeezing this is."

"It's so presumptuous, who's this kid ......"

The other words Qingcheng Xie did not listen to, he stood at the front of the crowd of onlookers, and further ahead is the police cordon. He saw the firefighters carry several bodies from inside, high-pressure nozzle rushing that burning hot pot restaurant constantly pouring ......

He stood stiffly over there with a blazing fire reflected in his eyes.

He knew that he had come too late.

And what was even more terrible was that when the rescue was over and the fire was extinguished, he watched the pale white body bags wrapped in remains being carried out one after another. In an instant, Qingcheng Xie was struck by a strong sense of guilt, a feeling like a mountain tiger running toward him, pounding on his heart and roaring in his ears.

For the first time, he felt his investigation was so childish, simple, pointless, and even, woefully inadequate - he felt that every corpse was made because of him.

He sits down at the crossroads, clutching his shoulders, and clutched in his sweat-soaked palm is the Nokia phone with the photo of the earrings stored on it.

He was so desperate, so heavily condemned inside, that he sat with his head down, at the mouth of the road, like a disembodied soul.

So he did not notice that in the street where the crowd had dispersed, there was a black set of private cars, inside sat a bearded man wearing a baseball cap, was lighting a cigarette, looking at him slyly.

When he finally got up and silently left this field of rubble, the private car started up after him, following him all the way to the bus and heading for his residence in the outer ring.

Qingcheng Xie got out of the car and had to walk a bit to get back to the hotel where he lived. He didn't have much money and had to save it, so the place where he lived was dilapidated and remote. In the past few years, Yanzhou's security cameras were not that dense, especially in the outer ring, and there were many blind spots.

In the darkness of the night, the bearded man pulled his baseball cap, a mouthful of cigarette butt spit, gripped the steering wheel and slammed the gas pedal, the lights dazzling, he was in the ear-splitting engine sound, towards Qingcheng Xie's back straight into the--!

Dead silence.

"I was in a car accident." In the waterlogged studio, Qingcheng Xie told Yu He that it was the first time he had uncovered his long-untouched scars in such a complete way, "The man was supposed to clean up the body after running me over, but I sensed him at the end and dodged some, not dying on the spot."

"The wheels were running back and forth on my legs and I saw him trying to get out of the car ......"

"But that's when a group of people came back from work at a nearby construction site in pairs and happened to pass by - the man then fled, too late to carry me to my car, only to take my phone on his way out."

"Then later, I was sent to the hospital by those workers ...... doctor gave a critical illness notice at that time. I woke up a few times in a blur, but could not feel my body." Qingcheng Xie understated, "I already knew at that time that I was dying."

He spoke of his pain and near death with great reticence, as if it was nothing at all.

Qingcheng Xie's gaze was not touched until the end, when he mentioned the name of an elder.

He said, "Just as I was waiting to die, I met a man."

--

" Ciyan Qin ."