Chapter 388: An Endless Nightmare
Jiaqi’s parents never once asked about my age throughout the entire meal. Instead, they kept earnestly telling me about Jiaqi’s flaws and asking me to be understanding.
I kept smiling and agreeing, feeling like I was floating on air.
I had thought this gathering would be an awkward ordeal for me, but somehow it was Jiaqi who ended up being the embarrassed one, making me unable to suppress my laughter.
His parents listed his shortcomings, and his sister teased him about his embarrassing stories. For the first time, I saw a flustered expression on Jiaqi’s face.
Happily, I snapped a few photos and posted them on my Moments, which I hadn’t updated in three years.
Today marks the beginning of my new life.
“Chenze, Jay Chou is coming to Chengdu in five days. Last time we couldn’t go to Richie Jen’s concert together. Want to go this time?” Jiaqi asked.
“Sure, if I have time, that would be great.”
“Ring ring ring—”
Jiaqi’s phone rang. The caller ID showed the Qingyang District Public Security Bureau.
“Hello?” Jiaqi smiled and sat down beside me, answering the call. “Yes, this is Attorney Sun. What’s the matter?”
A muffled voice came from the other end. Even though I was sitting very close to Jiaqi, I couldn’t make out the words clearly.
“What…? Okay, I understand. I’ll come see you first thing tomorrow morning. Try to combine these two cases if possible.” Jiaqi’s smile gradually faded. “Yes, I understand. Though I feel sorry for that girl, at least we can completely punish the villain now.”
Jiaqi hung up with a somewhat melancholy expression. After a few seconds, he turned to me and gave me a meaningful look.
I followed him to the balcony, looking at him in confusion.
“Chenze, I’m not sure if this counts as good news, but since it concerns you, I have to tell you.” Jiaqi smiled at me.
“What is it?”
“The police investigation found a female corpse buried in Butcher Ma’s backyard. Comparisons revealed it was a female college student who went missing many years ago.”
“Female college… student…?” My voice trembled slightly at those four words.
There were very few female college students in our village.
“Yeah.” Jiaqi took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth. “Sigh… I don’t know if it’s good news or not, but at this point, Butcher Ma is definitely going to get the death penalty. I’ll go to the police station tomorrow to check the details. Apparently, she’d been buried in his backyard for over a decade…”
My head felt incredibly dizzy.
“Jiaqi… that female… college student… what was her name?” I asked.
“I think I heard it just now, but I didn’t remember it. I heard she went there for volunteer teaching.” Sun looked at me with some confusion. “What’s wrong? Chenze, do you know that girl?”
A female college student who went to volunteer teach… How could I not know her?
She was the most important light in my life.
Under the illumination of that light, I managed to leave the village, spending the rest of my life striving for a better future.
I never imagined that the light guiding my way forward would remain there forever.
All these years… she had been buried in Butcher Ma’s backyard…
How terrified must she have been?
How hopeless?
My body began to tremble.
In that small room of Butcher Ma’s, I had seen the walls covered in scratch marks.
Those scratches were clearly years old.
So that’s how it was?
Teacher Ning Wan’er, in some other timeline, had you once been as desperate as I was?
No… you were more desperate than me.
Because you knew no one in this world could ever save you… you knew you could never escape this village.
You could only slowly accept your death, forever remaining there.
My lighthouse, the guiding light of my life, the woman who gave me all my hope—on some day over a decade ago, she died in that tiny room with the same despair as a pig.
“Jiaqi… I… I don’t feel well…” My eyes were red and swollen. I felt like my entire sky was collapsing. “I might lose composure. I think I need to go home…”
“Chenze… if something’s wrong, you can tell me.” Sun stared into my eyes. “I can solve anything for you.”
Solve it…?
The tragedy was… there was nothing left to solve.
Teacher Ning Wan’er was dead, and now Butcher Ma was going to pay with his life. From every angle, wasn’t this matter already resolved?
Then why was I still feeling so hopeless?
“Ding—”
My phone, which hadn’t made a sound in ages, suddenly received a WeChat message.
It was from Chengcai.
“Yo? Got yourself a boyfriend?”
It must have been because of my Moments post. Chengcai, who I hadn’t contacted in eight hundred years, was suddenly talking to me.
But it didn’t matter—these people couldn’t affect me anymore. I was going to block all their contact information right now.
I sighed and swiped left on the screen, about to delete the conversation, when another message came through.
After a moment’s hesitation, I opened it to read.
“Does your boyfriend know what you’re really like?”
Attached was a screenshot of a chat between Chengcai and Butcher Ma.
Butcher Ma: “A woman who’s been trained by city folk is really slutty. Take a look.”
And then came my pictures.
The photos I thought had been erased from the world, now appearing one by one before my eyes.
After that came a few videos, trampling every shred of my dignity into the dirt.
It seemed I really couldn’t escape this village… this village that devoured people.
Could you all just let me go?
Could you pretend you’d never seen me?
Could you just act like I was already dead?!
“Chenze, what’s wrong?” Jiaqi asked, puzzled. “Who sent you that message?”
“I…”
He was about to lean over to look, but I immediately locked the phone and shoved it into my pocket. In my panic, I even bumped my elbow, but I didn’t feel the pain.
I was too terrified. I couldn’t let Jiaqi see me like this. Even if everyone in the world could see it… I absolutely couldn’t let Jiaqi see it.
“Ah…?” When Jiaqi saw me frantically putting away my phone, he didn’t get angry, but his expression turned a bit awkward. “Sorry, Chenze. I didn’t mean to pry into your privacy…”
“No, it’s not that…” I waved my hands in panic.
Ever since we’d established our relationship, Sun always sat beside me whenever he took or made calls. Maybe it was to give me a sense of security, or maybe to put me at ease, but he always made these kinds of gestures without thinking.
He never hid anything from me, but this time I had hurriedly hidden my phone. It wasn’t fair to him.
“Jiaqi… it’s not what you think… I…”
I hadn’t even thought of how to explain. I just wanted to cry, and also wanted to curse this world.
But I couldn’t cry.
If I cried, Jiaqi would worry.
This was my own problem, and dragging someone else into it wasn’t right.
So the best option right now was to quietly go home, find a place where no one could see me, and cry my heart out—just like I’d done every day for the past ten years.
“I know… I know…” Jiaqi nodded earnestly. “Chenze, it’s okay. I’m not blaming you. Everyone has things they don’t want others to know. When you’re ready to tell me, I’ll be right here waiting.”
That day, I felt like the entire world was spinning.
What was I supposed to do?
I didn’t remember how I left Jiaqi’s house. When I came to my senses, I was standing in my living room, staring blankly at my phone.
Chengcai was calling.
If I didn’t resolve this, my life would be an endless nightmare.
I took out a voice recorder from the drawer, turned on my phone’s recording function, pressed speakerphone, and answered the call.