Chu Jiajun: If I don't want to marry you, then I won't get married.
Ji Yongtao: If you say this to others, people will think you are sick.
Chu Jiajun: And then?
Ji Yongtao: You can't read this book anymore, and I can't stay in my unit anymore. Let's go out together.
Chu Jiajun: You're taking me with you even if it means starving me? Okay.
Chu Jiajun: Forget about starving. If you have no other choice but to steal or rob, I can go with you.
Ji Yongtao was helpless: "How dare you rob me? If you kill a girl tomorrow, I'll see you scared to death."
Chu Jiajun: I'm not going to cause trouble for a girl's life. If I have to make trouble, I'll make it a big one.
Ji Yongtao: How big is it?
Chu Jiajun: I will make trouble for all the people in the country who can speak English, so that schools don't have to take English exams.
Ji Yongtao remembered: Did you take an English test in college last time? What was your score?
Chu Jiajun: Ninety-five!
The train started moving, and Chu Jiajun hid among the crowd who were seeing him off and left with a smile.
-
During Ji Yongtao's business trip, Chu Jiajun would sometimes wander around the school, sometimes go to the kitchen of a western-style restaurant, and plan his plans by looking at a map on the wall. Sometimes he would stroll along the Ai Ya River, staring blankly at the children digging for loaches in the river.
Chen Weimin had "disappeared" from the guesthouse. Only after the portrait artist arrived and went to look for Chen Weimin would they discover he was missing. Even if Ji Yongtao got the news while out of town, it would take him several days to get back.
He yawned and went to the video store to buy a bunch of tapes and videos. Ji Yongtao only had a tape recorder at home, so Chu Jiajun bought a stereo. When he came back and asked about it, he said it was a replacement from the store where he worked.
The wires in the speakers are made of gold so that the sound quality is good.
He had always wanted to get Ji Yongtao to go to the steakhouse in the Friendship Store, but a meal there cost 60 yuan, and that guy definitely wouldn't go. Chu Jiajun had been there a few times and asked if they could get takeout. Next time, he would take it home and pair it with steak and red wine.
He then got some "foreign money" from a vendor outside a supermarket. Foreign money could buy high-end imported windbreakers. In the supermarket window, there were two Italian camel-colored genuine leather lining windbreakers that he had been eyeing for a long time. Ji Yongtao's leather jacket was almost completely stained by cigarette smoke, and the pockets were filled with ash. He couldn't stand it anymore.
Back at the Ai Ya He residential complex, Chu Jiajun realized he had forgotten his keys. He always forgot to bring them, so Ji Yongtao would leave the door open for him when he was home.
Now that man is on a business trip, he can't get into the house.
He wanted to pick the lock and get in, but the neighbors coming and going behind him were all Ji Yongtao's colleagues, so he couldn't concentrate on his work at all.
Finally, I found the local tyrant "Film" and contacted the local "Lock King", who was said to be able to open a lock in three seconds.
When Lock King heard that it was Aiyahe Community, he didn't want to go there because he knew it was a police dormitory.
Chu Jiajun, sipping a Coke straw, smashed the entire bottle against the wall when he heard he couldn't go. Film yelled, "Are you crazy?! If you keep causing trouble here, you won't be able to get anyone in City A!"
Chu Jiajun stayed in the most upscale Gaoxing Guest House for a few days and ate the "A City KFC" invented in the Gaoxing kitchen for a few days. It is said that the taste of the KFC was based on the one in Qianmen.
In the end, I had no choice but to go home and stand in front of the locked door, feeling sad.
A familiar voice came from behind: Xiaofei, what's wrong?
——It was Liu Wei De who had just gotten off work.
Liu Weide lives in Room 702.
Chu Jiajun pouted and said: I forgot to bring my keys.
Liu Weide: It's okay, it's simple. Just wait for Xiao Wu from Room 04 to come back and then climb over from his balcony.
Liu Weide: This is nothing. If you have any trouble, just go to the police. There are police everywhere here, so what are you afraid of?
Several people borrowed the balcony of Room 04 and climbed up to Room 05 to help him open the door. The room was dark and eerily quiet.
Chu Jiajun stayed alone in the living room for a while, then turned on the TV. At this hour, all the channels were showing Dream of the Red Chamber. Outside, two men were arguing about who was prettier, the woman who played Xue Baochai or Yamaguchi Hsueh.
Chu Jiajun: Brother Yong, which one do you think looks better?
No answer. He remembered that Ji Yongtao was on a business trip. He was the only one at home.
Chu Jiajun turned on all the lights in the house, including the TV and stereo. He ran to Ji Yongtao's bedroom, pulled out the man's quilt, draped it over himself, and ran around the room. When he was exhausted, he wrapped himself in the quilt and fell asleep on the floor.
After sleeping for a while, the phone rang.
Chu Jiajun woke up from his sleep and stayed there for a long time before he fumbled to answer the phone.
It was that person's voice on the other end of the phone.
Ji Yongtao: Are you at home?
Ji Yongtao: No work? No going out with your girlfriend?
Ji Yongtao: Let me tell you, I'm there now. I'm calling you from the county guesthouse.
Ji Yongtao: I'm going into the mountains tomorrow, so I might not get a call. How's home? Is everything okay?
Chu Jiajun: Not good.
Ji Yongtao: What's wrong with it?
Chu Jiajun: I always forget to bring my keys.
Ji Yongtao laughed softly: Go to sleep at my girlfriend's house.
Chu Jiajun: I don't have a girlfriend, this is my only family.
Ji Yongtao: You will have it.
Chu Jiajun: No more, just a home. If you don't come back and open the door for me, I'll go begging on the street.
Ji Yongtao: No more shouting about robbing banks?
Chu Jiajun: Didn't you say I didn't want to cause you any trouble?
Ji Yongtao: I'm on a business trip. If you go and grab it now, you'll cause trouble for Old Liu. Go ahead.
Chu Jiajun: Really? Then I'll go.
Ji Yongtao: Well, grab more, and I'll kill you when I come back.
Ji Yongtao hung up the phone with a smile and returned to his room in the guesthouse. He also sat alone in the room, staring blankly at the TV.
Chu Jiajun couldn't sleep, so he went out for a run along the riverbank. Ahead of him, a dog was rummaging through a trash can. Chu Jiajun ran past it, then ran back, squatting down to look at the stray dog.
He brought the dog home, washed it, and fell asleep with it wrapped in Ji Yongtao's quilt.
——
To be continued
Love River Mystery: Bound Ears 9
We changed to a freight train from the station in City Z to Pingyang County, and then changed to a car to go into the mountains. The colleague who came with Ji Yongtao was already suffering from malaria, probably because the water in this place was not very clean.
The mountain village was shrouded in a gray fog, devoid of sunlight. The soil here was alkaline, and as I walked along the ridges of the fields, I saw scattered, sparse crops lying flat on the ground, their leaves a grayish, burnt yellow.
Villagers were rarely seen outside, and only old, gray faces could be seen in the dilapidated wooden houses. The guide pointed in the direction of the county. Most of the villagers had been relocated. This place was humid, the soil and water quality were poor, and the nearest health center was twenty miles away.
Guide: Li Village seems to have only about 70 people. It used to be called Lijia Village, and half of the people there have the surname Li.
Guide: The Chu family moved away a long time ago. The two brothers split up. The eldest brother gambled and eventually died of alcoholism. The second brother moved to the county town four years ago, leaving behind an empty house.
Ji Yongtao: Are the empty houses of both families still there?
Guide: They are all here. Nothing is left behind. If you look quickly, we can take the market bus back to the county guesthouse tonight.
The house of the second son of the Chu family was already very dilapidated, probably because it had been idle for too long; but when the guide took them to the door of the house of the eldest son of the Chu family, the two of them sighed at the same time.
It could hardly be called a house anymore. It didn't even have a door, and years of disuse had caused rainwater erosion, leaving this structure, made of straw sheds and rotten wooden planks, half collapsed.
A removed door panel was thrown into the poultry pen. Back then, Chu Jiajun's mother was beaten and her waist was broken by debt collectors. Someone helped remove the door panel and let her lie on it. She died three days later.
The guide's father, returning to collect rice stalks and chicken manure, recalled that the child didn't cry, but simply followed the door panel, likely hungry, sucking its mother's finger. The debt collectors had originally held the child at the Chu family's house, but after a few days, they felt the place was too shabby. One of them said they would hold the child until the man returned; the other, believing Chu's father wouldn't return, simply took the child away.
Guide: They just put him in a sack and took him away. The villagers helped with his mother's funeral.
Ji Yongtao: Do you know who that group of people is?
Some people said that they were several men from the neighboring village who made a living by collecting debts. Two of them were executed a few years ago, and another was imprisoned and released last year.
Ji Yongtao followed the clues and prepared to go to the next village to investigate - this "next village" was seventy miles away. He exchanged a tricycle for an ox cart and finally walked over the mountain.
When I arrived, the other party's relatives told me that "he had already gone to the county town", so it was a wasted trip.
Ji Yongtao looked inside the house, nodded, and prepared to leave. After taking a few steps, he suddenly bypassed the front door and headed for the back door. After chasing for about five or six hundred meters, he tackled the fleeing man at the entrance of the forest.
The temperature in the mountain village was six degrees lower than in the city, and the night wind howled, but the window of this house was open. Obviously, the family heard someone coming to the door to inquire about the situation and immediately let the person jump out the window and run away.
After being taken back to the local police station for interrogation, it turned out that this man was indeed guilty - last month, after the market was over, he took advantage of the night to molest and rob a woman who was returning to her hometown, and he was worried that she would call the police.
-
When asked about the events of that year, You Jisheng was evasive. Ji Yongtao and his team had traveled a long way to stay with him until two in the morning, but they really didn't have the time to waste, so they asked the local joint defense officers to help him "clear his mind."
After half an hour of investigation, You Jisheng was finally willing to talk. Even the chairs in the interrogation room had been knocked over into a corner, and the man crouched dejectedly on the other side: "I really didn't participate much back then. My two cousins who were executed asked me to follow them. I followed them when they bullied people, and I followed them when they beat people up."
You Jisheng: There were people who couldn't pay off their debts and had to sell their children. I can't remember their names, but there were actually only a few buyers.
You Jisheng: There was a woman in the market who beat up little kids. She was one of them. She took children from us and sold them in the market. But she was shot...
Ji Yongtao: She accepts both men and women?
You Jisheng: Yes, we accept both. The smaller ones for boys are more expensive, while the larger ones for girls are more expensive.
Ji Yongtao: Do you remember the incident in Li Village? They beat the mother to death and took the child away in a sack.
Yuji was silent.
Ji Yongtao: We're not here to investigate you for beating someone to death. The two members of your gang who did that were executed a few years ago. We're investigating that child, who's around 20 years old.
You Jisheng didn't dare to believe him. If Ji Yongtao turned around and reported someone to death, he would also be executed.
Ji Yongtao: Do you know who this kid is now? — Xiao Zhang, bring me the newspaper that reported on "Facebook."
There were dozens of thick newspapers about Facebook's serious crimes.
Ji Yongtao: We're protecting you. If there's a rumor out there that someone was involved in the murder of Chu Jiajun's mother, maybe he'll come looking for you himself.
Half an hour later, Youji confessed.
You Jisheng: The child was too thin at that time, and Aunt Wan refused to take him in, so she kept him in the gambling club.
You Jisheng: A big customer came to visit, saw him, and said he wanted to buy him to be his "godson", so he bought him.
Ji Yongtao: Who is the big customer?
You Jisheng: He had a lot of cases at that time. His name was Li Dapeng.
The police officer who was taking their statements at the local police station looked up: Li Dapeng, he was a well-known highway robber around here more than ten years ago. He committed countless crimes. He robbed trucks and cooperatives along the highway in our area, helped people in revenge killings, participated in fights in villages selling Magu to seize territory, and also robbed trains - the most famous case was robbing a train.
Ji Yongtao: Is it the Peng character with the bird radical? Is it the one from the 1984 train murder?
Police: Yes, in 1984, his gang, a total of seven people, hijacked a train. Later, more than 190 passengers on the entire freight train were killed, and only a few who jumped out of the window survived.
Ji Yongtao: He died on that train, I remember. This case is extremely heinous.
Police: It was an internal conflict, within his gang—he and five other accomplices were beaten to death by one of their own gang members before they could get off the train. One gangster killed six of his own, and their bodies were dragged along the tracks behind the train, shattering them to pieces. The investigators were stunned.
Ji Yongtao muttered to himself: When did Facebook commit its first crime?
The earliest newspaper used to scare Youjisheng was from January 1986.
-
Chu Jiajun had a very distant dream.
Perhaps it was Chen Weimin's appearance that slowly brought back the past. He dreamed that at the end of 1984, he braved the heavy snow to find his way back to Li Village and knocked on his uncle's door.
——Since there was no one at home, he went to look for his uncle.
My uncle said, "Your father drank himself to death. You haven't come back for so many years, where have you been?"
Chu Jiajun didn't say anything.
My uncle said, "If you don't explain clearly, I can't keep you here. If you are bought as a son by another family, what will you do if they come looking for you?"
Chu Jiajun: He won't come to my house again.
Uncle: You said you can't do it, right? Did you run away from someone else's house?
Uncle: I can't keep you here. Take these fifteen dollars and go. Your parents' graves are by the pond three miles east of the village. Go and kowtow to them.
Chu Jiajun took the fifteen yuan and left. He found two dilapidated graves beside a pond outside the village. The wooden boards on the tombstones were rotten.
He took out two bloody gold chains from his pocket, threw them on the grave, and left without looking back, covered in wounds.
For some reason, this dream made him very sad. In his dream, he curled up and cried, as if all the snow that night was caused by his tears. Chu Jiajun didn't understand the reason for his sadness, but whenever he thought of the scene of the door being closed, his heart felt like it was being crushed by a stone.
Suddenly, someone pushed him.
The instinct formed over the years made him tense up, and he reached under the pillow to feel for the gun - but he touched something warm.
Chu Jiajun opened his eyes. Ji Yongtao was squatting beside the cot, looking at him worriedly. The man's hand reached under his pillow, as if trying to pull it away and make him turn his face.
He held Ji Yongtao's wrist tightly, and the strength he exerted in holding it was astonishing.
Ji Yongtao: Xiaofei, I'm back. You're having a nightmare. What are you shouting about?
Chu Jiajun: ...what did I... yell...
Ji Yongtao: What do you mean by "Don't kill me"? Did you watch something you shouldn't have?
Chu Jiajun stared at him blankly, and suddenly realized that the Ji Yongtao in front of him was real. This man had returned from a business trip, and it was now 5:30 in the morning.
Ji Yongtao told him to continue sleeping. His luggage was piled beside the sofa, giving off the smell of fatigue from the journey.
He took a shower to wash off the strange smell. When he came out wrapped in a bath towel, Xu Fei was already awake, squatting on the sofa in a daze.
Ji Yongtao: I heard some news and rushed back. Were you scared?
Chu Jiajun hummed. He could roughly guess that the so-called "news" probably referred to Chen Weimin's disappearance.
Ji Yongtao pulled the luggage over: I brought some local specialties, which are just right for your breakfast.
Chu Jiajun: Food?
Ji Yongtao: Well, it's a flatbread made from some kind of straw husk…it's considered a specialty, not very delicious, but you've definitely never eaten it.
A cloth bag was tossed into Chu Jiajun's arms. He opened it, revealing several dusty flatbreads. A feeling of nausea washed over him—this was a specialty of Pingyang County, called ash cakes. Because they weren't wealthy enough to make cakes with grain, they made these from scraps like corn shavings, wheat bran, bean hulls, and straw ash.
Ji Yongtao's voice came from the kitchen: "It's a bit rough, but it's quite fragrant after chewing it for a long time. How many do you want? I'll start the fire."
Chu Jiajun: You eat it, I'll just give you a bite to taste it...
Ji Yongtao steamed it, and now it's probably steamed in the local area as well. Chu Jiajun remembered that this thing can actually be eaten raw - the reason for this is that it can be eaten raw, without wasting firewood on the fire.
Ji Yongtao came out with a plate of steamed buns. Chu Jiajun didn't want to eat them, so she went downstairs to buy some mutton buns. Ji Yongtao saw a dog in the living room.
-
The matter of raising a dog was something they were supposed to discuss carefully, but with Chen Weimin missing and Chen Xiaohu about to be dragged out for public display, Ji Yongtao didn't have time to argue with him about it.
Ji Yongtao said, if you pick it up, you call it Xiaofei and it will be called Dafei.
Ji Yongtao: You are responsible for walking it, feeding it, taking care of it and seeing it to the end of its life. If the house is dirty, only one of you and the dog can stay.
He was leaving. Today, the truck carrying Chen Xiaohu and several other serious criminals would depart from the north of the city, pass through Chunfeng Square in the middle, and then leave the city to change vehicles and go to the execution ground.
If they want to rob someone, they usually do it when they are changing cars out of the city.
Chu Jiajun thought, they must have fallen into an ambush.
Those who were arrested earlier or later than him were all put on display a few days ago, but this person was only executed today. It must be because he was able to complete the plan today.
The focus of the trap must be the car-changing process, with key precautions and a tight net.