Chapter 72
Chapter 72
Seeing how nervous he was, Wu Xiaojiu walked over and patted him on the butt.
“What are you scared of? Bo Suihan is unbeatable among men, an emperor on land. He could fight a ghost to the death if he had to. All we need to do is sit back and let him handle it.”
Wang Qiang rubbed his backside and gave a bitter laugh.
“Easy for you to say. But yeah, you do have a point. That head has a slender neck, pale skin, and barely any neck lines. If we don’t judge by the facial features, there’s a high chance it’s female. What I don’t get is, if something happened to the Village Chief’s Daughter, why would the Village Chief cover for his illegitimate son and the young stepmother?”
That question plunged the whole place into silence.
Senior, in particular, looked awkward. No one answered. They had clearly meant to brush the question aside.
But Wang Qiang was the type to latch onto a point and never let go.
He was still raising his hand and asking questions.
“Come on, explain it to me! She was his only child in the legal sense, the only child he had with his ex-wife. His kid died, and he didn’t report the killer. Fine, but why would he protect the killer too?”
“There was a reason.”
Wang Qiang was like a toad-poke him once, and he jumped.
Bo Suihan truly couldn’t take his barrage of life-or-death questions anymore. Ignoring the warning look Wu Xiaojiu and Senior shot him, he answered aloud.
“What does that mean?”
Wang Qiang didn’t understand. He couldn’t make sense of it. He stared at that bastard with eager eyes, hoping the other man would break it down for him piece by piece.
“Come here.”
With Wu Xiaojiu present, Bo Suihan couldn’t run his mouth too wildly.
But if he wanted to make this kind of thing clear in a sentence or two, he couldn’t go into too much detail either.
He slung an arm around Wang Qiang’s head, and the two of them stood beside the grave. Bo Suihan glanced left and right before leaning in and saying, “Because her father is trash. He thinks daughters can’t compare to sons. A filial son can smash the funeral bowl and carry the mourning banner, while a daughter is, at best, a relative by marriage. For all we know, he might even have helped push this whole thing along.”
Wang Qiang let out a howl.
Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists again, only to loosen them again in useless frustration.
Seeing him like that, Bo Suihan thought, wasn’t this kid just a fool?
He lifted a brow, glanced behind them, then patted Wang Qiang on the shoulder and gave him a little shake in consolation.
“Don’t waste your energy. Right now, the most important thing is to act first and report later. Cut the corpse open, bring the head back to the bureau. As long as the DNA confirms it’s the Village Chief’s Daughter, everything will be fine. Once the villagers fall into chaos, how to explain it will be the Village Chief’s own problem.”
After saying that, Bo Suihan walked forward.
Wu Xiaojiu and Senior had both heard what he said.
One of them couldn’t make up his own mind anyway, so whatever Bo Suihan said went.
The other, of course, still had doubts and felt this was far too rash.
What if the head wasn’t the Village Chief’s Daughter? When the local villagers woke up tomorrow morning and discovered the head was gone, they would start another uproar.
“Tomorrow, the coffin will be opened and the forensic examiner will dissect the body. There’s no need for us to rush this moment. Otherwise, if our judgment is wrong and we provoke public outrage, won’t we be done for?”
Bo Suihan let out a sigh. No matter how he looked at it, he felt delays would only bring trouble. The Village Chief’s whereabouts were uncertain, and who knew what vicious trick he might come up with next.
But this matter had nothing to do with him. Why should he help them?
Then his gaze shifted, and he caught sight of Wu Xiaojiu studying the corpse seriously.
So he lifted his eyes and swept a look over the villagers, taking in their unimpressive numbers.
Then he sighed again.
“Do it. I’ll take responsibility.”
Wu Xiaojiu immediately backed him up, persuading Senior, “Anything can change. The stepmother is still under watch in the self-built house, but the Village Chief and his illegitimate son are nowhere to be found. Who knows what they’re doing right now?”
Hearing this, Senior’s expression loosened slightly.
“But who’s going to cut open the corpse? We don’t have the skills for that.”
It was dirty, exhausting work. Naturally, Wu Xiaojiu and the other two were unwilling to do it.
Their eyes met, and the three of them quietly looked toward Wang Qiang.
Senior let out a sleazy chuckle.
“Then it’s settled.”
Wang Qiang was still standing in a corner, drawing circles and cursing the Village Chief.
He didn’t notice the three people gradually closing in behind him, complete with classic villainous laughter.
He turned his head stiffly.
…
“Come on, this isn’t right.”
“Stop talking. The fluids are already leaking out. Keep going.”
“Mm… ah.”
It was the dead of night, pitch-black all around.
At the grave pit, Wang Qiang was working hard to dismember the corpse. To avoid alerting the villagers, he was inside the coffin, straddling the body.
Fluid splashed everywhere, and the coffin was already coated in a layer of bloody water.
Wang Qiang’s expression twisted.
The hand he was using to pick at the thread trembled.
The other three cheered him on, watching as he forcibly ripped away the stitches connecting the head to the body.
A large chunk of flesh tore loose and sprayed out with it. Wang Qiang failed to dodge in time, and blood spattered across the hem of his clothes and his face.
The shock made him turn his head away and squeeze his eyes shut, but even then, Senior had no intention of letting him off.
“Keep going. There’s only one tendon left. Soon we’ll be able to run the DNA test!”
Wang Qiang had no choice. His face was sticky with gore, but he kept pulling with all his strength.
At last, amid a wet tearing sound, the head was yanked off-though not exactly in one piece.
“Success!”
Wang Qiang climbed out, holding the head in both hands. The cross-section was not neat and clean like the other corpses. It was a complete mess.
No matter how bad Wang Qiang was at pulling heads off, he still shouldn’t have been able to yank the cross-section into a mangled paste of misaligned bone and tendons.
Senior glanced at the cross-section and gained a little more confidence that this was the Village Chief’s Daughter’s original head. He raised a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Holding the head, he reached one hand toward the edge of the grave and climbed up.
The others followed without a word. They stuffed the head into the car and looked around at the sleeping villagers. After a few knocks and clicks, they silenced the patrol car’s beeping alarm.
Wang Qiang nodded at the other two and gave a low hum of acknowledgment.
The little car slipped away in silence.
The sleeping villagers had no idea that three cops had run off.
When they were half-awake the next morning, the sky over the cornfield had just begun to brighten. The Village Chief stood there with a dark expression, two bucket-carrying villagers behind him, staring unblinkingly at them.
“Where’s the patrol car? And where are the people from the higher-level task force investigating my daughter?”
One villager wiped his face, straightened up, and looked toward the grave.
“What are you looking at? They’re all gone! Do you know what state the village is in right now? We’ve got demons, we’ve got a Turtle Spirit! Someone dug up the grave, and if this brings out a ghost too, won’t we all be finished?”
The Village Chief spoke with righteous indignation.
It would have been even more perfect if one could ignore the white bucket behind him, which was giving off wisps of smoke.
“Now hurry to the station and make a scene for me. If they don’t return the head, don’t you dare stop!”
The Village Chief was a local tyrant.
In this area, he practically ruled the village.
None of the villagers dared disobey him, and besides, they were genuinely afraid a ghost might appear.
They scrambled up from the ground at once, grabbing their hoes and hammers again.
Then they stumbled and crawled their way toward the police station.
Meanwhile, the Village Chief did not dare stay idle either.
He was also terrified that the cops might uncover something, so he directed the two people behind him to move toward the grave with him.
There were still police inside the cordon. Dawn had only just broken, and everyone was groggy with sleep.
No one noticed three people climb over the police tape, nor the large bucket of unknown liquid that was poured straight into the grave.
The sharp chemical stench spread through the air.
By the time anyone noticed, it was already too late.