Chapter 358: Retrieving the Corpse, The Price of Truth

Everyone has a door, and behind it lie the deepest secrets of your heart.

Perhaps it is dark, sorrowful, painful, twisted and misshapen.

Could it be happy, sweet as honey?

No. Secrets are only things that can never be told to another soul.

Only then are they locked away behind a door like a vault!

SQUEAK~

After a lengthy discussion at the office, Xu Huo returned to Shuangyue Village.

He pushed open the door that once bore the “Double Happiness” character.

A piercing sound rang out.

Before Xu Huo could get a clear look at what was inside…

BAM!

The long-rotted wooden door cracked at the sound, falling to the ground in several pieces and kicking up clouds of dust.

Xu Huo paused, then silently raised his head and scanned the scene before him.

Shen Fei had refused to enter this room no matter what, so he had decided to come take a look during the day.

It was now ten in the morning. The bright sunlight lent the deathly still ruins a bizarre touch of life.

The bedroom was clearly visible. The walls were covered in black scars, remnants of the sea of fire.

He stepped into the deathly silent house, reached out, and wiped a hand across a dust-covered mirror.

The wiped patch reflected Xu Huo’s face.

But the mirror had been damaged in the fire, and the reflection was blurry.

He looked toward the marriage bed.

The bed had long since been burnt to ashes, leaving only its iron frame.

In the other dark, filth-covered corners, he could faintly make out where some furniture had once stood.

“See anything?”

As if from a daze, Li Jianye’s voice broke the silence.

Xu Huo turned to see Li Jianye, Sun Jian, and the others moving about the ruins, hoping to investigate the six-year-old arson case while they were here.

“A six-year-old fire… How could it be that easy to investigate?”

Xu Huo shook his head.

It was the same old story.

The police’s greatest fears are fire, water, and time.

Fire can burn away everything, time can wear everything away, and this was a fire from six years ago.

“But we’ve caught Shen Fei. At least that brings Zhang Jiayu’s case to a close,” Sun Jian said with a sigh.

The endpoint of a case is catching the culprit.

The end of a criminal investigation is the trial.

These are usually the things the police care about in any given case.

But, in truth, there is a third point.

The truth—the specific details of how the crime unfolded.

Compared to the first two, the truth often emerges from the evidence. But most people only care about “who killed whom,” and secondarily, “why they killed them.”

If the answer to the first question is highly credible and supported by evidence, then the latter is rarely investigated with much effort. A general idea is often enough to close the case.

Why?

Because once you know the former, the latter can easily be inferred. The answer might be vague and non-specific, but it’s usually enough. This was precisely Xu Huo’s situation now; he knew the suspect had killed someone six years ago, but he didn’t know the specifics.

Of course, nothing is absolute. If the killer died before the police could find them, there would naturally be no answer to these questions.

In that situation, the police don’t even get the chance to guess or verify their logic. How could they possibly find even a rough answer?

“What about Shen Fei? Still won’t come in?”

“He fainted last night while digging the grave for Zhang Jiayu. He’s still not awake.”

Li Jianye replied, shaking his head.

‘Still not awake…’

Xu Huo was at a loss for words. He looked around the house again.

Li Jianye did the same. He glanced around the clue-less room and sighed, “What a shame.”

“I guess no one else knows the truth of what happened six years ago.”

“But at least we have some form of closure.”

Then, they took one last look around the room, committing everything inside to their cameras and their memories.

Just as they were about to say something more,

a voice suddenly rang out.

“Chief, Chief! We’ve found the third body!”

‘The third body…’

Wang Wei’s group had four people. Two were dead, one was in police custody, and the last one had disappeared.

‘Does that mean they’ve found the missing person?’

‘But he said ‘body,’ not ‘person’…’

Li Jianye paused, then raised the walkie-talkie to his lips.

“Location.”

“At the well by the Shuangyue Dam!”

The voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. The three men paused, then quickly stood. After giving a few instructions to the police officers at the scene, they rushed to their car and headed for the address they’d been given.

Shuangyue Village was so named because of the “Shuangyue River” and the “Shuangyue Dam”; it was only natural that the village itself would be called Shuangyue as well.

The dam wasn’t large, but the river it controlled was the only major one in the vicinity. These days, aside from private wells, this river was the main source of water.

Of course, “not large” referred to its width, not its depth.

The Shuangyue River had another, much more direct name.

The “River of the Drowned.”

The water was deep—immeasurably so. Many people had drowned in this river over the years, some while bathing, others while swimming.

And yes, a few anglers had drowned in it, too.

So, whenever someone from the village disappeared and was suspected to have drowned, the villagers, with practiced experience, could always find the body in this river.

「11:50 AM」

Xu Huo arrived at the dam.

In the early January weather, the river had already frozen over. Anyone who wasn’t too heavy could easily stand on its surface.

Several police officers in thick winter uniforms were standing on the ice, carefully chipping away at the layer beneath their feet.

Xu Huo was among them.

He crouched down, silently looking at the ice below him.

Beneath him was a layer of ice.

And frozen inside it… was a human face.

A face, bloated and swollen from the water, was pressed against the underside of the ice. Its mouth was agape, its eyes staring lifelessly upward.