Reborn in 97, I solved a cold case at the Municipal Bureau

Chapter 479 The Jade Buddha Case

“When a normal person takes a train, they always have a lot of luggage, even for a short trip. It’s impossible for them to be empty-handed. Plus, with your old classmate’s roguish manner and foul language, you’re most likely a pickpocket.”

Zhou Yi whispered his analysis: Before the rise of mobile payment, people would always carry cash when traveling long distances, and thieves were most common at train stations.

When Zhou Yi went to Anyuan before, he took the opportunity to deal with a group of pickpockets after Zhang Xianglan's wallet was stolen.

This is also how he became acquainted with the train police officer; he got his two sleeper tickets through a friend of the officer.

The gang that was taken down last time was just one of hundreds or thousands of gangs.

After all, there are so many trains coming and going every day, and each train carries a different theft gang.

Taking one down doesn't affect the others.

So Zhou Yi didn't originally intend to catch thieves on the train this time, since he was in the serious crimes unit and dealt with homicide cases.

Pickpockets on trains are dealt with by the train police, especially since he was on vacation.

But to my surprise, this Jiang Guiyou came to my door on his own initiative, and he even set his sights on Lu Xiaoshuang. I definitely have to deal with him.

“I really don’t have anything valuable on me, and I didn’t take out any money in front of him,” Lu Xiaoshuang said.

Pickpockets don't steal randomly; they first identify which pocket you've hidden your money in before seizing the opportunity to strike.

Therefore, as the old saying goes, when you are away from home, don't flaunt your wealth.

"Jiang Guiyou isn't after your money."

These words startled Lu Xiaoshuang, and she instantly understood. No wonder he kept saying things like "girls change a lot as they grow up," "university is a nurturing place," and "you'll look good."

It turns out they had ill intentions from the very beginning.

“He’s like a leech, sticking to you like glue. If you don’t get annoyed by him and try to get rid of him, he’ll have a chance to slip some drugs into your water. Then, when it’s late at night and everyone’s asleep, you’ll have no idea what he’ll do.”

Lu Xiaoshuang didn't think Zhou Yi was exaggerating. If she was being so unfriendly to him, and he still wouldn't leave, what would happen if she were given a friendly look?

Terrified, she grabbed Zhou Yi's arm and said, "How scary! Thank goodness you came."

Zhou Yi smiled, pinched her cheek and said, "It's okay, we'll deal with him later."

Just then, the train attendant arrived with a clean blanket and warmly helped Zhou Yi change into it.

Before leaving, the train conductor said, "If that kid comes looking for trouble again, just call the police. We've seen plenty of people like that. They're like dead pigs that aren't afraid of boiling water. They're not afraid of anyone except the police."

Zhou Yi smiled and thanked the train conductor.

Lu Xiaoshuang smiled and said, "I'm afraid of the police. That makes things easier. We've just walked right into their line of fire."

Zhou Yi put his bag on his bed and then took out a lot of food from it. Besides the necessary change of clothes, his bag was full of food.

There was a huge selection of cooked food, snacks, and drinks.

"Brother Yi, why did you bring so much stuff?"

“It’s been over thirty hours, and I’ve already bought too little. I’m worried I won’t have enough to eat. But it’s okay, I can buy more when the train attendant comes to sell goods.” Zhou Yi said, opening a bag of cooked food. “Eat this first, it’ll spoil if it’s left out in this heat.”

Zhou Yi placed the food on the small table by the window on the lower bunk, and then opened a can of Jianlibao and handed it to Lu Xiaoshuang.

Then he stood up again, took the bag of cooked food, and asked the two guys on the upper bunk to order.

Lu Xiaoshuang's bunkmate didn't stand on ceremony, while Zhou Yi's bunkmate, a middle-aged man, smiled and waved his hand in refusal.

Lu Xiaoshuang looked at the pile of food on the table, then at Zhou Yi across from her, and felt a warm feeling in her chest.

If this is her ordinary life, then she feels that such ordinariness is the most beautiful thing.

As soon as Zhou Yi sat down, a chicken wing was offered to his mouth.

Zhou Yi looked at Lu Xiaoshuang holding the chicken wing, then pushed her hand back and stuffed the chicken wing into her mouth.

Lu Xiaoshuang was a little confused. Zhou Yi smiled and said, "I'm going to the restroom first. You eat first."

Then he turned around and left the compartment, heading in the direction the train attendant had just left.

The train conductor, who was checking tickets, looked up and saw Zhou Yi walking towards her, and smiled.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Yi came over directly and asked in a low voice, "Excuse me, could you tell me which carriage the train police officer is in?"

The train conductor was startled and quickly asked, "Did that guy come here to cause trouble?"

"No, it's just that I have some things I'd like to discuss with the train police officer."

"Let's chat?" The train conductor looked at Zhou Yi with some suspicion and asked, "Comrade, which unit are you from?"

Zhou Yi reached out, took out his ID, and handed it over.

The train conductor took it and glanced at it; his eyes immediately cleared.

After obtaining the information he wanted, Zhou Yi put away his documents and turned to leave.

As the train conductor watched his retreating figure, he suddenly muttered to himself, "This young man looks familiar. Have I seen him on TV before?"

Lu Xiaoshuang didn't eat much, partly because she was used to being frugal, and partly because she didn't have the habit of eating snacks.

After Zhou Yi returned, the two ate and chatted for a while. Lu Xiaoshuang then cleaned up the rest of the food and started reading.

Zhou Yi initially thought she was reading a novel, but it turned out she was actually reading a professional book.

"Lu, you're being way too studious. You're making the other students feel ashamed of themselves," Zhou Yi teased.

"No, I missed some classes before, so my final exam results this semester weren't very good. I just want to review what I missed. Also, the tax bureau is starting to assign me some more complicated work, and I'm worried I won't be able to handle it later, so I need to make the most of my time to study."

The delay she mentioned was actually the more than half a month of leave she took during the Hongda case, which was considered force majeure.

"Then you go study, I'm going for a walk."

Lu Xiaoshuang asked, "Brother Yi, are you going to find Jiang Guiyou?"

"Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."

Hearing him say that, Lu Xiaoshuang didn't say anything more and lowered her head to continue reading.

……

This train starts in the provincial capital, passes through Hongcheng, and then continues to cities in the Northwest.

Lu Xiaoshuang's hometown is a small village called Yangjiatun.

Lu Xiaoshuang said that when her parents sent her to the city to take the train, they first took an oxcart from the village to a nearby town, then found a car to go to the county seat, then took the county bus, which only ran twice a day, to the city, and then took a long-distance bus from the city to a nearby big city to catch a ride.

It takes a long time just to get out of Yangjiatun.

Moreover, the places she remembered, whether in the county or the city, were all very old.

Although it's a county town, it's far inferior to the suburbs of Hongcheng.

Therefore, considering that he still needed to report to Wuguang on August 1st, Zhou Yi chose a return ticket for the 29th when arranging his round-trip tickets. This way, he could return to Hongcheng on the evening of the 30th and go to Wuguang on the 31st.

However, I estimate I'll have to leave Lu Xiaoshuang's house on the 28th.

I should be able to stay for about five or six days, if I can manage.

Zhou Yi actually wanted to leave earlier and wanted Lu Xiaoshuang to stay at home for a few more days, since she hadn't been back for six years.

However, my previous health condition made things difficult, so this was the only arrangement I could make.

Zhou Yi knew that Lu Xiaoshuang's parents would most likely never leave that village in their lifetime.

It's not that they don't want to, but that they can't let go.

Many educated youth who went to the countryside couldn't leave their hometowns, not because they didn't want to, but because many got married there and formed deep, unbreakable bonds. Since the reform and opening up, people have become more flexible; no one is anymore locked into one place.

Therefore, for people like Lu Xiaoshuang's parents, both of whom were sent-down youth, the policy did not force them to stay there, even though they were assigned to the countryside and their household registration was in the local area.

But the real reason the couple didn't leave was because of the children there, one after another, like Lu Xiaoshuang.

Lu Xiaoshuang told Zhou Yi that when she was thirteen, on her way to take the train, her father, Lu Guohua, told her, "You are actually lucky because you have the status of a child of educated youth sent to the countryside. You can go to Hongcheng to study, receive a better education, and in the future you can go to high school and college, make a name for yourself, and become a useful person to society."

But the children of the people who have lived on this yellow land for generations are not as lucky as you. The only way for them to leave is through education.

Before Lu Guohua established Yangjiatun Primary School, most of the children in the village did not even go to school. Even those who went to school in nearby towns would drop out after two years.

The reason is simple: adults don't think reading is useful at all.

This kind of thinking is prevalent in many underdeveloped areas, and not just in the 1980s and 90s. Zhou Yi knows that even after entering the new century, this phenomenon is still very common.

What Lu Xiaoshuang's parents couldn't let go of were the children born on that yellow earth.

In a heartfelt letter to his daughter, Lu Guohua wrote: "I want these children to be like you, to go out and see the world, to have a better life, instead of being like their parents and grandparents, toiling in the fields generation after generation."

Lu Xiaoshuang showed Zhou Yi the letter her father had written to her, and the warmth in the words deeply moved Zhou Yi.

Therefore, he knew that Lu Xiaoshuang's parents would not leave that land.

Therefore, he had made preparations in advance for accompanying Lu Xiaoshuang home and prepared some special gifts for her parents.

This gift was a real surprise, even Lu Xiaoshuang didn't know about it.

……

After passing through the train carriages, Zhou Yi arrived at the door of a room and knocked.

A man inside asked, "You've arrived."

As he spoke, the door opened, and the person inside glanced at Zhou Yi, momentarily stunned.

Zhou Yi was also stunned. It turned out to be an acquaintance, one of the two railway policemen he had met on the train to Anyuan, named Zhu Mingxiang.

The arrest of Uncle Li and his gang was so rushed that they didn't even leave their names. However, after the major case was over, Zhou Yi went to check on them, since they were all colleagues.

He got the ticket bought through another railway police officer.

"Zhou Yi? It's you!"

"Officer Zhu, what a coincidence!"

"Hey, just call me by my name, or Lao Zhu. We're all family, no need to be so formal." He then pulled Zhou Yi into the room. "Come in and sit down."

Then he introduced another colleague of his to Zhou Yi: "This is Lao Shen, my colleague. This is Zhou Yi, from the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Hongcheng City Bureau. He's the one who helped Lao Xu and me arrest that group of people last time."

After Zhou Yi greeted Lao Shen, Zhu Mingxiang pulled Zhou Yi to sit down and asked him where he was going on another business trip.

Zhou Yi shook his head and said he was on vacation, accompanying his girlfriend back to her hometown. He also mentioned asking another railway policeman, Lao Xu, to help him buy train tickets.

“Zhou Yi, do you remember that old guy you helped us catch last time?” Zhu Mingxiang asked.

"Is it that Uncle Li?"

"Yes, it's this old guy."

"What's wrong with this person?" Zhou Yi asked curiously. Since the other party brought it up, there must be some reason behind it.

Have you heard of the Sun Guobin case from 1979?

Zhou Yi frowned, trying to recall what the Sun Guobin case he was referring to was.

The case from 1979 is now 18 years ago; I really need to recall it carefully.

But after thinking it over and over, I couldn't find a single case that matched.

He thought to himself, "Did I accidentally damage my brain?"

Seeing that he didn't react, Old Shen said, "Really, this case you're talking about is a railway police case. How could the municipal bureau know about it?"

Zhu Mingxiang slapped his forehead and said, "Hey, it's my fault, it's my fault."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Yi felt incredibly fortunate. It turned out that his brain hadn't been damaged in the fall, and that it wasn't even a case from the same system.

He had no access to railway police case files in his previous life, so he naturally didn't know about the Sun Guobin case that Zhu Mingxiang mentioned.

At this point, Zhu Mingxiang said again, "You may not know about the Sun Guobin case, but you must have heard of the Jade Buddha case, right?"

Zhou Yi was immediately taken aback, because this statement did sound familiar; he seemed to have seen it on TV or somewhere else before.

After thinking it over and over, I remembered that I seemed to have heard a rumor from my mother when I was a child.

So he asked, "Is it the jade Buddha that was unearthed from the Liuliqiao Towel Factory?"

Zhu Mingxiang nodded repeatedly and said, "Yes, that's it. You're a local from Hongcheng, right? I knew you'd guess it as soon as I mentioned the Jade Buddha. It was quite a mysterious story back then."

Zhou Yi remembers that this is how her mother described the incident.

There is a towel factory near Liuliqiao in Qingshan District that is on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor management.

As if things weren't bad enough, the factory building collapsed after a heavy rain.

During the emergency repairs to the factory, workers unearthed an ancient tomb beneath the factory building.

Back then, things weren't as standardized as they are now; there was no procedure for reporting to relevant departments.

The factory manager and his workers dug up the grave, saying they found a lot of things, the most valuable of which was a palm-sized jade Buddha statue.

It is said that when the jade Buddha statue was unearthed, the originally cloudy sky instantly cleared up and the sun shone through.

Everyone said that the unusual phenomenon was because the jade Buddha was spiritual. Later, it seems that the factory manager wanted to sell the jade Buddha to save the towel factory.

Then strange things started happening. First, the factory manager died, then the jade Buddha disappeared, and then, one after another, people who had dug up the grave that day had accidents, either dying or becoming maimed.

It is said that there was a particularly strange rumor at the time, that the grave under the towel factory contained the remains of an ancient person who died a violent death, and that the person's death was so tragic that the grave was filled with resentment. The jade Buddha was placed there to suppress the resentment.

As a result, the jade Buddha was taken out, and the resentment of the tomb owner could no longer be suppressed, and it began to backfire. None of the people who participated in digging up the tomb that day could escape.

In short, it was quite chilling and scared a lot of people back then.

When Zhou Yi recounted the rumors his mother had told him when he was a child, Zhu Mingxiang and Lao Shen burst into laughter.

Zhu Mingxiang said, "This kind of thing happens like this when it gets to the people; the more it's spread, the more bizarre it becomes, but it's not like that at all."

Zhou Yi asked, "Is this Sun Guobin you mentioned the person in charge of the towel factory?"

Zhu Mingxiang nodded: "That's what you call professional, that's right. This Sun Guobin is the factory manager of Liuliqiao Towel Factory. The towel factory did indeed unearth an ancient tomb, and they did indeed unearth that jade Buddha from the tomb. But in the whole incident, only Sun Guobin died; not a single worker died."

"How did it get spread like this?"

"Hey, one is that rumors spread like wildfire, you know how it is. When things get out, a lot of people will embellish them and make them more and more exaggerated. Another thing is that Sun Guobin was indeed killed."

Upon hearing this, Zhou Yi learned that Sun Guobin had been murdered, but he had no recollection of the man.

That means this was a murder that occurred on a train.

Zhu Mingxiang said, "We investigated later and found that a worker had his leg broken when a roof beam fell down next to him while he was digging a grave. This man was very superstitious and thought that the lingering spirit in the grave had harmed him. That's all there was to it, nothing else happened."

"So how did Sun Guobin die?"

Old Shen said, "Sun Guobin died on the train. He was strangled with fishing line in the train toilet. The jade Buddha he was carrying with him disappeared."

(End of this chapter)