Wang Shi's brain was invaded, forcing him to release some of his memories. But he still had control over which ones - he chose only the dark memories.
His mother's muffled sobs penetrated the thin door as she suffered humiliation, yet he was powerless, only able to repeatedly copy vocabulary over and over.
His father was violent and selfish, often beating and scolding him, his eyes icy and devoid of any warmth. Only when Wang Shi brought home outstanding grades did he begrudgingly acknowledge him as his son.
As days like this accumulated, the neighbors began to gossip and murmur.
"Men keep coming to the house and staying for hours at a time. Something's not right."
"The woman is always crying, and she's covered in bruises."
"The man beats his wife, there must be a reason for it. She must be cheating on him."
"You know, the Wang boy doesn't look much like his dad."
Then the whispers spread through his school.
"Don't talk to him, his mom's a whore."
"For real?"
"I heard it from my auntie. She got pregnant before they got married. His dad's a cuckold, haha."
"His dad's an asshole. No wonder he grew up twisted."
These unspeakable memories from the past dragged Wang Shi down like a swamp.
He wanted to struggle, to cry out, to escape.
But no one could hear him, no one cared, no one reached out a helping hand.
He finally understood why his mother never told anyone about her misfortune. She must have known that people would not sympathize with her, only condemn and insult her.
It was better to maintain the illusion of happiness than to be pointed at and ridiculed.
But one day, the dream seemed to come true.
That day, his father was sober and bought some braised dishes and pastries. His mother wore a new dress and cooked a table full of his favorite home-cooked food. The three of them sat at the dinner table as if the conflicts of the past two years were just a dream.
The man said, "If all goes well, I'll be the new manager at the out-of-town branch. When that happens, you'll both come with me and we'll find a better middle school for our son."
He said the last part directly to the woman.
The woman cried tears of joy.
Here, everyone knew of her shame. The men who came to take advantage of her kept coming one after another, an endless nightmare.
If they could move away, and no one knew of her past, no one would gossip, then she could start over with her husband and son and live a peaceful, happy life.
All of her endurance was worth it.
"Sorry for making you suffer these past years," the man nodded at the woman. "I've finally made something of myself."
Little Wang Shi looked at their joyful faces in disbelief, wondering if it was a dream.
But this time, it was real.
The transfer notice came down, and the man left to pioneer new markets out of town. The woman busied herself packing up their things. She barely packed her own items, only carefully organizing her son's - folding his clothes and neatly lining up his books in boxes.
As she packed, she kept saying, "Everything will be better from now on, it'll get better." She earnestly exhorted him, "Don't blame your mom. I know what it's like to not have a man in the house. If it wasn't for your grandfather dying early, they wouldn't have dared...they wouldn't have dared..."
The memories pricked her most painful wound, raw and bleeding.
She forced back her tears of blood, repeating, "As long as you have your dad, you're his real son. No one will laugh at you..."
Wang Shi listened silently, slowly putting his arms around the woman.
As moving day drew near, her complexion visibly improved day by day, becoming rosy and radiant, more mature and charming.
It goes without saying that the neighbors' words grew even more unkind.
But they tried not to care, enduring and waiting until finally boarding the moving truck out of there.
A new life was beginning.
In the big city, the neighbors didn't know them well and they saw little of each other, so there was less gossip. His new classmates knew nothing about his past and were very friendly.
His father was busy with work. His mother doted on him even more to make up for it.
Those days were as blissful as a dream.
He started to believe that maybe the future wasn't so bleak after all, that things would slowly get better.
But later events proved that they had been too naive.
After just over a month, the man returned home again, his face dark. He opened a bottle of beer and drank most of it in big gulps, a murky look flashing across his eyes.
The woman attended to him gingerly, afraid that he would snap back to his old ways and hit her again.
She was destined to be disappointed.
An abusive man could not change his nature, and a man who profited by selling out his wife would not easily give up this successful shortcut.
He didn't even bother making excuses this time, simply commanding her plainly: "Vice President Fei will come over for dinner tomorrow. Get ready."
The woman's breath instantly halted.
Crying, she pleaded with him: "You said you wouldn't do this anymore. You promised."
"Work's not going well. I have no choice," the man was merciless. "If I can't do the job well, we'll have to move back. What, are you reluctant to part with someone? Eager to go back? Foreman Liu? Director Qian? Or who else? Go on, say it!"
Lethal words.
The man knew how to manipulate her. Just a few sentences rendered her unable to retort, only able to weep sorrowfully.
In an instant, the bubble of happiness shattered, plunging them into an even more miserable hell.
She grew thinner and number by the day, slowly losing the most basic human dignity.
Jian Jing watched as this beautiful woman turned into the walking dead before her eyes, turning into a skeleton that could no longer cry or feel pain.
She fell ill, worsening rapidly as she began to vomit blood.
At first, the man thought she was faking it and beat her even more severely. Her face swelled up grotesquely as she vomited mouthful after mouthful of blood, leaving pools of it staining the floor.
The man panicked. He bought her medicine and softened his tone to comfort her, but nothing worked.
The illness came on like a landslide, and she deteriorated rapidly until she could barely get out of bed. The man didn't want to be around her and simply stopped coming home.
One evening at dusk, the sunset filled the sky.
Wang Shi returned home and habitually walked into the bedroom. The woman struggled to sit up, a spark flashing through her eyes. She desperately grabbed his hand, "I'm sorry, forgive me..."
He lowered his eyes. "Why?"
Didn't you say it would get better?
Tears brimmed in the woman's eyes as she murmured, "I'm sorry..."
He asked again, "Why?"
Weren't we supposed to find happiness?
Tears streamed down her cheeks, wetting the pillow. Her lips moved slightly, but she no longer had the strength to speak. She just looked at him mournfully and reluctantly - looking at her own child.
He wasn't a child she had hoped to give birth to.
His existence caused her endless humiliation from her husband.
She struggled not to abandon him, but now...she had no choice but to leave him first.
The woman gathered her fingers as if to hold her child's hand, but she couldn't move them. Her body was already at its limit, drained of all vitality.
She could no longer control this flesh shell. Every breath took all her strength just to draw.
It was too painful.
Her bones ached, her organs ached, every inch of skin on her body ached until she shattered.
She really couldn't hold on any longer.
And so the light in her eyes faded like a summer firefly's glow, flashing a moment of beauty before decaying into silent darkness.
She closed her eyes and stopped breathing.
Wang Shi stared blankly at her, fixing on her unmoving chest. His hands spasmed into fists, clutching her emaciated fingers.
The lingering warmth of the corpse passed into his hand, crushing the last shreds of his sanity.
"Why?" he repeated mechanically. "Why, why?!"
Why did you give birth to me? Why did you abandon me? Why don't you love me anymore?
I only have you, Mother.
Cracking sounds echoed through the air as the scene fractured like a glass curtain, splitting into countless broken lines. The world shook, collapsing the ceiling and shattering the furniture, rupturing the entire world into pieces.
Then all the stage sets collapsed at once with a deafening crash, pulverized into dust.
Jian Jing saw the man's corpse lying on the sofa, vomit blocking his mouth and nose, his face swollen and purplish with livor mortis.
He was dead.
Wang Shi closed the door with an expressionless face and walked into the dark night.
*
3 AM, Public Security Sub-Bureau office.
Ji Feng sat on the desk, smoking to stay alert while staring at the whiteboard covered in clues.
So far, the police were mainly following two leads:
1. The kidnapping case
The key was figuring out how the suspect took Jian Jing away, which route was his real course of action?
Hypothesis 1: Kidnap Jian Jing—Leave by taxi—Change vehicles in the park—Use Jiang BaiYan’s car—Abandon the car and transfer her to the place of detention;
Hypothesis 2: Kidnap Jian Jing—Fake leaving by taxi, Jian Jing is actually still at the venue—Leave the venue together with many guests—Take her directly to the place of detention;
Hypothesis 3: Same as 2, just after leaving, use Jiang BaiYan’s car for transit, then destroy the corpse to destroy evidence.
This lead is very difficult to investigate, mainly because there are too many interfering factors, watching dozens of hours of surveillance footage, it makes people dizzy and extremely difficult to identify.
Also, Wang Shi has multiple identities, cars with new license plates obtained with the new identities, simply have no suspicion.
Second, the serial murder case
The DNA of Xue's relatives has been proven to be a mockery, all clues are broken.
Wang Shi, a psychologist graduated from the University of Edinburgh, a fake identity
To be honest, this identity does not seem to be fabricated out of thin air, the resume is complete. Except that the academic qualifications are false, everything else is traceable, and in 2013 Wang Shi went abroad to study, which coincided with the beginning of the real-name system in China.
Ji Feng suspects that the other party borrowed the identity information of the real Wang Shi and made a layer of real disguise.
So what is his real identity?
If he found the place of detention with his real identity, how could it be found out?
As soon as the question came out, countless thoughts surged in his brain, squeezing his head about to explode.
Ji Feng pinched the bridge of his nose and decided to use the old method.
Subtraction.
He hesitated and tried not to think too much about the location of the kidnapping case. Jian Jing is not an ordinary girl with no ability to resist. She is smart and agile, and may not be much worse than him.
Treating her as a partner and doing each other's work is the best policy.
He drove away the worries and anxiety in his heart, and concentrated all his attention on the whiteboard. After thinking for a moment, he circled the DNA line in red.
This was what he had personally experienced, and it was the most obvious clue with solid evidence.
The other party pretended to attack him, no, he did attack him, while leaving a blood sample. This directly achieved two purposes.
Giving a response to Jian Jing and misleading the direction of the investigation.
Considering that his injury was not serious, the latter should weigh more—it was really an act of low harm and extreme insult.
But...the owner of the blood is not some missing person, but a drug addict who may be caught by the police to obtain a sample at any time.
The misleading time is very limited.
Since it was done, why not find a missing person? He would think that the blood owner was him as long as he couldn't find out.
But instead, someone easy to discover was chosen, which proves that he wants them to find out.
Is it a mockery? But provoking the police would have serious consequences, which is completely opposite to the caution he showed during the kidnapping. What annoyed Ji Feng the most was this, it was obvious that the kidnapping was done by him, but no clues related to the past were left, and he couldn't prove the connection between them.
In other words, he does not want the police to restart the investigation of the serial case.
Such a meticulous person would not do these arrangements purely to mock them.
So what is his purpose?
Ji Feng stroked his chin and pulled out a clue from the complex clue cluster.
Did he want them to think that he was someone who was extremely good at hiding himself?
Looking at the many photos posted on the whiteboard, one word was circled prominently: True identity??
Wang Si Ji's alias in the 2009 case.
Xue Addict's DNA sample in the assault case.
Wang Shi, a graduate psychologist from the University of Edinburgh, a fake identity
He created many fake identities, he cautiously hid his past, he is very likely to have more hidden aliases.
This is the idea he implanted in their minds.
At this moment, Ji Feng still firmly believed this, and was overly suspicious—could this also be a kind of cover?
DNA cannot be faked, but what about Wang Shi?
His academic qualifications are fake, and his real appearance is different from the photos in the archives. Therefore, they guessed that this was a real fake identity that was borrowed.
Is this his real purpose?
Use the illusion of a fake identity to prove the reliability of the real identity?
"Old Gao." He kicked the chair next to him and woke up the dozing Gao Police Officer, "Quick, let's check Wang Shi again carefully."
