Gao Wei did not go home all night. The Gao family did not take it seriously at first. After all, they had locked him up too harshly before. After a whole month, he was finally released and must have some fun. The people who went out together this time all knew each other well, and the Gao family just thought that he was drunk and went to someone's house to sleep. But he didn't come back until the next afternoon. Seeing that Gao's father was about to go home from get off work, Gao's mother was afraid that he would find out and beat his son, so she prepared to call him back, but his phone was turned off.
"You little bastard, you must have forgotten to charge your phone again!" Gao's mother said angrily. She couldn't contact him and could only look for him through the other children who went out to play with her. She called every household to inquire, but no one said they had seen Gao Wei. Everyone thought he had gone home.
After hanging up the phone, Gao's mother sat on the sofa in the living room for a while, and then hurriedly dialed her husband's number.
"Beep...beep...what's up?"
"Ah Kun, something happened to Dabao!"
When Gao Wei woke up, it was probably around eight or nine in the morning, but he himself didn't know exactly. He was awakened by the heat, feeling as if he was being roasted on a fire, with a tingling sensation on his skin. Due to the aftereffects of a hangover, his head was dizzy. He struggled to open his eyes, but what he saw was not a bright and comfortable bedroom, but a dark and dilapidated place.
There was a fire less than two meters ahead, the firewood was burning with a crackling sound, and the flames were jumping and dancing like elves. Apparently, this was the source of the burning sensation that had woken him. The firelight illuminated the surrounding area. The rough and uneven ground was covered with a thick layer of dust that was visibly visible to the naked eye. The walls were made of scattered bricks, and moss spread from the base of the wall to the wall surface. The wooden door embedded in the wall was half open, and the original color of the door could no longer be seen. The lower corner had rotted and fallen off.
Gao Wei's first reaction was that he was dreaming. He closed his eyes and shook his head violently twice. As a result, the back of his head accidentally hit a half-broken brick on the ground and he cried out in pain. He subconsciously wanted to reach out and touch the back of his head, but found that he couldn't move at all. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were also tied, so he couldn't move. The stiffness that was previously concealed by the burning sensation gradually became clearer.
The dilapidated wooden door creaked and a man walked out, his sneakers stepping on the ground and raising fine dust. "Awake?" It was a man's voice. He walked to Gao Wei, squatted down, reached out and picked up a piece of wood and put it on the fire. On that hand, there was a white plastic glove.
"Who are you? Where is this?" Gao Wei asked while trying to turn his head to see the man clearly. However, before the goal was achieved, he was frozen because of a word from the other party.
"Aren't you afraid that you will die if you see my face?"
This is not just a scare tactic. In a kidnapping case, the kidnappers may just want money, but if someone sees their face, it is very likely that the kidnapper will end up being murdered.
Gao Wei turned his head and looked at the ground, panicking, "I didn't see anything! Do you want money? Tell me how much you want!"
The kidnapper said calmly, "I don't want money, I just want to ask you a few questions. How much do you know about the other people in the 430 case?"
Gao Wei was stunned for a moment before he realized what Case 430 referred to, the sensational Hedu drug trafficking frame-up case that he had personally experienced. "How did you find..." He suddenly stopped in the middle of his sentence. Because he didn't need anyone to answer, he guessed the result himself. When the news reported on this case, the information of all the people was concealed, but he couldn't resist the urge to show off and shared it with his friends online. Although he was soon told that this was dangerous and deleted the post, who knows if anyone saved it.
If it weren't for his limited mobility, Gao Wei would have wanted to slap himself.
"Have you thought it through?" the kidnapper asked again.
"If you tell me what I said, will you let me go?" Gao Wei tried to negotiate with the other party, but was kicked in the heart in return.
"What qualifications do you think you have to negotiate with me now?"
"Ah - I'll tell you, I only know one, her name is Qi Lili, and she lives in..."
That afternoon, Gao's mother called home. Zhang Qingrong happened to be in the living room and answered the phone. The other party asked her if she knew where Gao Wei was. She replied that she didn't know because she left early last night with a few other girls and left before the show ended. She didn't think much about it at the time. Who knows if she was drunk and couldn't walk, so her boss sent her to the hotel.
At around eight o'clock in the evening, Zhang Qingrong was talking on the phone with a friend when there was a knock on the door of her room. She asked, and it was her father who answered, with his usual serious tone. She opened the door in her slippers, only to see the man, who was supposed to be wearing home clothes, had changed into a police uniform. He looked cold, "Pack your things, and I'll have Xiao Liu take you to your grandmother's house later."
Zhang Qingrong was stunned for a moment, "What happened?"
"Mr. Gao has been found."
In an unfinished building in the suburbs.
In the afternoon, Gao Wei's father received a call from his wife saying that his son had an accident. He immediately mobilized personnel to investigate and quickly locked on to the Zero Point Bar. Then, he found from the surveillance video that a suspicious person approached Gao Wei and talked to him. The man was very familiar with surveillance cameras and his face was not captured from beginning to end. The surveillance video only showed him helping Gao Wei away, and then the screen went black. No one knew how he took the person away. Gao's father had originally planned to use the surveillance cameras on the street to investigate. At this time, his wife called again - she received a color message with a photo and a paragraph. In the obviously abandoned house, there was a large iron barrel in the middle with a fire at the bottom of the barrel. A person was tied in the barrel with an expression of pain and panic on his face.
——He doesn’t have much time left.
The person in the photo is Gao Wei.
…
"That man calculated the time too accurately. When Lao Gao found Gao Wei, he had only been dead for a few minutes... Although you did nothing wrong in this matter, we all live in the same compound and we see each other all the time. Seeing you will inevitably remind me of the children, so I plan to let you live with your grandmother for a while."
The person who was partying together yesterday suddenly died today. Zhang Qingrong felt it was a little unreal for a moment, "How could it be?" Gao Wei had just returned and had no grudges against him... But she soon remembered a detail - the time was calculated very accurately. Her eyes suddenly widened, and she couldn't believe it and said, "That person appeared again?"
Father Zhang nodded heavily. "There is a word spray-painted on the iron barrel: demon."
demon, devil. It represents not just a word, but the inhumane murders behind it. The last time he appeared was after the major human trafficking case was solved fifteen years ago. The information of the investigators and the victims' families was leaked somehow, and soon after, these people died tragically one by one. At first, the police investigated the criminal gang's revenge plan, but ended up reaching a dead end. Later, someone suggested that the criminal might have killed for revenge and just wanted to confuse the police.
The serial murder case was never solved and the files were shelved.
Zhang's father was in the public security system and was personally involved in the incident back then. When she was a child, Zhang Qingrong was very interested in these things. After her repeated requests, Zhang's father told her a lot of cases. So many years have passed, and she has forgotten many things, but this is the only thing she remembers most clearly.
"Didn't the person get caught?" Zhang Qingrong asked.
"He was very good at choosing a location. The terrain around the unfinished buildings in the southern suburbs is complicated. On one side is the garbage disposal center with a mixed crowd of people, and on the other side is a mountain forest with lush branches and leaves extending in all directions. Let alone catching him, we can't even determine where he left from."
This answer was within Zhang Qingrong's expectations. If he could be caught so easily, the case would not have become an unsolved case and been forgotten.
East Administrative District, Pingzhou, Baiyan City.
After more than a month of recuperation, Qi Lili's injuries had healed a lot. After obtaining the doctor's consent, she went through the discharge procedures.
Her family lives in an old-fashioned residential complex, and the housewives who dance in the community square every day know almost everything about her children, including how old they are, where they work, whether they have boyfriends, etc. Qi Lili's mother used to be one of them. Not only did she gossip with people in the community, but she also said a few words about it every time she called Qi Lili. But now that Qi Lili was in trouble and the target of gossip had become her own daughter, she never went to the square to dance again.
But this can't stop everyone's enthusiasm for gossip.
Qi Lili came back from the hospital that day. The weather was fine. A group of people were sitting under the trees in the community garden. When they saw their family, they greeted them and expressed their concern. After thanking them one by one, Mother Qi urged her to leave quickly.
Qi Lili knew exactly why. Sure enough, after walking for a while, I could vaguely hear those people talking behind my back.
"I heard he fell down the stairs?"
"That's what the old Qi family said."
"You just believe what she says. When I went to the hospital to see her before, she had injuries on her face. It looked like she was beaten."
"Didn't she have a boyfriend before? I heard he was quite rich. But I didn't see him today after he was discharged from the hospital. I guess they broke up. This injury might have been caused by someone beating her up!"
…
"These people have nothing to do after eating, so what nonsense are they talking about!" Mother Qi was furious.
Qi Lili calmly replied, "Why do you care what they say? It won't hurt you." Didn't you gossip with them about other people's affairs and enjoy it every day? Now I feel the pain when the knife pierces my body.
After this incident, she suddenly realized that neither love nor material things meant anything compared to life.
She took some time to develop a regular routine, waking up early to exercise and going to bed on time at night. Because my injury had not yet fully healed, I initially just got up early and took a walk around the community. She persisted for a week, during which time she would often meet a girl, but they would just say hello. That morning, she met the girl again. She seemed to be in a good mood. After saying hello, she actually started chatting with her.
The two chatted all the way, and when they finally parted, the girl suddenly asked, "Didn't your boyfriend come to pick you up today?"
Qi Lili was stunned, "What boyfriend?"
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