Chapter 106

Chapter 106

“This number hasn’t gone through once in the past ten years.” A woman’s faint voice drifted from the other end of the line. It sounded somewhat familiar. “I never thought… that before I died, it would actually connect.”

The flicker of excitement in Nan Mu’s eyes scattered. His right hand tightened around his phone without him realizing it. “What’s wrong? Where are you? Can I come find you?”

“Don’t look for me. I can’t see you… and I’m about to die anyway.” The voice on the other end grew even softer.

Nan Mu found the voice incredibly familiar, but for the moment, he couldn’t place who it belonged to.

“Ten years ago, you called me looking for my sister. You said you were a friend of Brother Gu Zhishu. Right?”

Her sister?

In a flash, Nan Mu suddenly realized. “You’re Wang Pandi?”

The person on the other end was startled too, but she didn’t seem to recognize his voice. “You know me?”

Nan Mu hesitated. This didn’t seem like the time to explain. “You’re Zhaodi’s younger sister. I… heard Zhaodi mention you.”

The person on the other end immediately brightened, so innocent she hardly seemed like a girl who had killed someone. “My sister mentioned me to you?”

Nan Mu suppressed his guilty conscience and could only brace himself as he asked, “Didn’t your sister mention me to you?”

Wang Pandi shook her head. She had only ever met one of her sister’s friends, and that was Gu Zhishu.

Then she remembered the person on the other end couldn’t see her. She wanted to tell him the truth, but was afraid he would be disappointed, so in the end she gave a vague answer. “Maybe she did. I just don’t remember.”

Nan Mu thought, It’s not that you don’t remember. You’re just slow. You didn’t even ask who I am.

But he had no intention of reminding her. “Then can you tell me where you are now?”

Wang Pandi fell silent for a moment. “No. If you meet me now, you’ll be in danger. Someone is looking for me.”

“You mean the police?”

Nan Mu was just about to tell her not to worry when he heard Wang Pandi’s grave voice. “No. Them.”

Them?

Nan Mu’s heart pounded wildly. He unconsciously lowered his voice. “The people who killed Gu Zhishu?”

“Mm.”

Hearing that answer, Nan Mu pressed a hand over his hammering heart. “Who are they?”

A long silence suddenly came from the other end of the phone.

Nan Mu couldn’t help growing anxious. “What is it? You can’t say? Or do you not trust me?”

Wang Pandi suddenly gave a soft laugh. “No, I don’t distrust you. Actually, after all these years, you’re the only person who has ever called my sister’s phone… I think you’re not a bad person. Those people… would never dare to call.”

Nan Mu didn’t understand. “Then why won’t you tell me?”

A soft sigh came through the phone. “It’s not that I won’t tell you. It’s that… I don’t know who those people really are.”

“Then how do you know they’re the ones looking for you?”

“A feeling.”

When Nan Mu heard Wang Pandi’s answer, he couldn’t help finding it absurd. For a moment, he even wondered whether she was messing with him, or if… he was dreaming.

Wang Pandi on the other end probably sensed his hesitation and explained, “Because it’s the same as when they took my sister last time. They went into my home, went through all my things, and watched me from the shadows… That feeling is exactly the same as ten years ago. It has to be them.”

Nan Mu didn’t know whether he should trust her judgment.

He gave up pursuing the matter and changed the question. “Then why did you hang up on me the last time I called you?”

“My sister’s phone is being monitored.” This time, Wang Pandi answered without hesitation. “My sister said so.”
Nan Mu thought of Wen Miao’s phone.

That made sense. If Zhaodi was one of the targets too, then it was only natural someone would be monitoring her existence.

“Then where is your sister now?”

“I don’t know.” Wang Pandi looked just as lost. “I tortured that old man… to death. But from beginning to end, he kept saying he didn’t know where my sister was…”

Nan Mu guessed that the old man she’d tortured to death was probably Jia Lingyuan.

Anxiety gnawed at him. To get more information, he said, half-truthfully, “I remember that on April 5th, ten years ago, Gu Zhishu told me he’d seen your sister. Where did your sister go back then?”

April 5th was the date Nan Mu had previously seen on Gu Zhishu’s schedule when he went to the Gu Family home.

By then, Wang Pandi seemed to trust Nan Mu completely. She told him everything she knew.

===

The Wang Family was very poor, but they had a lot of children, because their father only wanted a son to carry on the family line.

Even though the Wang Family had no family fortune to speak of.

Because she wasn’t valued, Wang Zhaodi was ordered by her father to drop out after graduating from middle school.

But Wang Zhaodi was good at studying. Incredibly good. Even the volunteer teachers who came to teach in their area praised her as a genius.

In order to attend high school, Wang Zhaodi begged her father for a long time. She even signed and fingerprinted a written promise to him, swearing that as long as he paid for her education through university, she would not only cover her younger sisters’ tuition in the future, but also give her father two thousand yuan a month for living expenses.

When the college entrance exam was approaching, teachers from the school came to visit their home.

Everyone said, “Your daughter is sure to score above the key university cutoff. She’ll have a bright future. Just wait and enjoy your good fortune. Once she tests her way out of this place, she’ll be like a fish leaping into the vast sea, a bird flying freely in the open sky.”

A fish leaping into the vast sea, a bird flying freely in the open sky. It was meant as praise, but what her father thought of was that once Wang Zhaodi left, she would escape his control. If she truly entered the sea like a fish, and he couldn’t find her later, what use would an IOU be?

So, to keep the family’s strongest laborer by his side, available for him to order around as he pleased, he tied Wang Zhaodi up at home on the day of the college entrance exam…

After that, Wang Zhaodi never got to go to university as she’d hoped. Instead, she dropped out early and went to work.

But she didn’t give up. While working, she enrolled in night school and studied on her own for a diploma.

It was around February of 2022.

Whenever Wang Zhaodi got out of night school and went home, she always felt as if someone was following her. But at the time, nothing actually dangerous had happened to her, so at first she thought she was just imagining things.

Then in mid-March, the night school suddenly organized a free physical exam.

But that day, Wang Zhaodi had work. On top of that, she couldn’t keep coming home too late, or her father might discover she was secretly attending night school. Since she also believed she was in decent health, she didn’t go.

Later, when she thought back on it, she remembered that there had been a number repeatedly texting her at the time, urging her to go for the physical exam as soon as possible.

It seemed that from that day on, the feeling of being followed suddenly became much more frequent.

As mentioned before, Wang Zhaodi had been praised for being smart ever since she was young precisely because she had an exceptionally strong memory for movement and spatial changes.

So when she came home, she immediately noticed traces that items in her house had been moved. Even though almost everything had been put back in its original place, she could still spot those tiny differences.

“It was because of what happened that time that I developed this habit. I don’t have my sister’s good memory, but before I leave, I tie a strand of hair to the latch bolt… That’s how I know someone went into my room.”