After emerging from his grandparents’ house, Ji Xun headed first to the hospital.
Apart from confirming some of his prior assumptions, this visit had brought a completely new question to his mind, which was the fundamental reason driving him to the hospital:
Since Grandmother had never been to Fu Province, why did Grandfather have a photograph of himself holding an infant at the Fu Province pier? The probability of a male traveling alone with a small infant is extremely low. If it was for official business, why bring an infant? If it was for travel, why not bring his wife?
This was the first point of suspicion; there was also a second.
Various indications from the past to the present demonstrated that Grandfather highly treasured this small mirror, but Grandmother did not necessarily value it the same way.
There were obvious deformations and scratches on the silver casing, and within the scratches hid traces of black mud. Judging by the pattern, these were marks stamped out by the soles of women’s shoes—and there was more than one, there were multiple marks. Stepping on it once could be called an accident, but what about multiple times? It at least proved that Grandmother disliked the mirror and the photograph inside it.
Combining these doubts pointed to a possibility:
The child held by the young Grandfather in the mirror was not Grandmother’s child.
As for whether it could be the child of Grandfather’s relatives or friends, judging from Grandfather’s various behaviors, it didn’t seem like it.
Perhaps this was a child Grandfather had with someone else before marrying Grandmother.
Pushing further down this line of reasoning, there was Grandfather’s faint, vague coldness toward his father, and his formulaic courtesy toward him and Ji Yu; in contrast to Grandfather was Grandmother, who possessed a care that was hidden in her heart but always surfaced inadvertently.
The child in the photograph was not Grandmother’s child, which was why Grandmother treated the mirror with indifferent disregard; correspondingly, if Grandfather’s treatment of them was merely courteous, could it be because… Father was not Grandfather’s child?
He registered at the counter, met the doctor, and handed over Grandfather’s hair and his own, which he had prepared well in advance.
Paternity and kinship testing was not complicated.
He only needed to wait one day to know whether he shared a biological lineage with Grandfather, and whether his father was actually Grandfather’s child.
Exiting the hospital, Ji Xun did not linger.
He quickly rented a car and drove out of Ning City. However, he was not heading to Fu Province. Before going to Fu Province, he had to visit another place first.
The gray car once again drove up Cuckoo Mountain, winding through the mountain’s nine twists and eighteen bends before entering that small path which still lacked surveillance cameras. He followed the path all the way until he reached a position where he could see the village from afar, but the people in the village could not see him.
Afterward, Ji Xun waited patiently in the car.
He waited for the sun to sink and for night to fall.
A pitch-black night is always the optimal time for brewing wickedness.
His first stop upon re-entering the village was the dumpster placed outside the abandoned factory.
The yellow police tape was still there, but the police had already left, taking all valuable physical evidence with them. Ji Xun smoothly arrived at his destination, switched on his flashlight, and conscientiously shone the light in a full circle around the perimeter of the dumpster.
The area around the dumpster consisted of concrete ground, and the concrete ground was very “clean.”
There were only fallen leaves, dust, and sand, without any stains or marks from garbage.
This formed a stark contrast to the interior of the dumpster, which was filled with recent, sticky waste.
Ji Xun had noticed this point on the day they discovered this abandoned factory, but he simply hadn’t mentioned this minor detail to Huo Ranyin or Yuan Yue.
Returning to the old place now and looking at the clean ground once more, he thought:
If a group of people really lived here covertly and dumped their trash here, why wasn’t there a single trace of garbage falling onto the ground outside the dumpster? Could it be that every single person staying in this abandoned factory was particularly mindful of hygiene?
The likelihood of this was genuinely not high.
Ruling out this possibility, another hidden alternative surfaced.
The garbage here was systematically transported over by someone and systematically placed into the dumpster.
Who would do such a thing?
The doubt flashed through Ji Xun’s mind, and the question immediately hooked out an answer that had already been prepared.
Meng Fushan.
The person doing this sort of thing might be Meng Fushan. But why would Meng Fushan do this, and how did he manage to do it?
A light was on inside a house built right next to the refuse station.
This house was a simple single-story structure. The exterior walls weren’t tiled but were painted halfway with green paint; over the years, under the effects of sunlight and various stains, the green paint had already altered its hue, turning into a look that was neither yellow nor green.
Outside the house, no courtyard had been partitioned off, but cardboard boxes, beverage bottles, scrap iron, and other miscellaneous items were still piled up into one small mountain after another, nearly swallowing the house’s windows.
The owner of the refuse station, a plump middle-aged man, was currently haggling over the price of scrap materials with an old lady.
Over a matter of one or two yuan, they argued for a full fifteen minutes.
In the end, the old lady still failed to secure the two yuan she deserved and walked away dejectedly.
After the old lady left, the man returned inside the house.
The window was wide open. The orange-red light, along with the crying and cursing of a woman, leaked out together from this window covered with a patterned cloth.
It wasn’t that some victim was hidden inside the house.
One only needed to peer slightly through the gap between the patterned cloth and the window to discover that there was no woman inside at all; there was only a plump middle-aged man sitting with his back to the window beside a round table, looking down at his phone.
The crying and cursing sounds were precisely coming from the phone—perhaps it was some mother-in-law and daughter-in-law soap opera.
Ji Xun withdrew his gaze and stood outside pondering for two seconds. He felt that this penny-pinching middle-aged man neither possessed the look of a tough guy nor the temperament of someone who would brave dangers for a friend and keep his mouth tightly sealed. Since that was the case, there was no need for him to employ any extraordinary or violent means; it would be fine to just ask questions normally.
Ji Xun stepped forward and knocked on the door.
“What is it? We’re not accepting scrap items today,” the man’s coarse, gruff voice came from inside.
“It’s not scrap business; it’s another kind of business,” Ji Xun spoke up loudly.
“Another business? What business could there possibly be here?” The man didn’t want to move. “Stop knocking, I’m not doing any business.”
“Let’s chat about how you specially transported garbage from elsewhere to the dumpster in front of the abandoned factory,” Ji Xun said calmly.
The sound of a chair scraping against the floor suddenly came from inside the room, followed by the disappearance of the noisy phone audio. A short moment later, the closed door opened, and the man inside stepped out, staring at him in astonishment:
“How do you know?”
“You don’t need to know how I know,” Ji Xun said bleakly. “What did the person who instructed you to do this leave for you?”
With Chen Jiashu dead, Meng Fushan was a suspect.
He certainly wouldn’t stand out in the open; staying in a small village to transport garbage meant that, most likely, he had contacted the local waste handler to let the party perform their primary job while simultaneously handling some derivative work.
And according to his understanding of Meng Fushan, as long as the other party wanted to obtain help from him next—he would inevitably leave some things behind to explain the situation.
“A letter.” The man’s voice pulled Ji Xun’s attention back. “He left a letter for me, specifying that it was to be given to whoever came here alone looking for it to ask me for something.”
A letter—is a contact method hidden inside the letter? No, Meng Fushan couldn’t guarantee that the letter wouldn’t be lost or opened by someone else, so it definitely wouldn’t be a direct contact method.
Ji Xun thought to himself and extended his hand toward the man.
“I’m not keeping it for you guys for free.” The man didn’t move. “The other party said you would give money.”
“How much?” Ji Xun asked.
“One thousand.”
This figure caused Ji Xun’s hand holding his wallet to pause slightly.
Thinking Ji Xun found it expensive, the boss quickly added, “This isn’t me opening my mouth like a lion; this is the number stated by the guy who instructed me.”
Ji Xun had no doubts.
One thousand yuan happened to be the exact sum Meng Fushan had used during their student days to support him in staying at a hotel.
He counted out ten banknotes to give to the boss and took Meng Fushan’s letter from the boss’s hand.
The envelope wasn’t sealed. He opened it and pulled out the letter paper, taking a glance under the dim light. The handwriting on the paper belonged to Meng Fushan, but the sentences were disconnected and incoherent; whether read horizontally, vertically, forwards, or backwards, it made no sense.
Meng Fushan didn’t trust the custodian and worried the letter might fall into someone else’s hands.
Therefore, he had placed an invisible lock on the letter—the key to which was held solely by Ji Xun.
With the transaction concluded, Ji Xun took the letter and returned to his car.
Just as he got into the vehicle, his phone vibrated; Huo Ranyin happened to send a message.
“Where have you reached?”
Ji Xun folded the letter in half, tucked it into his clothes, and replied to Huo Ranyin: “Driving on the highway.”
He lied to Huo Ranyin.
He knew Huo Ranyin suspected him.
He was even more certain that even if Huo Ranyin suspected him, he wouldn’t openly manifest that suspicion on the very first night.
Because Huo Ranyin didn’t have sufficient certainty.
This was a game of chess where both sides were fully aware of each other’s moves.
Ji Xun stepped on the accelerator, truly driving onto the highway this time.
