Zhao Jiarui asked: "Why doesn't Brother Biao want you?"
Cheng Ji inserted his ten fingers into his short hair and said in distress, "He is worried about my safety, afraid that I will be harmed like Chen Guangjun and Sister Yu... He seems to think of me as someone who can share wealth but not adversity."
"But you have never been rich." Zhao Jiarui pointed out the obvious fact.
Cheng Ji said: "He is so simple-minded that he thinks that he can exclude me by not recognizing me as his godson. He doesn't even think about the fact that Sister Yu and I didn't meet through him."
Zhao Jiarui nodded. "Yes, Vice President Zhang is a righteous person and is really good to you. When she was watching you at Changkang Hospital, I didn't go there often. I heard that she scolded Wang Beifeng and Chen Chuan a lot, scolding them for bullying orphans and widows. It was so immoral. Once, she almost used a big mop to hit Wang Beifeng."
"When I was in the most difficult time, it was Sister Yu who helped me." Cheng Ji held his chin up and said depressedly, "When people live in this world, they must always take revenge and repay kindness, right? If someone bullies her, can I just ignore it?"
Zhao Jiarui suddenly said: "Go find him!"
"?" Cheng Ji raised his head.
Zhao Jiarui said: "Go talk to Brother Biao and make it clear. You can't just abandon me after having sex with me!"
"That's not how you use the phrase 'seducing and then abandoning'!"
Cheng Ji asked, "You're letting me out again now?"
Zhao Jiarui said, "I didn't let you go out just now because I was afraid you would run around. If you get lost, I'll be scolded by Master Qi. Now I let you go out to win back your father. If you don't have any biological parents, wouldn't it be too pitiful if you can't even keep a godfather? Besides, I'm with you. What's the combat power of the two of us together? At least we can beat 20 people!"
Zhao Jiarui is very kind, a pure little angel.
"What about Lao Qi's inspection?"
Zhao Jiarui was full of confidence: "Mr. Qi will be in the company for quite a while today. It will be fine if we can get back before dark. Bring your cell phone with you and say we are taking a walk on the beach. We won't be afraid of him checking on us!"
Cheng Ji immediately grabbed his coat and said, "Let's go!"
Zhao Jiarui didn't dare to drive. The car was equipped with a GPS, so he could tell where people were at a glance.
Cheng Ji first contacted Lao Geng, asked him where he was, and ordered him to pick him up.
Old Geng was a sentimental man. Although he kept saying it for a long time, he still couldn't bear to let it go, so he agreed.
Cheng Ji and Zhao Jiarui stood at the intersection, stretching their necks to look into the distance. They waited for half an hour and were almost frozen into popsicles. Then they saw an old van rumbling up from the foot of the mountain. It looked like a rotten iron monster spit out by the deep blue sea in the distance, so discordant.
"Godfather." Cheng Ji shouted as soon as he got in the car.
"Master Geng!" Old Geng corrected.
"Brother Biao." Zhao Jiarui shouted.
Old Geng pointed at Zhao Jiarui and said to Cheng Ji: "Learn more from Ruizi, then people won't call me godfather!"
Cheng Ji was so angry that he asked, "Are you stupid?"
Of course Lao Geng would not admit that he was stupid, he only admitted that he was Master Geng.
Cheng Ji was so angry that he asked repeatedly: "You can recognize your son if you want to, and you can refuse to recognize him if you don't want to? Do you think I'm the kind of person who would abandon my brothers and run away at a critical moment? You are not righteous yourself, so you think I am not righteous?"
"Who is not righteous?" Old Geng was angry, "Say it again if you dare!"
"It's agreed that the house will be transferred to me after 30 years, and I'm still waiting," Cheng Ji said, "How dare you deny it!"
Lao Geng burst out laughing.
Zhao Jiarui stuck his head in: "Oh, such a big deal? You have to work hard to live for another 30 years, and you have to ensure that the house does not collapse within 30 years! The old building of your noodle shop is more than 100 years old, it is really difficult to ensure that it does not collapse, right, Brother Biao?"
Cheng Ji also smiled and said, "Master Geng, this is an extraordinary period. We must not mess up. We must unite and discuss everything. I am definitely not the kind of person who turns around and runs away when encountering trouble. Don't treat me the same way you would treat that kind of person, okay?"
"..." Lao Geng's eyes turned red, and he accepted his fate, "Call me godfather!"
Cheng Ji smiled and hit him on the shoulder. He wanted to fight back, but Zhao Jiarui stopped him.
"You can't hit him." Zhao Jiarui said sternly, "You need my permission before you can hit him!"
Old Geng glared and asked, "Are you his bodyguard now?"
Zhao Jiarui nodded: "Even if he had a chipped nail on his little finger, Young Master Qi would ask me for it."
Old Geng turned around and complained to Cheng Ji, saying that he had told you not to keep someone like Qi Beisong at home. Not being able to support him was a small matter, and bringing him outside and attracting attention was also a small matter. It was too troublesome to be so busy with his affairs. If you continue like this, I don't think you will live past thirty!
Cheng Ji said you shouldn’t be such a pessimist.
Lao Geng said I told you to go to Huangshan Temple to ask the old monk to tell your fortune. This is science. You must believe in science. There can be no falsehood in science! How did you run into Master Qi? There must be something wrong with your horoscope...
Cheng Ji finally managed to bring the topic back from science and told Lao Geng about Manager Zhou's disappearance. The latter was so frightened that his eyes widened and he kept asking if it was true.
"It's true."
Lao Geng yelled, "Then hurry up and find it!"
"The problem is where to find him," Cheng Ji worried. "Even the police can't find him!"
Lao Geng said, "I have a solution!" and jumped out of the car.
Cheng Ji thought he was going to gather many of his friends to look for someone, but he didn't expect him to say after getting in the car: "I asked the old monk from Huangshan Temple to tell my fortune, and now I know where Manager Zhou is!"
"… "
Zhao Jiarui became interested and asked, "Where is Zhou Zhiwen?"
Lao Geng said seriously: "I have forgotten what the old monk said in a flowery way, but we were in the water anyway."
"In the water?" Cheng Ji vaguely felt that this was not a good sign.
Lao Geng said: "Science guides you forward, so we have to go to the sea to rescue Manager Zhou!"
Cheng Ji hit him on the head with his elbow and yelled, "Godfather, are you sick?!"
Lao Geng covered his head and asked, "Then where do you say it is?"
Cheng Ji pointed out the car window and said, "His car has never come down from Shuiyue Mountain. If you don't go to the mountain to look for it, why are you fishing in the sea?!"
Lao Geng said, "If we don't go and fish it out, what if it gets washed away by the ocean current?"
Cheng Ji shouted: "Go to Shuiyue Villa!!"
In fact, it is unlikely that Manager Zhou is still staying in Shuiyue Villa, but it is better than staying in the sea.
When the car was halfway there, Qi Beisong indeed checked the post. Cheng Ji lied and said that he was walking on the beach with Zhao Jiarui and was shooting seagulls with a slingshot. Qi Beisong reminded him not to be swept away by the waves, to pay attention to protecting animals, and also why he was out in the cold wind, so he should go home early.
The three of them drove into the gate of Shuiyue Mountain and went up along the winding mountain road.
There was a moderate snowfall last night, the vegetation in the mountains was covered in white, the air was biting and the chill was overwhelming.
Lao Geng's old van was originally underpowered, and it had difficulty climbing the hill in cold weather. It broke down just after turning two corners.
Cheng Ji and Zhao Jiarui came down cursing and pushed the cart. After pushing it for dozens of meters, they couldn't move it any further, so they had to stop on a small open space near the cliff.
The handbrake of the broken car didn't work very well. In order to prevent it from sliding down the cliff, Cheng Ji found some stones to prop up the tires.
Zhao Jiarui panted and said, "Cheng'er, does the deal between you and Brother Biao include this car? If he says he will transfer the car to you after 30 years, you must not take it!"
Cheng Ji was sweating from pushing the cart. The cold wind made his scalp tight. He smiled bitterly and said, "Go away."
Without a car, they had to walk. Lao Geng refused to move forward, but Cheng Ji insisted on going on. In the end, Cheng Ji won.
The three of them walked back and forth on the road against the wind, with their necks hunched. The huge Shuiyue Mountain was empty except for them. There was not even a shadow of a car. The only sounds they could hear were the rustling of the wind through the treetops and the crunching of their shoes on the snow.
There is a landscape planning near Shuiyue Mountain Highway. The areas where evergreen trees are planted, flowering trees are planted, bamboos are planted, and shrubs are all designed. So even though it is cold along the way, it doesn't look bleak.
After walking a few more kilometers and approaching the top of a small hill, they could already see Shuiyue Villa on the sunny side of another small hill. Old Geng was filled with resentment: "At this speed, it will be dark by the time we reach Shuiyue Villa!"
"Godfather, just leave quickly." Cheng Ji advised.
Lao Geng was angry: "I told you to go to the sea, but you didn't listen to me!"
Cheng Ji asked: "Have you ever read a detective novel?"
"What do you mean?"
“In novels, when looking for someone, one always starts from the place where the person disappeared.”
Lao Geng complained: "It's unscientific. This isn't a novel. This is reality!"
Cheng Ji suddenly said, "I remember there were railings on the outside of this winding mountain road. Why are they all removed now?"
Are there railings? Neither Zhao Jiarui nor Lao Geng noticed.
Cheng Ji has a good memory. He was sure there was an iron railing, and he also remembered that when driving at night, the car lights shining on the reflective plate of the railing appeared as a yellow fluorescent light.
They saw a sign near the top of the mountain and learned that a landscape improvement project was underway, and that imitation wood fencing was to be installed, scheduled to be completed on a certain date. Perhaps the bad weather affected the construction schedule, so the old fence had been removed and the new one had not been installed.
This didn't seem like a big deal until they came across some messy tire tracks around a sharp turn.
The tire tracks were mostly covered by ice and snow and were not very obvious. The only reason they were discovered was because the three of them were standing on them. If they were still driving, they would probably have missed them.
They swept away some of the floating snow on the tire tracks and saw that intermittent tracks suddenly turned from the road to the roadside. Two of them seemed to rush towards the cliff, but were cut off halfway.
The cliff has a drop of about 50 to 60 meters, with a slope of 70 to 80 degrees, and is covered with shrubs. Below the cliff is a long and narrow valley with a large number of camphor trees.
Camphor trees are evergreen all the year round, and they stand tall and majestic even in winter. More than ten acres of camphor trees meander through the valley, and in summer they look like a green river. Now it snows, and everything below the forest is covered in white.
If there was a railing nearby, we would know whether the car had fallen over, because it would definitely have broken the fence, but unfortunately there was no railing.
Cheng Ji asked Lao Geng: "Can you tell what kind of car these tracks are?"
When Lao Geng was first released from prison, he worked as a car mechanic, repairing most minor car problems.
"It's not a small car." Lao Geng measured the tire tracks with his stride and said, "The tires are so wide, it must have been modified."
Cheng Ji asked: "What car does Manager Zhou drive?"
"Do you suspect that Manager Zhou's car fell down?" Lao Geng said.
"I'm just asking casually." Cheng Ji said.
Old Geng recalled: "His car was an SUV, black... Yes, I saw him off when he left the clinic that day. It was a fully imported car of a certain brand, quite sturdy and expensive!"
Cheng nodded: "I want to go down."
"What?" Old Geng glared, "Are you serious?"
Cheng Ji said, "This trace is not normal. I will not feel at ease if I don't go down to take a look. Anyway, we can be back and forth within an hour."
Lao Geng disagreed, but Zhao Jiarui agreed: "Cheng'er, I'll go too!"
"What the hell! Are you two crazy for climbing a cliff in the snow?!"
Cheng Ji asked, "Godfather, are you waiting upstairs, or are you coming down with us?"
"… "
Although Lao Geng was arrogant, he was still willing to follow the action. The three of them held each other's hands and climbed down the slope. Zhao Jiarui was agile and faster, Cheng Ji was in the middle, and Lao Geng was at the end.
After climbing down only ten meters, I heard Zhao Jiarui shouting. It turned out that he found a piece of the headlight casing.
But this place is located next to the highway, and all kinds of car parts will fall from it over time. A piece of red plastic can't prove anything.
Continuing to search further down, Cheng Ji found the entire bumper of the vehicle in the bushes filled with snow.
The bumper is black, you can't tell the car model, and the corners are broken, which is a bit difficult to explain.
Further down, there were not many debris and most of the traces were covered by snow.
Finally reaching the bottom of the valley, the three of them entered the camphor forest one after another. After taking a few steps, they suddenly saw a big tree that was severely damaged!
There was a pile of dead branches and rotten leaves next to the tree, more than half a person's height. The three of them hurried over and took a quick look into the pile of rotten leaves, and they found the severely damaged black SUV!
The car was tilted on its side, with its front end squeezed, its rear end collapsed, its roof flattened, its windows shattered, and its license plate removed. However, it was still possible to tell that the make and model of the car was exactly the same as Manager Zhou's.
Lao Geng fell to his feet and yelled, "It's his!"
He leaned on the car window and shouted, "Manager Zhou! Manager Zhou! Are you in there?"
This question is obviously too optimistic. Although this brand of car is known to be strong, it has rolled down from a height of dozens of meters and has turned over countless times. Even if the driver is made of iron, he would have been dented.
Without any tools, they quickly cleared the debris and leaves around the car body with their bare hands. Those things were not originally piled there.
They finally understood why a car that had overturned had not been discovered for such a long time. First of all, it was due to the right time and place - it was snowing, Shuiyue Mountain was sparsely populated, and there were no fences along the mountain road; secondly, someone had already dealt with the scene. If Cheng Ji had not insisted on going down to the bottom of the cliff, the car might not have been discovered by the time the snow melted!
"I knew it was a bad omen! We must believe in science!" Old Geng's attitude changed 180 degrees and he shouted, "Sure enough, it's here!"
"But this is not in the water!" said Zhao Jiarui.
"Shuiyue Mountain, water!" said Lao Geng.
Cheng Ji lay on the ground, holding his cell phone and shining as much light as he could into the car, but he didn't see anyone, only some stains, probably blood.
Before he could see clearly, his cell phone rang. Qi Beisong checked again: "Where are you, wife? Why do I feel like you're not at the beach?"
Cheng Ji didn't care about his scolding anymore and said, "Call the police quickly! I found Manager Zhou's car!"
Qi Beisong asked what happened, Cheng Ji explained it in a few words and sent him the cell phone location.
Qi Beisong said decisively: "I understand."
He also instructed: "Just wait here and don't go anywhere!"
Just as Cheng Ji was about to answer, he heard Lao Geng screaming in the woods: "Manager Zhou!!!!"
He and Zhao Jiarui quickly ran towards the sound and saw Lao Geng sitting on the ground with his finger pointed upwards. The two looked up and found the body hanging on the thick branch of the tree.
—After being hung for so long, even though it’s cold winter now, he doesn’t look good anymore.
His body was covered in blood, with a rope around his neck and his feet about 1.5 meters off the ground. It was obvious that he did not hang himself.
The north wind blew through the forest, and the corpse turned slightly with it.
However, when I turned around, I found that it was not Manager Zhou, but Mao Xiaowei.
Cheng Ji fell to the ground with a thud. Zhao Jiarui was unable to hold him up, so he hurriedly hugged him and said, "Are you okay?!"
“…” Cheng Ji’s handsome face turned pale.
He had always been calm and composed, but at this moment, he was almost scared out of his wits. He rested his forehead on Zhao Jiarui's shoulder and breathed evenly. After a long while, he said, "Don't... don't take him down, let the police take him down..."
"I know!" Zhao Jiarui nodded, "We can't destroy the scene!"
"Manager Zhou!!!" Old Geng pounded the ground and howled, "The old monk said it was in the water! It was in the water! How could it be true? How could it be so effective?! Manager Zhou, you saved my Xiaojun's life, and I haven't had the chance to repay you yet. Your death was so unjust!!"
Cheng Ji's legs were too weak to stand up, so he picked up a small stone and threw it at him: "Stop... stop yelling! You almost scared me to death! This is... the second time it's happened! Open your presbyopic eyes and look carefully!!"
Old Geng took a closer look and said, "Huh?"
He stumbled towards Cheng Ji, mumbling incoherently: "Who the hell is this dead person??!"
Cheng Ji held his heart that was about to jump out: "This... This is the drug dealer... Mao Xiaowei..."
"What about Manager Zhou?!" Lao Geng asked.
A voice so weak that it was almost inaudible not far away said, "... here..."
Lao Geng pounced again: "The drug dealer is faking his death!!!"
"..." Cheng Ji pointed to the side and said, "Ruizi, hurry... go and have a look!"
Zhao Jiarui pulled him up, and the two of them stumbled over and saw another small cliff, about two meters deep. There was a naturally formed gully under the cliff, and the snow was very thick. A weak voice shouted under the snow: "Here... Here..."
Cheng Ji and Zhao Jiarui quickly climbed down the cliff and shoveled out the snow and fallen leaves with their bare hands. Lao Geng joined in soon after, and after shoveling only 20 to 30 centimeters, they saw Manager Zhou's face.
His face was covered in stains and blood, and he looked disheveled, with two rows of white teeth showing when he smiled.
Cheng Ji immediately reached out to pull him, and he whispered, "I can't move... My legs and ribs are broken."
He was barely breathing: "Oh, Cheng Cheng, I thought I was dead... Then I thought of some earthquake survivors who were rescued after being buried under the rubble for five, seven, or even ten days... I was only under the soft dead leaves for two days... And I had warm clothes, snow water, and a few candies to replenish my energy. How could I lose hope?"
He smiled at Cheng Ji: "Thank you for saving my life... I was right about you."
Cheng Ji's eyes were filled with tears: "Save your energy and don't talk, wait for the emergency personnel to come!"
"Okay, you stay with me..."
"I'm guarding here!" Cheng Ji knelt beside the ditch, "I'm not going anywhere!"
"Very good, very good." Manager Zhou said, "I feel relieved to have you here, I am so happy..."
Lao Geng lay on his stomach and asked, "Manager Zhou, what's wrong with you?"
Cheng Ji stopped him: "Don't ask, there's no rush."
Although Manager Zhou was weak, he was still in good spirits. He said, "It's okay. I want to say something... I just ate the last piece of chocolate and I have the energy to talk. Can you guys listen to my story?"
Cheng Ji said, "I know everything."
Manager Zhou asked: "Do you know that I helped Mao Xiaowei turn himself in?"
"Um."
In order to keep Manager Zhou warm, Cheng Ji piled the fallen leaves that he had cleared back into the pile and took off his coat to cover him.
He quickly checked Manager Zhou's physical condition - there were some external injuries, two of which were quite deep, and a fractured left leg. Fortunately, the broken bones did not pierce the skin, and the internal injuries were unknown. But Manager Zhou was conscious, so it was estimated that the internal injuries were not serious.
Manager Zhou said: "Then guess how I survived the disaster."
"You say!" Lao Geng wanted to hear it.
Manager Zhou said: "Mao Xiaowei wanted to turn himself in, so he gave me the stuff... I handed it to the front desk and told the girl to mail it out at dawn. Then I drove him out the east side gate to the police station... Halfway through the road, we were blocked by two cars, one in front and one behind."
"The other party had a gun, and I lost control of the car... and it rolled down a steep slope. Fortunately, I was wearing a seat belt and was wearing warm clothes, and the car was quite powerful, so I was conscious all the way to the bottom of the slope."
Zhao Jiarui pushed Lao Geng and said, "Brother Biao, you have to buy a good car. If it were your car, let alone rolling down a cliff of dozens of meters, someone would die if they went down two steps!"
Old Geng was furious: "Bullshit! The kid has learned bad things and actually slandered me!"
Manager Zhou smiled and continued, "As soon as the car hit the bottom, I climbed out as hard as I could and hid in this ditch with my broken leg. It turned out that my judgment was right. Less than five minutes after I hid, I heard the voices of the murderers. As for what they did, I had no idea. I fainted from the pain."
"How long have you been unconscious?" Cheng Ji asked.
Manager Zhou said: "I don't know how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, it was pitch black and terribly quiet. I couldn't move, and I didn't dare to go out, let alone contact rescue..."
Cheng Ji interrupted: "Did you lose your phone?"
"It's lost." Manager Zhou said, "I thought this ditch was where I would be buried, but I didn't expect that the god of luck would still favor me."
He thanked them again: "Thank you, especially Cheng Cheng."
Old Geng said in a gruff voice: "Why thank him? Thank the old monk!"
"Old monk?" Manager Zhou asked.
Zhao Jiarui shook his head: "No, we should thank Cheng'er. If we had listened to the old monk, we would still be fishing in the sea now!"
"Do you have any cigarettes?" Cheng Ji asked, "Give Brother Zhou one to calm him down."
Zhao Jiarui didn't have the habit of carrying cigarettes with him, but Lao Geng took out a pack. The three of them sat down, and Manager Zhou lay down, celebrating their survival together.
Cheng Ji lowered his head so low that his hands were shaking so much that he could hardly hold the cigarette.
Manager Zhou called him, "Cheng Cheng, what's wrong? I'm fine, right?"
Cheng Ji is this kind of person. He remains calm and resourceful when faced with a situation, but becomes more and more afraid the more he thinks about it afterwards.
He raised his face, tears in his eyes, and then lowered it again.
He choked up: "Sister Yu scared me once, and you scared me again... If you scare me like this again, I won't live anymore. Three times is the limit, don't do this again..."
He asked Zhao Jiarui: "Is Qi Beisong coming?"
Zhao Jiarui was unsure: "He should come, why do we need him to come?"
Cheng Ji looked away, his nose red, tears rolling down his cheeks: "I miss him... Shouldn't I cry to my wife at a time like this?"