"...If this is the truth that I can finally restore, if this truth can make you feel relieved at the end."
"… "
"Then I'll tell you."
—
nineteen years ago.
Yanzhou.
Thirteen-year-old Xie Qingcheng was carrying a schoolbag and was walking at the intersection of a hutong street in the harsh winter.
He has a green-screen Nokia in his hand, the most valuable thing in his possession.
His parents have been gone for several months.
In the past few months, Xie Qingcheng was like a soul left in the world, and the continuous blows made his heart empty. He had collapsed, despaired, and had countless violent quarrels with people.
But what's the use.
He woke up in the night countless times, dreaming of the day he was notified of the death of his parents.
That day, it was raining heavily in Shanghai, and he was in the school classroom, like all ordinary students, taking a math test.
The head teacher suddenly came in, greeted the math teacher, whispered a few words, and the math teacher immediately let out a gasping sound.
The students only looked up and looked numb, and there were even phantoms of equations and numbers floating in their eyes, and then they all lowered their heads and raced against the clock to continue working on the problem.
And Xie Qingcheng didn't even lift his head, he was checking the answering process of the last big question.
A girl next to him was looking at him secretly, not knowing whether he was looking at his answer or the handsome guy's face.
suddenly-
A shadow fell on Xie Qingcheng's test paper.
Xie Qingcheng paused at the tip of his pen, raised his head, frowned slightly and looked at the head teacher who came to his seat.
He is different from ordinary students. He can see it by looking at his eyes. He is very sharp, calm, and clear. He is rarely confused or numb, and all kinds of subjects cannot trouble him. He will not be tortured by knowledge, but often Reliable.
No teacher would dislike such a student.
This was the first time - Xie Qingcheng looked at the head teacher, but the head teacher did not smile.
He was stunned for a moment, not knowing what happened, he was not someone who would cause trouble.
"Xie Qingcheng." The head teacher patted his shoulder with a strange expression, as if trying to suppress something. Her thick glasses just reflected in the fluorescent light, obscuring most of her emotions.
But Xie Qingcheng could hear a trembling in her voice, the same aftertaste after the strings were plucked.
"Come out."
Now the students were all surprised, and the exam was not important anymore. They held their necks high and watched Xie Qingcheng leave the classroom behind the head teacher.
"what happened… "
"Why call him out at this time?"
"He didn't make a mistake, did he cheat?"
"What are you talking about... does he need to cheat..."
Everyone murmured until the math teacher knocked on the table: "What are they talking about? Exam!"
But after he reprimanded them, his eyes couldn't help chasing the two who disappeared at the end of the aisle - if the students looked closely, they would find that the math teacher's face had peeled off a layer of blood.
The math teacher tremblingly grabbed the thermos cup on the table, opened it, and took a sip of warm water.
The hot water ran down his throat, barely warming the chest that was suddenly cold when he heard the shocking news.
But he knows—
Xie Qingcheng, the child's heart, is afraid that it will not warm up for a long time in the future.
"Teacher, what happened?"
When Xie Qingcheng followed the head teacher up the stairs, he couldn't help but ask this question.
The head teacher didn't speak, and went to the door of her office on the top floor. Before she pushed the door in, she took a deep breath and looked back at the student she had always liked.
Her facial muscles were tense, and under the gray sky outside the window, Xie Qingcheng was stunned to find that behind her thick glasses, two lines of tears rolled down.
The teardrops were like ominous notes, and the thunder outside the teaching building was deafening, which opened the prelude to the tragedy.
Xie Qingcheng's heart skipped a beat.
"... someone in there is looking for you, let them talk to you... "
The head teacher's shrunken hand put on the doorknob and pressed it down.
The door opened.
Electric lights flickered outside the window, and the inside of the house was as dark as a cloud that was thicker than the outside. The thunder and lightning cut through the cumulonimbus clouds outside, and Xie Qingcheng walked in and cut through the darkness inside the house—
A large piece of deep navy blue.
The police are crowded like a cloud.
The leader is Uncle Zheng, who has the best relationship with his parents.
They all turned their heads when they heard him coming, but none of them spoke first.
When Xie Qingcheng heard his own voice, it was hollow like a cocoon shell that had been left on the dead wood.
"What happened to my parents?"
"… "
Word by word, he asked firmly, "Uncle Zheng, what happened to my parents."
Xie Qingcheng didn't quite remember how he listened to Zheng Jingfeng's specific situation that day. In his vague impression, he seemed to be very calm.
Calmly as if he had died, standing where he was listening to these words was a clay figurine, a corpse.
Not only at that time, but for nearly ten days in a row, Xie Qingcheng was as cold and numb as a walking corpse—except when he saw his parents' bodies, he collapsed and cried bitterly. For more than ten days, he was like a machine, like a symbol - constantly signing, signing, signing one ruthless document after another.
cremation…
heritage…
notarization…
Living people become words on paper, ashes in the furnace.
The younger sister is still young and not familiar with the world, but she also knows that her parents haven't come back for a long time, crying and crying—and—
There were other things that Xie Qingcheng didn't even want to think about.
When a person suffers so much that even the tears are drained, they will find that being able to feel sadness well is also a kind of great mercy given by God.
Xie Qingcheng didn't even deserve this kind of compassion.
- The car moved forward automatically, and the cockpit exploded after hitting someone... How could this be an accident
His body and soul seemed to have been destroyed by the sudden and huge pressure, and he could only support it with one breath. He kept running to the police station, grabbing any uncles and aunts he once knew, stubbornly repeating it over and over again. Say, my parents were murdered.
My parents must have been murdered.
I want a truth...
Please give me the truth...
At the beginning, those people would still sympathize and cry. After a long time, they would be bothered by a child repeatedly.
Someone started to say to him: "I have told you many times, we will definitely investigate carefully, but now there is no evidence, we have to follow the procedure, right?"
"Give us some more time."
But how long is a minute
Xie Qingcheng later found out that it was a full nineteen years.
He didn't know at the time that the wait would be so long in the future, but at that time he also understood that the death of his parents could only be characterized as an accident, and his father and mother could not wear police uniforms to kill them in the line of duty. Buried as a martyr.
In the end, he could only choose a snow-white shirt for his father. That shirt was the best piece of clothing his father had ever bought after their family was lonely.
And his mother was wearing a cheongsam sewed by Li Miaojuan. The female police officer was not able to be mourned by the police car, but on the day she left, in addition to her colleagues, many poor, rich, and prisoners she helped during her lifetime came. , the victim...
She is equal to every life, and she has never worn colored glasses to discriminate against anyone's soul. She is always willing to extend her hands to those who are struggling in the quagmire, as long as those people are willing to turn back.
So she got all their respect.
But she didn't get the truth until the dust settled.
Xie Qingcheng went to check it himself.
Even though he is still very young and a middle school student, even though the clues he got are very limited... He still refuses to give up tracking, and he spends all his spare time investigating the cause of his parents' death.
Then, maybe the emperor paid off.
From an uncle in the police station, he found out that his parents had been to the most mixed night scene in Yanzhou before the car accident.
"What they did and who they met were all secrets, and no one knew very well, but not long after that, the superiors received a report from the public, saying that the two of them were embezzling and accepting bribes, and they also produced some evidence... Although the evidence chain It is not enough to support the content of the report, and it cannot be ruled out that there is a possibility of framing, but wasn't it hard-hitting during that time? They were demoted and transferred again."
"The two of them have been intervened twice in the past few years. Together, they have participated in dozens of unsolved major cases, involving hundreds of people. To count down, thousands of people also said Not sure, these thousands of people have tens of thousands of relationships. It is almost impossible to investigate one by one like a headless fly."
The uncle patted Xie Qingcheng: "Don't think about so many children. And us. Let us find the truth about these things."
But Xie Qingcheng didn't know how long he would have to wait for the truth if he was relying on them. Or, he simply can't wait for the day when the truth comes out.
So he settled down with his sister during the winter vacation and went to Yanzhou alone to the nightclub mentioned by his uncle.
He wanted to follow this clue to find out.
That's when the accident happened.
He originally contacted a waiter who finally knew the situation. Although the other party was very flustered, his conscience was still intact. Seeing that the child was too pitiful, he agreed to meet at a small hot pot restaurant at the entrance of a hutong on weekend afternoons.
- "I don't know who I saw specifically. They came so mysteriously that even our boss didn't know the situation. But I was in charge of cleaning the private room. After they left, I found one inside. Earrings... you can come and see if it's your mother's, if not, it might belong to the person she met..."
Before meeting Xie Qingcheng, the waiter kindly sent him a MMS photo in advance.
At that time, the Nokia mobile phone was not very fast to receive MMS, and it had to be downloaded little by little. After the photo was downloaded, Xie Qingcheng sat at the mouth of the road and opened it to take a look—
It was a very oddly shaped earring.
The earrings are pure gold, very delicate, in the shape of a bone cross, with a ring in the middle, a blood-red broken diamond inlaid in the center of the ring, surrounded by three letters: RIP
Rest in peace means.
Although the resolution of mobile MMS messages at that time was very shabby and could be called AV picture quality, the sophistication of this earring was still seen through the screen. Under such circumstances, famous gold jewelry stores such as Chow Tai Fook Lao Feng Xiang would never be able to produce such inexplicable jewelry shapes.
It is most likely custom made by the parties.
The ear studs are different from other things. The studs are in contact with the person's ear holes for a long time, and the owner's sweat, secretions, and even skin tissue will be rubbed on them. The investigation of the case can gain some insights.
"To be honest, I'm really a greedy person, and I'm not a good person. I found this earring, and I was going to sell it for some money, so I never gave it to the foreman, but I heard you there that day. Talking to the foreman... I think it might be better to give you this earring."
"It's nothing... My mother went early too, I understand."
—
These two paragraphs became the last message that the waiter left to Xie Qingcheng.
Before Xie Qingcheng arrived at the hot pot restaurant where they had agreed to meet in the afternoon, he saw the sky-high flames burn, and the crowd watching was like a tide, and the sound and heat waves hit his heart. He rushed over and frightened several old aunts and uncles.
"Ouch, what are you squeezing this guy?"
"It's too rash, whose child is this..."
Xie Qingcheng didn't listen to other words. He stood at the front of the crowd of onlookers, and further ahead was the cordon pulled up by the police. He saw the firefighters lift several bodies out of it, and the high-pressure sprinklers kept pouring them on the burning hot pot restaurant...
He stood there stiffly, his eyes blazing with fire.
He knew that he was too late.
What's even more terrifying is that when the rescue was over and the fire went out, he watched with his own eyes the pale body bags wrapped around the remains were carried out. In an instant, Xie Qingcheng was hit by a strong sense of guilt, the feeling was like a tiger in the mountains rushing towards him, hitting his heart hard and roaring beside his auricle.
For the first time, he felt that his investigation was so naive, simple, meaningless, and even harming others - he felt that every corpse was made because of him.
He slumped down at Makou, hugged his shoulders, and clutched tightly in his sweaty palms was the Nokia mobile phone that stored the photos of earrings.
He was too desperate, and the condemnation in his heart was too heavy. He lowered his head and sat on the curb, as if he had lost his soul.
Therefore, he didn't notice that on the street where the crowd had gradually dispersed, there was a black decked private car with a bearded man in a baseball cap sitting in it, lighting a cigarette, and looking at him faintly.
When he finally got up and silently left this ruined field, the private car also started, and followed him on the bus all the way to the residence in the outer ring.
Xie Qingcheng got out of the car and had to walk for a while to get back to the hotel where he lived. He didn't have much money, so he had to save money, so the place where he lived was broken and biased. In the 2000s, the surveillance cameras in Yanzhou were not so dense, especially in the outer ring, where there were many blind spots.
In the dark night, the bearded man tugged at his baseball cap, spat the butt of his cigarette, held the steering wheel and slammed on the accelerator, the lights were dazzling, he collided with Xie Qingcheng's back amid the harsh engine sound. And go! !
Dead silence.
"I was in a car accident." Xie Qingcheng told He Yu in the water-filled studio that this was the first time he had completely uncovered a scar he hadn't touched for a long time, "That person should have He cleaned up the body after the crash, but I noticed him at the last moment and avoided him a bit, not killing him on the spot."
"The wheel was rolling back and forth on my lap and I saw him trying to get out of the car..."
"But at this time, a group of people from the nearby construction site got off work and came back together. They happened to pass by here. The man escaped. He didn't have time to carry me to the car. He only took my mobile phone when he left."
"Afterwards, I was sent to the hospital by those employees... The doctor issued a critical illness notice at that time. I woke up a few times in a blur, but I couldn't feel my body." Xie Qingcheng wrote lightly, "At that time, I I already knew that I was dying."
He talked about his pain and his near-death very lightly, as if it was nothing at all.
Xie Qingcheng's eyes were not touched until the end, after he mentioned the name of an elder.
"While I was waiting to die, I met someone," he said.
—
"Qin Ciyan."