However, due to the white cloths covering everything, the house was very clean and did not need to be cleaned again.
After washing up, the two of them lifted the white cloth, lay down on the bed, and slept on their respective sides. After a while, Xie Lin reached out to touch Chi Qing’s hand. But it was just a simple hand-hold; he didn’t make any further movements.
Chi Qing’s hand brushed against the ring on Xie Lin’s finger. Suddenly, a feeling stirred in his heart. As if sensing something, he moved his fingers to slide the ring down from the base of the man’s finger. Then, he felt a very subtle indentation on the inner side of the band.
It was a letter.
“Isn’t this…”
Wasn’t this the ring he had bought on the eve of Xie Lin’s birthday?
It was just that there hadn’t been enough time to give the gift out back then. Xie Lin had stepped out the door on that rainy night, and after that, the gale winds howled, and the sky completely changed over South China City.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t know what you were doing when you went to the mall?” Xie Lin said. “That night, before I went out, I looked for it and found it right away. I put the ring on before leaving the house.” Otherwise, how could he have endured through this stretch of time?
Xie Lin hooked his finger upward, hooking the ring back into place.
“This gift was well-chosen. From now on, when other people ask, the ring will no longer be an excuse.”
Chi Qing recalled when they first met in the bar; Xie Lin seemed to have used a ring to reject people. Rewinding time back to their very first meeting, the ring the man wore on his hand was also very eye-catching, except at that time, his ring was one he had bought for himself.
This time was different.
This time, there was truly someone, and he was truly, wholeheartedly willing to be bound by it.
The kind where other people had better consciously stay away.
The two of them lay in silence for over half an hour.
Chi Qing asked, “Are you asleep?”
Xie Lin replied, “No.”
How could he sleep?
Those children were still suffering in the dark night.
Even during the night, the news channels were continuously broadcasting the news of the hijacked school bus, hoping that citizens would actively provide clues.
Perhaps the darkness of the night lent him courage, for Chi Qing suddenly brought up a person’s name against the backdrop of the dark room: “There’s one thing I couldn’t figure out about the case ten years ago. Why did your older brother die?”
“In other words, why did the killer incite Guo Xingchang to kill Xie Feng?” Chi Qing blinked slowly and said, “Merely because he was the team leader of that operation?”
If one thought about this matter carefully, it actually wasn’t logical.
There was no need for the killer to take such a big risk to drag Xie Feng and Guo Xingchang into it. He had contacted Guo Xingchang privately; if Guo Xingchang hadn’t been under his control, he could have easily been exposed.
Did Xie Feng really die simply because he was the team leader?
Chi Qing knew that the name ‘Xie Feng’ was something Xie Lin was reluctant to face. If the current situation weren’t so urgent, he wouldn’t have pulled this lead regarding Xie Feng back out.
After a long silence, Xie Lin suddenly sat up. “Get up. I’ll take you somewhere.”
Chi Qing had been to Xie Lin’s study before.
The bookshelves were filled with a dazzling array of professional books. When opened, they were all covered in Xie Feng’s handwriting. Xie Feng’s handwriting was very different from Xie Lin’s; even the sharp turns of his pen carried a gentle, soft-spoken tenderness.
“He didn’t come home much during that period,” Xie Lin said, “but sometimes he would bring his work notebooks back.”
The two sat on the floor, with books and work logs stacked into two high piles on either side of them.
Flipping through them in reverse chronological order, it didn’t take long to find a brown-leather-covered notebook among the pile of books.
It was already late at night, and it was pitch black outside the window.
Xie Lin’s fingertips lightly brushed across the cover, and then he flipped open the first page. The first page was a psychological profile of a “child abductor,” combining some typical cases from both home and abroad: These types of people mostly have a low sense of social value and find it difficult to gain a sense of achievement among their peers. Therefore, they choose to target children. Only through children can they find that kind of pleasure in exercising control.
This psychological profile was a mainstream hypothesis at the time.
However, Xie Feng had passed away early. He did not know that after the killer was captured, the information obtained by the police overturned this hypothesis, because the killer didn’t seem to think that way at all. He looked down on everyone completely, so the point about “finding it difficult to gain a sense of achievement among peers” simply did not exist.
This was also one of the reasons why the case caused such a sensation.
But this piece of erroneous hypothesis from back then instantly pulled Xie Lin and Chi Qing back to ten years ago. Between the lines, one could feel Xie Feng’s anxiety at the time.
Xie Feng had tried to hunt down the suspect from limited information.
Most of it consisted of case analyses, but further down, a string of independent numbers began to appear. At the beginning of each page, a person’s code name, the school they attended, and their family background were written.
“It’s the children who were kidnapped back then,” Xie Lin swept a hasty glance over it. “I looked at their information back then.”
Xie Lin had also flipped through this notebook over the years.
But he hadn’t flipped through it many times.
After all, Xie Feng had died because of this case. Most of the time, he was unwilling to recall this case again.
Furthermore, the degree of confidentiality for this case was extraordinary. Even though it was written in the work notebook, the real names of these children were not used; instead, code names were used. This was to prevent anyone who saw the notebook from learning about the personnel and details involved in the case.
001, attending Huainan Middle School, 13 years old, Father (Yue Yang), Mother (Cheng Xiaoping).
002, attending Experimental Attached Middle School, Father (Deceased), Mother (Yang Yan).
……
006, ……
…………
Chi Qing carefully flipped through the list from beginning to end, and he even saw himself inside. His code name was 009.
From beginning to end, nothing out of the ordinary could be seen in the notebook. Aside from some normal information and reasonable deductions, there was no other special content.
Just as Xie Lin was about to close the notebook, Chi Qing suddenly reached out, pressing his finger against the last page to stop his movement.
Xie Lin asked, “What’s wrong? Want to look through it again?”
Chi Qing said, “The page count is wrong.”
“The specifications labeled on this notebook state it has 100 pages, but the number of pages inside seems to be an odd number.”
Xie Lin froze.
The two of them counted the pages again from beginning to end.
It indeed wasn’t 100 pages.
“There are only 99 pages,” Xie Lin finally said. “A page was torn out of this notebook.”
That night, Xie Lin and Chi Qing barely slept a wink. At past five in the morning, Chi Qing had just dozed off in the single sofa in the study when he was startled awake by a phone call.
Xie Lin picked up the phone. Just as he uttered a “Hello,” an anxious voice came from the other side: “Someone just sent a box of things to the police station…”
At this moment, the sky had just brightened.
The pedestrians on the street were sparse.
Compared to the sound of traffic, the street was filled more with the “swoosh-swoosh” sound of sanitation workers sweeping up fallen leaves with brooms.
Just ten minutes ago, a bleary-eyed police officer had discovered an unsigned express delivery box at the entrance.
“Whose delivery is this?”
Initially, the officer thought someone had accidentally left something behind. After picking it up, he scanned the surroundings but didn’t see anyone. He was just about to take it to the lounge for safekeeping, but after walking a few steps, he noticed that the bottom of the palm-sized cardboard box seemed to be stained with something sticky.
“What is this…” The officer looked down and cried out in alarm, “Blood?!”
The officer immediately tore open the box. To his horror, he discovered that the contents inside the box were a bloody, severed finger and… an eyeball.
After the news was broadcasted, Ji Mingrui was responsible for answering the citizens’ hotline. His mind was entirely filled with the severed finger he had seen that morning. That piece of finger was clearly not an adult’s finger; it was short and fleshy, and there was even a dimple at the joint.
It was a child’s finger.
Ring-ring.
Ji Mingrui picked up the phone: “Hello, good day.”
“Officer, hello,” the voice on the other end of the phone was very low. “I have a very important piece of information. I want to report something.”
Ji Mingrui had answered many phone calls since the case occurred, but almost none of them were useful.
Forcing down the discomfort and anxiety in his heart, he pressed for details: “What information?”
“I saw a man. It’s the suspect you are looking for.”
“Sir, may I ask where you saw him? Are you certain? What are his characteristics?”
“This criminal is extremely vicious! He’s a murderer! He’s a murderer! He is extremely dangerous!”
“…” Ji Mingrui pulled out a pen from the side. “Calm down, speak slowly.”
“I went out to prepare for work, and then the road was undergoing construction, so it was a bit congested. I lowered my driving speed, and as a result, I saw him on the road. He was sitting right inside the car!” The situation took a sharp turn into absurdity from here. “…He was driving a black luxury car. He actually looks quite handsome, just like what was broadcasted on television.”
A luxury car. Very handsome.
How did these two descriptors sound so…
“He was wearing a black jacket. And it’s very strange, his car was driving right in the direction of the police station. If you go out now, you might just be able to capture him right away!”
“……?”
Two minutes later, the extremely vicious “murderer” wearing a black jacket and carrying a luxury car key in his hand strolled grandly in through the entrance of the police station. Furthermore, he was followed by an old acquaintance who had “risen from the dead.”
He had been too busy during this period. He watched from afar as that familiar figure pushed open the glass door and walked in. A black glove was resting on the door handle, and further up was that face with eyes covered by hair. This face perfectly overlapped with the black-and-white photo in the memorial hall. Because this person’s hair was too black and his skin was too pale, even the color tones were incredibly similar.
In the end, Ji Mingrui could only squeeze out a dry sentence: “You’re here.”
Chi Qing handed him the breakfast he was carrying in his other hand. “Brought it for you on the way.”
Between long-time old friends, there wasn’t much more to say at a time like this.
Ji Mingrui took a glance at the breakfast. “As expected, you still don’t remember what I like to eat.”
Chi Qing: “…It’s good enough that there’s food to eat.”
“Where’s the express box,” Chi Qing asked again. “Where is it?”
Ji Mingrui was holding the breakfast and had just gained a bit of an appetite, but hearing the words “express box,” his appetite vanished instantly. “In Brother Bin’s office.”
Saying that, he offered a friendly warning: “Did you two eat before coming here? The severed finger and the eyeball actually don’t have anything special about them, but they are too small. Just thinking that this was taken from a child makes it… should I prepare a bag for you guys?”
Xie Lin and Chi Qing looked at him coldly.
“…”
Forget it, these two probably didn’t need it.
The express box was placed right on the desk.
Before even getting close, a very distinct bloody stench could be smelled.
The finger was very small, only half the length of an adult’s. The severed cross-section was jagged and uneven, not clean at all. The skin and flesh tissue were mangled and blurry; it looked as if it had been brutally crushed and severed by a blunt instrument. The eyeball was even more horrifying; the eyeball was still connected to the extraocular muscles, looking like a bloody mess.
Wu Zhibin said, “I’ve already looked at it carefully. There is no hidden information on the eyeball and the finger. Fingerprints were left behind, but… judging strictly from the size of the fingerprints extracted from it, they should also belong to a child. The maximum age does not exceed ten years old.”
As soon as these words came out, everyone present fell into silence.
In other words, this was highly likely done by another child.
Wu Zhibin raised his hand to press his temples and closed the express box. “You two probably didn’t come here just for this matter, right?”
“There is another lead.”
Xie Lin spread Xie Feng’s notebook open on the desk and asked, “Of the children who survived ten years ago, were there really only two?”
