The dry corn leaves cut across her cheeks like blades, leaving streaks of blood on her pale skin, but she dared not stop.
The whistles and chaotic footsteps behind me grew closer and closer.
She ran desperately towards the riverbank, her own heart pounding and the police shouting, "Li Xiaorou! You can't escape!"
The riverbank is just a stone's throw away; once we cross the river, we'll be safe!
With a loud bang, the deafening gunshot startled the water birds in the reeds.
Li Xiaorou felt a heat in her right leg, followed by excruciating pain.
She staggered and fell onto the riverbank, her palm pressing against the sharp pebbles, her blood instantly staining the grayish-white stones red.
"Hands up!! Don't move!"
Old Zhang approached, brandishing his still-smoking pistol; the sound of his shoes crushing gravel was like the footsteps of death.
Li Xiaorou suddenly laughed.
She shakily stood up, supporting herself on her injured leg, and raised her bloodied hands above her head.
His straw hat had long since fallen off somewhere, and his disheveled hair was stuck to his pale face with sweat.
"I surrender..."
She spoke in a hoarse voice, but the moment Old Zhang lowered his guard, she suddenly leaped towards the nearby riverbank!
"Stop her!"
Old Zhang's roar and the sound of gunfire rang out at the same time.
Li Xiaorou felt a heavy blow to her back, and a burning pain instantly spread throughout her body.
She plunged into the rushing river like a kite with a broken string, and in a daze, she heard a jumble of shouts from the bank.
"Quickly! Set up the downstream interception net!"
The murky river water filled my mouth and nose, and the blood-red color blurred before my eyes.
Li Xiaorou's last consciousness was at the moment she sank to the bottom of the water, and her mind seemed to be stuck on the scene from her previous life, where she was driven to the brink of despair.
How could it have turned out like this again...?
Three days later, a sand dredging boat downstream discovered Li Xiaorou's swollen body at the barrier.
During the autopsy, the forensic pathologist found an oil paper package in her inner pocket. Inside, besides crumpled banknotes, was a piece of blueprint that had been soaked in river water and was wrinkled.
After technical reconstruction, the police confirmed that this was a floor plan of a building, and a small ingot pattern was clearly drawn in the area circled in red.
*
In the threshing ground of Liushugou, Li Youcai had two worn-out cloth shoes hanging around his neck, with the words "corrupt criminal" painted in red on the uppers.
His gray head drooped almost to his chest, and spittle and rotten vegetable leaves splattered onto his hunched back.
Sharp curses erupted from the dark mass of people below the stage.
The commune's disciplinary decision was still posted at the entrance of the brigade office, with a bright red official seal stamped on the four words "removed from office".
At this moment, the banner on the denunciation platform was even more glaring, proclaiming that corrupt official Li Youcai should be severely punished.
"They embezzled 400 jin of wheat seeds in the autumn of 1976 alone!"
Director Wang of the commune's revolutionary committee shook the ledger so loudly that the pages almost poked Li Youcai's nose.
The Li family members below the stage froze on the spot as if struck by lightning.
Li Jianguo and Li Jianye stared wide-eyed, while their mother looked at her husband with a deathly pale face. She had no idea that there had been so much grain in the house!
"I'm innocent, Director!"
“My family eats sweet potato rice every meal, and the whole village, young and old, is watching! Four hundred catties of wheat seeds... that would fill half a room!”
"I'll let it go that I was dismissed because of that girl, but I won't admit to these charges!!"
Li Youcai suddenly looked up, and two tears squeezed out of his cloudy old eyes.
"Who has seen my family's hidden grain? Step forward!"
He became more and more excited as he spoke, looking at the crowd.
He secretly rejoiced, having exchanged all the wheat seeds for fine grains and given them to the widows in the village, without even his family knowing!
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