Chapter 150 Father and Son Meet

Yan Haotian shuddered and raised his hand to pat his cheek.

Like Jiang Hai, he had escorted the prisoner back on the green train and had hardly slept for two days and two nights. Now that he had heard that the matter he had been investigating for several years had finally been solved, he was naturally nervous and excited.

He does have a birthmark on his leg. Moreover, after being sold, he had a stress reaction and his memory was fuzzy. He only remembered that his name was Xiaotian, so his adoptive parents gave him his current name.

"Anything else?"

The man who sold him that year called him Xiaotian, which meant he must be an acquaintance. But who... was he?

Could they be his biological parents?

In those days, which family in the countryside could have enough food to eat? Moreover, most families had children one after another. Sometimes when they could not afford to raise a child, they would find someone to give the child away. It was a very common thing.

Of course, there are also cruel parents who sell their children directly...

The reason why he had been in doubt for so many years was because of one detail that he remembered very clearly: his father bought him a candied haws fruit, and he was happier than during the Chinese New Year.

Then, I woke up on an ox cart holding a string of candied haws, with a few unfamiliar children beside me. Two ferocious men whipped them with whips, told them that they had been sold by their families, and told them not to cry or they would be whipped to death...

Yan Haotian closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, his eyes had regained the decisiveness and composure that he had acquired through his years of military career.

Jiang Hai hesitated to speak, but still said: "That bastard also said... There is another reason why he can remember it so clearly, that is, it is very likely that the man who sold the child is the child's father, because the child looked up and called the man 'Dad'. He had just entered this industry at that time, and he was willing to sell a child who was already four or five years old. It was also the first time he saw it, and he has always remembered it..."

Yan Haotian's body swayed, and Jiang Hai quickly asked, "Boss, are you...are you okay?"

Yan Haotian quickly covered up his gaffe and whispered, "I'm fine. If the man who sold the child appears in front of him again, will he still recognize him?"

Jiang Hai frowned slightly: "Boss, I think we should just forget about this matter and not pursue it. It's been so many years..."

He was afraid that the final result would be the most cruel one. If that was the case, he would even rather not catch the kidnapper leader!

Yan Haotian looked at him coldly and said word by word: "Can he still recognize it?"

Jiang Hai sighed, nodded, and said, "He said we could give it a try. The man didn't have any special features. I just remember that he was short and had a broken finger. Also, not far from the man, there was an older woman. They should have been together. He still remembers the woman clearly. She had a hunchback!"

Yan Haotian was shocked!

He vaguely remembered that his grandmother had a hunchback, but the one in the family who broke a finger was not his father, but his uncle!

"How about this! Lend me your police car. We will take this leader to Xia Village immediately and let him identify himself!" Yan Haotian did not want to interfere and said in a trembling voice!

Jiang Hai was not vague either. He nodded immediately and said, "Okay! We'll go right away!"

After a while, Public Security Officer Li saw Jiang Hai coming out in a hurry with the kidnapper leader and getting into the police car. Naturally, he had no chance to tell anyone about Xia Shuangshan's affairs!

Alas... I can only wait until Captain Jiang comes back to bring it up again.

Unexpectedly, we had to wait until the evening.

Jiang Hai returned with the leader in a hurry. Two other people were also arrested in the same car, a man in his forties or fifties, and an old woman in her sixties or seventies. Both of them had handcuffs on their wrists. Who else could it be but Li Cuihua and Xia Dazhuang?

Li Cuihua started crying and screaming before she even got out of the police car: "You are wrongly accusing me! My son pushed me down and tried to kill me, but you didn't care and arrested me! Do you still have the law? Wuwuwuwu! Let me go! What grounds do you have to arrest me and my son?"

Xia Dazhuang was not much better, but he was more frightened than his mother. His legs were weak and he looked back and forth at the police who arrested him with a look of panic: "Comrade police, have you made a mistake? Why did you arrest me and my mother? It was my brother who committed the crime! Not only did he not provide for his mother in her old age, he almost killed my mother. Didn't you already catch him? Even if you want to use me and my mother as witnesses, you don't have to bring this to us..."

The handcuffs on his wrists were for prisoners in labor camps! These police officers put them on him in front of so many people in the village who were watching the excitement. How would he and his mother face people when they return to the village?

Jiang Hai was so annoyed that he shouted, "Shut up! You guys know what evil things you have done! Are you still wrongly accused? Wait until you get to the police station and give your confession, then you can protest your injustice!"

Yan Haotian sat in the car with a cold face the whole time and didn't say a word.

The leader arrived at the entrance of Xia Village. Before he even got out of the car, he pointed at two people at the entrance of the village from a distance and said with certainty, "Yes! These are the two people. If you don't believe me, go and see if he has a broken finger!"

It was later confirmed that the leader had made an amazing identification and those two people were indeed Xia Dazhuang and Li Cuihua!

Jiang Hai conducted another surprise interrogation throughout the night. In addition, the testimony given by the leader was very reliable. With a combination of coaxing and intimidation, Xia Dazhuang and Li Cuihua confessed everything in the second half of the night.

It turned out that Xia Village suffered from drought that year and the fields produced almost no food. Although Xia Shuangshan and Lin Yuru worked very hard, they were all lazy people at home and still couldn't make ends meet.

Li Cuihua heard from somewhere that someone was adopting boys, and that families in the city who couldn't have children were willing to pay a high price for them. She became interested and planned to sell one of her grandsons.

However, she has always been partial. At that time, Xia Dazhuang and Xia Sanxi also had sons. Xia Dazhuang's son was five years old, and Xia Sanxi's was three years old. She couldn't bear to give up either of them, so she set her sights on Xia Shuangshan's son.

However, she also knew that no matter how filial her second son was, he would never agree to "give" her son away, so she and Xia Dazhuang came up with a plan.

That day, Xia Dazhuang took advantage of Xia Shuangshan and Lin Yuru working in the fields and lured Yan Haotian to a vendor under the pretext of buying him some candied haws. After returning, he asked Liu Hongmei to pretend to run home in a panic, saying that she saw Yan Haotian playing by the river and accidentally fell into the river and was washed away...

In order to avoid revealing his true intentions, he even used candied haws to coax Yan Haotian and asked him to call him "Dad", which caused the human trafficker to misunderstand.

Xia Dazhuang never dreamed that it was his action of making Yan Haotian call him "Dad" that left such a deep impression on the man that he could still remember it clearly almost twenty years later and recognized him at once!

While Jiang Hai was being interrogated, Yan Haotian went to meet Xia Shuangshan.

They drove the police car to Xia Village. The villagers of Xia Village thought that they were there to investigate the case of Xia Shuangshan's arrest. Therefore, they gathered around them and pleaded with them to testify to Xia Shuangshan's character.

"Comrades in the Public Security Bureau, the second son of the Xia family is impossible to do such a thing! We are from the same village, and we have been watching for many years. Li Cuihua is really biased. Even so, after his second son broke off the relationship with her, he still gave her one yuan every month for her old age! It is impossible for the second son of the Xia family to do such a thing!"

"That's right! If you said that Xia Lao Da and Xia Lao San could get out, I would believe it a little bit!"

"I see, it's clear that Xia Dazhuang saw that Xia Laoer and his wife had severed their relationship with them, and that there were no longer two hardworking people working for them at home. They were just a bunch of lazy people who didn't earn enough work points and couldn't eat enough, so he got angry and deliberately falsely accused Xia Laoer..."

Only then did Yan Haotian realize that Xia Shuangshan was in the police station.

Xia Shuangshan had been locked up for a few days. His beard was untidy and he looked quite feral.

He saw that the person who was interrogating him was a young police officer he had never seen before, so he didn't care and said the same thing as before: "Comrade police officer, I really didn't push my mother down. It was my eldest brother who accidentally knocked her down..."

Yan Haotian didn't care about this matter. Jiang Hai would definitely handle this case as well as the interrogation.

He quietly looked at the gray-haired man in front of him. In his vague memory, his father was tall and big, and he always put him on his neck to ride a horse. He would always look up at him in admiration.

Today, Xia Shuangshan is no longer as tall as himself, his face is covered with wrinkles, and years of hard work have made him look very old.

However, his attitude was still simple and unpretentious, neither humble nor arrogant. This aspect was many times better than that of Xia Dazhuang.

Yan Haotian felt as if there was a ball of cotton in his throat. He was silent for a while before he asked, "We checked your household registration information and found that you had a son who was reported dead in a river more than ten years ago, right?"

Xia Shuangshan had never expected that after more than ten or twenty years, someone would suddenly mention his dead child. He was stunned and his lips began to tremble.

Seeing that he didn't answer, Yan Haotian didn't ask any more questions. He had checked this household registration change record before and was not unfamiliar with it.

Yan Haotian continued to ask calmly: "Do you still remember that you promised your son that you would buy him some candied haws on his birthday? Did you... buy him some?"

Xia Shuangshan looked as if he had seen a ghost. He stared at Yan Haotian with a pale face, his lips trembling even more. Suddenly, thick tears welled up in his dry eye sockets. A grown man suddenly covered his face and burst into tears.

How could he not remember? He promised Xiaotian that he would buy him some candied haws on his fifth birthday.

However, when he kept 1 cent from the money he earned from odd jobs, Li Cuihua scolded him for being selfish, saying that his whole family was almost starving to death, yet he still embezzled 1 cent!

At that time, one dime could buy a pound of sweet potato noodles, which was enough food for the whole family for a day. He was stupid enough to hand over the ten cents and break his promise to his son.

He thought, when the famine was over and his family was no longer hungry, he would buy two for his son! It was the same.

Because of this, his son was angry with him and didn't speak to him for several days.

Less than half a month later, the child fell into the water and drowned. Until his death... he never got to eat the candied haws he had been craving for!

"My poor child never got to eat the candied haws he wanted until he died... Why didn't I buy some for him... I really regret it..."