Chapter 111

Chapter 111

Lu Qiusheng opened the bag and took out a blue cloth shirt sealed in plastic.

A closer look revealed that the shirt was soaked with reddish-brown bloodstains, dried for who knew how many years.

Then he pulled a small box from the pocket of his hoodie and opened it as well, setting it in front of me.

Inside the box were several white things that looked like… Flesh Thorn?

Neither item looked ordinary. I only bent down for a closer look; I didn’t reach out and touch them.

Lu Qiusheng was alive, which meant this deal counted as a Yang Pawn.

With a Yang Pawn, if negotiations didn’t go well, I could refuse outright.

Of course, by now I also knew there was a certain chance I could refuse a Yin Pawn as well.

But refusing a Yin Pawn was completely different from refusing a Yang Pawn. I would have to spend a massive amount of Merit to summon ghost constables to take the person away. The price was far too steep. Unless there was absolutely no other choice, I couldn’t use that method.

I looked up at Lu Qiusheng and asked, “Officer Lu, can you tell me more about the story behind these two things?”

There was a chair by the counter, so I gestured for Lu Qiusheng to sit down and take his time.

After he sat, he lowered his head. He seemed to be remembering, or maybe doing his best to steady his emotions.

For some reason, at that moment, I had the strange illusion that I was the police officer, and he was the criminal.

I stood up and poured Lu Qiusheng a cup of hot tea.

Only after a long while did Lu Qiusheng finally say, “This shirt is the one my father was wearing when he died.”

“My hometown is Wangjiagou, about a dozen li from Wufu Town. Thirty years ago, my father was a local police officer in that area.

“Back then, family planning policies were enforced very strictly. My father was a government employee, so he couldn’t have a second child. I had an older sister, eight years older than me. My mother got pregnant by accident and hid from place to place until she gave birth to me. That made me an unregistered child.

“Later, my parents started fighting over a divorce. My mother took me and remarried in Wufu Town. I was registered there and took my stepfather’s surname, Lu. My sister was left behind in Wangjiagou. My father was busy with work, so my grandmother raised my sister by herself.

“My stepfather couldn’t have children. At first, he treated me pretty well, but the good days didn’t last. My mother came down with a sudden illness and died. My stepfather got hooked on pai gow. He lost almost every time he gambled, and his temper grew violent. He would either beat me or curse at me. I was often beaten black and blue for no reason, and I never had enough to eat or enough warm clothes to wear.

“When my sister came to town for middle school, she ran into me by chance. She held me and cried her eyes out. After that, she often came to bring me food and clothes. That life continued for three years, until the day my sister turned sixteen.”

By this point, Lu Qiusheng’s eyes were already red. His hands were clenched tight, the knuckles whitening from the force.

I didn’t know how to comfort him. All I could do was sigh inwardly. So he, too, had once lived such a hard life.

“That day was her birthday. Grandma bought her a small cake,” Lu Qiusheng continued. “It was tiny, with cheap, low-quality cream, but to us, it was the most delicious thing in the world. My sister couldn’t bear to eat it, so she hid it in her schoolbag and brought it to town. But on her way to see me, she ran into a criminal. When the police found her, she… the skin on her body had been flayed off. All that was left was a bloody corpse…”

Hearing that, I froze in shock.

A sixteen-year-old girl, skinned alive… Lu Qiusheng’s sister had suffered exactly the same fate as Chen Tao.

So this was the real reason Lu Qiusheng had come to me tonight.

“When my father got the news, he rushed over. During the autopsy, a Silver Needle was removed from the lower back of my sister’s skull and placed in my father’s hands.”

Lu Qiusheng raised a hand and pressed hard between his brows. Even his lips were trembling.
I didn’t dare make a sound, afraid I might interrupt his train of thought.

Even more afraid that if I did, he would never again find the courage to dredge up this part of his past.

So I waited patiently.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Lu Qiusheng continued. “My father went mad searching everywhere for the person who killed my sister. But back then, this whole area was too backward, and the killer was too cunning. There was never any progress. Instead, because my father missed work so many times, he lost his iron rice bowl.”

Very carefully, I asked in a low voice, “Did they ever find the killer?”

“They found them, and yet they didn’t,” Lu Qiusheng said. “It was exactly the same as Chen Tao’s case this time. Because of that Silver Needle, the police focused their attention on the Bai Family Medical Hall. Old Lady Bai was brought in for questioning, but she treated patients with medicines and those almost supernatural methods of hers. She didn’t use the Silver Needle. After a round of questioning, Old Lady Bai was released.”

I frowned. How could there be such a coincidence?

“My sister’s case was shelved just like that. My father couldn’t accept it, so he buried himself in investigating her case on his own. But before long, something happened to him too. When my grandma went to claim his body, she took off this bloodstained shirt and pulled these pieces of white Flesh Thorn out of my father’s body.”

So these pieces of Flesh Thorn had been pulled from Lu Qiusheng’s father. In that case, they were very likely left behind by the killer who had murdered his father, and perhaps even his sister.

The Flesh Thorn looked a lot like the spines on that white hedgehog’s back, only longer and thicker.

Just how enormous would a hedgehog have to be to grow thorns like these?

“My grandma kept these things all this time. It wasn’t until she was on her deathbed that she personally handed them to me, along with my father’s diary.” Lu Qiusheng’s voice was heavy with grief. “She gripped my hand so tightly. Even in her final moments, she kept saying, Ah Sheng… Ah Sheng, you must avenge your father and your sister!”

So that was why Lu Qiusheng had stayed in Wufu Town all these years, and why he had become a police officer for this area.

So that was why, last night, he had frozen when he saw that Silver Needle.

What carbon monoxide poisoning? In that moment, he had remembered his sister and father, both of whom had died so horribly.

“Shopkeeper Xiao Jiu, you may not be able to understand just how desperate I felt when Bai Jingmo was released.” Lu Qiusheng tipped his head back and let out a long breath before he managed to say with difficulty, “I knew that, just like my father back then, I had lost.”

“I knew that whether I relied on the authorities or on myself, I would never truly bring the murderer behind all this to justice. But I don’t have my father’s courage to stake everything on one throw. Because if I die, then there will be no one left in this world who remembers the girl who was skinned thirty years ago, or the man whose body was pierced into a sieve by white Flesh Thorn…”

Even though Lu Qiusheng tried hard to keep his head tilted back, two streams of clear tears still slowly slipped from the corners of his eyes.

He lowered his head, wiped away his tears, and looked at me. “Shopkeeper Xiao Jiu, I heard the rule of our Pawnshop is that once it accepts the belongings of the dead, the Pawnshop has a duty to help the dead find the person who killed them. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” I answered without the slightest hesitation.

A case this old and this troublesome was not something I should have taken on.

But this matter involved Bai Jingmo, and Bai Jingmo’s blade was already pointed at me. In the end, this was a road I would have to walk. Perhaps I could even get some useful clues from Lu Qiusheng.

I asked instead, “But Bai Jingmo’s Silver Needle had a stamped mark on it. The one taken from the back of Chen Tao’s head didn’t…”

Lu Qiusheng cut me off and asked in return, “Shopkeeper Xiao Jiu, have you ever thought about something? Old Lady Bai doesn’t know how to use needles, and there isn’t a second person in the entire Bai Family Medical Hall with that kind of skill. So where exactly did Bai Jingmo learn such miraculous needle techniques…?”