Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Song Xinghe was stunned for a while as he looked at the direction where Li Fujian’s finger was pointing at. He lowered his voice and said, “Lao Li, why don’t we discuss with the management to ‘settle’ the case?
“The international tourism festival is happening soon, I don’t believe that the leaders in the county would want such a serious murder case to happen.
“The old saying is simply accurate—the higher authorities have policies, while the localities have their countermeasures. Although the government fixed the regulation that we must report to the state council when there’s a criminal case with more than three deaths, in reality, there are many flexible ways to circumvent this rule.
“For instance, let’s say a wounded person who didn’t die on the spot. As long as he made it into the ambulance, it wouldn’t be included in the number of deaths.
“Or when there are too little witnesses on site and the situation has no major effect toward the society, we can secretly split the case and list it as two separate criminal cases so we can reduce the number of deaths in one single case and so on.”
What Song Xinghe meant by ‘settling it’ was no doubt suppressing it and closing one eye on the Guawo Village case. They would then discuss the case within the management and reduce it into a small one, and eventually, the whole incident would become nothing.
Unfortunately, Li Fujian was not as optimistic as his superior. He sighed and said, “Director Song, things are different from a few years back. We can see from here that there are many foreigners standing on the hillside. I think this case has already been posted online.
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to suppress it.
“We should get to the crime scene right now and see what we can do about the current situation.”
“Lao Li, you’re the wise one in our station. We’ll follow whatever you say,” Song Xinghe said as he adjusted his police cap and walked up the village path toward Zhang family’s old house.
S the police officers were not used to walking on mountain paths, it took them about ten minutes before they finally arrived at the crime scene.
As they looked into the old house’s courtyard after making their way through the crowd, Song Xinghe almost vomited his breakfast.
He frowned and pouted in disgust. His held back his emotions and said loudly, “Which one of you is Tao Lielin, the one who made the report?”
“I am.”
“Comrades, we’ve met before when I brought the villagers into county town to ‘bring back’ a man a couple of days ago. We’ve passed through the town…”
“Don’t try to cotton up to me. This is a crime scene, we’ll do the cottoning up in the future.
“Let me ask you, you’re a leader, how are you doing your job protecting the crime scene? There’re so many people who don’t matter, they would’ve damaged all of the clues that might have been able to solve the case.”
“Comrade, I’m just a deputy village chief. No tourist would listen to me, they would only leave if you guys who are wearing ‘tiger skin’ chase them away.”
“What tiger skin, this is our police uniform, the symbol of the country’s enforcement authority. Democratic centralism, the centralism is presented in our uniform.
“Zhihe, Huizi, please clear the scene. Get these people who are unrelated to the case out of here.
“Lao Li and I will report the site situation to the county council leader right now.”
Hearing their leader’s instruction, officer Sun Zhihe and Geguan Huizi began to clear the site.
As soon as the police showed up, the western tourists automatically walked away while whispering among themselves. They lived in a country where one might be shot on site at the smallest violation of the police’s lawful order.
After the western tourists left, the Chinese tourists left the crime scene one by one. Soon, the stone road in front of the old house became quiet.
At the same time, Song Xinghe was done describing the basic information of the crime scene to the county police station director Sun Xiangguo. He hung up the phone and looked at the victims. As he gazed upon the incomplete limbs, and the abdomen that was ripped apart, he felt numbness on his scalp.
He had never seen such a gory scene before throughout his twenty years as a police officer. To distract his focus as he did not want to be seen like he was neglecting his job, Song Xinghe began to question Tao Lielin about the case details.
After hearing there was only one surviving witness when the murder took place, he immediately switched his focus to Zhang Lisheng.
If the young man before him was taller and stronger, Song Xinghe would have definitely handcuffed him and given him the treatment befitting a criminal suspect. However, it was definitely impossible for this underage person who was less than a 160 centimeters tall and weighing less than 100 catties to murder four people, in addition to ripping someone’s abdomen up and chopping off a person’s arm.
Song Xinghe then wore a serious face while he was trying to figure out how to get the most accurate account from Zhang Lisheng.
Little did he know that Zhang Lisheng was the murderer himself, and therefore unable to give him any useful clues. Although he had now set his mind on accomplishing an outstanding job, which was a far cry from when he initially had his mind set on pushing his responsibility away, he was destined to be disappointed.
As he heard police sirens wailing in the mountain village again, Song Xinghe stopped talking unwillingly. Zhang Lisheng had not given him a single thing, and he had wasted his time for nothing.
“Director Song, I figured that the new exchange to our county criminal police force, Chief Yang, would come here personally for such a major case. Should we bring him in together?”
“Alright Lao Li, let’s go get him. Zhihe, Huizi, you guys please take care of the site, don’t let anyone enter anymore.”
“Yes, Director Song,” Sun Zhihe and Geguan Huizi replied in unison.
After finally escaping from the police officer’s interrogation, Zhang Lisheng, who was standing aside, closed his eyes as he was a little tired.
He let out a sigh. After quieting down, the thrilling scenes from last night began playing continuously in his head one by one.
All of a sudden, he recalled that he continuously spat a lot of blood during the attempt to drive Qing Hong out from the binding of the alloy thread last night. Theoretically, he should not be feeling tired now. Instead, he should be feeling exhausted due to the lack of blood.
He thought again and again but could not figure out how he was in such a condition at this moment. Zhang Lisheng lowered down his voice and chanted the incantation ‘psh shh…’ in a delayed manner.
Suddenly, he felt an intense gush of wizard power that he had never experienced before slowly flow through his bloodstream. He felt like he was going to break through Rank 1. If he cultivated diligently, perhaps he could get become a Rank 2 Wizard within two to three months.
“Murdering can accelerate witchcraft cultivation!” A terrifying thought flashed through Zhang Lisheng’s mind which caused him to have a major change of facial expression.
Although he was a slightly unsociable young man whose character was shaped by the environment that he grew up in, he definitely hoped he would not have to be a murderer as his future career plan.
However, after carefully recalling what happened last night after calming himself, Zhang Lisheng gradually realized that the reason his wizard power increased rapidly was not due to his murdering act but the fear and hatred that came from the four intruders.
Linking with history, witchcraft could gain greater power from others’ fear and hatred. Now, everything seemed to make perfect sense.
This history was the perfect explanation why until today, people would naturally think about gore, mystery, darkness, human sacrifice, and more terrifying descriptions whenever people mentioned witchcraft.
Perhaps having the intention of being feared and hated was what witchcraft was all about!
Zhang Lisheng was secretly relieved at this point in time, consumed in his own crazy thoughts.
When he opened his eyes, he happened to be looking at the short and plump middle-aged police officer who had interrogated him for a very long time. He was accompanied by seven to eight of his colleagues who had just arrived at the old house.
“Chief Yang, this kid is the only witness to the crime scene that happened last night. According to him, the four dead people were…” The moment they entered the house, Song Xinghe pointed at Zhang Lisheng while speaking to the police officer who had thinning hair but delicate features next to him.
Although the police officer had thinning hair, it seemed like he was not too old. His position was a first-class police officer, which was the same level as a common county-level police chief.
“Director Song, I would like to let the deceased and marking evidence at the crime scene to speak for themselves. I supposed all of you didn’t touch anything in the crime scene?” The young first-class police officer did not follow the usual routine of questioning the witness first. Instead, he asked in all seriousness to look around the crime scene.
Song Xinghe was stunned and replied, “None of us from the station did any site inspection on the crime scene, but there were already hundreds of people gathered here to watch when we arrived. It was comrades Zhihe and Huizi who evacuated the crowd…”
“It’s alright, the scene is so tragic. As long as all of you from the station did not inspect at your own will, the crowds that are watching usually wouldn’t enter the courtyard to damage the crime scene on their own accord.”
Hearing what the man said, they faintly figured out the profound background of this young man named Yang Zhengqi. This police officer was part of an exchange program from Western Sichuan Public Security Bureau at the Qu County Public Security Bureau and held a temporary position as the criminal police chief.
It was said that he would become the youngest department cadre in the Western Sichuan judicial system once he returned to the provincial office after finishing his studies. However, Song Xinghe still could not help himself but talk back, “Chief Yang, I’ve been a police officer for twenty years. I know police discipline too…”
“That’s great.” Yan Zhengqi did not give anyone a chance to speak at all. He nodded and began to investigate the site on his own.
He carefully walked around the old house’s courtyard then slipped into the house to take a look. After thinking carefully, he opened his eyes and walked to the side of the courtyard that was by the wall. He stopped walking and stood before the two deepest footprint marks and said, “Xiao Wu, start recording.”
“The four victims must have broken into the crime scene illegally. These footprints are so deep, and they’re the only two isolated ones which proved that one of them took the lead in crossing the wall and jumping into the courtyard.
“Judging from the footprints, this person should be the deceased whose arm is broken. Let’s hypothetically call him person A.
“Right after person A entered the courtyard, he leaped immediately forward. The purpose of such an odd action should be to launch an attack. This proves that person A is extremely alert and he was very agile.
“Moreover, after entering illegally, he performed a front leap instead of attacking by chasing on foot. It shows that he must have gone through years of martial art training and mastered a certain type of special combat technique.
“While he was attacking after performing the front leap, person A was blocked for a while. There’s a crude porcelain jar and a whole stewed chicken on the ground, that means there must be somebody holding the chicken soup in the courtyard and coincidentally saw person A…”
“Chief Yang, the kid who witnessed the murder last night is also the owner of the house which is the crime scene…” Song Xinghe could not help but interrupt.
“Director Song, we’ll get to the rest after finishing marking the evidence on the scene.” Yang Zhengqi stubbornly shook his head and proceeded with his argument.
“After person A was blocked, although there are footsteps that showed that he dashed into the kitchen at some point, but it doesn’t seem like it happened immediately.
“So the highest possibility is that he stopped his attack after being blocked while the person who blocked him proceeded to hide in the kitchen.
“Then person A opened the entrance door in the courtyard and brought in his partners, so this group of footprints should be able to prove my speculation.
“After the door was opened, we shall hypothetically name the three persons who entered by the sequence of persons B, C, and D.
“Judging by the distance of the footprints and position from each other on the scene, person B and person A talked to each other while person B walked toward the central room alone. His footsteps were not hurried at all, he should be the deceased whose neck was broken.
“After person B entered the central room, person A, C, and D began to talk to each other. Suddenly, person A rushed into the central room’s entrance alone. The reason should be because person B encountered an unknown attack out of nowhere in the house while person A, who was the most powerful one among the group, attempted to rescue him.
“After that, throughout the rescue process, person B died while person A’s left arm suffered a bad injury. Looking at the wound’s angle on the corpse, he must have chopped his arm off himself. We should be able to find that near person B’s corpse.
“Look, there’s something that looks like a metal syringe. Apart from that, there’s also…
“What the f*ck? What’s this…”
