Chapter 73
Chapter 73
“Come on, just test it.”
“No.”
At the station, Wang Qiang was holding the head in his arms while tugging at the cop with one hand, his face plastered with a fawning smile as he begged every way he knew how.
Unfortunately, the officer on duty was an honest, by-the-book sort who did not understand the technical side of things.
Without orders from above or support from anyone else, he absolutely refused to take some reckless gamble.
“Stop pestering me. I said no DNA test, and that means no DNA test! While the sky’s only just getting light, I advise you to hurry up and put that head back. If this blows up and the crowd turns on you, every last one of you is done for.”
The officer on duty had been badgered past his limit. He elbowed Wang Qiang twice and snapped, “Keep clinging to me like this, and I’ll cuff you for assault!”
Left with no choice, Wang Qiang behaved himself.
He stood there properly with the head in his arms, looking pitifully toward Wu Xiaojiu and Senior.
“If the DNA really doesn’t match, we won’t drag you into it. If the villagers come looking for trouble, they’ll only come at us. But if it does match, we’ll add your name to the reward list. Either way, you benefit. Think it over.”
Wu Xiaojiu could tell the man was hopelessly stubborn.
So he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, edged closer, and discreetly offered it over without making a fuss.
He did not smoke himself, but he usually kept a pack on him. Out in the world, a pack of cigarettes could smooth over a lot of minor trouble.
And these were good cigarettes, too. Genuine Zhonghua cigarettes. One pack sold for ninety-eight, and during shortages, they could easily go for a thousand or more.
Wu Xiaojiu thought he had handled it pretty neatly. After all, the three of them had been grinding away at this for quite a while, from night until broad daylight, several hours in total.
Even if the officer on duty did not care about them, surely for the sake of this pack of Zhonghua cigarettes and the promised cut, he ought to soften a little.
Who would have thought?
The man’s face stiffened. He raised a hand toward him with righteous severity and even let out a firm “hey” of refusal.
He truly could not be bribed, pressured, or moved by anything.
Wu Xiaojiu had no solution either. He could only pace back and forth inside the station, unable to think of a way out for the moment.
Just as the group remained locked in a stalemate, a jumble of footsteps suddenly sounded outside. Before long, a large crowd of villagers had surrounded the station on all sides, front and back doors included.
They were carrying axes, pickaxes, and all sorts of farm tools.
Every one of them glared at the station with hostility and hatred, as if they might smash through the door in the very next second.
“Give the head back!”
Someone in the crowd took the lead.
But one look at this man’s outfit showed he was different from the others. Unlike the rest, who were simply and neatly dressed, his clothes were ragged, worth less than a hundred from head to toe. Yet Wu Xiaojiu noticed that the leather bag he carried was a genuine branded one worth over a thousand.
When the man saw the people inside staring at him, he hid the bag behind his back, waved the hoe in his hand, and kept shouting at the top of his lungs.
“The village is already chaotic enough! Instead of helping, you people come here to make more trouble? The Village Chief already said that lately the Turtle Spirit monsters have been running wild. You went and pulled off the head of someone who died a violent death. What if his resentment rises to the heavens and he starts haunting the place? Are the people in our village supposed to keep living or not?”
He shouted with righteous indignation, full of moral outrage.
The villagers behind him were stirred up as well. They waved the farm tools in their hands and chanted in unison, “Return the head! Return the head!”
The officer on duty had clearly never seen anything like this before. He froze for a moment, then pointed at Wang Qiang and muttered something.
“Look at what you’ve caused.”
But his voice was drowned out. When the villagers saw him pointing wildly, they thought he was provoking them, and the uproar grew even worse.
“What is that supposed to mean? You’re still in there talking trash about us, huh? Brothers, smash it! Anything that gets broken goes on the Village Chief’s tab.”
Seeing that he had the upper hand, the man who had stuck his neck out grew even more arrogant and ordered the villagers behind him to surge forward.
Just as a fight was about to break out, Wu Xiaojiu stepped forward and yanked the front door open with lightning speed. Then he grabbed the leather jacket tucked under the ringleader’s arm.
“The Donkey brand’s latest crocodile leather, handmade from the most sensitive patch of skin on the back of a crocodile’s neck. Just this one leather bag has been hyped and resold until the price shot up to tens of thousands. From the way you’re dressed, you look pretty plain. So where did you get the money?”
Wu Xiaojiu shouted loud enough to drown out the curses all around him.
When the villagers heard that, they exchanged looks and realized something was off.
Because the man who had stepped forward was Lanzi, a notorious loafer in their area. In winter he stole roof tiles; in summer he stole firewood. He survived only because the villagers kept bailing him out. Even the clothes on his back were patched together with scraps from a hundred households.
He could barely afford to eat, so how had he bought a luxury brand?
Once they thought about it, they remembered how fired up he had been when he spoke up for the Village Chief just now.
Even the dullest person could tell something was wrong.
Several villagers slapped their thighs and came to their senses on the spot.
“We’ve been tricked! I was wondering why he cared so much about the Village Chief’s business. Turns out he took money!”
One person raised his arm and shouted.
The remaining villagers looked at one another. They did not say anything, but they were definitely unhappy.
People were like that. If there was money to be paid, everyone should get paid. If not, then no one should. Otherwise, why did he get money while they worked for nothing?
In an instant, public sentiment shifted. The villagers were about to go to the Village Chief and demand justice.
Seeing the villagers disperse, Lanzi, who had taken the money, immediately panicked.
It was not as if he had accepted that money for nothing. He had promised the Village Chief he would act as a troublemaker, mixing in with the crowd to stir up emotions and stop the body from being dissected.
Now not only had the body been dissected, the villagers were going to make trouble for the Village Chief. Was the Village Chief’s money so easy to take for nothing?
He hurriedly called out twice, but no one paid him any attention.
The more Lanzi thought about it, the angrier he became. His eyes swung toward the person who had ruined his good thing.
He reached out and grabbed Wu Xiaojiu, his expression twisting as the veins in his neck bulged.
“Fine, fine, fine. Those eyes of yours are sharp, aren’t they? Since you know your goods so well, let’s see if you still can when you’re blind!”
He was truly desperate. As he spoke, he raised the ax in his hand and aimed it at the artery in Wu Xiaojiu’s neck, putting all the strength in his arm into the swing.
“Fuck! Don’t move!”
Wang Qiang was the first to react. His hands shook as he pulled a pew-pew from his satchel and pointed it at Lanzi, trying to make him stop.
But the ax did not slow in the slightest. Wu Xiaojiu was about to be splattered with blood on the spot.
Just then, a helicopter roared overhead with sirens blaring.
The sudden turn of events made Lanzi’s hand pause. At a loss, he looked up at the sky.
A red laser sight, however, landed straight on his head.
“Do you want to trade one life for one life?”
From within the crowd, Bo Suihan suddenly spoke.
Facing Lanzi’s bewildered expression, he said calmly, “It can only be one life for one life. There won’t be any possibility of a life sentence.”
The scene in the sky was far too intimidating.
Lanzi’s expression wavered, and Wu Xiaojiu seized the chance to duck out from under his arm.
He ran all the way into the police station, gasping for breath in great gulps.
He had truly survived a disaster.