Break the door
Retribution comes too quickly.
The thud of a dog hitting the iron, the dog's short wail, the piercing screeching of brakes—the horrific accident was over in a matter of seconds. Hui Zifeng glanced at the hand he had raised to block the dog. Three bright red wounds pierced his skin. The dog was pinned beneath the wheels of the black jeep, blood gushing out.
Hui Zifeng stood up and took off his coat and covered Luo Yu's head with it, letting her face away from the tragic scene. "Don't look, it's okay."
On the other side, the dog's owner yelled something into the house, and three strong young men came out, holding shovels and other tools in their hands. They walked to the car aggressively and grabbed the driver who got out of the car.
"Calm down, guys! I'll compensate you, I'll definitely compensate you for your lives!" The driver was a man in his thirties, exuding an unruly demeanor. He seemed accustomed to this kind of situation. Even when someone grabbed him by the collar and was about to hit him with a hoe, he could still smile and curse at the other person unintentionally.
"What did you say?" The three men grabbed the driver and slammed him against the car. Even the two-ton car moved a little, and the driver coughed violently.
"My life has to be paid for, too. Brothers, do you want me to pay for your lives or do you want me to pay for mine?"
"That's the dog I've raised for seven years, just like my son. You just hit my dog and killed it. You can't leave without 300,000 yuan."
"I didn't bring that much money with me. How about we call the police? We'll pay the compensation when the time comes. Just say I killed your two sons and I'll admit it."
"Hey! I'm from CNM."
The driver was punched and vomited blood.
"Don't do it! Don't do it!" Hui Zifeng couldn't bear the noise and finally rushed in. The two sides persuaded and appeased the stubborn people, "I will compensate you, whatever you want."
"Four hundred thousand." The old man was extremely vicious.
"Okay. I'll pay," Hui Zifeng said. "This is a traffic accident, so we have to call the police to go through the formalities. I promise to pay you whatever you want."
Such straightforwardness made a few people flinch. After glancing at each other, they reached a consensus. The old man spoke up, "The car must stay, too."
The driver laughed. The old man's son was about to hit him again, but Hui Zifeng stopped him again, "Let's talk it over nicely, brother. Don't make a big deal out of it. It's not good for anyone."
"Honey, stay in the car first. I'll handle this." The driver put his hands on Hui Zifeng's shoulders and pulled him behind him. Hui Zifeng felt a chill run down his spine. What on earth was wrong with this guy? If he hadn't saved him and Luo Yu, Hui Zifeng wouldn't have wanted to get into this mess. So why was this guy so disgusting? Since he said that, Hui Zifeng was eager to get away with it. He slipped a business card into the driver's jacket pocket and slipped away.
Hui Zifeng took Luo Yu away, looked back at the messy scene, and secretly called the police. But the old woman at the door was holding a basin and shouted, "He's on the phone!"
A flurry of curses followed, and Hui Zifeng caught a few words like "bitch," "dead girl," and "dead parents." Hui Zifeng helped Luo Yu walk faster. He had no experience dealing with this kind of people, and right now, all he knew was to stay out of harm's way. But then he thought again: Luo Yu lived here, her world filled with these evil people and foul language. What should he do?
Everyone has his own destiny.
As they walked, they came across a lotus pond by the roadside. It was pure and flawless, swaying in the summer breeze, its golden stamens spreading out in a charming and graceful manner. Luo Yu pulled back her clothes, looked at the lotus pond, and said to Hui Zifeng, "Teacher, this is the place I'm talking about. Over there is a poplar forest, and behind that is another lotus pond. My grandparents planted this, and no one else has it."
Hui Zifeng could hear the pride in her words, but he was not in the mood to think about it at the moment.
"That's where I live. Teacher, you don't have to send me off. Teacher, here are your clothes. Thank you." Luo Yu folded the clothes and hesitated, "Should I wash them for you?"
"No need, then Luo Yu, you can go home. I'll stay here and watch you go in and leave."
Luo Yu nodded, turned, and ran back to the house by the lotus pond, which had been renovated for over fifty years. Although the house was quite old, it was clear that the owner was a very clean person. Hui Zifeng returned to the scene of the accident. No one was there, and the blood on the ground had been washed away, leaving only water stains and car brake marks.
Hui Zifeng couldn't believe it. So soon? No police came to question him? How could he justify letting a vicious dog bite someone? His camera, which had fallen to the ground, was also missing. The door of the house was tightly shut. Hui Zifeng was terrified and didn't dare to stay there any longer. He quickly left. He glanced at the bunch of flowers on the purple locust tree again, a pure and flawless thing, and sighed again and again.
The sketching trip ultimately fell through. Hui Zifeng worried that Luo Yu might be in danger walking along that road every day. Luo Yu, a little annoyed, said, "I was bitten by that dog, and it was Grandpa who saved me. He was blackmailed for a lot of money, but they were willing to do this for my own good. I can't do much for them, but Grandpa and Grandma still have something on their mind, so I'm not afraid of anything."
The female student had tears in her eyes, but she remained resilient. She calmed herself down and said, "I'm sorry, this is my own problem. I shouldn't have pinned my hopes on the teacher."
After returning that day, Hui Zifeng made some inquiries and gained a rough idea of what Luo Yu was referring to. The story went something like this: Luo Yu's grandparents were a highly educated couple in the village. Having a child in their old age, they doted on their daughter. When the daughter grew up, she fell in love with a simple, honest man from the same village who was a construction veteran. The marriage was a natural progression. Everyone was optimistic, as it was during the building boom at the time, and the man's job was lucrative. However, the daughter's life after marriage was unhappy, especially after she gave birth to a son. She frequently visited her parents' home. The proximity of the two families made for frequent gossip, and perhaps because the honest man cared about his reputation, he grew increasingly annoyed, leading to heated arguments. The daughter had been saying for years that she wanted to see the world, but when the child was seven or eight, or five or six, she allegedly ran away at night and never returned. The elderly couple waited day after day in their hometown, receiving no word from their daughter.
The villagers asked the man, "Aren't you going to look for your wife?"
After the man failed in his pork business, he set up a small shoe nailing stall at the door and said with a simple smile, "I'm not looking for you. If you want to leave, just leave."
When I left, there was only one landline phone in the entire village. Now everyone has a cell phone, and the village is accessible by road. Still no news from the daughter. I called the police, but still no response.
After the woman left, the man often visited his father-in-law and mother-in-law. Everyone praised him and scolded the woman for being restless and ungrateful. How could such an educated old couple raise such a daughter?
The house that Luo Yu took him to see was the home of the old couple's daughter and her husband.
"That house has been built for more than 20 years, right?"
"What? It's only been over a decade, it's become deserted quickly. But it's strange. His wife ran away overnight, and the man built the foundation overnight and worked day and night to build the house. Maybe he thought if he built a more luxurious house, his wife would come back."
"So when did the family move away? Why did they move away?"
"They moved out after the house was built, even before they moved in. Did the family of three go to find their wives?"
"A family of three?"
"There's still an old lady here."
A few days later, I heard that the family whose dog had died had eaten dog meat and had been vomiting and having diarrhea for several days, so they had to be taken to the hospital. Seven people went, and only two returned. It was a pity for the eight-year-old boy, the family's treasure. He had eaten the most, and he died on the way to the hospital before he could even get there.
His family needed to hold a funeral, but no one was there to help. The widowed mother and orphan turned to the village Party secretary for help. The officials couldn't mobilize the people, so they took matters into their own hands, even asking the school teachers to help. Everyone initially didn't want Hui Zifeng to get involved, and told him to pack up and go home early. But Hui Zifeng volunteered, and so he went back to the place.
When someone else's family suffered retribution, people with a bit of kindness would not just sit back and watch the joke. They would express their views on the matter in a compassionate tone.
"Out of a family of ten, only four are left."
"Isn't there a family of three? Where did the four come from?"
"Don't you have a son?"
"What the hell is going on?"
"He's been bullying us for decades and now he's getting his comeuppance. Let's not talk too much about it. Why criticize others? Everyone has a miserable life."
It felt like a lifetime ago. Hui Zifeng's assigned task was to accompany a mother and child who were still in confinement after childbirth. The woman's eyes held no sadness, or rather, no emotion at all. Numbly, she coaxed the child in her arms. The courtyard gate, trampled so many times by passing vehicles, was overgrown with weeds. The woman sat by a locust tree, refusing to return home. Next to her was her luggage: her child's belongings.
When it was almost dark, a car arrived, took the woman away, and Hui Zifeng went to look for help elsewhere. The teachers at the school kept stopping him from entering, probably because they thought it was dirty. A noble person like Hui Zifeng shouldn't set foot in a dirty place.
Hui Zifeng was sitting under a tree, waiting. Bored, he went to search for the bunch of flowers on the tree. Suddenly, his brow furrowed. Someone had plucked the single flower and tossed it to the ground. Was it that woman? She'd picked the flower to amuse the child, played with it for a few seconds, and then discarded it without regret.
He squatted down, looking at the flowers. Vivid colors, pure texture, a lingering fragrance. The old tree looked as if it had lived for a century. A sign proclaimed "Government Cultural Relic" stood beside it, surrounded by a man-high iron fence. Was this bouquet his only labor of love this year? And yet, it was stripped away, utterly undone.
There was no wind, but the treetops moved slightly, as if someone had bumped into the trunk. A piece of bark had fallen off. The old locust tree lived only on that circle of bark, its center empty. Hui Zifeng couldn't find the missing piece of bark anywhere near it. In an instant, lightning flashed and thunder roared, and then the sky cleared without a single cloud.
Inside the tree trunk, there was a glowing green object. Hui Zifeng stared at it again and again, thinking it was a cultural relic and shouldn't be touched casually. What if it got damaged? But what exactly was that glowing green object? He was genuinely curious.
There wasn't a single weed growing inside the iron fence. The soil beneath the bark was black, covered in green moss. Now Hui Zifeng saw that the color of the soil was changing, gradually becoming less dense, its center denting, revealing the white sand beneath. Was he losing his mind? Hui Zifeng patted his head, but for the moment, he chose to trust himself.
Finally, he reached over, and something seemed to slip through his hand. Hui Zifeng thought it was a snake and quickly withdrew. Then, savoring it carefully, he realized it felt like coral fleece, soft and light. He used his phone to shine a light and peered inside. Not even an ant could be seen, so he reached in again and grabbed the green, glowing object.
It turned out to be a green jadeite. It was the size of a button, set in gold, with a crown-shaped piece of gold engraved with the character "moon." It was spotless, without a speck of dirt, as pristine as new. He seemed to have seen this object somewhere before, but couldn't place it. Just as he was about to leave, he noticed what looked like an iron box buried in the sand at the center of the tree trunk, covered in rust. He gently touched it with a stick, and the quicksand dispersed, revealing its full form.
A corner of the box was opened. Hui Zifeng opened the lid and felt a prick on his hand. Inside was a small rabbit-like doll and a plastic bag containing something.
"That's it!"
Who is speaking? Hui Zifeng was startled and looked around. The leaves of the locust tree blew without wind.
"It's the murder weapon!"
Maybe it was the voice in his heart.
"Luo Yu, maybe I helped you," Hui Zifeng thought. "But where did that little rabbit go? It was clearly there just now, wasn't it?"
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