Let’s go and stop playing with this kind of people.
The police officer then turned to ask Xie Hao: "Xie Hao, can you identify who is in the picture?"
Xie Hao raised his head and said weakly, "Yes."
"Did you buy the necklace you are wearing?"
Feng Tingting interrupted: "Comrade police officer, I bought this necklace for my child as a reward."
"Xie Hao's parents, please don't interrupt."
Feng Tingting explained: "Comrade police officer, the child is still young and doesn't understand."
Xie Hao lowered his head, his eyes gradually became moist, and he began to sob.
Feng Tingting was so angry that she couldn't help but stand up and yell, "Why are you crying? You are useless! You can only cry! Can't you tell me that I bought the necklace?"
When the police tried to persuade Feng Tingting to leave, Xie Hao suddenly stood up and burst into tears: "The necklace was not bought for me by my mother, it was given to me by Xu Zhibao."
Feng Tingting grabbed his collar and scolded him, "What nonsense are you talking about? How did the things I bought become Xu Zhibao? Who is Xu Zhibao?"
"Xu Zhibao is my elder brother!"
Jiang Lin and Pei Xu listened to their quarrel at the end of the corridor.
Feng Tingting became completely anxious and slapped Xie Hao on the head.
Xie Hao covered his head and cried even louder, saying intermittently: "You... only know how to hit me and scold me!"
At the police's request, Feng Tingting sat on the other side of the desk.
The police officer asked gently, "Xie Hao, you said that the necklace was given to you by Xu Zhibao. What is your relationship with Xu Zhibao?"
Xie Hao sobbed and said, "He is from Class 7. He is my eldest brother. My mother opened a small shop. When I was in the first grade of junior high school, I was bullied. He brought people to help me. Since then, I have brought snacks from home to him every week, and sometimes I would bring a pack of cigarettes. He has always protected me, and no one dares to bully me anymore."
"Then do you know where the necklace Xu Zhibao gave you came from?"
Xie Hao lowered his head and sobbed: "I don't know."
After receiving the call, the school class teacher and his parents sent Xu Zhibao to the police station.
"Xu Zhibao, according to the information we have, we now know that you gave Xie Hao the necklace as a gift. So, did you buy the necklace yourself? Or did you get it from other sources?"
Xu Zhibao said fearlessly: "I picked it up on the road."
"Which way did you find it?"
Xu Zhibao said directly: "I don't remember."
The police pointed at Xie Hao who was at the other end of the desk and asked, "What is your relationship with him? Why did you give him the necklace?"
"He is my adopted little brother, and I gave him away because I don't like him."
"Do you know any of them?" the policeman showed him some photos for identification.
Xu Zhibao leaned forward and glanced at the photo. He didn't recognize her and had never seen her before.
Jiang Lin went downstairs and spoke softly to the three children, "When my brother was young, his parents sent him to a boarding school. You can go home once a week, but my brother can only stay at his life teacher's house during holidays."
Pei Xu hid on the stairs and listened.
Jiang Lin stroked their heads: "At that time, my brother was as short as you. Some tall classmates often bullied me and asked me for money and things. One time they robbed me of all my money." Jiang Lin held their hands tightly: "I had no money to eat. I was hungry for two days. I was very angry! I picked up the broom in the classroom, rushed into their class and beat them up. One of them even lost a tooth. I took back my money from them to buy food. Since then, they never dared to bully me again. Do you know why?"
The three of them shook their heads.
"It was because my brother stood up to them bravely. I was bullied by them for a whole semester. In fact, they are not that strong. We also need to learn to protect ourselves and be brave. They dare not bully us easily anymore."
Xu Zhibao fiddled with the pen in his hand, "Uncle policeman, can I go back to school?"
The police deliberately threatened him: "Xu Zhibao, do you know what the consequences will be if you lie to us?"
Pei Xu knocked on the door and said, "Comrade police, Pei Chen and the others have something to say."
Jiang Lin brought the three children up. When they entered the room, they did not dare to look directly at Xu Zhibao. Jiang Lin sensed their nervousness, stroked their backs and whispered, "Be a brave little man."
Pei Chen pointed at Xu Zhibao timidly: "Uncle, it was Xu...he asked us to steal something."
Xu Zhibao stood up and glared at him, denying: "It's not me, I don't know him."
Pei Yixuan shrank to Jiang Lin's knees in fear and choked up, "It was him and Liang Yiyi who asked us to steal things, or else they would beat us in the school toilet."
Pei Lin didn't dare to say anything and shed tears silently.
Xu Zhibao disagreed: "You are accusing me, what evidence do you have?"
Pei Chen said: "Xu Zhibao said that we are minors, and even if we are caught, the police will not take us to jail. He said that if we don't go, we can forget about studying in school in the future."
"Then how did you deliver the things to Xu Zhibao?"
"We stole things, drove our electric bikes to town, and then walked to Pangjia Village. When we arrived, he came down a hill and took our stolen things. He also tied us up and said he would starve us to death so that no one would know that he had asked us to steal things."
The police turned to Xu Zhibao and asked, "Are they telling the truth?"
Xu Zhibao hesitated for a while and then denied it.
The police called an auxiliary police officer and whispered to him for a while. The auxiliary police officer turned around and went to the monitoring room.
The police continued to ask: "Pei Chen, you said Xu Zhibao bullied you at school, when did it start?"
"Since the first semester of the first year of junior high school, they said our parents were not at home and no one would help us when they bullied us. They also asked us for half of our living expenses, fruits and snacks we brought from home, and if we didn't give them, they would beat us in the toilet."
"When Xu Zhibao and others ask you for something, where do you usually give it to them?"
"In the dormitory bathroom."
Jiang Lin and Pei Xu took them downstairs and waited for several hours.
Finally, an auxiliary police officer brought several middle-aged men to the station.
Under the dual evidence of the bosses' identification and surveillance video, Xu Zhibao admitted the facts pointed out by Pei Chen.
Xu Zhibao and the other three people scouted the villagers' homes in advance and forced Pei Chen and the other two to steal things. Pei Yixuan mistakenly entered a villager's house with surveillance cameras and was accidentally photographed by the cameras. Afterwards, Xu Zhibao and his gang took the mountain road into Pangjia Village. Fearing that the matter would be exposed, they tied Pei Chen and the other two in an abandoned house, walked to the pawn shop in the town to cash in, and bought two mobile phones each at the mobile phone store.
Before that, they entered Peijia Village to look for Pei Chen and the other two. They accidentally learned that a big star had come to Peijia Village, so they forced them to steal Jiang Lin's personal belongings. After taking the stolen goods, they were accidentally seen by Jiang Lin, who also forced Pei Chen and the others to steal things this time.
As night fell, Peijia Village returned to its former tranquility. Pei Xu called Pei Chen's parents on WeChat, and the children and adults were in tears as they were separated from each other.
"Xiaochen and Xiaolin, your parents are sorry for you! We didn't stay with you, and we didn't have the ability to take you to the city to study."
Pei Chen put his arm around Pei Lin's shoulder, wiped away his tears with his palm, and smiled: "I know that mom and dad work hard outside to earn money for my brother and me to study. I will protect my brother and myself in the future, and I will also help grandma with work. Don't worry."
Jiang Lin leaned against the door frame and looked up at the sky. He realized that Peijia Village was almost entirely populated by left-behind children, and that millions of rural areas were also Peijia Villages.
Jiang Lin gave Pei Chen the Chanel necklace he had found: "You are a brave little man now. Study hard. When you are admitted to a key high school, I will give you another gift."
Pei Xu added: "I advise you not to send slippers."
Jiang Lin pouted, then fought back: "Don't be so ungrateful. I haven't asked you for the new LV slippers yet."
"Luxury brands never cheat poor people. This is true for me. I can't believe that the slippers worth thousands of dollars are fading. When I looked at my feet, I was shocked! They were pitch black!"
Jiang Lin held out his hand without looking away: "These LV slippers worth thousands of dollars are a shame for Dr. Pei's feet. If you don't like them, you can return them to me."
Pei Xu said frivolously: "There's no reason to take back something you gave away. This is not in line with your style, Young Master Jiang."
Jiang Lin put his hand on Pei Chen's shoulder, turned around and said loudly: "You said all the good and bad things. Let's go. We don't want to play with this kind of people anymore."
Pei Chen looked at Pei Xu with admiration: "Mom often told me that I should emulate brother Pei Xu. He is very good at studying and got into a very good university."
Jiang Lin shook him and said, "You Peis are all ungrateful people."
Pei Xu let out a series of goose-like laughter.
Fortunately, the weather was fine, with sunny days lasting for more than a week. The villagers were busy cutting sugarcane in the fields. Every afternoon, Jiang Lin was the last one to weigh the sugarcane. He liked to use the camera to record the villagers' happy smiles after they received the money from selling the sugarcane. At that moment, their tired faces relaxed, and they were filled with the ordinary happiness of having their labor paid off.
The midday sun in December still made people's backs hot, and beads of sweat kept dripping into the sugarcane field. Pei Xu held a big loudspeaker and shouted, "Jiang Lin, it's time to move the sugarcane."
It was Saturday. Seeing that everyone's morale was low, Jiang Lin organized a few junior high school boys to declare war on Pei Xu.
The two teams competed in moving sugar cane. In the first round, Jiang Lin was the first to arrive under the big banyan tree. He raised the loudspeaker in his hand to the young men and taught them to shout, "Pei Xu, you are so weak!"
Pei Xu said to his teammates, "Do you think they are joking? We are just giving way to them first, right?"
"right!"
Jiang Lin fell behind in the second round, and Pei Xu raised the megaphone and shouted, "Mr. Kongxu team, are you not good enough? Do you want us to help you?"
Jiang Lin tilted his neck up: "Pei Xu, are you kidding? We are the tough guys team!"
The competition between the two sides was in full swing, which boosted morale and the adults in the fields worked harder to cut sugarcane.
The young players were panting and both sides entered their break time.
Jiang Lin asked a question that almost all teachers ask their students: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
Pei Chen was the first to raise his hand, "I want to be a lawyer!" His eyes sparkled with a young man's vision of the future. At this moment, the seeds of his ideals were planted. Perhaps one day the seeds would sprout, take root, and eventually grow into towering trees.
Then someone said, "I want to be an engineer. I want to build buildings as tall as the ones on TV!"
Some dream of becoming a teacher, scientist, or policeman. But no one mentioned returning to the land that nurtured them.
Jiang Lin asked: "Don't you want to return to Pei Village like Brother Pei Xu?"
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