Chapter 103 - 101: The Clue from Fuxiang Village

Chapter 103: Chapter 101: The Clue from Fuxiang Village

Sketches of the murderer and the victim were drawn up.

Zhuang Yanzheng went to run a match in the system.

Qi Feng brought back breakfast, and Zhuang Yanzheng told them to eat first.

After she finished eating, Zhuang Yanzheng walked over.

She looked at him. "Did you get a result?"

"We got a match for the man’s information, but not for the woman’s." Zhuang Yanzheng grabbed a cup of soy milk, stuck a straw in, and downed it in one go.

"No information?" Su Miaoyi asked.

Zhuang Yanzheng picked up a fried dough stick. "Right, no information found. Let’s go. We’re heading back to Fuxiang Village."

He started walking out as he spoke.

Su Miaoyi stood up, grabbed her food from the table, took a few steps, then turned back to get her down jacket before jogging to catch up with him.

"Do you have a driver’s license?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked as he reached the door.

"Mhm."

Zhuang Yanzheng tossed her the keys, took the breakfast from her hands, and sat down in the passenger seat.

Su Miaoyi stared at the keys in her hand.

Zhuang Yanzheng got back out of the passenger seat. "I’ll drive. Is your hand okay?"

Su Miaoyi slid directly into the driver’s seat. "The word ’can’t’ isn’t in my vocabulary."

Zhuang Yanzheng settled back into the passenger seat.

The car pulled onto the road.

Her driving was smooth and fast.

"Not bad," Zhuang Yanzheng said, eating his breakfast in the passenger seat. "Looks like I’ve got a chauffeur from now on."

"You’ll have to pay me for that," Su Miaoyi said.

Zhuang Yanzheng slapped his wallet down on the center console. "Monthly plan."

Su Miaoyi: "..."

After a few seconds of silence, she asked, "The victim is from Fuxiang Village?"

"He is," Zhuang Yanzheng said. "He lived alone. All these years and no one ever filed a missing person report."

Su Miaoyi had rarely returned to the village, so she hardly knew anyone there.

"His name is Qian Fan. According to his file, he’d be fifty-five this year. His parents passed away early, and he didn’t have any siblings."

"Didn’t he show up in the census?" Su Miaoyi asked.

Zhuang Yanzheng shook his head. "No record of him whatsoever."

Su Miaoyi was quiet for a moment, then asked again, "This morning, when I went to the autopsy room..."

"I was there, following you." Zhuang Yanzheng recounted the morning’s events to her.

After he finished, Su Miaoyi was stunned. "I fought with you?"

"Mhm."

"Last time, by the river in the old district, those two old men just had to pull on me and I woke up," Su Miaoyi said. "But this time I actually fought you."

"You don’t hold a grudge against me and used that as an excuse to beat me up, do you?" Zhuang Yanzheng said.

Su Miaoyi glanced sideways at him. "Tsk, you figured it out. I guess you’ll have to sleep with one eye open from now on."

Zhuang Yanzheng let out a laugh.

Su Miaoyi tried to recall the morning’s events, but nothing came to mind. After a pause, she said, "This new ’function’ of mine seems to be a stubborn mule."

Zhuang Yanzheng looked at her.

Su Miaoyi said, "It can’t open a door, so it just smashes it with its fists. How bizarre."

’Her assessment is spot on,’ Zhuang Yanzheng thought.

The drive to Fuxiang Village was nearly two hours. Since Zhuang Yanzheng had only slept for about ten minutes that morning, he used the car ride to catch up on sleep.

When they arrived at the entrance to the Fuxiang Village committee office, Su Miaoyi woke Zhuang Yanzheng up.

Zhuang Yanzheng opened his eyes, looked out the window, and rubbed his throbbing temples.

Su Miaoyi unbuckled her seatbelt. "I’ll go ask where Qian Fan’s house is."

With that, she got out of the car and walked into the village committee courtyard.

Zhuang Yanzheng got out of the car as well.

The village chief was on duty in his office.

"Qian Fan’s house is in the southwest corner. Our village is built on a perfect north-south axis, so the streets are all very orderly. The one in the far southwest corner, it’s very easy to find. But he hasn’t been back for many years."

They didn’t reveal that the victim was Qian Fan just yet.

So Su Miaoyi asked, "Did he leave often? Doesn’t anyone find it strange that he’s been gone for so long?"

"He was all alone. His family wasn’t well-off back then, so he never married when he was young. It was just him. I heard from the village elders that Qian Fan used to do business down south. Sometimes he’d be gone for a year or two, then come back for a few days or a few months before leaving again. The village got used to it."

"After I took office, I tried calling him, but I could never get through."

The village chief looked a few years younger than Zhuang Yanzheng.

"You can’t contact him, so you don’t report it? You don’t look for him?" Zhuang Yanzheng frowned.

The village chief gave a dry laugh and stammered, "It was indeed an oversight in my work."

Zhuang Yanzheng said no more. He took out his phone and showed him the sketch of the murderer. "Have you seen this person?"

"No," the village chief said. "Let me go find an elder. They might know more than I do."

Zhuang Yanzheng thought for a moment. "Are there many people living in the southwest corner?"

"Yes," said the chief. "A lot of the elders live over there, too. I’ll take you two over."

They went directly to the southwest corner.

On the way, they briefed the village chief on the situation and asked him to keep it confidential for the time being.

"I know, I get it, I get it."

Indeed.

Qian Fan’s house was in the far southwest corner and was very easy to find.

The house had been uninhabited for many years, and the lock on the large iron gate was completely rusted.

Zhuang Yanzheng examined the lock, gave it a downward tug, and it broke open.

Su Miaoyi exchanged a glance with him.

’I barely even pulled,’ Zhuang Yanzheng wanted to say.

The village chief immediately said, "He hasn’t been back in so many years... You don’t think he had an accident at home and no one in the village knew, do you? We should hurry inside and check."

Hearing his excuse, Zhuang Yanzheng remarked, "We’re here on an official investigation."

"Right, right," the village chief said as he pushed the gate open.

The gate swung open to reveal a yard overgrown with weeds.

The three of them entered the courtyard. Pushing aside the weeds, they saw a three-wheeled electric scooter.

Exposed to the wind and sun, its tires were flat.

The body was covered in rust.

Zhuang Yanzheng checked it over; the battery was gone.

The three of them then went to the door of the house.

The door was closed, covered in creeping vines.

Zhuang Yanzheng and Su Miaoyi pulled down the withered vines and pushed the door open.

Everything was covered in dust.

The air was thick with the smell of dust.

The three of them went inside to look around.

No one had been inside for many years.

The room had been tossed.

It was unclear if it had been searched at the time of the murder, or if someone had come in and searched it sometime later.

The layers of dust everywhere made it impossible to determine anything.

Zhuang Yanzheng and Su Miaoyi looked around, but finding no clues, they went back outside with the village chief.

The village chief took them to find an elder.

The story about Qian Fan was mostly the same as what the village chief had told them.

Zhuang Yanzheng once again showed him the sketch of the murderer.

The man studied it carefully for a moment, then passed it to his wife.

The couple looked at it and said, "Qian Fan came back a few years ago and brought a wife with him. It looks like her."

"He got married?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"He just came back a few years ago with a woman he introduced to everyone as his wife. We don’t know if they were legally married or not," the wife said.

"Do you know where he did business?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"We don’t know. We asked, but he wouldn’t say," the man replied. "In a rural place like ours, people love to get to the bottom of things, but Qian Fan never talked about it."

"I’ll go get his second aunt from next door. She might know more," the wife said, and went out to call for her.

She quickly returned with another woman.

Zhuang Yanzheng showed her the sketch as well.

"That’s Qian Fan’s wife. I remember her. That woman didn’t like to talk. After Qian Fan brought her back, she never left the house. I went to their place once to borrow something and tried to talk to her, but she didn’t say a word. Back then, there was even a rumor in the village that she was a mute."

"And then?" Su Miaoyi prompted.

"Then one night, I was coming home from playing mahjong, it was already eleven o’clock, and I heard Qian Fan hitting her. She was crying and begging him, ’Don’t hit me, don’t hit me.’ Oh, dear." The woman shook her head.

Su Miaoyi and Zhuang Yanzheng exchanged another look.

"To be honest... when that woman was in our village, we all secretly said she was a simple-minded ’wife’ that Qian Fan had bought."

"Otherwise, why would a woman who looked so much younger than him be with a man in his fifties? He might have earned some money out of town, but he drank and gambled. He wasn’t a good person."

"So where did his wife go?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"She must have left with Qian Fan."

"When did they leave?" Zhuang Yanzheng asked.

"Oh, that I don’t know. I didn’t pay much attention. They just... left."

Su Miaoyi processed the information.

Qian Fan and the woman everyone called "Qian Fan’s wife" disappeared at the same time.

"Do you know what Qian Fan’s wife’s name was?" Su Miaoyi asked.

"No idea. Never heard it."

...