False evidence

Chapter 236 The Most Familiar Stranger (7)

It was the dead of winter, and heavy snow was falling.

On the small street in the early morning, only two shops had their lights on.

One of them sells breakfast.

Another shop was quite unique; its storefront was so small it didn't look like a shop at all, but through the thick cotton curtains, a constant cacophony of noise and bustle could be heard...

Just as Li Meizhi finished speaking, Fang Ling interjected, "It's Baoju!"

"Baoju" was an earlier name for a casino.

Fang Ling looked at me strangely and whispered, "Lu Xin likes to gamble."

All I could do was roll my eyes.

What Li Meizhi said is actually not hard to imagine.

It seems that only a limited number of 'entertainment venues', such as Baoju, could be so lively in the dead of winter, at the early hours of the morning.

The street was narrow, and the store was small, consisting of only a room of about thirty square meters with a few tables.

In one corner of the room, there was only a small charcoal stove.

But the room is never cold; in fact, it can make you sweat from the fumes.

Li Meizhi recounted that the nightmare began at this Baoju (a type of entertainment venue) on this street.

She was first led to a breakfast stall by a man. The man dropped a coin, took two fried dough sticks, but only tore off half of one for her.

As she eagerly ate her fried dough sticks, the man pulled her into the restaurant diagonally opposite.

She already knew what the man wanted to do, but when he shouted "I'm betting my wife" with red eyes and a smirk, she still couldn't help but tremble.

What happened next was just like a typical scene from a TV drama.

The man lost.

Since it's a gamble, there are winners and losers.

In the round where the man lost to his wife, the big winner at the table was a well-dressed outsider.

The man was young, wearing a cotton robe of excellent quality, with a satin short cotton jacket over it.

Li Meizhi said she recognized the young outsider at a glance!
This man is Liang Kaiyuan!
Liang Kaiyuan beat the bookmaker, and he beat everyone else.

Of course, the women who are used as gambling chips by men also belong to him.

After winning this round, Liang Kaiyuan did something very "unethical"—he stopped gambling.

He then took the woman to a breakfast stall diagonally across the street and let her eat her fill of a 'feast'.

When Li Meizhi got to this point, she wiped her mouth several times, looking as if she was really drooling and starving.

Li Meizhi continued, "Kaiyuan is really too good to me. He was just an early riser who would eat breakfast. When he saw me being pulled into that room, he knew what the man was going to do, so he followed me in. He doesn't like gambling, but he can win whenever he wants, however he wants."

I couldn't help but interject, "Is he really that good?"

Li Meizhi actually laughed, "His family runs a gambling den. When other people's children are being held in their arms, they're holding rattles, but when he's being held, he's playing with dice."

I was utterly astonished and broke out in a cold sweat.

Putting aside the fact that Li Meizhi's account doesn't match Liang Kaiyuan's...

The key point is that Li Meizhi's accent even changed as she spoke.

She was originally from the South, but as she spoke, her accent shifted to a heavy Northeastern accent.

If Xiao Shen were here, he might be able to tell you exactly where the 'she' in the dream is from.

What I thought of, Fang Ling and Pi Dan, who knew the whole story, naturally thought of as well.

That is—Li Meizhi's account, the reason why it doesn't match Liang Kaiyuan's is because what she's talking about is another life.

That is, another dream that Liang Kaiyuan did not tell! I don't know if it's because they have a 'couple' resemblance', but Li Meizhi and Liang Kaiyuan have the same problem.

That is, as the story progressed, he kept saying, "He's been so good to me."

Just like Liang Kaiyuan said, "That woman is really beautiful."

However, Li Meizhi also mentioned several things, such as how Liang Kaiyuan treated her well.

Liang Kaiyuan gave her a house she had never lived in since birth; dressed her in clothes she had never worn since birth; and, apart from the breakfast he made her stuffed, fed her delicacies she had never eaten or even seen before...

Li Meizhi suddenly buried her face in the French Bulldog again, trembling all over as she cried:

"He was so good to me, yet I killed him..."

I asked, "How did you kill him?"

“I…I stabbed him with a knife…” Li Meizhi trembled more and more violently, “Stab…and stab…Why did I do that? Why? Shouldn’t I have stabbed that bastard who treated me like a human being to death?”

She cried pitifully.

However, Fang Ling and I both felt a chill run down our spines.

That's because we've all seen Liang Kaiyuan with his arms wide open, his chest covered in blood.

Moreover, even now, Li Meizhi's accent hasn't changed.

If she weren't wearing modern clothes, I would probably mistake her for someone else, someone from the era of gambling with coins and silver.

Why did you kill him?

I feel like I'm being cruel, but I still want to take this opportunity to directly ask the 'person involved' for answers to some questions.

Li Meizhi raised her head, tears streaming down her face, and shook it repeatedly: "I don't know, I really don't know, I don't know what happened before, I only know that I used a rusty sharp knife, slashing it again and again..."

She suddenly seemed to remember something and froze in place.

My heart sank, and I quickly went over.

I'm worried that she might have health problems due to being too emotionally agitated.

I was about to pinch her philtrum, but before my hand even got close, she suddenly looked up at me and said:

"Thank you. I'm sorry!"

I was taken aback: "What?"

Thank you. I'm sorry.

Li Meizhi repeated it again, then suddenly grasped my hand, "I remember now, Kaiyuan's last words to me before he died were: Thank you. I'm sorry."

I subconsciously said "Oh".

At this point, Pidan would never have minded my 'intimate contact' with Li Meizhi.

Because anyone could see that Li Meizhi was like someone stuck in a swamp, unable to extricate herself, and I was just a lifeline she was trying to grasp.

“Thank you, I’m sorry…” Pidan was a little lost in thought. “He won you over, he was very good to you, he’s your benefactor… Why is he saying thank you and sorry to you?”

Li Meizhi suddenly screamed "Ah!", let go of my hand, and covered her head with her hands, saying:
“It wasn’t just in my dream, it wasn’t just in my dream! I just remembered, when he was killed by that thief, he said these same things to me before he died!”

A sudden thought flashed through my mind, and I asked, trying to use the lowest possible voice possible so she could hear me clearly:
"Who killed Liang Kaiyuan this time?"

"it's me!"

Li Meizhi suddenly raised her head.

Seeing her wide-eyed stare, her face deathly pale, and her trying to clench her teeth but unable to stop making 'clattering' sounds, I had a bad feeling.

I quickly grabbed her chin with one hand and pulled her head into my arms with the other, breathing rapidly and exaggeratedly: "Huff... huff... huff..."

“De de de… de de de… de de de…”

(End of this chapter)