spoiled brat

Chapter 31 30. Spring Harmony (10)

It wasn't until they coughed up blood that they realized they had been poisoned with arsenic. They kept cursing, but their voices were drowned out by the torrential rain as they left the county jail, and no one could hear them.

Zhao Zhao remembered.

Next time something like this happens, I'll have to fill the pipe with more tobacco, otherwise it'll go out too soon, and the wait for someone to die will be unbearable.

Only after confirming that there was no more sound from the cell did she take out the key she had stolen from the young jailer and open the cell door.

She checked their breathing with her hand. One was dead, two were dead, three were dead, and four... were still alive.

When you do something, you have to go all the way.

Zhao Zhao's eyes suddenly turned cold. She grabbed a rope from the side and strangled his neck with all her might, trying to kill him.

He had already fainted, but as he suffocated, he suddenly opened his eyes as if in a final burst of energy.

"Spare me...please spare me..."

He had been beaten forty times and poisoned, and was no match for Zhao Zhao. At this moment, he was so terrified that he was urinating, defecating, and snotting, and cried out, "I can't die... I still have a daughter to raise, who is the same age as you... the same age as you!"

He wanted to evoke Zhao Zhao's pity, but instead, he heard Zhao Zhao's chilling laughter:
"What a coincidence, I also have a mother and a younger sister to support."

Zhao Zhao tightened her grip on the rope, drawing blood from her fingers.

His face was a deep, liver-colored red from blood stasis and suffocation, his eyes bulging out, filled with the fear and helplessness of impending death.

Zhao Zhao glanced at him, calmly seeing him off to his death:

"I want to get a good night's sleep."

His pupils gradually dilated, turning into a hazy gray.

Zhao Zhao let go, her palms covered in scratches from the hemp rope. She brought the rope close to the candle, and after a while, it finally lit.

She can't afford to give anyone a handle to use against her.

The other three bodies were fine, but the ligature marks on the neck of the last one were too obvious to be concealed.

She stood among the corpses for a moment, lost in thought, and then pulled out a knife from her boot.

*
Dark clouds obscured the moon, and a torrential downpour and thunder roared.

Zhao Zhao walked in the rain, her whole body soaked. Rainwater dripped down her clothes, leaving a trail of scarlet with each step she took.

That was all blood.

Go back to the building? The smell of blood on her was too strong, and there wasn't enough water in the building to wash her clean.

A clap of thunder illuminated her. She looked up at the sky, then down at the bloodstains behind her. Finally, she sighed and walked into the shallow river next to the street.

Zhao Zhao was soaking in the icy river water, the torrential rain slapping her face.

At first, she yawned a few times from the cold, but she quickly got used to it. She numbly took off her blood-stained clothes in the river and then carefully washed the blood off her hands.

By the time Zhao Zhao cleaned herself up, her entire body had frozen solid in the river water, rendering her unable to move.

With great effort, she finally climbed ashore.

She lay on the bluestone ground, shivering uncontrollably, rubbing her numb legs, trying to regain her composure before continuing.

Suddenly an umbrella appeared overhead, sheltering her from her drenched state.

Zhao Zhao raised her head and met Xiao Duo's eyes, which were calm to the point of being almost lifeless.

Xiao Duo's hand, gripping the umbrella handle, trembled slightly. He asked, feigning ignorance, "Where have you been?"

Zhao Zhao didn't avoid his gaze at all and smiled, "I forgot."

She didn't want to explain, nor was she bothered to say more. She struggled to her feet and prepared to leave.

Xiao Duo threw down the umbrella, grabbed her arm, and, unable to contain his emotions any longer, roared helplessly and angrily:

"Zhaozhao, do you know what you've done?!"

"what did I do?"

Zhao Zhao retorted, a cold mockery appearing in her eyes:

"They're allowed to kill me, but I'm not allowed to kill them?"

"Zhao Zhao..." Xiao Duo had never gripped Zhao Zhao's arm so tightly before. He couldn't understand why he felt so sad and frustrated, and his voice sounded like he was about to cry: "Zhao Zhao'er..."

He gazed at Zhao Zhao's pale and frail face with wet eyes, watching the rain slide down her nose and onto her delicate chin. His childhood friend suddenly seemed like a stranger.

Zhao Zhao, in this state, resembled both a pitiful drowning person unable to reach the shore and a delirious ghost already terminally ill and beyond cure. In the torrential rain, the string in Xiao Duo's heart snapped suddenly; he burst into tears, tightly embracing Zhao Zhao, sobbing incoherently:

"How could you kill someone... Zhao Zhao'er... How could you kill someone..."

baffling.

Zhao Zhao stood expressionless, letting Xiao Duo hug her as if she were coaxing a child. Her gaze was fixed on the boundless darkness, her consciousness gradually fading away, and the words Xiao Duo spoke remained outside her heart.

Only when she could no longer hear Xiao Duo crying did Zhao Zhao pat his back comfortingly. Although she didn't understand what was making him sad, she still coaxed him:
"Xiao Duo, it's almost dawn, let's go back."

Xiao Duo realized that none of what he had just said had reached Zhao Zhao's ears. He looked at Zhao Zhao with red, teary eyes, wanting to say something, but before he could speak, Zhao Zhao raised her hand and covered his eyes.

Zhao Zhao's palm was warm, but he could smell blood, a bloody smell that couldn't be washed away.

In the darkness, he heard Zhao Zhao whisper:

“You’re sad not because I killed someone, but because I’m not the Zhaozhao you think I am—if I were a man, I would have eliminated the threat completely, and you would probably have praised me for being ruthless.”

"Xiao Duo, I don't think I've done anything wrong, and I won't repent. If necessary, I will do this kind of thing again in the future."

"If you really can't stand me, then let's just part ways sooner rather than later."

She lowered her hand, dragged her numb leg forward, limping slightly, her lonely figure looking disheveled in the heavy rain.

Xiao Duo shouted at her retreating figure:
"Zhao Zhao'er, I'm just angry that you do things without telling me!"

Zhao Zhao's back paused for a moment. She turned around, and surprisingly, she was smiling—a smile that was both relieved and mocking.

"Why tell you? You can't even understand me, so how can you expect to get involved in this mess with me?"

Xiao Duo was speechless, unable to utter another word. He stood there blankly, watching Zhao Zhao's figure disappear into the misty rain.

*
Bad luck, really bad luck.

The young jailer lay on the straw mat, gazing longingly at the bare roof beams, where a nest of chirping swallows used to live, but had recently moved away for no apparent reason.

He was having a run of bad luck; even the swallows didn't want to stay in his house.

The young jailer still had a headache, but his throat was parched. He tried to get up to pour himself a glass of water, but as soon as he straightened up, he fell back down, his head slamming heavily onto the pillow.

He gasped in pain, his vision blurred, and he could see the thief's eyes again.

So beautiful it's sickening.

"Son of a bitch!"

Because he fell for that petty thief's trick, four prisoners in the county jail died.

If he had just died, that would have been fine, but his death was so gruesome and terrifying that even his brother had to take care of him.

His brother was the only coroner in the county government office. He had been in the mortuary for two days and came back every night smelling of corpses, making the house smell strange.

Just then, the sound of a bolt being bolted came from outside, and the wooden door was pushed open; it was his brother who had returned.

The coroner first threw his smelly coat into the pool outside the door before stepping inside and placing the buns he was carrying on the bedside table.

He looked at the jailer's head, which was wrapped in cloth, and laughed, "You've caused a lot of trouble for the government, but you're lying at home comfortably."

The young jailer dared not turn his head, but could only grope around with his hands. He touched warm oiled paper and smelled the aroma of meat:
"Brother, we're having meat buns today..."

Coroner Chen was usually frugal, but since his younger brother was injured, he needed to eat some meat to help him recover.
"You eat, I've already eaten at the yamen."

The young jailer was starving, so he unwrapped the oil paper and tilted his head back to gnaw on the steamed bun.

The aroma of beef, bamboo shoots, and soybean paste filled his mouth. He liked Wang Mazi's meat buns because they contained a little cumin, which made them warm and comforting, and helped him forget even the most unpleasant things.

The coroner cursed him as a heartless bastard, then sat down at the table, took out a roll of paper from his pocket, and laid it out. It contained the clues he had found during the autopsy that day.

The young jailer looked at his profile and asked with a hint of greed:
"Brother, will we still be able to have meat buns tomorrow?"

Kids always think they have special privileges when they're sick.

“We won’t be able to get any more food.” Coroner Chen shook his head. “We need to save up money, pull some strings, and get you out of that wretched county jail so you won’t have to do hard labor anymore.”

The young jailer blinked, thinking to himself, "You deal with corpses all the time, isn't that a tough job too?"

Fortunately, he was the younger brother, so there was no need for him to think about such questions too deeply. He then asked curiously:
"Brother, were those people really dismembered?"

Without looking up, the coroner said, "Only one body had its head cut off, and the method was quite crude."

At this point, he added a speculation to the paper: the external injuries were deliberately obscured, suggesting that he was strangled with a rope.

(End of this chapter)