Seeing Crime Scenes in My Sleep

Chapter 46: Chapter 46: Kidney Bean ’Pig’s Trotter’ Soup

"Jiang Li, Zhao Chunmei just went into a hardware store. Let’s follow her and take a look."

Wu Ming pulled Jiang Li toward the hardware store. They hid by the entrance, listening to the sounds coming from inside.

"The police are already investigating. They’ll find out sooner or later. I don’t want this building anymore! You can have it back!"

"Zhao Chunmei, you insisted on taking over this building to rent out. And now you’re just going to say you don’t want it?"

Zhao Chunmei’s face was etched with worry. "I don’t want it. If I’d known it would be this much trouble, I never would have taken it on!"

Jiang Li turned on her recording pen and listened to the two people arguing inside.

"I don’t care, I don’t want it. Give it to whoever you want!" Zhao Chunmei stood up in a huff. But when she yanked the door open, she saw Jiang Li and Wu Ming at the entrance and froze on the spot.

"Aunt Zhao, you’d better come with us."

Jiang Li waved the recording pen in her hand.

Zhao Chunmei opened her mouth, but in the end, she reluctantly followed.

Back at the police station, Lu Xingye had been waiting for some time.

"Aunt Zhao, I hope you’ve thought it through. This is your last chance. If you keep hiding things... are you trying to say you were involved in the death of Xiong Wangtian’s mother?"

As soon as Lu Xingye finished, Zhao Chunmei’s face changed dramatically. She quickly waved her hands. "No, it wasn’t me! Why on earth would I kill someone for no reason?"

"I... I was just scared. When I first took over the building, people said it was haunted, but I couldn’t resist how cheap it was."

"So I bought it and started renting it out. In that time, tenants complained about feeling uneasy and moved out. And now, Xiong Wangtian’s mother has died in the building."

"I was just afraid I’d get dragged into it, but I really didn’t do it! I could never do something like that."

Zhao Chunmei waved her hands frantically.

Jiang Li looked up. "You said there was something in the wall. What was it?"

The color drained from Zhao Chunmei’s face. "There’s... there’s a ghost! I went to collect rent once and heard this... THUMP THUMP THUMP sound."

"It was... really, really scary."

Jiang Li stared at Zhao Chunmei in silence. "Aunt Zhao, what do you gain from lying? It wasn’t a ghost in that wall. It was a person, wasn’t it?"

"AHHHHHH!"

Zhao Chunmei shrieked in terror. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she looked as if she was about to pass out, but just then, Ning Sinian intervened.

"It-it really has nothing to do with me! That day, I went to collect rent, and I saw the man you mentioned, Xiong Wangtian, holding an axe in the hallway... BANG! BANG! BANG!"

"I was about to go stop him, but then I saw... I saw him chopping something. It looked... it looked like a human hand. I was so terrified, I just ran."

"I didn’t go back for a few days after that. The next thing I knew, you were knocking on my door. It really has nothing to do with me."

Lu Xingye was so furious he shot to his feet. "Nothing to do with you? Why didn’t you call the police?"

Tears streamed down Zhao Chunmei’s wrinkled face, her lips trembling. "If I had called the police, who... who would ever rent from me again?"

Lu Xingye took a sharp, deep breath. He really felt like he might keel over from sheer anger.

"What about the body? Did you see it?"

"No, no! I just hid at home after I got back that day. But later, I started to think... what if it was just pig’s feet?"

"Because that night, Xiong Wangtian posted a picture of a kidney bean and pig’s foot soup."

As she spoke, Zhao Chunmei quickly pulled out her phone. With trembling hands, she tapped on the photo from Xiong Wangtian.

"I... I thought the soup looked good at the time, so rich and white. I even saved the picture, thinking I’d try making it myself sometime."

Lu Xingye took the phone from her, transferred the image to a computer, and Ning Sinian stepped forward to carefully examine the "pig’s feet" in the picture.

Ning Sinian straightened up, his expression grim. Those weren’t pig’s feet. They had clearly been chopped to resemble them, but one could still tell the difference from the skin’s appearance—whether it was pigskin, or...

Wu Ming immediately turned her head and vomited.

Jiang Li turned away, but she still felt something was off. ’Based on Zhao Chunmei’s timeline,’ she thought, ’even if Xiong Wangtian ate some of it, what about the rest...?’

Zhao Chunmei’s face went deathly pale. ’W-what does that mean? Don’t tell me those weren’t pig’s feet at all.’

The phone in her hand CLATTERED to the floor. Her vision went black, and she fainted. Ning Sinian quickly had someone take her to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Huo Qing was corroborating information with the property developer.

"The eighth of the seventh lunar month... I remember we were close to finishing up then. Only Building Eleven was still incomplete. Is there a problem, Officer?"

Wang Dahai looked at Huo Qing with a simple, honest expression.

Huo Qing nodded. Holding the information he’d gathered, he went to find Jiang Li. He, too, wanted to know why she was looking into this.

After learning about Xiong Wangtian from Lu Xingye, Huo Qing’s brow furrowed.

"You suspect Xiong Wangtian hid the body inside a wall?"

"Yes."

"Then we’ll know for sure if we take a crew and tear down the wall." According to inspections, the structure was a hazardous building anyway and not up to code.

Huo Qing handed the file to Jiang Li. "The information you wanted."

Jiang Li took the file and opened it. Twenty years ago, on the eighth of the seventh lunar month, Building Eleven was nearing completion.

Building Eleven. It was Building Eleven again.

"Officer Huo, let’s tear down the wall." Once it’s down, we’ll know everything.

"Okay. We still need to go through the proper channels before we can demolish it. I’ll let you know the second I have an update." Huo Qing looked at Jiang Li. They had already sent a request to the relevant agencies for an inspection right after arresting Xiong Wangtian; it just took time.

"Okay." Jiang Li nodded, watching the sky darken as a light rain began to fall.

"I’m going to head out then."

Jiang Li gathered her things and walked out.

Before Lu Xingye could even say anything, Jiang Li was gone, not once looking back.

Seeing Jiang Li leave, Wu Ming said a quick goodbye and left as well.

Jiang Li sat in her car, watching the rain fall harder and harder. She soon arrived at Qiao Siyuan’s house. When she let herself in, he wasn’t home, which suited her perfectly.

For the past few days that Jiang Li had been staying there, Qiao Siyuan hadn’t come back. He just texted her as usual, asking if she was home and telling her he was waiting for her there.

Jiang Li walked into Qiao Siyuan’s study. A smile spread across her face as she looked at the messages synced to his computer. She had been wondering how she was going to get Qiao Siyuan the death penalty.

She hadn’t expected an opportunity to present itself so soon.

Just as she had before, Jiang Li took out her phone and gathered evidence, making sure to put everything back exactly as she had found it before she left the room.

She walked to the window and looked outside. Fat raindrops hammered against the glass, the RAT-A-TAT-TAT sounding like a midnight revelry.

In an excellent mood, Jiang Li walked over to a cabinet, took out some medicine she hadn’t taken in a long time, and swallowed a few pills.

「A few days later.」

Huo Qing sent her a message telling her when they were scheduled to demolish the wall and asking her to be there.

Jiang Li stood in the sun, looking up at the light-starved building.

The crew Huo Qing had contacted carried their equipment upstairs and got into position at the designated spot.

Jiang Li stood to the side, watching nervously.

’What’s really inside that wall?’