Chapter 48 The Truth: I hope Xie Shijin can go to university and live a good life.
A pair of men's leather shoes.
Cheng Shiyun had seen these shoes before.
Ni Jiaqi came in, and the sunflower was still wriggling on the ground, repeating the same few sentences over and over again.
The rough, murky, and suppressed growl was filtered through the plastic loudspeaker, resulting in a slight distortion of the timbre, but one could still vaguely discern that it was the voice of a middle-aged man.
Ni Jiaqi felt his blood rushing through his body, forcibly interrupting all his thoughts. He subconsciously asked, "Whose voice is this...?"
He picked up the sunflower toy from the ground, trembling.
Cheng Shiyun's phone was smashed and burned?
Was Cheng Shiyun's death related to Feng Yue?
Were there other people at school on the night of July 12th?
They killed Cheng Shiyun!
The truth from two years ago came crashing down on him. Ni Jiaqi pulled his phone out of his pocket, entered the password to unlock it, and opened the dial pad...
The toe of the leather shoe on the balcony moved slightly.
Cheng Shiyun saw it and screamed, "Hiss—!" Go! Ni Jiaqi, get out of here!
But Ni Jiaqi couldn't understand her words; his ears were ringing. His first instinct was to call the police. He dialed the number and said, "Hello, Yang..."
The man on the balcony jumped out.
Ni Jiaqi looked up and saw a dark figure looming over him. Before he could see who the man was, his head was covered by a piece of clothing.
Immediately afterwards, it felt like something was choking him, and his vocal cords seemed to have been torn open, so he couldn't shout or make a sound.
A clothes hanger was looped around Ni Jiaqi's neck. The man gripped both ends, his knuckles protruding like animal claws, and tightened it frantically, once, twice!
The air in his lungs was instantly sucked out, and the clothes hanger embedded in his throat seemed to be strangling his neck. The boy was tortured and suffocated, only managing to squeeze out some broken, gurgling sounds, like a deflated balloon.
As if she could sense his presence, Cheng Shiyun felt as if someone was choking her.
Guo Renyi seemed not to notice the small snake on the ground, or perhaps he simply didn't have time to notice it. He said, "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry, you saw something you shouldn't have seen."
"I don't want to kill you either, but I have no choice. If you don't die, I will."
"What are you standing there for? Aren't you going to help? Are you waiting for her to run downstairs and call the police?!"
These sounds suddenly popped into my head.
The weather forecast said there would be no rain tonight, but it's starting to drizzle outside the window.
With a deafening roar, a bolt of lightning struck, and in an instant, the pale light illuminated the man's face in every detail.
His bloodshot eyes, his nostrils flaring, and his hands, clenching tightly with bulging veins...
Cheng Shiyun remembered.
She remembered everything!
*
That night at the school gate, she made her last phone call to Cheng Jinghua.
Cheng Jinghua did not answer.
There were no security guards in the security room, the automatic door was broken, and it was so dark that she could barely see the road under her feet. She entered the school alone.
Raindrops pelted the camphor tree leaves and trickled down the umbrella ribs, making her shoes so wet that they squeaked with every step.
She closed her umbrella and walked towards Cheng Jinghua's office on the fourth floor, looking down at her phone.
Today is her birthday, and many people liked the post she made tonight, and many also sent her private messages.
She was about to click to see it, but when she looked up, she realized she was on the fifth floor.
There are only two classrooms on the fifth floor, and few students, so Cheng Shiyun often comes to the fifth floor to use the restroom.
She went to the wrong floor. She was about to go downstairs when she saw the light on in office 507 and could faintly hear sobbing, like cotton thread dampened by rain, heavily hooking her feet.
She was so curious that she tiptoed over. The curtains were half-drawn, and she saw Feng Yue covering her face and sobbing uncontrollably, crying and questioning the other party about why they filmed the video and why they did this.
The man standing opposite her, with a loose-fitting shirt collar, was Principal Guo Renyi, who had made the newspapers just two months prior for bringing ice blocks to cool down the students.
Their conversation became clearer and more intense, and she raised her phone to record it as evidence.
Suddenly, Guo Renyi slapped Feng Yue.
"Shut up! If this gets out, you can forget about staying at school!"
The next moment, they looked straight at them.
Then came the argument.
She argued with Feng Yue.
Arguing with Guo Renyi.
...
Feng Yue shook off her hand. She couldn't believe it and insisted on pulling Feng Yue downstairs. However, just as she turned around, a tearing pain shot through her scalp.
The man grabbed her high ponytail, pulled her back, and pressed her against the railing, trying to snatch the phone she was holding high.
Half of her body was suspended in the air, rainwater fell into her eyes, and she saw the light coming from the fourth-floor office. She called out to her father, and to Cheng Jinghua.
"Cover her mouth!"
"If she calls the police, you'll die too!"
Her throat was being choked, and her mouth and nose were being covered, making it impossible for her to breathe.
She struggled, but the hand covering her mouth and nose tightened its grip.
15 seconds —
The air in my lungs felt like a squeezed-out sponge.
30 seconds —
My vision started to go black.
60 seconds —
Consciousness is like a stone sinking into water.
Boom—!
Her phone fell downstairs.
The deafening thunder drowned out the loud bang.
She suffocated and fainted; Guo Renyi probably thought she was dead.
When she woke up again, she was curled up in the trunk of a car, her nostrils filled with the smell of leather and gasoline, trying to squeeze the air out of the trunk.
A beam of light appeared in the darkness; Ran Hongyin had called her.
"Mommy, Mommy..."
"Mom, save me!"
Her phone was smashed; the screen was shattered, and she couldn't unlock it or answer her mother's calls.
The car started, and she was terrified, not knowing where they were taking her, perhaps to dump her body somewhere.
The man shoved her umbrella in, and her eyes gleamed with a sharp light in her desperation.
She inserted the tip of the umbrella into the latch on the trunk and pried and pried desperately.
It's been pried open!
The car was driving so fast that she jumped off, her knees hitting the ground hard. She suspected her patella was broken.
But before she could feel the pain, Guo Renyi saw her in the rearview mirror.
She fell into a puddle filled with sewage, the foul-smelling mud coating her teeth and tongue.
We can't stop!
She kept running forward.
She wants to live!
She wants to live!
She wants to live!
She saw that the courier station was still open, and a tall, slender figure came out holding an umbrella.
She was carrying the same blue umbrella as him, and her clothes, damp with moisture, clung to the boy's body.
It's Xie Shijin.
He was walking towards the school.
Did Xie Shijin come to see her?
She wanted to call out to him, begging him to save her.
But her throat hurt terribly, as if what was stuck in her throat wasn't mud or sand, but boiling lava.
The silver-white sedan turned around and caught up with them.
She couldn't run anymore, she really couldn't run anymore...
A second before the wheel rolled over her, she saw the boy raise the edge of his umbrella.
It was so close.
*
The scene before me was stretched thin, overlapping with that chaotic, rainy night two years ago.
Guo Renyi's words were exactly the same as before: "I didn't want to lay a hand on you, blame yourself..."
That ugly, unremarkable toy could actually record audio.
He had strangled Ni Jiaqi, but he hadn't figured out what to do with the body yet. At least he couldn't fake it as a car accident as he had last time, but he had no other choice now.
The emergency call ended the moment the phone was dropped.
Ni Jiaqi's body convulsed instinctively due to lack of oxygen. His struggles became weaker and weaker, and he was about to suffocate and faint like she had.
At that moment, her consciousness returned to her body, and Cheng Shiyun suddenly realized that she was a snake.
Even if a venomous snake bites and kills someone, the snake is not held responsible.
The man revealed his true colors; he intended to strangle the boy, hide him in the trunk, and bury him somewhere.
Guo Renyi's attention was entirely focused on Ni Jiaqi, so much so that he didn't notice a snake wrapped around his arm until his hand was pierced by a venomous fang.
"brute!"
Who raised this thing?
The sharp teeth pierced through his flesh, sending a sharp pain through him. Guo Renyi loosened his grip on the clothes hanger, trying to pry the snake off the back of his left hand.
Cheng Shiyun immediately relaxed. She couldn't be caught, and she couldn't be thrown to her death like last time.
Guo Renyi wanted to capture her, but the blood flowing from the back of his hand was dark black.
This is a poisonous snake.
How could there be poisonous snakes here?
Xie Shijin didn't go to find Feng Yue, Ni Jiaqi appeared at Xie Shijin's house, there was a toy that could record audio, and a poisonous snake suddenly appeared...
Everything that is happening now is beyond Guo Renyi's expectations; this was not his original plan!
The sunflower playing the saxophone was still twisting and playing on the ground. The man stomped on it twice, the force of which made the plastic horn crack loudly. He crushed the sunflower to pieces and then walked straight to the bedroom door.
"Don't run away!" Ni Jiaqi crawled over and hugged his leg.
Guo Renyi kicked Ni Jiaqi twice with his backhand, kicking his leg in the cast, his stomach, and his head. The man's eyes were filled with murderous intent. He thought for a moment and swung the chair to smash it down, but the snake leaped over and pounced again.
"hiss--!"
It straddled Ni Jiaqi's body, its form taut like an iron chain, standing tall on the boy's shoulder. The cold light in its vertical pupils clashed sharply with the man's, as if it were desperately protecting the boy beneath it.
"Damn it!" Guo Renyi cursed under his breath, veins bulging on his forehead.
His snakebite wound swelled up rapidly, and the veins on the back of his hand turned black. The venom was spreading through his body at a visible rate, and he would die in less than two hours if he did not receive antivenom in time.
The pain instantly cleared his mind.
Thankfully, Ni Jiaqi wasn't killed.
He drove today. The rain outside was getting heavier, but with the surveillance cameras along the way, his driving route, eyewitnesses, and signs of a struggle in the bedroom, the police would be able to find him within half a day.
What good is it if Ni Jiaqi survives to go out and report to the police? Now the only evidence has been destroyed by him.
But Xie Shijin still had the USB drive. Once the other party handed the USB drive over to the police, what awaited him was a prison sentence that was even more unbearable than death.
Even though the situation was already out of his control, even though there was an abyss ahead, he absolutely could not wait to die here.
Driven by his survival instinct, Guo Renyi sucked out the poisoned blood with his mouth and then pulled off his tie to tighten it around his arm, which would slow down the rate at which the venom entered his heart.
After doing all this, he didn't even have time to look back at the half-dead boy on the ground before staggering open the door.
Just as Cheng Shiyun reached the door, she heard Ni Jiaqi's weak shouts from behind.
"Cheng Shiyun, don't chase after her..."
Ni Jiaqi's left leg cast was kicked and shattered, with blood seeping from the broken area. Several dark and menacing shoe prints, mixed with sweat and dust, covered his cheek, making him look utterly disheveled.
He tried to get up, supporting himself on the floor, but trembled all over from the excruciating pain: "It's too dangerous... Don't chase after them..."
Before he could finish speaking, his eyelids drooped, and he slammed heavily onto the floor, completely losing consciousness.
"Ni Jiaqi!" Cheng Shiyun's heart tightened, and she turned around and rushed back to his side. "Don't die, Ni Jiaqi!"
"Your phone? Where's your phone?"
It slid under the bed in the bedroom.
In the earlier chaos, Ni Jiaqi's phone was kicked under the bed by Guo Renyi, and the screen was still faintly lit.
Cheng Shiyun crawled inside and used her head to push the phone out, then dialed the police.
"Hello?" The call connected, and the operator's voice came through the receiver.
"Hiss hiss hiss—!"
"Hello? How can I help you?" the operator's voice sounded again, sounding somewhat puzzled.
Cheng Shiyun was extremely anxious and nudged his head, saying, "Ni Jiaqi, wake up!"
Operator: "Hello, is anyone there?"
Someone's there! Someone's there!
She kept shouting that Ni Jiaqi was injured; the broken cast seemed to have pierced his calf, causing him to bleed a lot, and his breathing was very weak.
She wanted to give her address and shout for help to get someone to come quickly, but she couldn't. Only strange hissing sounds came from her throat; the operator couldn't understand a word of her urgent pleas or desperate cries.
Why can't she become human?!
She's been reborn, so why can't she become a human?!
Become a human! Become a human!
She can't turn into a human; she can't even make a call to the police.
She thought of Uncle Lin in 602. Was Uncle Lin home?
But she couldn't open the door...
Just when she was at her wit's end, the door was suddenly pulled open.
Xie Shijin stood at the door, soaked to the bone. He ran upstairs, completely out of breath.
His gaze swept across the room, first catching sight of the small white snake curled up beside Ni Jiaqi, his pupils contracting slightly. Then his gaze shifted to the side, where he saw Ni Jiaqi lying on the floor, barely breathing.
The young man's brows furrowed, his expression stern, and his aura solemn.
"Hello? Is no one here? Please respond."
Cheng Shiyun stared blankly as the boy strode in. Xie Shijin bent down to pick up the phone from the ground: "No. 132 Xuezi Road, someone has a broken leg and is bleeding. They are unconscious and need an ambulance."
"Why did it take you so long to get back!" Cheng Shiyun blurted out.
Xie Shijin looked at her, his expression instantly changing: "Who let you come back?"
His eyes were sharp and piercing, like a cold, sharp blade.
Cheng Shiyun's heart pounded, and she was startled for a second.
In that split second of stunned silence, Xie Shijin grabbed her.
His body temperature was burning hot, and his palms felt like they were being scorched by flames. Cheng Shiyun was burned and instinctively tried to pull away from his hand.
The boy's hands, however, remained as still as iron shackles, tightening even more as she struggled, the knuckles of his fingers digging painfully into her spine.
Xie Shijin picked her up and examined her thoroughly, as if he wanted to pry open every single scale to examine her closely. His movements were quite rough: "Did Ni Jiaqi bring you back? Did I tell you it was dangerous and that you shouldn't come back?"
"Xie Shijin..." Cheng Shiyun was so dizzy from being manipulated by him that her voice was weak.
"He didn't tell you? How could he bring you back?!"
Cheng Shiyun had been missing him a lot, but after his stern interrogation, the light in her eyes dimmed abruptly. She forced herself to speak, "...It wasn't him. I came back on my own. I was worried something might have happened to you..."
The fierce look in the boy's eyes suddenly froze, and his heart felt as if it had been stung by something.
Xie Shijin's Adam's apple bobbed for a moment: "Why are you worried about me?"
"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" Concern clouded her judgment, and she completely forgot that she had just picked up the little snake and checked it from head to tail.
Staring at her intently, Cheng Shiyun's head felt hot and throbbing: "...It hurts."
"Where does it hurt?" His heart clenched.
"My tail hurts."
Cheng Shiyun tilted her head to the side, not daring to look directly at the urgency in his eyes. She put her tail on his wrist and complained in a muffled voice, "You hurt me just now... Rub it."
Xie Shijin was slightly taken aback. He breathed in the air that had been suffocating his chest. He pulled off the little snake's tail and said, "You're disobedient. It'll hurt."
Cheng Shiyun was truly stunned.
Xie Shijin rejected her.
His aura was icy, and his eyes were covered with a layer of indifferent mist. He was so cold that it was as if the person who was sweating profusely just now was not him, as if Xie Shijin, who had been so obedient to her, had not returned.
The swelling and pain in her eyes became more pronounced, and a stinging sensation spread from the tip of her nose. Cheng Shiyun felt wronged and indignant: "I didn't listen to you? Then did you listen to me?"
"I told you long ago not to act alone, but you insisted on going by yourself and didn't take my words seriously at all!"
"I told you I didn't want to break up with you, but you just dumped me on Ni Jiaqi!"
"Who exactly is disobeying orders?"
Is Xie Shijin giving her the silent treatment?
Cheng Shiyun was even angrier: "So what if I came back? Didn't you say this is my home? Is there a problem with me coming back to my home? Do I need your permission to come back to my home?"
She's been sharp-tongued since middle school; no one can out-argue her.
"It's my problem, it's my fault..." Xie Shijin held her in his hands and touched her head with his forehead.
His forehead was burning hot, and the fierce little snake suddenly fell silent: "Hiss~ It was originally, it was originally your fault."
Xie Shijin put her down, then walked silently to Ni Jiaqi's side and looked at his injuries.
A shard of plaster was embedded in the flesh of his calf. Xie Shijin didn't dare to move it, but pressed hard on the wounds on both sides of the shard to stop the bleeding.
The nearest hospital's ambulance would take five minutes to arrive. To prevent the plaster fragments from shifting and penetrating deeper, Xie Shijin said, "Bring a towel."
Cheng Shiyun darted into the bathroom, climbed her little ladder, and snatched a towel from the shelf in her mouth. Afraid of getting it dirty, she held it on her head to get it.
Xie Shijin glanced at the towel on her head, frowned and said, "Get another one."
"It's clean."
Xie Shijin's face was very tense: "...Take mine."
Cheng Shiyun was speechless and rolled her eyes at him: "Saving lives is the most important thing. Why distinguish between yours and mine? How pretentious!"
Xie Shijin took the towel from her, folded it into a square, and, avoiding Ni Jiaqi's bleeding wound, placed the towel inside the plaster cast, which just happened to hold the protruding plaster fragment in place, preventing it from shifting and piercing into the wound.
The bleeding had stopped, but Ni Jiaqi's face was as white as a sheet of rice paper, with a faint bluish-gray tinge.
Cheng Shiyun suddenly felt a pang of guilt. If she hadn't insisted that Ni Jiaqi bring her back, Ni Jiaqi wouldn't be lying here injured now.
"...He's not dead, is he?"
"He's not dead." Xie Shijin checked his breath. "He just fainted from the pain."
"That's good..." Cheng Shiyun said, "I almost thought I was going to kill someone again."
Xie Shijin frowned: "Who did you kill?"
"You."
If she hadn't knocked on that door that day, his ashes would have been buried in that small plot of land in Songshan Cemetery.
It's very, very far from where she was buried; even the name on the tombstone is wrong.
Xie Shijin has already died once with her.
Xie Shijin closed his eyes and went to the bathroom to wash his hands, while Cheng Shiyun stayed by Ni Jiaqi's side.
When Xie Shijin came out, Cheng Shiyun said, "By the way, go to the bedroom and see if the sunflower toy can still be repaired."
Guo Renyi stomped on it twice as he left. Free toys are usually of poor quality and can't withstand being dropped.
“Guo Renyi and Feng Yue were indeed in the fifth-floor office on the evening of July 12th.” Cheng Shiyun told Xie Shijin everything she had heard and what had happened when she regained her memory. “Guo Renyi smashed and burned my phone. When he called Feng Yue, Sunflower recorded it.”
The boy immediately went to the bedroom.
The bedroom was a mess, and the sunflower's plastic saxophone horn had been trampled and broken.
Xie Shijin picked it up and pressed it.
"Why is there no sound?" Cheng Shiyun asked anxiously. "Is something wrong?"
The situation was urgent; she could only save one of Sunflower and Ni Jiaqi.
“Recording toys all have storage chips. The chip capacity is small, and the original content is only replaced when a new recording is generated.” Xie Shijin disassembled the sunflower toy and said, “The lack of sound is most likely due to a faulty trigger switch or a damaged speaker.”
Cheng Shiyun: "So... the voice inside is still there?"
"Hmm." Xie Shijin lowered his gaze and nodded. "By reading the data in the chip, we can hear what's inside."
"That's great!"
The sound of police sirens from downstairs grew louder as they approached, penetrating the doors and windows and flooding into the house.
If they hand over the chip to the police, they can convict Guo Renyi.
Many people cried for her on the day she left.
The tears she shed that day were greater than the torrential rains she had witnessed in the past sixteen years.
For the next two years, tears continued to fall like this.
Now it's finally going to stop.
A sense of relief washed over Cheng Shiyun, and she happily threw herself into the boy's arms, nuzzling his neck and chin: "Ni Jiaqi sent you messages but didn't reply, and he didn't answer your calls either. Where did you go this afternoon?"
She said, "I miss you so much." She missed him terribly after only a few hours apart.
Xie Shijin touched her, briefly basking in the warmth of surviving the ordeal, and asked, "How long has Guo Renyi been gone?"
"Two or three minutes before you came back?" Cheng Shiyun said smugly. "I bit him, so he shouldn't have gone far."
Two or three minutes.
Xie Shijin looked down at her, his eyes burning red: "You stay here with Ni Jiaqi and wait for the ambulance to arrive."
"Where are you going? To find Guo Renyi?" Cheng Shiyun looked up at him. "Isn't there already evidence?"
The boy's brows were gloomy, his lips were tightly pressed together, and his Adam's apple bobbed repeatedly.
Cheng Shiyun's heart sank lower and lower as she stared intently at him: "You're not even sure if the chip is broken... right?"
Her phone has been burned, and if the recording chip is damaged, the remaining evidence is still insufficient to convict Guo Renyi.
Xie Shijin acted as if he hadn't heard, turned around and strode towards the kitchen. When he came out again, he had a knife in his hand and held it in reverse.
"Xie Shijin?" Cheng Shiyun stared at him in disbelief.
She knew what Xie Shijin was planning to do.
...He was going to kill Guo Renyi.
She clung to Xie Shijin's trouser leg like a kitten, saying, "Don't go, you're not allowed to go..."
"On my birthday, I made a wish that my parents would be healthy and safe."
"I hope Xie Shijin can go to university and live a good life."
You can't let me not be able to have even one wish granted!
She cried out, "School is about to start, take me to Beijing to study with you, let's... stay together forever."
"sorry."
Xie Shijin did not look down at her.
Even though the snake's eyes couldn't shed tears, she could clearly feel liquid seeping from her eyes: "Don't say sorry! I don't want to hear sorry, promise me, promise me!"
"Guo Renyi has been poisoned. He will die. He will definitely die!"
Xie Shijin said, "The police will save him."
The police will take Guo Renyi to the hospital after they catch him.
Even without antitoxin serum, Guo Renyi might not have died if he had received timely medical treatment.
"It doesn't matter."
He said, "I will find him before the police do."
"Xie Shijin!" Cheng Shiyun called out to him, but he wouldn't listen.
The boy opened the door, and a gust of wind rushed in, whipping up the corner of his clothes.
Police officers, nurses, and doctors crowded the narrow stairwell as they went upstairs.
Xie Shijin brushed past them under the gaze of more than a dozen pairs of eyes.
-----------------------
The author says: Love can make people lose their minds and go mad. But Xiao Xie still has reason.
He won't go to jail; he'll go to school. We'll see how I make it up.
Poor thing, the ball's nutrient solution.
The little cloud will transform again, becoming a little bird~
After turning into a bird, she can even talk! No one will suspect her then. [glasses]
Regarding strangulation marks, experiments have been conducted. If you strangle someone for about a minute, there will be no marks. However, if your mouth and nose are covered, emotional excitement can cause asphyxiation and hypoxia within a minute, similar to respiratory alkali poisoning, leading to unconsciousness.
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