Chapter 147

How did A-Zhen die?

The official explanation was that she died from a rockfall.

According to the police's subsequent questioning of A-Qiang and media interviews, the course of events as he described it was roughly as follows:

The two, having received guidance from the master, fled the haunted courtyard in a hurry. Taking advantage of the fact that it wasn't completely dark yet, they ran away without daring to look back. When they returned to the place where they had parked outside the town, they found that the car A-Qiang had parked there had disappeared, and the empty ground was covered only with withered grass.

Having experienced the strange events just now, the two were already on edge. A terrified A-Zhen subconsciously began to loudly blame A-Qiang, crying and scolding that it was all because he hadn't locked the car properly that it had been stolen. Although she knew in her heart that they had checked it together repeatedly when they parked.

Rationally, she knew this was wrong, that it was throwing a tantrum and being unreasonable, but suppressed emotions needed to be vented, and the fear in her heart needed to be eased. And by throwing a tantrum and losing her temper at the man to gain emotional value to balance her distorted mental state, this was almost a physiological instinct carved deep into the genes of every woman, having long since formed a path dependency.

When her emotions were unstable, only by scolding the man could her mood be eased slightly.

A-Qiang knew this very well, so he ignored A-Zhen's unreasonable behavior. A-Qiang kept saying 'yes yes, okay okay, I was wrong, I was wrong' while retracing his memory to the place where they had parked earlier—he remembered clearly that to make it easier to find on the return trip, he had specifically looked for a reference point when parking and had parked the car under the shade of an old oil-tea tree outside the town.

At this very moment, that oil-tea tree was still there, and on the soft sand under the tree's shade, the tire tracks they had made when they drove up were clearly visible, but the car parked under the tree was gone.

No, it wasn't just the car that was gone.

A-Qiang, carrying his travel bag, squatted down and called A-Zhen, who had finished scolding, over, pointing out the tire tracks under the tree to her: "Look, tire tracks. These were all made when we came. If the car had been driven away by someone else, there should be new tire tracks around, but there aren't."

What does this mean?

It means that either some strange, supernatural phenomenon occurred here, making a car disappear into thin air, or someone flew in by helicopter and airlifted their car away directly, which is why no tire tracks were left.

A-Qiang felt that compared to someone flying in to steal a car, the possibility of it being haunted was greater.

"Call the police."

"Mm."

A-Zhen, who had been hitting and scolding A-Qiang just a moment ago, now appeared exceptionally well-behaved. She fished out a backup phone from her backpack and tried to dial the fire department—in places like this, the fire department's response speed is far faster than that of the regular police.

The sunset slowly descended. The phone in A-Zhen's hand rang three times, but the fire department call did not go through.

She wanted to try again, but when she looked up, she saw the 【No Signal】 icon on the phone's status bar.

"How could..."

A-Zhen was stunned.

"Hold—hold on, let me interrupt here."

In the livestream room, Brother Deep Affection, in his blue plaid suit, interrupted Du Diao Hanjiang's narrative, leaned his face toward the camera, and said: "In A-Qiang's account, they were forced to stay in Zanjü Town because the car was gone and they had no means of transportation. A-Zhen's phone call logs indeed showed several failed attempts to call the police."

"But according to the police's subsequent investigation, their car had been parked in the same spot under the oil-tea tree the whole time, with no signs of being moved. As for the claim about the tire tracks, it could not be verified because shortly after A-Zhen failed to call the police, it started to rain."

"The soil near Zanjü Town is soft sand, and a heavy rain easily washed away all the tire tracks, so A-Qiang's claim that 'the car disappeared into thin air' can only be taken as a reference; its truth cannot be verified." "I'm done." Brother Deep Affection clapped his hands after speaking, signaling that Du Diao Hanjiang could continue.

At this time, Park Changfan had already gotten off the bed and was sitting in front of the computer, using split-screen to watch both livestream rooms at the same time—there was no help for it, the style on the female host's side was truly too exaggerated, and they were all jumpy even when showing a photo of bloodstains released by the police. The experience of listening to the story was far less smooth than on the male host's side. But the male host's side didn't have long white legs and silk stockings to look at, so if he wanted both, he had to watch both.

——The photo released by the female host's side was reprinted from media reports from that year. The background of the photo was a deep concrete cave entrance. The cave was located on a mountain, and mottled sunlight spilled down through the pine branches above, illuminating a pool of blood at the cave entrance and the white human outline drawn by the police centered on this bloodstain.

Xiao Ke's soft, affected voice rang out in the headphones: "A-Zhen's death location is right here."

"This is an abandoned air-raid shelter in the mountains behind Zanjü Town. Such air-raid shelters are basically everywhere in the Qinzhou mountain area. They were products of the period of international tension in the last century. Later, when the international climate eased, these war-preparedness facilities built to defend against war were slowly abandoned."

"I know, I know, there is also a large network of such air-raid shelters on the mountain behind the Taoyuan city area, and they have always been maintained. Citizens all use these caves as places to escape the heat, and in the summer, you can even buy melons soaked in mountain spring water when you go inside." Tang Xin was a local from Taoyuan city, so she had the right to speak on this matter.

"The air-raid shelters in the Taoyuan city area are regularly repaired and maintained by dedicated personnel, so of course, you can use them as a place to escape the heat with peace of mind, but the ones in Zanjü Town are not."

Xiao Ke shook her head and said: "Most of these air-raid shelters in the deep mountains and old forests have been in disrepair for a long time, are unmaintained, and have the risk of landslides during the rainy season, so they are very dangerous."

Tang Xin changed the position of her two legs, resting them on each other, and also said: "Family members, you should also pay attention to safety when going out to play in the suburbs. Safety first, oh."

"A-Zhen and A-Qiang were too nervous, which is why they panicked and risked the rain to hide in the air-raid shelter in the mountains behind Zanjü Town, leading to the tragedy." At this time, Xia Chong, who was sitting between the two, finally spoke.

Her voice was a bit thin, and her expression was a bit shy. It seemed like this was her first time appearing and speaking in the public view of a livestream room like this, and she spoke stutteringly. If she were a host of a TV program, this would already be a major accident.

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Fortunately, she was just a new streamer, and a female streamer at that. As long as a female streamer has a good figure and is willing to show it, the viewers will naturally pay for it. As for professional quality and the ability not to be stage-frightened, these are actually unimportant things.

Xia Chong continued intermittently: "After running into the air-raid shelter, A-Zhen and A-Qiang set up a temporary camp in the cave to spend the night."

"According to A-Qiang's account, after the two got into their sleeping bags, because of fear, he held A-Zhen to keep her company and chat, and they talked until midnight before falling asleep."

"In the early morning, A-Zhen got up once, left the cave for a few minutes, and returned quickly, crawling back into A-Qiang's arms. A-Qiang asked her what she had gone to do, and she said she had gone to the bathroom."

"The next morning, A-Zhen got up first and was preparing breakfast using emergency food like canned goods they had brought. A-Qiang got up later, and after washing up, he also planned to go outside the air-raid shelter to use the bathroom."

"Then, he saw A-Zhen's corpse lying on the ground at the entrance of the air-raid shelter, covered in blood."

As she spoke, Xia Chong enlarged the photo and placed it in the center of the livestream room, allowing all viewers to see the bloodstains in the photo and the few fallen rocks at the edge of the human outline's head drawn by the police.

"A-Zhen's skull had a clear depression at the back of her head. The forensic examination result was that she died from a blunt force trauma. Regarding this result, there are two conjectures on the internet."

【1. The area around Zanjü Town is soft sand, and it is easy to have accidents like landslides during heavy rain. A-Zhen might have been hit in the head by a falling rock from the mountain while going out to the bathroom in the middle of the night at the cave entrance, dying on the spot.】

【2. A-Qiang killed A-Zhen with a blunt object and disguised the scene as having been killed by a falling rock.】

(End of chapter)