Chapter 179: Frail Body

"Fei-ge, news from the hospital, Cui Nian can be discharged." Wu Shanqiu hung up the phone and said to Qi Fei, who was sitting diagonally opposite her.

"So fast?" Qi Fei looked at the desk calendar; only two weeks had passed since the incident at the Nanling labyrinth.

Wu Shanqiu pursed her lips: "How does that old Nancheng saying go? Madmen don't die, fools recover fast, heh."

Cui Nian's hands and feet were shackled, and he sat in a wheelchair, pushed by a police officer into the interrogation room.

There were many more people in the observation room than usual.

As the biggest case in the Nancheng Police Station spanning over forty years, the capture of the murderer was undoubtedly an extremely heartening event.

Through the one-way glass, all eyes were on the old man in the interrogation room with gauze covering his eyes.

The man who had molded himself into an evil god was, when reduced to reality, nothing more than a frail body of flesh and blood.

"Click," with the buckle closed, the wheelchair was locked in front of the interrogation table.

Cui Nian sat bolt upright. From the moment he regained consciousness until now, he had remained silent.

No one knew what he was thinking.

"Nancheng Police Station Criminal Police Brigade, Qi Fei. Because you are suspected of the crime of intentional homicide, I am now interrogating you according to the law. You must answer our questions truthfully. According to procedure, we need to verify your basic identity information. Name?"

"Cui Nian." The voice emitted from the depths of his dry throat was like the whimpering of an old dog, completely different from the voice when Qi Fei first encountered him.

"Previous names?" Qi Fei added a question.

The person opposite was silent, his aged head, topped with a full head of white hair, drooping down.

Qi Fei did not urge him, just waited quietly.

The interrogation room was so quiet that only Cui Nian's rough wheezing could be heard. His dry, chapped lips never managed to utter those three words.

Qi Fei's voice sounded: "Cui Nianbai." This name hit Cui Nian's body like an electric shock, causing him to tremble all over, and the wheelchair he sat in creaked. "We found the underground altar in Dongji Zhen and found the remains of Bai Yunzhi there."

Qi Fei's words were resonant, causing Cui Nian's drooping head to jerk up, and the empty eye sockets behind the gauze twitched.

"Yes, we know everything. According to the time of Bai Yunzhi's death, you were just a ten-year-old child at that time. Rather than saying you are the murderer of this case, it's better to say you are more likely the only witness. Who killed her?" Qi Fei said, pushing the evidence bag containing the pocket watch to Cui Nian's hand.

Through the plastic film, Cui Nian felt the shape of the pocket watch, and the shackles on his hands made a continuous tapping sound against the table due to his trembling.

"If... I mean if... I could have known that Heaven intended to give me a happy second half of my life, everything would have been different."

The only response to Cui Nian was silent questioning.

His hands groped affectionately along the outline of the pocket watch, sighing heavily: "I know, you worked so hard to save me, nothing more than wanting to know the truth. Fine, I'll tell you.

My father thought I didn't understand anything, but actually, I remember everything.

That year when I was ten, I followed my mother and took a bus for a whole day before arriving at the seaside of Dongji. At that time, Dongji was just a virgin land that had completed foundation establishment. For this project, my father lived in the fishing village all year round and rarely came home.

Mother and I arrived at my father's residence with bags and baggage after much difficulty.

It was a simple bungalow, with a five or six-square-meter studio outside and a bedroom inside that was only big enough for one bed. The whole house carried the rotten smell of seafood, which made me feel nauseous.

That night, I was awakened from my sleep by the sound of arguing outside.

Even at home in Nancheng, they rarely argued.

However, at ten years old, I could already understand the content of their argument.

It was because of me, because of a scripture I had doodled... He said this, and as if possessed, he began to chant. This voice, with a crying tone, echoed in the interrogation room, making people's backs feel cold.

The handcuffs knocked heavily on the table, and the chanting stopped abruptly.

"Father scolded Mother, saying she used the Sea Mother Cult to poison me, while Mother argued that the Sea Mother Cult was the only thing she had taken from the Bai Family Village and would not allow Father to take it away.

Because I was afraid, I curled up in the bedroom, not daring to make a sound, naively thinking that when I woke up, they would make up as before.

But, I was wrong.

Father was not a violent person, but the pressure of the Dongji Zhen project made his nerves tense to the extreme.

That night, he lost control.

The shattering of glass accompanied by my mother's screams was imprisoned in this dilapidated bungalow by the sound of the waves.

Then, a terrible silence.

The bedroom had no door, only a tattered cloth curtain. I carefully got out of bed and, through the gap in the curtain, saw my father holding a piece of broken glass, with blood dripping continuously from the sharp edge.

And my mother, lying on the ground, facing my direction.

Her dying eyes looked at me, using her last bit of strength to signal me not to make a sound.

He just watched like that, quietly watching her eyes, just like a frozen water surface, gradually solidifying.

He didn't even have time to think about whether she was dead.

At that time, I saw the coldest side of my father in his life.

When he recovered from his rage, his sanity to cover up the crime surpassed his mourning.

He looked at the drawings spread on the table and soon thought of a way.

My mother was wrapped in a tattered blanket from the corner of the wall, carried on his shoulder, and under the cover of night, walked toward the seaside.

He would never have thought that I would follow behind. A ten-year-old child can be far more capable than adults imagine.

Perhaps the sound of the waves and the sea breeze was too noisy; he never discovered me.

That was the first time I found this underground cave, this secret space that only my father, the creator of Dongji Zhen, Cui Zhan, knew about.

When he discarded my mother in the seaweed and silt, I finally couldn't help but cry out.

The searchlight above his head vaguely revealed that expression of astonishment, far more shocked than when he killed my mother.

In the pitch-black cave, we stood face to face with a distance of one meter between us.

He didn't say anything, carried me on his shoulder, just like carrying my mother's corpse, and took me away from the cave.

The project was completed, and the news about my mother eloping spread like wildfire.

And he never explained it to me.

In Nancheng, he was a prestigious expert, a responsible father, and meticulous toward me.

I couldn't hate him, couldn't take revenge. I only remembered that all of this was caused by me. If I hadn't left the Sea Mother Cult graffiti there, they wouldn't have argued, and my father wouldn't have accidentally killed my mother.

Since then, I have had severe dyslexia." ===== CHAPTER 180 =====