Chapter 64

“That child might not be born to Xia Weizhi but has been living in the nursing home.” Lu Siyu remembered a room he entered earlier in the day. On the dusty bedside table, there was a teddy bear. At that time, he was puzzled about why such a thing would be found in a nursing home.

Now he had a clear understanding. In such a large nursing home, with elderly residents and staff living together, it was a community of hundreds of people. They must have had families, children among them.

Perhaps the number of these children was not large, but like adults, they lived here day in and day out. The school was nearby, and their education wasn’t compromised.

Children could grow and change with the passage of time. While adults had already formed their characters and the elderly were in the twilight of their lives, children had countless possibilities. They could be kind, or they could be malicious.

If the Wushan Nursing Home was a bleak cliff, these children were the little grass growing beneath it.

Eighteen years ago, this place was nothing like the desolation it had become today. It was filled with living, breathing individuals.

Back then, the nursing home wasn’t as strictly managed as it is now. It wasn’t restricted to outsiders, requiring signatures for every visit. These children naturally came and went frequently. They might be the offspring of divorced parents, or relatives who had passed away, or their parents were temporarily absent, or perhaps their parents worked as staff in the nursing home. They could only follow the elderly living here, considering this place as their home, their paradise…

Standing in the room, Lu Siyu felt as if he could hear the sounds outside—the conversations of the elderly, the coughs, the calls, and the hurried footsteps of the caregivers. Amidst those shuffling figures, children would run past, nearly colliding with the elderly in the corridors, turning around to make funny faces.

These children lived here, yet everyone overlooked them.

For various reasons, they were “abandoned” by their parents and lived in a world that wasn’t originally meant for them. A lack of care during their childhood led to psychological deficiencies. They were naive, bold, yearning for freedom. Unable to distinguish right from wrong, they encountered Xia Weizhi, a gentle-looking but venomous doctor, enough to change their lives.

“We overlooked it, and the police investigation back then also overlooked this point…” Song Wen looked at Lu Siyu before him. He still remembered the last page of the record sheet from back then, with several blank spaces, only numbered boxes without names and ID numbers filled in. Those should have been the underage children in the nursing home at the time. Due to the protection of minors’ information, the police had reserved these spaces for registration but left them unfilled.

Lu Siyu nodded. Back then, Wu Qing was aware of the existence of these children. It’s even possible that he had talked to a few of these children and gathered some clues. He might have left those hints because he had figured out some crucial links.

From start to finish, those children should never have been excluded from the case.

“So… where can we find relevant information about them?” Song Wen asked. If Lu Siyu’s deduction was correct, there was a child here who was nurtured by Xia Weizhi and eventually inherited her methods of killing.

Xia Weizhi’s murderous techniques were ingrained in their bones. Even unintentionally, they could tie the same knots. It was this person who tortured Zhang Peicai to death. Song Wen had already thoroughly reviewed the police information from before, and there was no relevant information. The teenager from eighteen years ago had grown into an adult, and they needed to figure out where to find this person.

And… could this person be related to Bai Luorui?

Lu Siyu pondered, “If we want to check the information about the children living here, we may need to go through all the family genealogies of the elderly who used to live here. But this could lead to omissions… After all, it was eighteen years ago. The household registration at that time wasn’t perfect. Some children might have been relatives fostered by the elderly. Adoption procedures weren’t as strict as they are now. Considering these factors, the difficulty might be greater.”

Before Lu Siyu could finish, Song Wen suddenly understood the link. He briskly walked out, “The director’s office!” Back then, computers weren’t as prevalent, and paper documents were more common. If there was any place that might have relevant clues, it would undoubtedly be the director’s office.

Lu Siyu hurriedly got up and followed Song Wen. The echoes of their footsteps rang out in the spacious building. The director’s office of the Wushan Nursing Home was located on the top floor of the staff building, the largest room on the entire floor.

The old director of the Wushan Nursing Home had long been implicated in the events of that year, later succumbing to illness. The place had been preserved in its original state. The entire director’s office was the most luxurious place in the nursing home. Several solid wood bookshelves stored various materials about the nursing home, including accounts and various directories. When the police were intensively searching for information about Xia Weizhi back then, this part had been overlooked.

As the remaining daylight illuminated the room, Song Wen searched through the documents while asking Lu Siyu, “Do you think there might be names of children in these files?” He was afraid that if the information was incomplete, their efforts this time might be in vain.

Lu Siyu responded, “Your line of thinking just now is correct. Now, although this building is vacant, there must be enough information left behind.”

Who lived in each room? What exactly happened in this nursing home back then?

Song Wen nodded and continued flipping through the records. “Alright, if we’re going to investigate, let’s turn everything upside down, thoroughly.”

“I can’t be sure if there are information files, but…” Lu Siyu crouched down, pulled out a booklet from the cabinet, and said, “There’s a photo album here.”

Eighteen years ago, film rolls still existed, and color photos were mostly developed, not printed. This was an entire photo album of the Wushan Nursing Home, containing pictures from more than twenty years ago up to about five years before eighteen years ago. Opening the album felt like unveiling a segment of time that had been sealed by dust. These photos might be the last things left in this world for many elderly people.

Lu Siyu pulled out a photo from it. Perhaps, to prevent the staff from forgetting the names of those elderly people, the names were written on the back of the photos. Two of them had even been framed in black, obviously indicating that these elderly people had passed away shortly afterward.

Lu Siyu turned to another picture, a group photo of Xia Weizhi and some elderly people. Xia Weizhi in the photo looked extremely gentle, wearing a pair of pearl earrings, lowering her head, lips pursed, somewhat reserved. She seemed like an angel descended to earth, but who could have thought that such a woman was a demon.

As the sunlight gradually dimmed, the entire room was about to be engulfed by darkness. Song Wen also leaned over and looked at the album with Lu Siyu. The booklet had turned yellow, and the photos displayed smiling faces one after another, mostly group photos of three to five people. Every now and then, there was a collective picture, and Lu Siyu used his fair fingers to flip through. Many elderly people quickly disappeared from the photos, and new elderly people appeared afterward.

Later, some photos showed children. Lu Siyu’s hand paused, and Song Wen lowered his head to count the number of people in the photos. He then turned it around to check the names. He breathed a sigh of relief; luckily, the names of the children were also recorded.

Soon, they found photos with children. As they flipped through, the cameras got better, and the pictures became clearer. At the end of the album, there was a large group photo of everyone. In addition to the elderly people, there was the director, Xia Weizhi, and in the front row, seven or eight children crouched down. These children looked innocent, looking at the camera. Some were around ten years old, while others were four or five years old, some even carrying school bags, apparently just returning from school.

Lu Siyu flipped the photo over, looking at the names one by one. Soon, he saw familiar names. They had finally found a clue, and it seemed like they were getting closer to the truth. However, Lu Siyu’s brow furrowed tighter, and he uttered in a trembling voice, “I was wrong in my previous deduction.”

“Where did you go wrong?” Song Wen asked.

Lu Siyu’s fingertips slid over each name—Bai Luorui, Wei Hong, Du Ruoxin… He trembled, saying, “It’s not a child, but children!”

There might be more than one perpetrator!

Those children, they met, knew each other, accompanied each other, and grew up together.

The world in their eyes was completely different from that of adults. They were not just one person, and it might not even be two people, but three people… They were influenced, and perhaps their life trajectories had long become entirely different. However, there was a moment when they were here with Xia Weizhi simultaneously. Perhaps a toy, a piece of candy, a gentle word could turn those children, whose worldviews were still incomplete, upside down, making them lose the sense of right and wrong.

They watched her kill, learned to kill from her, and their lives were imprinted by this witch.

Eighteen years later, those once small plants that grew on this land finally grew wildly, even blooming and bearing fruit.

Du Ruoxin, the deceased Zhang Peicai’s wife who was going through a divorce.

Bai Luorui, the female owner of the Luoxin Nursing Home.

These two seemingly unrelated women had actually met here eighteen years ago. Perhaps, they were not entirely unaware of Zhang Peicai’s death. They had reached a tacit understanding and kept a secret from them and even from the police.

Du Ruoxin and Bai Luorui had known each other long ago. With just these two women, they might not have killed Zhang Peicai or done so much. There was also a man. And those other people…

Lu Siyu looked at the photos of the young men, and one with a clearly defined scar on his forehead caught his attention. His eyes had a somewhat gloomy look. Song Wen took the photo and said, “This person… looks so familiar. I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere.”

Countless faces appeared in his mind. He must have seen such a face somewhere. The indifferent eyes, the slightly elevated cheekbones. What kind of appearance would this young man have after eighteen years…

Suddenly, Song Wen remembered. He had indeed seen this person!

This was the deliveryman who had once entered the police station!

It was just that on that day, the person had worn a hat, and the scar on his forehead was not very noticeable, which is why Song Wen didn’t recognize him at first.

“This person once entered the police station boldly under the pretext of delivering food,” Song Wen said. Perhaps at that time, the person had hidden a knife in his clothes…

TN

“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”