"The Mortal Chapter Of Qing Zhuan" - Chapter 8
The Sorrow of the Criminals
In the abandoned fishing shack, hazy clouds of smoke hung in the air. A sinister gaze scanned the surroundings, while the Fatty smacked another mosquito with a loud thwack.
The tall, skinny man sat on a pile of straw, picking his nose before he started to complain. “Damn it all, how long do we have to hide like this?! This dump is full of mosquitoes and flies, not to mention snakes!”
Luan Qingfeng handed a piece of grilled snake meat to Qin Shaojie, then shot the tall man a glare. “Stop your whining, like a woman. You’re getting on my nerves!”
The Fatty looked at the snake meat in his hand with disgust. “Brother Feng, have we really fallen so low? Eating snake meat? I just want some proper food.”
Qin Shaojie put out his cigarette and looked at his tattered clothes, then at his own. “It’s my fault, brothers. If I had known those two, father and son, were so ruthless, we should have split up back then. We wouldn’t have ended up in this sorry state. If those villagers call the police, we won’t be safe.”
Luan Qingfeng sighed. “Brother, don’t say that. The main blame is on me. If I hadn’t pushed us to get revenge, we wouldn’t have ended up like this…”
The Fatty quickly interrupted. “Brother Feng, if it wasn’t for you, I would have never lived such a comfortable life or tasted such heavenly delicacies! Even though things are rough now, once we get out of this, we can wash our hands of this life for good. Then we can open our own shop and do honest business, hehe…”
Hearing the Fatty paint a picture of their future, the tall man’s frustration and sadness visibly eased. He squatted there, gnawing on his meat, listening with a happy grin.
Qin Shaojie quietly listened to his brothers’ hopeful plans for the future. He secretly glanced at them, then looked out at the vast expanse of weeds. A few bright flowers occasionally swayed in the wind, only to be quickly swallowed up by the overgrown grass…
Half-asleep, I heard my dad’s voice. “Yes, yes, Officer, that’s right… That’s what happened. Uh-huh. As soon as we get a lead, I’ll call you right away. Okay, okay…”
Then my mom’s voice chimed in. “But, honey, no matter what, you have to be careful!”
I slowly opened my eyes and felt something soft and furry on my neck. I turned my head and saw Mimi sleeping soundly on my pillow.
He had been running around with us all night, so he must have been exhausted. I slowly got up, carefully repositioned him, and rubbed my eyes before leaving the room. I saw Old Gao and my dad bringing dishes to the table.
My mom, who was serving porridge, looked at me. “You’re up, my dear?”
I yawned, rubbed my eyes, and nodded. “Yeah.” In truth, I hadn’t slept well at all. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the bloodstains in Uncle Wang’s yard and Auntie Wang’s terrified face.
When I finally managed to fall asleep, I had nightmares. I’d wake up with my heart pounding, my forehead soaked in sweat, and it would take a while to fall back asleep.
Old Gao saw how listless I looked and worried. “Didn’t you sleep well last night? You look so pale!”
I nodded. He handed me a bowl of porridge. “Eat more!”
I nodded mechanically, lost in thought as I held the bowl. Seeing this, my dad picked up a piece of golden-fried salted fish and put it in my bowl. “Honey, were you scared last night?”
I shook my head. My mom frowned and whispered to my dad, “This child has been out of it all morning. Could she have lost her soul last night? We have to call Uncle Chen and have him do a soul-calling ritual.”
Even though they were speaking softly, I could still hear them. I replied, “I didn’t lose my soul! I just didn’t sleep well! You two are so superstitious, having someone come to call my soul!”
My mom saw that I was speaking and acting normally, and that I even ate two bowls of porridge, so she dropped the subject of the ritual.
The sun was already high in the sky, making everything hot and dry. After helping my mom hang up the laundry, I wiped my forehead. “Mom, it’s so hot. Let’s go back inside. We’re going to get heatstroke.”
My mom used a small handkerchief to wipe the sweat from her neck. “This is truly the dog days of summer. It’s so hot, and there’s not a breath of wind! Just dry heat.”
Old Gao and my dad were fanning themselves with large cattail fans under the grape arbor while they ate watermelon. Mimi, who was eating his favorite dried fish, only ate two bites before going to lie down on the rocking chair, panting heavily from the heat.
Just then, we heard a knock at the door, and we all tensed up again. My dad grabbed a stick and went to open the door. He looked through the crack and saw it was the village head. My dad was about to open the door when he heard the village head say, “Li, it’s the village head. Are you home? Don’t be scared!”
My dad slowly opened the door. “What’s wrong, village head?”
The village head said, “I’m here to ask you to come to a village meeting. I’ve been running around all morning. I didn’t dare use the loudspeaker, so I’m knocking on every door to tell people.”
My dad sighed. “Sigh, it’s not easy, village head. You’ve worked hard!”
The village head shook his head and sighed helplessly. “Sigh, times are tough, and people’s hearts aren’t what they used to be! Tell them to lock the door at home!”
We nodded as we watched the village head and my dad walk away. I also sighed. “The world is truly lawless now, because of those criminals!”
My mom agreed. “We just have to make do. What else can we do? It’s not like we can just die. As long as we’re alive, we have a chance to see a better world again someday.”
The three of us went back inside and watched the news. Mimi was sleeping soundly on my legs. We heard the door open, and my dad returned.
They had been in a meeting all morning. My dad scooped a big ladle of cool water from the jar and gulped it down. “Ah, that’s refreshing. I was so thirsty all morning.”
My mom quickly asked, “What did you talk about? The meeting was so long.”
My dad put down the ladle. “The village head said that Officer He and the police are currently matching the suspects’ AD Calcium!”
I interrupted in surprise. “Wait, what, Dad? It’s called DNA, not AD Calcium! Why is it drinking milk?!”
My dad laughed awkwardly and quickly corrected himself. “Oh, right, right, AD Calcium… no, that’s not it, DNN!”
Old Gao finally couldn’t hold back and laughed. “Uncle, it’s called DNA, not DNN.”
My mom tried to hold back her laughter to save my dad’s face. “Then what?”
My dad continued. “Then, Officer He said the results could come out in about a week. The forensic team at the city bureau has also extracted the fingerprints of four people from the body and is matching them. They said they’ll have results soon. Also, the police have sent a special unit to our village to do a grid search of the whole area. They told us to contact them immediately if we see anything.”
Hearing this, we all breathed a sigh of relief. But just as we were starting to relax, those criminals were quietly lurking in the dark, waiting for their chance…
They had never left our village. They were hiding in an old fishing shack by a reservoir left over from the war. Because the area was so remote and overgrown, hardly anyone went there, so everyone had overlooked the place…
The Skinny Man rushed back and said to Qin Shaojie, “Brother, hiding like this won’t work forever! The villagers have already called the police, and I even saw some officers when I went out to scout! We have to find a way to escape quickly!”
The Fatty chewed on his corn. “Easy for you to say, escape? Where to? The outside is full of police now, and the village is surrounded by plainclothes officers! I think we should just wait and see!”
Then he turned to Qin Shaojie. “Brother, what do you think? What should we do now? We’ll all listen to you!”
Qin Shaojie sat in a heavy silence, smoking. His sinister gaze was chilling. After a deep inhale, he slowly exhaled a smoke ring. After his last puff, he threw the cigarette butt away with his rough, calloused hands and stamped it out with his worn, broken leather shoes.
He cleared his throat and said in a low, raspy voice, “What I’m worried about now is that the woman has already gone for a DNA test! Once they get our DNA, we’ll be wanted. It will be hard to go anywhere.”
Luan Qingfeng handed him a piece of freshly grilled corn. “Brother, where there’s a will, there’s a way! Eat something first! You haven’t eaten all day! If we have to, we can wait three more days. We have food. What are we afraid of?”
Qin Shaojie looked at the woman tied up behind him with a wicked glint in his eye. “What do you think we should do with this woman, Ah Feng?”
The Fatty chuckled. “Hehehe! Boss…”
The Skinny Man burst out laughing. “Zhao, you can’t be so ungrateful! She gave us a lot of boiled corn and eggs!”
The Fatty gave him a contemptuous look and retorted, “Oh yeah? You’re not going to eat it then, you country bumpkin!”
The Skinny Man grabbed his collar and lifted him up, glaring at him. “You, Zhao Fangshuo, if you dare insult me again, I swear I’ll kill you!”
The Fatty looked at him, sweating. “You wouldn’t! Sun Youwei, you want to hit me! Don’t you forget! If it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead already!”
As the two of them stared at each other, the Skinny Man remembered when he was saved. He had gotten into a fight because his wife ran off with another man and got a brutal beating. The other guy was about to stab him to death when Zhao Fangshuo knocked him out with a stick, saving his life.
These four men were despicable, but they were also pitiful. The reason Qin Shaojie was so moody was because his own brother had ruined him.
His brother was a gambler, the kind who would gamble away a fortune for a tiny profit. Later, Qin Shaojie, fearing his brother would gamble again, made him the general manager of his factory.
As a result, his brother’s gambling spiraled out of control until he owed eight million to a casino. Even though he secretly started an external company to sell his brother’s products to pay off the debt, it wasn’t enough. In the end, he sold the food processing factory that his brother had painstakingly built.
The suppliers, who relied on Qin Shaojie, also suffered.
With the forced closure of the factory, thousands of workers were laid off, and the situation spiraled out of control. The workers and suppliers all went to Qin Shaojie for an explanation.
Qin Shaojie was out of town on a project and had no idea what was happening at the factory. When he got the call from his accountant, his world came crashing down.
The forced closure meant he couldn’t supply the suppliers anymore, leading to huge fines for breach of contract.
And the thousands of laid-off workers needed huge severance packages! This brought him to the brink of collapse.
Overwhelmed, he had no choice but to abandon the factory and run. He’s been on the run for five years, and because of this, his personality has completely changed.
His current coldness is the result of being betrayed and sold out by the person he trusted and loved most. This is what led him down a path of no return.
The tall, skinny man, Sun Youwei, and the Fatty, Zhao Fangshuo, were classmates. Sun Youwei was a simple street vendor who sold steamed rice cakes but married a beautiful and seductive wife.
In that society, if a low-class man didn’t have money, marrying a pretty wife would bring him trouble. He was noticed by a new rich man, and a few days later, his wife’s rice cakes were sold in bed.
When he pushed open the door and saw the two of them together, he was filled with murderous rage. He cursed the two of them and swung his cleaver at them, but the rich man punched him in the jaw and kicked him out.
His wife, seeing his face covered in bl00d, screamed, “Stop, you’ll kill him!” The rich man then stopped.
After his wife left with the rich man, he kept trying to find her, but every time he was beaten.
It wasn’t until he met Zhao Fangshuo, who had returned from working out of town, that he was saved. Zhao Fangshuo saw him being ganged up on and saved him, and he escaped with his life.
The two of them accidentally killed someone and had to flee their town.
As fate would have it, they met Qin Shaojie and Luan Qingfeng at a dance hall in a new city. And their meeting was destined to lead them to the gates of hell.
Luan Qingfeng wasn’t a bad person at first. He was a victim of human trafficking. He was kidnapped by someone from his village at the age of five and sold to this place. He witnessed a lot of cruelty in the dance hall. If people didn’t listen, they would be hung up, starved, denied water, or even beaten to death.
This taught him from a young age to read people’s expressions and how to navigate social situations. With his good looks and quick wit, he learned to survive…