Translator: Dj22031
Editor: Dj22031
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Jiang Lan and Wang Qing also stayed together to keep watch at night.
There was a parking space in front of the floor, which made it easier for them to monitor. The two sat in a car with Team Leader Chen and another team member Zhao Li, paying attention to the flow of people in the third building while reorganizing the chronology of the case.
The two victims before and after were beheaded, and their bodies were hung upside down at the door of their home. Such cruel and consistent methods, and the locations were all in the same building, it was difficult not to think of revenge killings.
Team Leader Chen and the others had listed the interpersonal relationships around the deceased as much as possible and found that the residents of this building were basically all relatives.
They all moved to this building ten years ago, in 2009, due to the demolition of their village. Most of the people living in this building were people surnamed He from the village.
The deceased He Zhuangyang and He Zhuangqing were cousins, He Zhuangyang was the second eldest child, and He Zhuangqing was the fourth eldest child. Besides the two of them, there were six other cousins.
He Laoqi died of stomach cancer a few years ago. He Laoyi died in a car accident the year before last. Among the eight cousins, He Laoba was the earliest to die. He died in the flood 20 years ago.
The only ones still alive were He Laosan, He Laowu and He Laoliu, who was said to be crazy.
“The relationship between these cousins is not very good, in fact the neighborhood relationship in the entire building is relatively average. There are usually some trivial conflicts, but they are not to the point of enmity.” Captain Chen said.
Wang Qing asked strangely: “They are all relatives who have moved from the same village. In a strange community, they don’t unite, and the relationship is still very cold. Isn’t it strange?”
Jiangcheng’s economy had developed rapidly in recent years, and many surrounding rural areas had been demolished. Most of them were in relatively remote districts such as Hanyang and Caiyang. Large areas and houses were built to accommodate these villagers. Generally, when these villagers moved from the village to the community as a whole, their relationship would become closer and closer. Because there were not only relocated villagers in the community, but also many tenants or residents of commercial buildings. When in front of outsiders, they were always surprisingly united.
Team Leader Chen nodded and said: “We also felt a little strange. But after visiting the residents, we can’t find any information. Our current tendency is to believe these are revenge killings. The murderer must be related to the person surnamed He, or the eight brothers. I have already asked someone to investigate what happened before they moved here and see if we can find any clues.”
“If it was really a revenge killing, wouldn’t it be possible that the three brothers who are still alive are in danger?” Wang Qing said hesitantly.
“Don’t worry, someone has been sent to keep an eye on them.”
Captain Chen said helplessly: “He Laosan is sick and is locked up at home all year round. He Laoliu has inconvenient legs and feet and is at home most of the time. Only He Laowu is going to go to Lao Er’s house today to help with the funeral. In order not to alert others, I sent two people to protect him secretly.”
While they were talking, Jiang Lan was flipping through the materials, which contained detailed information on the He family brothers. He looked at the people in the photos, and then at the drunken man who entered the door of the fourth building. He said with some uncertainty: “The one who went in just now, wasn’t it He Laowu? His name is He Zhuangsheng, right?”
Captain Chen heard this and went to look, but he only had time to see a bloated back.
When he thought about his teammates following He Zhuangsheng, he felt that Jiang Lan had probably seen it wrong. However, out of caution, he still said: “I’ll contact them and ask.”
But when he dialed the phone, there was no response.
After a few times, Team Leader Chen’s expression darkened: “Something has probably happened, let’s split up and take action. Wang Qing, please help ask Zhang Peng and the others to find someone. Zhao Li and I will go upstairs to find He Zhuangsheng.”
After saying that, he opened the car door and quickly went to Building 4. Jiang Lan followed their footsteps and went upstairs together.
He Zhuangsheng’s home was on the fourth floor. The three young people climbed the stairs very quickly and arrived at the door of 404 in an instant. Team Leader Chen knocked on the security door with a nervous expression. The person who opened the door was a woman in her fifties. The woman asked warily: “Who are you? Who are you looking for?”
Captain Chen showed his police ID and said, “Is He Zhuangsheng at home? We have something to ask him.”
Unexpectedly, the woman said: “He hasn’t come back. He is organizing the funeral at the second son’s house and drinking with others. He probably won’t come back until midnight.”
Captain Chen’s heart skipped a beat, and he suddenly looked at the others.
Jiang Lan recalled the figure walking into the fourth building and affirmed: “I shouldn’t have been mistaken, it was him.”
Captain Chen’s brows were almost knotted and he quickly said to the woman: “Our colleagues saw him coming back. We have something urgent to ask him. Please give him a call and ask where he is now.”
The woman’s expression was obviously unhappy, but since the other party was a police officer, she could only take out her mobile phone and dial He Zhuangsheng’s number.
The call was quickly connected, but there was no voice from He Zhuangsheng’s side, only the faint sound of water dripping.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…the pattern reminded people of some terrible fact.
“Something has happened.” Captain Chen’s eyes darkened.
But he couldn’t figure out why something happened so quickly when they had followed He Zhuangsheng into the building.
The woman looked at them in panic, as if she had realized something, and called loudly into the phone several times, but there was no response. The call interface was cut off after ten seconds. It seemed as if the murderer just wanted to announce He Zhuangsheng’s death.
Team Leader Chen gritted his teeth: “I’ll send people back and we’ll search the building door to door! The murderer must be hiding here!”
Jiang Lan didn’t answer his words. He just walked to the stairs and looked up.
The dim sensor light was on above his head. He squinted his eyes slightly, but he couldn’t see the end of the stairs.
This building gave him a very bad feeling. From the moment he had entered, he felt as if he had entered a dark lair. But he could never find the owner of the lair.
Team Leader Chen transferred people back, and the scattered police forces were quickly gathered together. The two criminal policemen who protected He Zhuangsheng also came back. They were two tall and strong young policemen. They were helped back by teammates.
“What happened?”
There was no worry on the faces of his teammates, indicating that they were not injured. But looking at their looks, he knew something was wrong.
One of them rubbed his temples and said, “We kept staring at He Zhuangsheng until Lao Zhang and Wang Qing came to call us.”
In their memories, they had been monitoring and protecting He Zhuangsheng outside the house until the anxious Lao Zhang and Wang Qing came. They felt as if they were forcibly awakened from a dream, and their whole bodies became dizzy.
Team Leader Chen gritted his teeth: “At half past eight, He Zhuangsheng came back alone. I called you at least five times.”
The two young detectives were obviously aware of the problem, so they showed panic in their eyes.
But in their memories, they had been staring at He Zhuangsheng. One of them quickly took out his phone, only to find that there was indeed a missed call from Captain Chen on his cell phone.
He put down the phone and murmured: “This is too weird. We really kept staring at He Zhuangsheng and didn’t hear the phone vibrate.”
Jiang Lan pursed his lips and said, “Maybe it just created an illusion for you.”
Team Leader Chen took a deep breath and said solemnly: “It’s important to find someone first, and we’ll talk about other things later.” With that, he quickly arranged the search task.
This building had seven floors in total. There were five households on the first floor. Five criminal police members plus Wang Qing and Jiang Lan were more than enough.
The tasks were arranged and everyone immediately jumped into action.
Jiang Lan wanted to take a look at the top of the building. So he volunteered and went to the seventh floor with Wang Qing to find someone.
The group of people went up the narrow stairs. When Jiang Lan reached the fourth floor, he paused and said softly: “I smell blood.”
He narrowed his eyes, sniffed carefully, and then asked Suan Ni in the bag sideways: “Do you smell it?”
Suan Ni meowed.
He smelled it too.
Jiang Lan frowned heavily and walked up again, thinking about what kind of monster this was.
He could feel something was wrong, but what the other party was doing was beyond his understanding of the demon clan. He raised his head and looked up. The dim light illuminated the top, and circles of staircase handrails rotated upwards, as if there was no end.
Wang Qing was so frightened by this that he stammered: “Brother, can you handle it?”
Jiang Lan shook his head and said, “Let’s go upstairs and have a look first. It’s different from the ones I’ve seen.”
If his guess was correct, maybe they were not in the same space as each other. So he felt a strong sense of violation from the moment he saw this building.
It could open up space, which was something that many ancient demons could not do. What was this thing doing here now?
What grudge could it have against the He brothers?
While thinking, the two of them had reached the seventh floor.
The seventh floor was very clean, with snow-white walls and no garbage or dust on the floor. There were several pots of pothos[1] placed along the corridor, but judging from the traces, it seemed that only one family lived there.
Wang Qing raised his hand and knocked on the door of 701.
The person who opened the door was a kind-faced old man. His gray hair was neatly combed back, and he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and trousers. If it weren’t for the deep wrinkles on his face, and just looking at his figure and temperament, he would have thought to be in his fifties. The old man pushed up his reading glasses: “Who are you looking for?”
Wang Qing showed his police officer ID and asked him if he had seen He Zhuangsheng.
“He Laowu?” The old man opened the security door and said, “Isn’t he holding a funeral at Lao Er’s house? He usually doesn’t come to my place.”
Then he pointed to the other residents in this building: “I am the only one living on this floor, there is no one else.”
“You also moved here from He family village?” Wang Qing asked again.
“Yeah, it’s been ten years since I moved here.”
The two were still talking, but Jiang Lan looked past the old man and looked into the room. The curtains were drawn and the light was a little dim. However, Jiang Lan had good eyesight and he still saw the neatly tidied living room and the paper dolls on the coffee table.
Those paper figures were the sweeping girls hanging in every house downstairs.
They were colorful, some had been cut and put aside, and some were only semi-finished products.
Jiang Lan’s eyes moved from the room to the old man and he asked an unrelated question: “Did you also cut those paper figures hanging downstairs?”
The old man turned his eyes to him, then looked back at the living room, and shook his head: “I didn’t cut it, it should have been done by He Laosi, he can do it too. You young people may not understand, this is called Sao Qingniang, it is said that it can ward off evil spirits to avoid disasters, every household in the village used to hang them, but later we moved to the community and stopped hanging them so much. I don’t know why it’s become popular again. I used to cut these and sell them, but now that I’m older, I can’t do it.”
As he spoke, he raised his hand stiffly and hammered his waist.
The shirt sleeves moved up with his movements, revealing a small section of skin above the back of his hands. Jiang Lan noticed that the skin above the back of his hands was covered with large dark purple-red patches.
In other words, they were corpse spots.
Jiang Lan calmly withdrew his gaze and asked casually: “Do you know why the eight brothers of the He family have a bad relationship? We have asked many residents, but they seem to be unwilling to tell.”
The old man straightened his back again and still smiled gently, but there was a hint of separation in his smile: “They dare not say it.”
Wang Qing immediately asked: “What do you mean? Why don’t they dare to say it? What happened in the village before moving to the community?”
The old man still shook his head: “They won’t tell me, and it’s hard for me as a foreigner to tell. If you want to know, just go and look up the flood twenty years ago.”
After saying that, he turned back to the house and closed the door.
The moment the door closed, Jiang Lan noticed that his steps staggered, but soon it seemed as if someone helped him and he regained his balance.
The door was then completely closed.
Wang Qing muttered: “Do you think the residents in this building are weird?”
They were very indifferent to each other. The deceased He Laoer and He Laosi were grandfathers and should have higher seniority in the village. However, when organizing their funerals, young people rarely went to pay homage to them. Instead, older people like He Laowu from their generation was in charge of the overall situation. Moreover, except for family members, no one else was sad during the funeral. Just like He Laowu, when his cousin died, he could still drink with others and get drunk.
Jiang Lan said: “Go and tell Captain Chen that He Laowu is probably gone and tell them to find out what happened in He family Village during the flood twenty years ago. I’ll stay here to look for clues.”
Wang Qing wondered: “What other clues are there?”
Jiang Lan smiled mysteriously and whispered in his ear: “That old man is not a living person.”
“…”
Wang Qing’s scalp was numb, and goosebumps suddenly covered his back.
His voice trembled: “Brother, don’t scare me.”
Jiang Lan pursed his lips and smiled, with two dimples appearing on his cheeks: “Okay, I won’t scare you anymore. Go and tell Captain Chen.”
Wang Qing saw that he had regained his composure and thought that he was really trying to scare him. So, he ran away quickly.
Jiang Lan, on the other hand, turned around and stared at the security door of 701. He probably knew where the passage to the other space was.
The author has something to say:
Taotie: Let me see what kind of monster it is this time?
Sao Qingniang: Knock on the mother! Get out! Stay away from me!!!
——————
Without Longlong, Lanlan could finally take the prize alone.
It seems like it’s a good thing that Longlong didn’t show up?
This last chapter shouldn’t be too scary, right? I saw some comments yesterday saying it was scary, scratching my head. jpg
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