Time seemed to freeze in the ward, and the pale walls, beds, and glass windows had all turned into distorted reflectors, reflecting a strange, dizzying white light.
wow-
The sound of metal handcuffs broke the deadly silent confrontation. Li Yuxin's hands kept shaking, and the whole person seemed to fall apart immediately. It took several minutes before she spat out a sentence intermittently with the sound of teeth fighting: "... You... how... know... "
"Do you think that as long as you hide the truth of He Liang's death, you'll be fine after you get out of jail for stealing these months, right?"
"… "
Jiang Ting leaned down and whispered in her ear: "Midsummer is early in the middle of summer, and July is still in the middle of the month. The meaning of this sentence is that in the evening in the middle of July, the gorgeous sunset falls somewhere at 8:09, announcing that Boyhood ends, the time of punishment begins, and the long night that follows is the entire execution process. - Do you think the punishment for killing He Liang is over? No, far from it. Why don't you think about why you were picked from the very beginning? Is it just you?"
"… "
Li Yuxin's beautiful face was white and scary, and she couldn't stop gasping as soon as she made a sound, but she was immediately grabbed by Jiang Su's hand.
Jiang Ting's three fingers were still wrapped in gauze, and Li Yuxin's hand was also injured in the struggle. The two equally white, slender and scarred hands grasped each other tightly, giving the illusion that the left hand was clenching the right hand.
"Tell me," he said, "and I'll take you out of this nightmare, or you'll never run away from those people for the rest of your life."
"No..." Li Yuxin whispered hurriedly, "It's not just me..."
"I'm not the first... I'm ahead, still, and..."
Jiang Ting's eyes flashed.
The metal chain jingled, that was Li Yuxin holding Jiang Ting's finger harder, as if he had gained unspeakable courage from this move:
"But the... two people in front of me, they are all... dead."
died.
Both were killed.
As if day and night were reversed, the scene was replaced. Everything around the ward receded from the girl's eyes, and the scene repeated countless times in the nightmare gradually invaded the field of vision and devoured all the senses.
It was the golden red sunset sinking below the horizon, the night rising from the end of the wilderness, and He Liang, who was bound, knelt on the ground tremblingly.
The ghosts surrounded the open space, and the girl holding the knife was so weak that she could not stand, and was erected abruptly.
"Go kill him," said a smiling voice in his ear.
"no no… "
"This coward betrayed you for his own life and must be punished."
"Please, let us go, please..."
"Go kill him, or you'll lie down in the ground holding hands with him."
"I can't do it, please, please, please!"
The crying girl was forcibly turned her head, and under the pit not far away, two rotting corpses hugged each other hand in hand, their empty eye sockets facing the sky, and black internal organs and maggots were faintly visible in the bones.
"Look, this is the end of it." The voice was still smiling, always seeming to be very happy, and said, "You will endure the punishment together."
You will be punished together—
The girl burst into tears, and her heart-piercing wailing rose from the wilderness to the sky, and gradually became the same voice as the desperate choking in the ward:
"I don't want to kill, I don't want to kill He Liang, why is it me?"
"What is wrong with us to be punished, I don't know, really don't know..."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Jiang Ting wiped away the tears on the girl's face and whispered, "Listen, when I call the policeman in later, you know the part about how He Liang was killed. What to say."
"I-I don't dare," Li Yuxin sobbed: "I really don't dare, I—"
Jiang Ting said: "You dare. He Liang was indeed killed by you, but he died without evidence. If the kidnappers cannot be caught, no one can prove that you were indeed coerced. Do you want to sit for the rest of your life because of other people's crimes? prison?"
Li Yuxin shook her head like crazy.
"Then do you want to go back to school, let the police apply for meritorious service for you, and restore your reputation in front of all your relatives, friends, teachers, and schools?"
"… "
Li Yuxin's face was pale, and following Jiang Ting's soft and low voice, as if bewitched, she nodded at a loss for a while.
Jiang Ting said, "Then you know what to do."
Just as he was about to stand up, Li Yuxin grabbed him and pulled him hard like a life-saving straw: "Officer, you—why are you helping me?"
Jiang Ting didn't answer right away, his face didn't tell the difference between joy and anger, and after a while he turned his head and looked out of the hospital bed.
Through the glass window, I could see Yan Yan standing in the corridor on the phone from a distance, and it was impossible to hear the movement here.
"...Because the target he really wanted to execute was neither He Liang nor Shen Xiaoqi." Jiang Ting spoke to Li Yuxin's cold ears, his voice so small that only each other could hear him: "It was me who betrayed him."
Li Yuxin's pupils suddenly widened.
The voice that was always calm and familiar came from the phone: "It's not He Liang, it's not Shen Xiaoqi... It's me who betrayed him."
Then there was a click in the corridor behind him, Yan Yan turned around, and saw Jiang Zhan standing at the open door of the ward, saying to him succinctly: "Come in, she is willing to explain."
"Oh, okay." Yan Yan's face showed no abnormality, and he hurriedly said to the mobile phone: "Continue the search and rescue and keep in touch, I will contact you as soon as I have news." Then he pressed a key and put the mobile phone back in his pocket, After a few steps, he stepped forward and hooked Jiang Ting's shoulder: "How is your hand?"
- When he asked this, he clenched Jiang Ting's wrist, and at the same time, his other hand slid from Jiang Ting's back shoulder to his back waist, and gently took off something small from the edge of the belt.
It was the monitor microphone that he pinned up by hugging when he left the ward just now.
"It's okay, it doesn't matter." Jiang Ting's face was unconcealed with exhaustion, and he pulled his hand back: "Don't worry about me."
Yan Yan walked into the ward, turned his face and smiled at him.
This smile is actually a bit weird, but because it is extremely short, no one will notice it.
Li Yuxin leaned on the snow-white pillow of the hospital bed, her lifeless face finally regained a trace of blood, she saw Yan Yan come in and immediately struggled to get up, speaking very hoarsely: "Can you really count my meritorious performance and send me back to study? "
Jiang Ting sat far away in the armchair at the other end of the ward, with his hands folded on his thighs, like a static and graceful statue.
Yan Yan glanced at him, then immediately withdrew his gaze and nodded: "Yes, I promise."
—His eyes were quite meaningful, but Li Yuxin didn't notice it, she was fully focused on that promise.
"I didn't see what that person looked like." The girl finally squeezed out the first sentence: "I only heard his voice."
Yan Yan narrowed his eyes.
"In July last year, I was with... Me and He Liang, we were dating. Because of my poor final exam results, my dad was scolding people at home all day, so I ran out in a fit of anger and called He Liang to come out to accompany me... We The two walked along the road until it was dark, and they were about to leave the county. At this time, a car came to take us home. "
Li Yuxin swallowed dryly, and Yan Yan immediately asked, "What car? What does the driver look like?"
"It was a silver Hyundai. It was dark at the time, and the driver's face could not be seen clearly. It was a man in his 30s or 40s. Shortly after we got in the car, we... seemed to be fascinated and fell asleep for some reason. "
Yan Yan didn't say a word, and actually couldn't say anything.
Two unarmed sixteen-year-old high school students got into a black car in a daze, and their safety awareness was terrifyingly low.
"When we woke up, we were already in the wilderness. There was no one around. It was all mountains and wilderness. We were very scared, but we should not let the ground and the ground not work. We could only keep walking... After that We spent the last two days in the woods." Li Yuxin couldn't help sobbing: "We didn't have to eat or drink, He Liang was injured, and we all had a fever..."
Yan Yan suddenly heard something wrong: "No one kidnapped you?"
"I didn't know that we were kidnapped at all. I didn't hear that until I came back, that He Liang's parents received a blackmail call." Li Yuxin choked: "But we really didn't know it at the time, it was just in the I kept walking and walking in the mountains, and I didn’t even see anyone else in the first two days!”
Yan Yan seemed to understand something, but he didn't say it, and asked, "What about the third day?"
Li Yuxin's expression seemed to be strangled by someone's throat.
"On the third day, we met..." After a while, she forced a few words out of her throat: "Those who wear black clothes and cover their faces."
—A man in black with his face covered
"How many? Male or female? How did you meet them?"
"I don't know where they came from. On the third day we climbed to the open space on the top of the hill and passed out. When we woke up, we found these people surrounded by the open space. He Liang was tied up and kneeled on the ground, begging all the time. , kept begging... I tried to run but they caught me. I desperately called for help, begging them to let us go, but someone held the phone to my ear—"
Li Yuxin's eyes widened, it seemed that so long had passed, and the horror at that time was still deeply soaked in the bone marrow:
"The voice said on the phone that He Liang was a coward who betrayed me and told me to kill him. I begged him not to do that, but he said that if I didn't dare to do it, I would be punished with He Liang. Like, like…”
Yan Yan asked, "Like what?"
"..." Li Yuxin trembled and said after a while, "There is a pit on the ground."
The ward was terribly quiet, and Yan Yan and Jiang Ting both focused on the girl's face that didn't look like a living person:
"In the pit... there are two corpses... a man and a woman, holding hands..."
"He said that if I didn't kill He Liang, I would be like the girl in the pit..."
Yan Yan's face changed completely. He knew what Li Yuxin's words meant: last year's 712 was not the first serial kidnapping incident!
Before He Liang, there were at least a pair of victims!
"...So you killed He Liang?" Yan Yan heard her own voice asking with a humming in her head.
Li Yuxin dodged and avoided his gaze.
"No," the girl muttered, "I don't know anything, I... I fainted. When I woke up, He Liang was already... dead."
Yan Yan raised his eyes to look at Jiang Ting, who silently lowered his eyes.
In the ward, only Li Yuxin's trembling breathing and choking could be heard. After a long time, Yan Yan slowly nodded and said, "Okay."
- Yan Yan is such a person: he rarely talks nonsense when handling cases, and he takes action to solve what he can take action to solve.
But as long as he is willing to say it, every word he speaks is a nail, and it can never be changed by external force after being nailed.
Jiang Ting breathed a sigh of relief, but it didn't show on his face. He didn't seem to see Yan Yan's sharp line of sight, and the muscles on his face were still relaxed or even relaxed, and he asked Li Yuxin indifferently: "Afterwards, these people let you go?"
Li Yuxin shook his head, and when he opened his mouth, he heard the sound of his teeth squeaking and slamming: "No, no, no. They drove several off-road vehicles, moved He Liang to one of them, and took me down the mountain in the dark at night... After going down the mountain, I They sprayed something on my face and suddenly fell asleep. When I woke up again, a whole day had passed, because when the sun went down again, I saw the off-road vehicle parked on the top of the hill, and they put He Liang— Move He Liang, who is motionless with his eyes closed, out of the car..."
The girl was incoherent and wanted to hug her head, but she could only wrestle the handcuffs in vain:
"A big hole was dug in the ground...they put Heliang in it and put it inside..."
"Then they fill the hole with soil... ahhh!"
Her filament-like nerves that were stretched to the limit were finally broken, and she let out a sharp cry like a ghost.
Yan Yan raised her hand and pressed her eyebrows tightly. With this action, she slowly digested the huge amount of information in Li Yuxin's words just now, and after a while, she sighed hoarsely amid the girl's tragic cries.
"The executioner is not a single person, but an organization with perfect mobility. The leader of the organization is to target young men and women who love each other. After kidnapping, they are thrown into the barren mountains, where they make extortion calls, send blood clothes, and notify the execution time. The two hostages struggled to survive, and then when the execution time came, the girls were forced to kill the boys, and if the girls dared not start, they would kill both at the same time and bury them hand in hand."
Yan Yan shook his head and took a breath: "This sense of sacrifice and ritual feels like a cult, but I don't know what 'betrayal' and 'coward' mean."
Jiang Ting did not speak.
Yan Yan pondered for a moment, then suddenly raised his chin at him: "Hello."
"Ok?"
"Why do I feel that this organization is a bit similar to the drug cartel behind Feng Yuguang's case, shouldn't it be the same group?"
Although it was a question, Yan Yan's very oppressive ending seemed to hint at something vaguely, causing Jiang Ting to drop his gaze.
Looking from his slightly side cheeks, there are long, beautiful streamlines formed from the eyelashes to the tip of the tail, and it feels a little cold and hard to get close to.
"Actually I was thinking about another thing," he said suddenly.
Yan Yan said "Huh?"
Jiang Ting ignored him: "Li Yuxin?"
The girl didn't know whether she was crying or collapsed. The wailing has gradually subsided, and her body twitched from time to time. She heard the words and raised her embarrassed face.
"You said that when the kidnappers coerced you to execute He Liang, there were two bodies of men and women in the pit next to him, but after He Liang died, he was buried on another hillside a whole day's drive away?"
Li Yuxin bit her lip and nodded.
Jiang Ting turned to Yan Yan: "Although I can't figure out why he was buried elsewhere, is it possible that the kidnappers will use He Liang's body to intimidate the next pair of hostages?"
- This is indeed too easy to associate, Jiang Ting realized Yan Xun before he finished speaking: "Tianzongshan!"
"Ma Xiang!" Yan Yan took out his mobile phone and dialed the number, and quickly instructed: "The kidnappers are not individuals, but gangs, immediately notify the city bureau to send someone to call in and out from 12:00 noon to 12:00 p.m. on July 16 last year. All mountain roads in the hinterland of Tianzong Mountain are monitored, and the target is off-road convoys, so notify me immediately!" He then covered his mobile phone and asked Li Yuxin, "Can you still remember any landform features where He Liang was executed, and where He Liang's body was buried? Any information? This is critical! Any detail must be given to the police!"
Under the watchful eyes of the public, Li Yuxin shuddered and said, "Yes."
—She was so sure all of a sudden that not only Yan Yan, but Jiang Ting was also surprised.
"On the hillside where He Liang was buried, there was a large fiery red tree. They forced me to stand in the open space and watch the dirt hole be filled up. That person told me on the phone—"
"'I thought you were a fowl rolling in the dirt, but who would have known that you would have the fate to see this phoenix tree'." Li Yuxin's face showed a mixture of irony and despair: "That's my life, this is my life. For the first time in my life, I saw the Phoenix Forest with my own eyes."
Yan Yan raised his phone in surprise: "Ma Xiang..."
"Yes! - Hey Brother Yan? What's wrong with Brother Yan?"
"I'm with you, Consultant Lu, and I seem to know why the kidnappers used the blood of the white-tailed sea eagle this time." Yan Yan paused and said, "Also, notify the provincial department and Bureau Lu to use aerial photography to survey the entire Tianzong Mountain. , the place where the kidnappers are going to kill Shen Xiaoqi is a phoenix forest."