For a moment, the contrast between last night's scene and the one on the phone completely overwhelmed me. I couldn't stop wondering whether what we saw last night was real or what we saw in the video on the phone today was real.
"What we saw last night was definitely not like this, right?" I asked the policewoman, my mouth dry.
"Right, I know what you want to say. I can say with absolute certainty that what we saw last night is completely different from what we see now," she said.
Suddenly, both of us fell silent. I could tell that this policewoman's worldview had collapsed completely during the past few days at Lin's family village, because her eyes were now bloodshot.
"We can't let anyone else know about this. Whatever problems my father has, at least he hasn't done anything to harm anyone, right?" I said bitterly.
"But actually, this question should be best directed to your mother," the policewoman suddenly said. "They shared a bed for so many years. Your father's issues, it's most appropriate to ask her about them."
"She's a fool," I said to the policewoman.
She was instantly dumbfounded, and then said to me, "I'm sorry. But I really can't see any problem with your mother."
I didn't answer her. We both sat in the car for a while. I saw my father coming towards us. I was okay, but as I looked at my kind father in the sunlight, I felt a little strange. The policewoman watched my father coming over and even leaned towards me.
"It's okay, you see, except for the evening, he's still a normal person in the daytime," I comforted the policewoman, but in fact, I was also comforting myself.
"What are you two doing in the car so early in the morning, without eating breakfast?" Father came to the car and called out, his face still cloudy. It used to be only worry, but now, as I looked at him, it was glaring.
"We were just discussing whether to go to town to buy a few sets of clean clothes, as the police officers said," I said to my father with a smile.
"In that case, let's go after eating. The things sold outside might not be as good as what your Aunt Miaoke can cook. Let's eat first," Father said.
After returning home, Lin Yao was a little upset with me because of what happened these past two nights. I didn't have the mood to talk love with her at the moment, my eyes were just watching my father, and he even glared at me a few times. The daytime passed very peacefully. Father finished his meal and went to the fields, working on the farmer's land, it seemed that those few acres of land had endless farming work to be done.
"Second Uncle, please look after my father," I worriedly said to Second Uncle.
He nodded at me and followed with a hoe on his back.
The policewoman's phone was still in my pocket. I went back to my room, carefully watched that scene a few times, and I felt a deep sense of horror because of the red coffin. For some reason, I was particularly sensitive to the color red now. But in the video, there was a woman in a red dress and opera makeup.
This should have been a festive occasion, but now it seemed especially enchantingly terrifying.
"Nine-two, let's go find Fatty." I stepped out of the room and called out to the policewoman, "When there's an issue, I can only turn to Fatty. At this moment, he has become my confidant."
When I went to find Fatty, there were two things I needed, one was to let Fatty take a look at the matter, and the second was to help Second Uncle pass a message to him, just like a messenger in a battle between two armies.
At Lin Sanshui's house, Fatty had Lin Sanshui cook an old mother chicken in the early morning. By now, we were quite familiar. Fatty was not polite and said, "Do you both want some? It's a blend of forty-nine kinds of Chinese medicinal herbs, simmered on a low heat overnight. It's carefully cooked by your village chief and is an absolute cure for impotence, premature ejaculation, irregular menstruation and has a miraculous effect of nourishing yin and invigorating yang to promote blood circulation and disperse blood stasis."
"We're both very healthy, Uncle Liu, you go ahead and eat," I replied with a smile. At that moment, Lin Sanshui stood in front of Fatty, wearing an apron like a virtuous young wife.
"You two just don't understand. Western medicine is for killing, but Chinese medicine emphasizes nurturing. Whether it's treating illness or preventing it when you're healthy, you shouldn't let your guard down just because you're young. With your physical condition, you won't be able to withstand this kind of fatigue for long," said Fatty.
His words frightened me and made me break out in a cold sweat. I couldn't withstand such fatigue for long? Did Fatty know that I had been through a similar situation with Lin Xiaoyao before? I stole a glance at Fatty and found he was looking at me with a sly smile, and I was truly scared. How did he find out about this? Did Fatty calculate it using some sort of divination?
Fortunately, Fatty didn't say anything specific, and the other two people didn't catch the meaning behind Fatty's words. It seemed like it was only me who felt like a thief with a guilty conscience. The three of us waited for Fatty to finish eating, then went into the room together. Lin Sanshui was also a reliable person and was aware of many things, so there was nothing to conceal. I explained to Fatty and Lin Sanshui about my father's strange behavior at night. Finally, I took out my phone and played the recording.
"The content in the video is completely different from what we saw last night," I said.
"The red clothes! The red coffin! Xiao Fan, why do I feel that there must be a connection between these things?" Lin Sanshui said with a pale face after I mentioned it.
"Uncle Sanshui, I also think so, but I don't understand specifically what's going on. That's why I came to discuss with Uncle Liu," I replied.
Fatty stared at the phone screen while smoking, and his expression was very serious. He was absolutely an important figure among our three, and we dared not even breathe loudly in front of him. After smoking three cigarettes and watching the video countless times, he slowly put down the phone and said, "The red candle, the red clothes, this woman, is she a performer, or has she gone crazy wanting to be a bride?"
"How would I know, Fatty? If I knew, I would ask you!" I replied with a pained expression.
"Red, crimson, it's difficult, how deep must the resentment be?" Fatty continued with his cryptic speech.
"Fatty, what's going on? Can't you just be straightforward?" I was about to kneel down in front of Fatty.
Fatty stood up, spun around in place, and said, "Red is originally associated with festive things, isn't it? But this woman, she insisted on wearing red clothes, which is definitely because she died because of a love debt." —Finally, he said something useful.
"A love debt?" I asked, puzzled.
"Yes, a love debt. It's most pitiful how the hearts of such a beautiful woman... Who knows which scoundrel did such a thing. I heard from Sanshui that there are Daoist talismans on the woman's coffin, so it's obvious that she was originally irritated by the corpse and transformed into a ghost. It's intriguing. No wonder Xu Lin was scared out of his wits. It's really difficult to handle," Fatty said.
"What should we do now?" I asked Fatty.
Fatty shook his head and said, "I'm thinking of a way. This isn't something to rush."
At that moment, the policewoman took out her phone, found the recording, and asked Fatty, "I just want to understand why what we saw is completely different from what I recorded with my phone?"
Fatty scratched his head and said, "You should understand. The spells now are written in ancient books. People from ancient times never saw a phone, so how would they know?,"
I had a sudden realization of the situation and felt exasperated. Ghosts were keeping up with the times, but people still weren't moving forward?
"However, there was a situation like this that I've seen before. The last time someone came to me for help, it was also a young policewoman, but to be honest, that girl wasn't as beautiful as you, but she was definitely much gentler," Fatty said.
"Can you stop with the nonsense?" the policewoman glared at Fatty.
"This is a long story. It was three years ago, I remember it was in Changsha. At that time, I was invited by a friend to eat stinky tofu at the Fire Palace. Who knew that my damn friend had set me up, saying that someone had sought my help and arranged for a policewoman to meet with me, claiming to be investigating a local murder case," Fatty continued.
To summarize what Fatty was saying, it could be gleaned that he had experienced something similar to the content of this cell phone recording in the past. This matter was truly perplexing, and Fatty, being particularly loquacious, almost scared the three of us half to death.
In Changsha, there was a young man in his twenties working in a factory who didn't show up for work for several days. His absence was not noticed until a week had passed, and his family couldn't reach him. When his family inquired with the factory, they were told he hadn't been coming to work, but nobody knew where he was.
The young man was somewhat reclusive and had little contact with people. Later, they found out he was renting a house on the outskirts, which was quite remote and rarely inhabited by anyone due to its distance from the factory. When they reached his house, they smelled a foul odor. The landlord, an elderly woman, didn't know much apart from the fact that a young man was living there. The factory workers and the family entered the house and discovered the young man had been dead for a while and putrefaction had set in. At the time of his death, he was wearing women's clothing, and the scene was extremely frightening. His family immediately reported the case to the police.
One of the officers who responded to the call happened to be the policewoman Fatty mentioned, and due to the influential factory owner and the unsettling nature of the death, pressure was put on the authorities to quickly solve the case.
However, the case was difficult to solve. The forensic report concluded that the young man's death was natural, not even a suicide. It seemed he had died in his sleep. The reason for wearing women's clothing was attributed to the discovery of his own seminal fluid on his underwear, suggesting a cross-dressing fetish and implying that he experienced a sexual climax before dying. The case was closed due to the factory owner's influence and the lack of a better explanation. But, the policewoman, perhaps more perseverant than most women, was not convinced. She enlisted the help of some colleagues and discovered something significant during their investigation.
The young man was a hardcore otaku, and during this modern age, such individuals typically spend a lot of time online. They found a laptop and a broken smartphone among his belongings, and when the policewoman in charge of safeguarding the belongings explained the situation to another officer, she was given the keys. However, when this officer handed the keys to the policewoman, he told her, "Sis, take a look at the files on his computer. Be prepared, it could be quite disturbing. If it's too much for you, you can come find me." The policewoman kicked him out, wondering why he was insinuating such a thing. She did not take his comments to heart. While opening the otaku's laptop, she found that it didn't contain movie files as she expected. Instead, the computer was filled with numerous images.
Images of a woman.
There were clothed and unclothed images of them, and even intimate photos of them together, with some even taken in bed. What was particularly noticeable was that all these photos showed clear signs of being edited. That is to say, the otaku had certainly been fantasizing about a woman and had photoshopped her image onto the bodies of naked women.
The bodies could be that of famous adult movie actresses, but the faces were those of women who appeared conventionally beautiful.
In addition, there were intimate photos that were clearly photoshopped.
-"How vile. This pervert really deserves to die," thought the policewoman as she looked at these images. However, while going through these disturbing photos, in the D drive, the policewoman found a hidden folder containing many love letters written by the young man.
Without exception, the contents of these love letters were all addressed to one person, a girl named Ren Xue. This Ren Xue was most likely the girl in the photos, a beautiful woman in the pictures.
The young man might not have much education, only writing in the first chapter of the love letter: "Ren Xue, this is the first day I met you, you are so beautiful, your eyes, your perseverance, are all in my mind. I fell in love with you at first sight, I want one day, you to be my most beautiful bride."
The subsequent content was relatively simple, like a declaration:
"Ren Xue, love you on the second day."
"Ren Xue, love you on the third day."
...
Every day, he had to tell this woman "I love you". The policewoman suddenly felt that this young man didn't seem so detestable anymore.
This girl named Ren Xue definitely played a very important role in the young man's life, but this was contradictory. The young man's sexual orientation was normal, since he liked women, how could he be a cross-dressing pervert? The policewoman couldn't help but become very interested in this Ren Xue. The young man was a homebody, so this girl was most likely his coworker.
The policewoman turned off the computer, thinking she had found a clue. The next day, she went to the factory to see if there was a girl named Ren Xue working there, but to her surprise, there wasn't anyone. Even when the policewoman asked the young man's family, no one knew of anyone named Ren Xue around him.
Back at the police station, the frustrated policewoman grabbed a colleague and went to look at the young man's computer again. To her surprise, when her colleague saw the photos on the computer, his face turned pale. The policewoman couldn't understand, "What's going on? Do you know this girl?!" The colleague didn't answer, but opened Baidu on the computer and quickly searched for the name Ren Xue, which brought up countless search results.
This Ren Xue turned out to be a female prisoner who was executed over twenty years ago!
The policewoman's curiosity compelled her to open the profile of this woman, only to discover that this woman had a large number of fans, and even in a small audience, she was extremely popular, known as "China's most beautiful female death row prisoner".
This young man was truly peculiar, to fantasize about a female criminal? And one who had been dead for over twenty years! An alive person fantasizing about a dead one, and afterward he died in an eerie manner, turning what was already a convoluted case into one with a supernatural element.
This news instantly exploded in the police station. The police officers were also human, and although they didn't say it openly, they were discussing it privately. Some wondered if the young man's sincere feelings had truly moved the spirit of the unjustly wronged woman who had refused to be reincarnated due to her grievances and taken her away. Some even remarked, "Hey, without saying anything else, she really was beautiful, especially the stubborn look in her eyes just before the execution, it's really pitiful!"
The policewoman didn't participate in their discussion, as she didn't believe in ghosts and spirits. Similar to my companion Chen Jiuli at the beginning, she was particularly persistent. After looking at the computer, she began to look through the phone. The young man's phone had been left with his body, had been soaked in water and had since broken down, and no one had thought to repair it, without the idea that it might contain something.
The policewoman found someone to fix the phone and paid forty yuan to repair the young man's old phone. After the repair, everything else on the phone was normal, unlike those horror stories where there would be text messages and communication between the young man and the deceased Ren Xue, which would be too unreliable.
However, there was one thing that alarmed the policewoman. In the gallery of the young man's phone, there was a photo. The woman in the photo was Ren Xue. Her pale face and hollow gaze were almost identical to the online pictures of Ren Xue. But the background of Ren Xue was the young man's rented room, and this was absolutely unmistaken.
This was a photo the young man had taken in his rented room, of a person who had been dead for over twenty years!
This discovery left the policewoman feeling chilled to the bone as she stood on the street.