False evidence

Chapter 244 Jiang Family Archway
While the steamed bun shop owner was attending to other customers, Gao He asked me in a low voice, "Who exactly killed Liang Kaiyuan?"

I sighed inwardly; the captain's intuition was truly remarkable.

All I could do was shrug and indicate my 'innocence'.

Gao He glanced at his phone and said, "Did Liang Kaiyuan hire someone to kill Li Meizhi?"

I remained silent.

Gao He said, "The last person killed was Liang Kaiyuan, because the murderer was Li Meizhi's husband in her previous life?"

I remained silent.

The truth is, Liang Kaiyuan is still inside my body at this moment.

I have learned the details of what happened that night through him.

It goes without saying where he found the "drunkard," but he did give the drunkard a large sum of money to kill Li Meizhi.

He suspected that Li Meizhi wanted to harm him, ultimately because of the two nightmares that kept haunting him.

That night, Liang Kaiyuan pretended to fight with the 'burglar,' but for some reason, he suddenly felt a deep-seated hatred for the people he had brought.

What was initially a feint of fighting turned into a real one.

According to Liang Kaiyuan himself, he was determined to kill the other party at the time.

But just as the two were entangled, Li Meizhi suddenly called out a name.

Upon hearing that name, both men stopped abruptly.

A few seconds later, Li Meizhi inexplicably called out another name in a soft voice.

Upon hearing the second name, Liang Kaiyuan was greatly shocked.

So much so that he subconsciously turned around and looked at Li Meizhi.

It was at this moment that the drunkard's murderous blade pierced Liang Kaiyuan's body.

At the same time, the drunkard repeated the second name that Li Meizhi had called out, and said with a sinister grin:
"My dear wife, this time, he will still die by our hand."

This is all that Liang Kaiyuan remembers.

Perhaps, that night, when the three people, entangled across two lifetimes, gathered together, Li Meizhi was the first to recall things from her previous life, and even the life before that, which is why she blurted out the names of the two people from before.

These cannot be verified.

But one thing is certain: if Li Meizhi hadn't called out the second name, given the vast difference in physique between Liang Kaiyuan and the drunkard, Liang Kaiyuan might not have necessarily died.

It was precisely because of this that Liang Kaiyuan was convinced that Li Meizhi and the other party had conspired to kill him.

Finally, this was the secret he asked me to keep for him.

Whether it was fate or not, in the end, all he felt for Li Meizhi was love.

He didn't want the person he loved to live with guilt... Seeing that I wasn't willing to respond to him, Gao He cleverly changed the subject:
Are past and present lives predetermined?

I thought about it very seriously and asked him in return, "It's certain that Liang's outcome was influenced by his past life. But... tell me, is it a coincidence or an inevitability that Liang, Li, and that drunkard, three people with completely different backgrounds, came together?"

Gao He grinned and shook his head: "I'm neither a philosopher nor a mathematician."

I sighed and said, "So, you're Captain Gao, and I'm just a veterinarian."

Gao He raised his hand and tapped me: "You're getting more and more cunning."

I smiled wryly: "Talking too much about unrealistic things will affect you."

Gao He nodded: "Alright, let's not talk about this anymore. By the way, why did you suddenly decide to stay?"

He picked up a small steamed bun and put it in his mouth. "Could it be that you've come to like the steamed buns here?"

Thinking about the main purpose of my trip to Heqian Town, I asked the owner, who had some free time, "Did you used to have a memorial archway here?"

The boss said, "Oh my, how do you, an out-of-towner, know about this?"

I smiled and said, "A friend of mine who works in the antique business mentioned it."

The boss rambled on for a few more minutes before finally saying, "There used to be a memorial archway at the foot of Centipede Mountain. If it were alive today, it would definitely be protected as a cultural relic. Unfortunately, it was destroyed by a bunch of bastards during the 'Destroy the Four Olds' campaign."

As soon as I heard there was a lead, I quickly offered him another cigarette.

After lighting the cigarette, the owner said while smoking, "I don't remember that archway, but I heard from the old folks that it was bestowed by the emperor on the widow of a general surnamed Jiang a long time ago. Locals call it the Jiang Family Archway. The whole archway is made of stone and is carved with beautiful flowers."

I have already learned about what he said through Yan Fengwei.

The Jiang Family Archway was actually built by imperial decree after a general surnamed Jiang died in battle, as a memorial archway for the general's wife to commemorate her chastity.

I asked the boss, "Are there any descendants of the Chiang family left?"

The boss said, "How would I know? This place is dirt poor. Anyone with a bit of ambition would go to a big city. But speaking of Jiang Family Archway, it's still somewhat famous around here. Mainly because of two things that happened there."

The story goes that there was a beggar who slept under the archway. In the middle of the night, he suddenly heard people talking. One person said, "My feet are itchy," and another said, "Did you step on something?"... In the end, the beggar was woken up by the noise.

He squinted and was immediately terrified. The speakers weren't people at all, but the two stone lions in front of the archway! He was so frightened he didn't dare sleep or move all night. Only at dawn did he remember to run. But then he remembered what the two stone lions had said during the night.

The beggar thought to himself, "The lion on the right says its paw is itchy. Could there really be something bothering it? If so, I'll remove it. That would be a good deed, a way to accumulate merit."

He ran to the stone lion on the right, circled it, and found a hole underneath that looked like a mouse hole. He grabbed a rummaging hook from the trash and reached into the hole to hook it out. And guess what? Good heavens! He pulled a gold ingot out of the hole!

Little Shen San, mimicking his accent, laughed and said, "This is incredible! This beggar is going to make a fortune!"

The shopkeeper laughed too: "That's just a legend. Anyway, it's always God who pities the poor. There's another thing, which is true. When those spendthrifts were about to smash the archway, the moment they moved their weapons, the central plaque on top of the archway fell down. That plaque was also made of stone, weighing a hundred or two pounds, and it instantly killed the leader. It was incredible; his head was smashed into his body! Alas, what a pity, in the end, we still couldn't stop those bastards."

Seeing our somewhat dismissive attitude, the boss became more serious and said, "This is really true! My dad heard that someone had died, so he went to see for himself, and he saw it with his own eyes! If you still don't believe me, you can go to the Jiang Family Archway and see for yourselves. The archway is gone, but the plaque is still there, and there's a dark stain on it—that's the blood of the person who was killed!"

(End of this chapter)