Chapter 359: Retrieving the Corpse, the Price of Truth

A few other voices could be heard nearby.

“Hey, this river has a dam, so anything floating down would get stopped by it.”

The village chief stood off to the side, a smile spreading across his face as he looked at the police cordon.

It was his report, made just a short while ago, that led the police to this third body.

“Anything it doesn’t stop will most likely get snagged somewhere along the banks. I’m familiar with the river’s course; I know the spots where a body could get caught.”

“I came here early this morning to try my luck and saw a hole in the ice. My heart skipped a beat, so I took a closer look, and what do you know, there he was.”

“Son of a bitch, I glanced down at my fishing spot and saw a face under the ice. What are the odds!?”

The village chief was a seasoned angler, after all; he had plenty of experience.

He might not be able to catch any fish if you asked him to.

But if you asked him to fish for something else, he was more than capable.

However…

“Sir, you don’t exactly look like someone whose heart just skipped a beat.”

Li Jianye shot the village chief a speechless look.

The man was so happy he looked like he was about to light firecrackers in celebration. That was hardly ‘his heart skipping a beat’…

“Ah, I was just worried that no one had died,” the village chief said, waving his hand dismissively.

Li Jianye nodded instinctively, but then it hit him, and he froze.

Li Jianye: ?

“Huh?”

“Worried that *no one* had died? You meant to say you were worried someone *had* died, right…”

“Young man, you’re not from Shuangyue Village. You have no idea how much people hated these four bastards. In every single household, there was at least one person wishing they’d get hit by a car the moment they stepped outside.”

“When I saw that big hole in the ice, I thought he’d fallen in and then punched his way back out,” the village chief sighed emotionally.

“Good. Turns out it was the hole that bastard used to get *in*. Now I can finally rest easy.”

“The heavens have eyes!”

The corner of Li Jianye’s eye twitched, but he was already used to this.

Xu Huo, on the other hand, had been ignoring the man’s words the entire time.

After a brief survey of the area, he stood up and walked back to the riverbank.

“What’s the situation? When can we get the body out?”

Sun Jian came forward to meet him, asking the question with a shiver as he tucked his hands into his sleeves.

“We’ll have to wait. Once the tools get here, we’ll break through the ice and retrieve the body,” Xu Huo replied slowly, looking at him.

The body wasn’t caught at the dam, but at a bend in the river.

This spot was a water intake. There were a lot of pipes connected here, and the body happened to be snagged on something.

If they just broke the ice on the surface, the body might come loose and get washed away by the current. The hole they made would be useless then—like that old story about marking the boat to find a dropped sword.

Of course, someone could also go into the water to retrieve it.

But in this god-awful January weather, sending someone into the water to fish it out…

A cop’s life is a life, too!

An auxiliary officer’s life is a life, too!

Besides, we’ve pretty much figured out the whole story anyway. The only surviving culprit, Shen Fei, is already in custody. There’s no need to rush things just to save a few minutes.

“What’s the deal with that hole?” Li Jianye asked.

The hole in the ice was a good distance away. Our preliminary theory is that’s where the third man, Song Xiaoyang, entered the water. He drowned and drifted until he got snagged here.

“I analyzed the footprints and the marks around the hole’s edge.”

“He was most likely trying to hide underwater.”

Xu Huo sighed.

In some ways, the side effects of laughing gas are worse than narcotics. After all, it’s an industrial chemical and extremely harmful to the human body.

Combined with the psychological shock, his brain had long since stopped functioning normally.

“He dug up Zhang Jiayu’s grave.”

“But he found Zhang Jiayu’s body wasn’t in there. From that point on, he must have mistaken his hallucinations for a real ghost. Then, just like Wang Wei, he went to find a place to hide.”

“And ended up hiding under the ice.”

Normally, a person wouldn’t do something like that.

Why?

Things like deep-water phobia or a fear of heights are typically our biological instincts sensing danger and urging our bodies to get away.

A normal person in this situation would have been driven by those same instincts to get away from the ice to avoid falling in and dying.

But the laughing gas had already damaged his brain—not just psychologically, but physically!

His biological defense mechanisms were already half-dead, much like Shen Fei’s.

“So he hid. For three or four days. He’s still down there,” Xu Huo remarked with a click of his tongue.

Hearing this, a cheerful smile spread across the village chief’s face.

“Heh, the kid’s a pretty good swimmer.”

“He can stay underwater for three or four days without coming up for air!”

“Young man, no need to rush. Let’s just watch and see when he finally decides to come up for a breath.”

Xu Huo: …

A few nearby police officers couldn’t help but glance back at the village chief, a look of pure bewilderment on their faces.

‘Xu Huo felt the village chief was getting a little too cheeky.’

He thought for a moment, then said:

“Where do these water pipes lead?”

The village chief answered without a second thought:

“The water treatment plant, of course. The river water gets purified there. Is that even a question?”

“And who drinks that water?”

“We do, of course.”

As the words left his mouth, the village chief paused. He fell into thought for a moment, and then his face twisted in fury.

“That bastard! Cursing the village even in death!”

“Pah! Why couldn’t he have died somewhere farther away? The heavens are blind!”

Xu Huo chuckled, no longer paying mind to the village chief who, though old in years, was young at heart.

He stood on the bank and watched in silence.

A while later, an officer arrived on a motorized tricycle, which was loaded with some iron hooks and saws.

Xu Huo went down himself and began to break the ice with the tools.

The January river water was bone-chillingly cold.

Just a moment of contact was enough for one’s hands to go numb, even through gloves.

But before long, the pendulum would swing the other way: his hands would start to burn and itch intensely.

This was due to a ‘neuroregulatory response,’ and ‘tricks played by the circulatory system.’

A while later.

The police lowered a hook into the hole they had cut further out. Once it snagged the body, everyone began to pull the corpse up from the water.