Chapter 1730: Man-Made Accident
It was clear that Pu Hui was not usually a talkative person, and he didn’t have any keepsake from his deceased colleague, using only a bloodstained rock as a substitute. He silently stared at the rock, hesitating to speak, until the effects of the medicine gradually made him drowsy.
At this point, the operation could proceed smoothly. Xu Huo brought him into his own spiritual realm.
Without needing special visual interference, he only shaped a shadow outside Pu Hui’s door.
Pu Hui’s bedroom door was made of translucent frosted glass, making the view unclear from either side. Even if someone stood outside the door, only a blurry shadow could be seen, so the shadow didn’t need to be detailed. Under the influence of indoor and outdoor lighting at night, even the height didn’t need to be specific.
He didn’t make a sound, waiting instead for Pu Hui to notice on his own.
Under the effects of the medicine, Pu Hui’s reactions were a bit slow, but as the light outside changed, he soon spotted the figure outside the door.
“Who’s there!” His first thought was that someone had broken into the house, and he immediately activated the smart robot. When the room’s lights came on, the robot didn’t issue an intrusion alert.
Pu Hui got up and opened the door, but the figure disappeared as the light turned on, and naturally, there was no real person outside.
“Thud!” The bloodstained rock that had been on the table in his room suddenly rolled off and hit the floor.
Pu Hui spun around, more shocked than terrified. Watching the rock wobble twice on the ground, he suddenly realized something and turned off all the machines in the room again.
Standing in the living room with the bedroom door open, in the darkness, he saw a shadow slowly appear beside the bloodstained rock. The shadow was hunched over, as if struggling to get up from the ground, but then it was violently smashed down from the middle. Its outstretched hand seemed like a cry for help...
Pu Hui suddenly dropped to his knees, tears in his eyes as he stared at the shadow on the ground. “I’m sorry... I’m sorry... I really didn’t mean it... I never intended to actually kill you...”
“I... I don’t know how it happened either... When you asked me, I somehow asked you to take my shift...”
“...I thought they were joking... I never imagined it was all true...”
He grabbed his hair in anguish, sobbing painfully. “So many people died in front of me. If I had been braver, maybe not so many would have died... After all these years, I’ve lost my wife and children, living like a ghost, neither human nor spirit... I’ve thought about dying, but I worried that without atoning for my sins, I wouldn’t be able to see my wife and children again after death... Lu Feng... I don’t expect you to forgive me... Punish me, so I can feel a little better...”
The shadow lying on the ground gradually took on a concrete form. It looked like a corpse, but it was lying face down, away from Pu Hui.
After listening to his confession for a few minutes, Xu Huo made the “corpse” move.
Only then did Pu Hui feel real fear. He stumbled back two steps. “Lu Feng... I know I was wrong! Don’t scare me!”
The “corpse” paused, grabbed the bloodstained rock that had fallen nearby, and forcefully wrote the character “revenge” on the ground.
This confession might have been hard to make to others, but to the victim “Lu Feng,” there was much less psychological pressure. Pu Hui poured out everything he knew in one breath.
It turned out that the day before the accident, he had accidentally slipped in the mine tunnel. The fall wasn’t serious, but he hit his head and felt dizzy, so someone helped him out to rest. Right where he was resting, he overheard two managers from Hiers Group talking about some “plan.” At first, he didn’t pay attention, until one of them expressed guilt, saying that a mine collapse would kill many people, and the other replied helplessly that to keep mining, sacrifices had to be made, or the company couldn’t continue.
Pu Hui was shocked and couldn’t believe his ears. After listening, he doubted his own judgment. For one, he hadn’t heard the entire conversation from start to finish, and the two speakers hadn’t fully explained the details, only vaguely mentioning an impending mine collapse. Such accidents were not uncommon in Zone 019 at the time. He repeatedly questioned whether he had misheard something—maybe the problem wasn’t at the mine where he worked, but at another mine...
Under this self-hypnosis, he endured until the next day. When Lu Feng came to ask if he could go to work, he took the opportunity to say he still needed rest. Worried that his absence might draw attention, he asked Lu Feng to switch shifts with him.
At the time, Pu Hui wasn’t sure that the mine where he worked would definitely collapse, nor was he certain of the timing. He was more concerned that the two Hiers managers might discover he had overheard their conversation, so he dared not show up. Afraid that others might notice something was wrong, he asked Lu Feng to swap shifts.
Only after the mine really collapsed did he belatedly realize what kind of conspiracy he had accidentally stumbled upon, how narrowly he had escaped death, and how he had unconsciously missed the chance to save over a hundred lives, while causing the death of a kind colleague who shouldn’t have died...
Pu Hui revealed the names of the two managers.
After he rambled through an apology, Xu Huo hypnotized him into thinking he had fallen asleep, moved him to the bed, fabricated a dream, and placed the rock back on the table. As for the words on the ground, they had never existed.
Withdrawing his attention, Xu Huo returned to the hotel side and investigated the two people Pu Hui had named on the message collection terminal.
Both of them were now honorary senior executives at Hiers. Having worked for the company for over a hundred years, they had long since retired. Under Hiers Group’s arrangements, they lived in dedicated retirement villas for former employees. Besides receiving regular retirement benefits and some company dividends, they no longer needed to contribute any effort to the company.
“Who are these two?” Zhu Zhongliang asked.
“Participants in the mine accident,” Xu Huo replied, quickly scanning the information. He paused when he came across a photo posted on their social media. In one corner of the photo, a daily-use item bore a special religious symbol.
“Participants?” Zhu Zhongliang frowned. “You mean the mine accident Pu Hui experienced was man-made? How is that possible?”
Jiao Hongyuan, along with Zhao Yiming and Meng Xiaoman—who had dawdled but eventually returned—also found it hard to believe. (Chapter End)