“Sis!? When did you get back? Why didn’t you tell me ahead of time?”
“Last night.” Qiuyun yawned as she walked over to the refrigerator and opened it. There was quite a lot inside.
“You bought all this?”
Qiu Ze shook his head. “The property management company, I guess. Last time they came by to sell me on their cleaning and cooking services, I thought they sounded pretty good, so I signed up.”
His salary had gone up a little recently, and with his share of the VIP fan revenue, he made more than ten thousand yuan a month. He handed all of it over to the property management company.
No wonder Qiu Ze was so busy practicing his dancing every day, yet the house was always spotless.
Qiuyun glanced around, took out some toast and milk, and sat down at the dining table with him for breakfast.
“By the way, I just remembered something. Wasn’t our family’s house rented? I seem to remember it was.”
“You mean the one in North Third Alley?”
“Yeah.”
Qiu Ze thought carefully. “It was rented. I remember Mom and Dad used to argue about the rent. One of them would say there was no need to pay if the landlord hadn’t come to collect it or something.”
Qiuyun asked, “How old were we back then? I vaguely remember that when I was around ten, Mom and Dad stopped mentioning the rent. Didn’t they?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’s been a long time since I heard anything about it.”
It was just a small, cramped bungalow in an old neighborhood, and they even had to use the public toilet outside whenever they needed to go. But its location was excellent. By today’s standards, the rent would have been at least three thousand yuan a month.
Three thousand yuan.
For a couple who usually survived on odd jobs, that was no small expense. How had they managed to come up with it?
The next day.
After Qiuyun got the elderly couple’s passports, she bought tickets for the next flight to Singapore and went home to fetch them.
When Qiuyun Fuyang and Fang Fang received the news, they packed their luggage early and waited at home.
Their neighbors found it strange that the couple had recently stopped going out to work and came over to visit.
The husband and wife guarded the secret of their upcoming trip abroad and their future life of luxury with all their might.
After all, their daughter had said that once they returned from Singapore, they would be on an entirely different social level from these neighbors. They had already let Uncle Liao in on the secret, so they absolutely could not allow anyone else to get hold of their weak spot!
If the neighbors used this as leverage against them, it wouldn’t be something that could be settled with a few hundred thousand yuan anymore.
The couple assumed everyone else would think the way they did. If they had such leverage over someone, they figured they would go asking for money the moment they ran short.
Just imagining that scenario made them clamp their mouths shut even tighter. They told everyone only that an elderly relative had fallen ill and they needed to go back to take care of them.
Qiuyun arrived with the tickets and passports. “Oh, and leave a key with me. I’ll have someone deal with everything here—especially the photos and anything with your names on it.”
The couple didn’t suspect a thing. They handed over the key and reminded her, “Make sure you clean everything out properly. Then lock up the house so no one can get in.”
After that, Qiuyun took the two of them to the bank and deposited fifty thousand yuan into each of their bank accounts. She printed out proof of their deposits and exchanged another thousand Singapore dollars, just in case they were questioned at customs. She did everything she could to make sure they wouldn’t be stopped at the border.
Three hours later.
After watching the plane take off safely from the departure lounge, Qiuyun turned around and headed for North Third Alley.
The bungalow and its courtyard covered roughly sixty square meters. Entering through the small gate on the south side led straight into the courtyard. The main room and master bedroom were on the north side, while the kitchen and two smaller bedrooms were along the side.
Unlike the other homes, whose courtyards were often planted with trees, this one had nothing but a few pots of dried flowers tucked into a corner.
Qiuyun remembered that there should have been a tree in the courtyard.
After taking a quick look around, she went to the master bedroom first.
She found nothing useful in the bedside table. Then she searched the wardrobe and discovered an old mobile phone. It was a keypad phone from years ago, so it probably wouldn’t contain anything valuable.
“Sister Fang! Sister Fang, are you home?”
Just as Qiuyun was trying to turn the phone on, a neighbor called from outside. “Open the door! My cat chased a rat into your courtyard!”
What?
Oh, come on.
Qiuyun went over and opened the gate. “My mom isn’t here.”
“Oh, are you Little Yun? You’ve grown into such a beautiful girl since I last saw you a year or two ago! Where are you working now?”
Qiuyun came up with an answer on the spot. “At a department store counter.”
“No wonder you look so elegant. You’re tall enough, too—perfect for selling luxury goods.”
The woman entered the courtyard and quickly found her cat, Mimi, in the drainage ditch by the wall.
“You deadbeat cat! That rat’s filthy. If you eat it, you’ll get poisoned! Come out!”
As she spoke, she grabbed a bamboo pole from nearby and began poking it into the ditch.
Unfortunately, cats were just like that. The more you tried to stop them from doing something, the more enthusiastic they became. Qiuyun watched helplessly as Mimi tore into the rat even faster.
She couldn’t help stopping the woman. “Let me do it. I’ll move the drainage cover.”
Qiuyun casually pulled over two cloth sacks, used them to protect her hands, and lifted the stone slab aside. The woman bent down and grabbed the cat while grumbling curses.
“You can stand being in such a filthy, stinking ditch? When we get home, you’re taking a proper bath. You’re not allowed inside until you do!”
The woman picked Mimi up by the scruff of its neck, thanked Qiuyun, and hurried away.
Qiuyun shook her head, closed the gate, and returned to replace the stone slab.
The ditch was used to drain rainwater and household wastewater. It was about thirty centimeters wide and half a meter deep.
As Qiuyun lowered the slab back into place, she must have set it down at a different angle from before. This time, she noticed that underneath the slab on the opposite side of where Mimi had been hiding, a lush patch of nettles had grown.
The spot where the nettles grew was covered by a pile of miscellaneous junk. Unless someone bent down to set aside the stone slab and looked through the drainage ditch, there was no way to notice it from anywhere else in the courtyard.
Qiuyun’s palms turned cold.
She had seen plenty of dark and sordid secrets behind the walls of wealthy households. She wasn’t unfamiliar with murder cases.
Nettles liked shade, but soil that was too damp and shaded wouldn’t contain enough nutrients to sustain such luxuriant growth. The only way they could thrive there was if a body had been buried beneath them and decomposed, enriching the soil.
Steeling herself, Qiuyun stepped forward and began moving the pile of junk aside piece by piece.
Slowly, everything was cleared away. A section of the blue-gray stone slab had visibly sunk downward.
Back when she was living at the Duke of State’s residence, an old bachelor whose wife had run away with another man had been cutting grass for the horses in an alley behind the estate.
One day, a steward went to the stables and accidentally tripped over the uneven stone pavement. He immediately ordered people to dig it up and relay the stones.
Who could have guessed that they would unearth a skeleton?
The news spread throughout the estate. It was only after the authorities from the Court of Judicial Review arrived to investigate that they learned what had happened. When a body was first buried, it remained intact, and after the soil was packed down, there was naturally no visible sign of anything unusual.
But as the body gradually decomposed into bones, its flesh and organs were eaten away by insects underground. Eventually, the ground would naturally sink.
If it had been ordinary dirt, an uneven patch might not have attracted anyone’s attention. But when a stone path was first laid, every slab was level. If only one particular section sank, that meant there was almost certainly a problem beneath it.
Qiuyun stepped forward and carefully examined the depression, comparing its length and width.
She couldn’t help feeling despair.
Don’t tell me… Maybe… It really could be… There was a very good chance…
If a body truly was buried underneath, then she knew why both the son and daughter had run away, while the husband and wife still refused to report it to the police.
They simply didn’t dare!
Even if it was only a suspicion, modern society had far too many methods of investigation. Qiuyun had no intention of getting herself dragged into this mess, so she did not rashly start digging around.
