Chapter 14

The reason people commit crimes, aside from psychological disorders, boils down to love, hatred, and personal gain.

Of these, love is the most dangerous because it wears a glamorous disguise, making it the hardest to foresee. Hatred and personal gain, however, often leave more discernible traces.

Beyond psychological disorders, people are drawn to crime when the cost of committing it isn’t high enough, or when the benefits are substantial. Corruption belongs to the former category, drug trafficking to the latter.

If someone wants to make fast money or big money, they can skim through the criminal code; most paths to fast and big money are documented within.

In another life, An Xiaohai once thought this was just a joke, but here, it’s all too real. Nearly everyone in Cell Block A ended up there for these very reasons.

Of course, a few ended up here for reasons unrelated to money, but even they weren’t able to escape love, hatred, or vengeance.

Some say that the loud and brash ones are just small-time thugs, while the real kingpins often appear kind. This saying is vividly true in Cell 232.

Hu Jianming was all smiles, even taking the initiative to prepare An Xiaohai’s bed, remarking that the room had felt quiet with so few people and that it was livelier with An Xiaohai there.

It almost felt like a warm welcome—as if An Xiaohai hadn’t known better, it would be hard to imagine Hu Jianming as a ruthless drug dealer.

Yang Bo was also smiling quietly, speaking little, but the way he watched made An Xiaohai feel uneasy all over.

Though the new room seemed nicer than before, its small size made it feel even more oppressive.

Life seemed to settle into a quiet routine:

Wake up, wash, roll call, drills, breakfast, labor, lunch, labor, dinner, watch the news, two hours of permitted free time, sleep, with political study and reports every three days…and so on.

An Xiaohai was already used to this life. In another life, he’d endured it for twenty years!

Even without those twenty years, he wouldn’t feel much discomfort. After all, he had studied at the National University of Defense Technology, a militarized institution with even stricter rules than prison.

The difference is that university leads to a brighter future, while prison often leads to an even darker abyss.

Highly regimented life can greatly alter one’s mental state—either fostering discipline and growth or causing despair and breakdown.

An Xiaohai was temporarily content with this life because he needed time to reflect and plan.

People with hyperthymesia, if they have strong willpower, can consciously block out certain memories.

In his previous life, An Xiaohai’s will had been completely shattered early on, so he blocked out everything, submerged in an endless cycle of painful memories.

This time, it was the opposite. He needed to block out all pain and unlock the treasure of memories he had once suppressed, to figure out how it all started. Then, he could plan carefully.

He would plan how to get through his three-and-a-half-year sentence safely, how to survive once free, and how to find the hand behind the scenes and cut it off at the root!

Hu Jianming and Yang Bo appeared calm, but An Xiaohai could tell they were close to breaking down in despair.

These two were like ticking time bombs, liable to explode and drag him down as well.

So whenever possible, An Xiaohai would choose to stay in the reading room to minimize contact with them.

The prison encouraged study, and the reading room had a wide selection of books. There were many so-called “soul-purifying” classics, both Chinese and foreign, as well as practical manuals on trades like electrical work, carpentry, and machining.

An Xiaohai rarely touched the literary classics, focusing instead on the technical manuals.

His study method was simple and direct: he would skim through a book to commit its contents to memory, then later study and understand it in detail.

When tired, he would unwind by recalling the specifics of the day the crime occurred.

At that time, he’d been in an extreme state of excitement, focused solely on taking down his opponent, with weakened awareness of his surroundings, making it hard to reconstruct his memories accurately.

The knife in his hand that day had come from a nearby fish stall, he was certain. Someone had placed it in his hand.

This was critical—it could lead his investigation in two very different directions.

In his past life, if the mastermind had targeted him due to Zhou Tie’s death, then Zhou Tie was the crucial link.

But if someone had handed him the knife, then things were far more complex.

Why had that person given him the knife? To help him or harm him? Or perhaps they also hated Zhou Tie and wanted him hurt by An Xiaohai’s retaliation.

Or maybe that person’s target was An Xiaohai all along, seizing a perfect opportunity to frame him.

The last possibility was the most frightening; it would mean someone had planned this all along, and Zhou Tie’s harassment of Lin Xuan’er at the fish market was just one piece of the scheme.

Is this possible? An Xiaohai didn’t rule it out and even considered it likely. If not, the mastermind wouldn’t have pursued him and his family relentlessly for 30 years, even dragging down his two closest friends.

“But what was the motive? Why would someone hold such a grudge against me and my family, friends, for decades?”

An Xiaohai couldn’t figure it out.

He’d been born to a simple fisherman’s family in Apojiao Village. His father had left them when he was young, leaving his mother to raise him alone.

His maternal grandparents were also village-born. His grandfather worked as a ship repairman for a large shipbuilding company until his mid-40s, while his grandmother was a typical housewife.

His paternal grandparents were ordinary workers at a small company in Shenhai City, not even a state-owned enterprise—more like a cooperative.

All his elders were honest people who got along with others, and he had never heard of them offending anyone.

Why would anyone go to such lengths to ruin such a simple family?

An Xiaohai leaned toward the belief that it had to do with Zhou Tie.

If that were the case, things would be simpler. By investigating Zhou Tie’s family, he’d likely find the mastermind. But if it were the worst-case scenario, the only lead was the person who’d handed him the knife.

He couldn’t investigate Zhou Tie’s family for now. All he could do was recall who handed him the knife.

That person had been discreet.

He remembered that after being knocked down by Zhou Tie, as he struggled to stand, the knife was suddenly in his hand, and the person who handed it had even helped him up.

This person had stayed behind him the entire time, so it was no wonder he had no impression of them.

But An Xiaohai wasn’t discouraged.

Since he hadn’t seen the person directly, he could use the process of elimination. By ruling out those who couldn’t have handed him the knife, he would eventually narrow down the list of suspects.

Over these days, he had been doing exactly that, gradually narrowing down those who couldn’t have handed him the knife. It was an incredibly challenging task.

He had been too focused on helping Lin Xuan’er to remember everyone present, and on top of that, although only a month had passed on the surface, to him, the event happened 30 years ago.

So progress had been slow.

However, he’d made some headway, reducing the suspects to about a dozen people. This alone would make future investigations much easier.

As for Wu Guanhai, An Xiaohai had stopped paying attention to him. Wu seemed important, but in reality, he was more of a middleman.

Even if Wu named who’d bribed him, that person was likely just a subcontractor. Wu’s behavior showed this.

If that person were easy to trace, they couldn’t have done so much harm to An Xiaohai’s family.

Wu and his associates probably exaggerated An Xiaohai’s family’s situation to get him to take drastic action.

With decades of prison experience, An Xiaohai understood this tactic.

Prison was a closed environment, so anyone trying to use inside contacts to harm him would need substantial power, and people with that level of influence rarely made amateur mistakes.

Sometimes An Xiaohai wondered if he was overestimating his opponent, but overestimating was better than underestimating.

Factoring in everything, tracing back through Wu Guanhai seemed pointless and could lead him astray, but if he got the chance, it might be worth a look.

Wu, now terrified, wouldn’t last under the strain for long and would eventually come to An Xiaohai with everything he knew.

An Xiaohai just had to wait.

Another ten days passed without news from Wu Guanhai, but then came an announcement for a rigorous inspection of Cell 232. All three occupants would be taken to the prison’s interrogation room for questioning.

As they walked down the corridor, An Xiaohai realized that this was likely the arrival of Wang Tiejun.