Chapter 15

She sighed long: "Yeah, he disguised himself really well, so well that for a long time, when he got married, drank, gambled, beat me, and scolded me, I thought it was me, the wife, who wasn't good enough and spoiled him like this. Later, the old people said, could it be that he was possessed by a ghost? The family had no way out and took him to the mountains to see Daxian, but Daxian returned the money after seeing him. I didn't dare to tell him this, for fear of another beating. Now that I think about it, I was really stupid back then!"

"This is not your fault," Wu Shanqiu listened and couldn't help but stroke Gu Ruyun's back, comforting her.

"You said he harmed others, who is it?" Gu Ruyun asked anxiously.

"We don't know yet, we need your help to find them together," Qi Fei said, "Since he is not from Sanwu Town, where did you meet?"

"Heh, our ill-fated relationship, speaking of it, everything really has traces to follow..." Gu Ruyun looked at the Huang Daxian statue in the gate, thoughtful, "That year I went out to travel. Yang Jinhan was the owner of a local homestay. The homestay business wasn't busy, and we chatted happily, so we left contact information. After I came back, we chatted often, and gradually I had a good impression of him.

From the beginning, I mentioned to him that my parents wanted to find a live-in son-in-law. Later, we had feelings, and I didn't dare to take the initiative to mention this to him, for fear he would mind. Unexpectedly, one day he suddenly appeared at my house, saying that in order to be with me, he sold the homestay and moved to Sanwu Town. He said his parents were dead and he had no relatives in his hometown, so he didn't mind being a live-in son-in-law.

This person looked decent, and his conversation was very elegant, different from the mud-legged people in the town, as if he were the son-in-law my dad ideally wanted to find. We didn't think much and let him stay.

Now that I think about it, I actually know very little about this person. At that time, I don't know why I was obsessed and married him."

"When were Yang Jinhan's hands burned?" Qi Fei asked.

Gu Ruyun showed a puzzled look: "Are you talking about the scar on his palm? This wasn't burned, it was an abrasion from falling off a motorcycle once. When I first met him, his hands were wrapped in gauze, and I asked him."

"Was it after he came to Sanwu Town?"

"No, his hands were like this when I met him. I asked him, and he told me himself. He said he sold the motorcycle after that accident and never rode it again. Could it be that he lied to me about this too?"

"Now that the person is dead, I don't know if it's true or false," Wu Shanqiu said from the side.

Gu Ruyun thought for a while and said: "That might not be the case. I might have photos of his hands. You wait."

As she said this, she opened her phone and searched carefully. After a long while, she finally found the photo and showed it to them: "This was taken by accident when we were dating. He really doesn't like taking photos. This one was taken when I wanted to take a picture and he raised his hand to block my lens, and it happened to be taken. I'm relatively lazy, and I don't delete my photos because they are automatically backed up, otherwise I would have deleted his photos long ago."

Qi Fei leaned in and looked carefully. The area around the scar had obvious contracture, which couldn't have been caused by an abrasion. It seemed Yang Jinhan had lied to Gu Ruyun again.

"You just said you met at a homestay, which homestay?"

"In Lanhe. During the time I was arguing about divorce with him, he often went back to Lanhe, I don't know what he was doing, and later he had an accident at the gas station over there."

Qi Fei gave Gu Ruyun his business card and said she could find him if she thought of anything later. Gu Ruyun stopped talking when she took it. Qi Fei saw it and asked: "What do you want to say?"

"I don't know if I should say it. My parents said Yang Jinhan's death was Huang Daxian showing his spirit, but I never believed it. I know you are working so hard to find the murderer who killed Yang Jinhan. But I have to thank the person who killed Yang Jinhan. I know killing is wrong, but if you catch him one day, can you tell me? I want to know who this person is."

Gu Ruyun put on her headphones again and ran forward.

The fog had completely dissipated. When Qi Fei and Wu Shanqiu returned to the Huang Daxian Temple, neither Zhong Kui nor the old woman was nowhere to be found. Everything was like a story in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. In the middle of the night, there was a feast and a beauty, but when the day dawned, everything vanished into thin air.

Qi Fei and Wu Shanqiu passed through the streets and walked toward the place where they parked at the entrance of the town.

The Gu family's door was still closed. That kind of deliberate avoidance always made Qi Fei feel that there were still unsolved mysteries. However, the pragmatic side of being a policeman prevailed. The top priority was to go to Lanhe first.

So far, except for that fingerprint and the ethereal and supernatural connection between Sanwu Town and Zhong Kui, there was no realistic connection between the deaths of Yang Jinhan and Zhu Ming'en.

He didn't believe in Zhong Kui's so-called curse at all. Only by finding a complete chain of evidence could he find out what happened to the two deceased.

The car drove slowly away from Sanwu Town. He was thinking about the case information, and driving became a subconscious mechanical action. In his ears was the sound of Wu Shanqiu discussing the case with him from time to time.

Suddenly, the car decelerated sharply, and the car behind almost rear-ended it. The angry driver honked and overtook them.

"Ah, Brother Fei, what are you doing?!" Wu Shanqiu looked at the distracted Qi Fei, still shaken.

Qi Fei recovered, looked at the rearview mirror, restarted the car, and resumed normal speed, muttering: "Sorry, I just lost my mind and forgot we were on the highway."

"This doesn't look like you, Brother Fei!" Wu Shanqiu said to Qi Fei with concern.

"I just saw the monster's logo."

"On the highway?"

"It might be that I saw it wrong, it seems like some railing on the side of the road... it was just my peripheral vision... but it's also possible that I didn't sleep well last night," Qi Fei took a deep breath, trying to make himself clear. The two chatted back and forth, and the car drove another distance on the highway.

Lanhe City was a prefecture-level city adjacent to Nancheng. Tourism had developed well over the years, and there were many people like Yang Jinhan who opened homestays locally.

Their first stop was the gas station where Yang Jinhan was killed.

This gas station was not far from the highway exit, and it was desolate all around. It was no wonder that it was very difficult to find an eyewitness when the case happened.

After more than a year, the tragic scene could no longer be seen, only the low wall not far away, where the monster in the photo appeared, was still staring at them.

The effect seen at the scene was more shocking than in the photo. Sure enough, it was exactly the same as the painting seen in the morgue where Zhu Ming'en was killed.