Chapter 238: To send a finger, to plant evidence, to cover up a crime.

Chi Xiaochi is sucking on a mung bean popsicle while working on a problem.

The screens were closed, filtering some of the heat from the hot air, and the blowing on my back was less than comfortable, but better than nothing.

Zhu Shoucheng took a thermos and poured a cup of boiling water for Chi Xiaochi: "Don't drink it, let it dry first. Let it dry to cool white water, and drink it."

Chi Xiaochi said, "Thank you, Sensei."

Zhu Shoucheng, who had poured the water, sat across the makeshift desk that had been converted from a dining table, staring at Chi Xiaochi with an uninterrupted gaze that made Chi Xiaochi a little bit hairy.

He didn't know what Zhu Shoucheng was trying to do, he just instinctively felt very uncomfortable.

...... It's not even the unusual kind of discomfort with compression.

As it turns out, Zhu Shoucheng is indeed not quite the same as when he was tutored normally.

He asked Chi Xiaochi warmly, "Is the popsicle good?"

Chi Xiaochi's mind was always sharp, and after realizing that something was wrong, he said much less: "Hmm. Very good. Thank you, Sensei."

Zhu Shoucheng : "Can you get through on your home phone?"

Chi Xiaochi : "...... can't."

Zhu Shoucheng : "My family can't either. Do you know why?"

Chi Xiaochi: "If your house doesn't work either, the lines in the whole building may be down. ...... It should be a line failure at the telephone office."

"Oh--" Zhu Shoucheng smiled again and showed his teeth, "Xiaochi is so smart."

The tone of voice was so audible it sent tingles down one's backbone.

Chi Xiaochi stiffly raised the corners of her mouth and moved her shoulders unnaturally, tossing the cleanly eaten popsicle round into the trash and pulling another roll of paper to wipe the pale green sweet juice from her hands.

Zhu Shoucheng suddenly raised his hand to touch Chi Xiaochi's face.

Chi Xiaochi deftly dodged, "...... teacher?"

Zhu Shoucheng pointed to the corner of his mouth and smiled broadly, "There's something dirty."

Chi Xiaochi said dryly, "Thank you, Sensei."

After a moment of silence, Zhu Shoucheng stood up and closed the wide-open screen window.

The thin "brush" of the edge of the screen sliding over the roller inexplicably gave Chi Xiaochi goosebumps.

He stopped writing and twisted his head, looking toward Zhu Shoucheng.

Zhu Shoucheng turned around and clashed face to face with Chi Xiaochi.

He laughed and pointed to the empty half of the sky, "There are mosquitoes."

As a matter of course, he reached down and pulled the inner window closed.

The lock on the inside of the window is an old lock, half broken, and can't be locked from the inside, but Zhu Shoucheng doesn't care.

When he took his seat again, he did not return to his own place, but sat down close to Chi Xiaochi.

He should have had hot noodles for lunch.

Chi Xiaochi smelled the scallions, garlic and dashi on him.

Zhu Shoucheng brought his face over, "Are there any questions you don't know how to do?"

When he opened his mouth, it tasted of fermented garlic.

Chi Xiaochi dodged halfway across the room, her face already vaguely white, "Teacher, aren't you hot sitting here."

"Hot." Zhu Shoucheng said, "You have strong firepower, and it's good to be young."

Chi Xiaochi frowned, "Teacher, I want to do the questions."

Zhu Shoucheng said, "Do. You do."

Chi Xiaochi couldn't stand the anxiety from the bottom of his heart, so he got up and left with his homework and textbooks in his arms.

Unexpectedly, a pair of strong arms came slamming in from behind, clamping him in that embrace that smelled of fermented food.

A hand that smelled strongly of pen water covered his mouth and nose.

Zhu Shoucheng pressed against Chi Xiaochi s ear and said in a small and eager voice, "...... Xiaochi, your legs are very white."

Covered by her mouth and held by her waist, Chi Xiaochi was dragged all the way from the living room to the bedroom, seizing every opportunity to make noise, stomping her feet, then stomping her legs, stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then stomping her legs, then opening her mouth and biting her teeth, just like a pissed off little crazy animal.

Zhu Shoucheng repeated in his ear, "Be a good boy", "Don't tell your parents, they won't believe a word of it", "If you make any more trouble, you won't be an obedient good boy! "He didn't listen to a word of such nonsense.

Zhu Shoucheng had obviously never encountered such fierce resistance and was at a loss for a moment.

Just as he froze, Chi Xiaochi flew up and kicked the monarch orchid that stood on the small desk in his bedroom.

The sound of the vase disintegrating made Lou Ying, who was preparing for Chi Xiaochi's review downstairs, put his pen on hold.

He looked up in the direction of the ceiling.

"...... Xiaochi?"

The building was built early, at least twenty years old, and the soundproofing was extremely poor, but Lou Ying couldn't tell for a moment whether the sound was coming from Xiaochi's house or from her neighbor Zhu Shoucheng's house.

Hearing a faint "Xiaochi" from downstairs, Zhu Shoucheng was also confused, and immediately stopped Chi Xiaochi dead in his tracks, and also nimbly pressed his mouth with a pillow, and pressed his black tower-like body against Chi Xiaochi's body, and with a weight of one hundred and eighty, he pressed Chi Xiaochi down so hard that he couldn't move. The black tower-like body was pressed on Chi Xiaochi, and with a weight of one hundred and eighty, Chi Xiaochi was unable to move.

Chi Xiaochi for the first time in his life and people have such intimate contact, body coated with oil like difficult nausea, whimpering, the smell of middle-aged and old men's head oil through the breath of a strand of return into his mouth, causing his chest suffocated, followed by the loss of a little bit of vitality.

Chi Xiaochi's heart was beating extremely fast, and the blood in his limbs had the illusion of stopping flowing under great pressure, and his fingertips and toes were gradually becoming numb and numb.

Lou, help me ......

I'm here ......

Zhu Shoucheng, fearing that someone would break his good deed, did not dare to move the slightest bit more, except to suppress Chi Xiaochi.

It wasn't long before footsteps came from the entrance to the building.

Footsteps sounded all the way to the front door of the Chi family's house.

This was followed by Lou Ying's trademark gentle accent, "Is Xiaochi home? Did you break something?"

Zhu Shoucheng twisted his head to look at the clock and let out a slight sigh of relief.

Two fifty, not quite three.

He remembers that when he ran into the two of them at noon, he had made an appointment with Chi Xiaochi for tutoring at 3:00 p.m. in front of Lou Ying.

Now, Lou Ying won't want to come after you, will he?

Lou Ying called the door two or three more times, but the door was still closed and no one answered.

Zhu Shoucheng showed an expression of relief.

But the next moment there was a knock at the door of his own room, from outside

Lou Ying's slightly worried voice came from outside: "Mr. Zhu, are you there? Was it your house that dropped something just now. ...... Teacher Zhu?"

Chi Xiaochi struggled even more fiercely, unable to stop making tiny whimpering noises.

Zhu Shoucheng, in his panic, did not care about the proper measure, and even covered Chi Xiaochi's nose tightly.

The sensation of instant oxygen deprivation drained Chi Xiaochi of what little strength he had left.

Lou Ying, who was outside, saw that he could not open the door and turned to another neighboring house, where he continued to knock on the door.

In the middle of the day, all the adults who are doing their jobs go to work, and the ones who are not doing their jobs cut off their fans and can't lie down at home, so they go to game halls and department stores to rub their hands.

Some of the students go out for tuition classes, some go out to have fun, and almost no one wants to stay in this hot building to warm up their sweat.

As luck would have it, Lou Ying couldn't knock on any doors in the neighborhood and had to go home.

Hearing the sound of footsteps leaving from near and far, Zhu Shoucheng breathed a huge sigh of relief, withdrew the pillow and embraced the already blurred Chi Xiaochi, his calloused fingertips gently caressing the soft snow-white cheeks of the teenager, and greedily kissing Chi Xiaochi's shoulder.

He was just about to get into the swing of things when a renewed sound of footsteps and the jingling of keys scared Zhu Shoucheng out of his wits, and he re-gagged Chi Xiaochi with a pillow.

In the meantime, Chi Xiaochi inhaled some fresh air and his chaotic consciousness cleared up a bit.

He opened his eyes weakly, and instead of struggling and shouting, he showed full tameness and waited quietly for his strength to return, looking for an opportunity to get out.

He remembered that he always forgot his house key, so he made an extra copy and left it at Lou Ying's place, just in case.

The door to Chi's home has been opened, but Chi Xiaochi can't be optimistic.

He was not dragged away by Zhu Shoucheng, and everything in the house is normal, with no traces of a fight, and will not call to mind ......

Suddenly, Chi Xiaochi thought of something, and her eyes lit up slightly.

The sound was indeed difficult to locate, and Lou Ying could only use it to determine that someone in one of the second-floor apartments had dropped something.

Lou Ying, always cautious, first knocked on the door to confirm the situation.

After none of the families around him answered, he realized something was wrong.

If Chi Xiaochi didn't break anything, whose house was it?

People are bound to be awake to break things, even if a person is asleep, waving their hands and stomping their legs in their sleep and breaking things, it's impossible to go back to sleep after making such a big commotion.

Of course, it's possible that a strong wind blew something over.

But if there was such a strong wind, there's no way Lou Ying, who was at home with the windows open, wouldn't have noticed.

...... So Lou he must have realized that something was wrong.

Zhu Shoucheng naturally did not think as much as Chi Xiaochi.

He felt that Lou Ying should have left when he opened the door to confirm Chi Xiaochi's absence.

......

Lou Ying opened the door, the person was indeed not there and everything was intact.

But this confirms something ominous in Lou Ying's mind.

There was nothing broken in the Ji house, so it should have been either Zhu Shoucheng's house or the neighbor's house on the other side of the Ji house, but there was no answer to the knock on the door. ......

In broad daylight, is it a burglar?

Or is something else going on?

Lou Ying circled the room twice, thinking about what to do next.

It's a bit rude, but for safety reasons ......

Ji's house is on the second floor of a silo.

Below the window sill, there is a section of about ten centimeters of concrete edge.

Lou Ying stepped through the open window of Chi Xiaochi's house and tumbled out, planting one foot on the concrete edge and making sure it was steady before stepping over with the other.

The first place he traveled to was the Zhu family.

There was only a thin wall separating the Zhu family from the Chi family, so it didn't take Lou Ying much effort to get to the Zhu family's living room window.

The tightly closed glass window made his brow furrow gently.

Who would keep their portals closed like this in this sweltering heat?

And when he saw that textbooks and Chi Xiaochi's stationery bag were scattered on the living room tabletop, and a cup of hot water was still steaming on the tabletop, a vague thought came into Lou Ying's head and then exploded with a bang.

The steep sound of a window pulling from the living room caused Zhu Shoucheng's blood to instantly flow backwards!

He thought of the books Chi Xiaochi had left on the parlor table, still unpacked, and his heart almost stopped, and he let go of the hand that held Chi Xiaochi down, and drew his feet and ran outside--

With ...... him thus half openly embraced, he collided face to face with Lou Ying in the bedroom doorway.

Zhu Shoucheng opened his arms and held onto the bedroom doorframe in an attempt to block Lou Ying's path forward, "Little Lou, how did you get in here?"

But he made a mistake, and with his arm raised, he exposed Chi Xiaochi, who was struggling to get up behind him.

Chi Xiaochi was so weak that she rolled off the bed with a tom-tom thud.

Seeing Lou Ying, Chi Xiaochi's aggression and fear only buzzed to the head, opening his mouth is a trembling sob: "Brother Lou! Lou save me--"

Lou Ying was from the big city and had read certain similar stories in the newspaper, and now that he had seen Chi Xiaochi's almost ripped off little shorts, where else could he not understand?

A trifle of violence colored his always gentle eyes.

Zhu Shoucheng, seeing that everything was sliding into an uncontrollable situation, also snapped, "This is all a misunderstanding. He and I ......"

Lou Ying refused to say a word to him, and raised his knee, hitting him in the crotch.

Zhu Shoucheng was in pain and distorted his face, covering the injury and calling out in pain, Lou Ying picked up an opportunity to drill into the bedroom, Chi Xiaochi from the floor, holding his hands shaking with fear, softly consoled: "It's okay, it's okay, Lou brother is here."

Zhu Shoucheng ate the pain and was pushed to the brink of extinction, and the purple and red blood in the bottom of his eyes blossomed minute by minute.

He must not let these two walk out!

After choosing carefully for so long, I finally fell in love with Chi Xiaochi, partly because of his good looks, and partly because of his parents' indifference and lack of interest in Chi Xiaochi.

Zhu Shoucheng could guarantee that even if Chi Xiaochi said it, no one would believe him, given his leather monkey character.

But Lou Ying is different.

This is the kind of thing that once there are witnesses, he's completely screwed!

He scurried up in a single bound and wrenched Lou Ying's shoulders to split the two apart.

Lou Ying saw Chi Xiaochi's purple face and the suspicious spit marks on his shoulders from close range, and, seething with rage, he followed suit, swinging off Zhu Shoucheng's hand and headbutting him in the jaw!

He called out, "Xiaochi, run!"

The pain aroused Zhu Shoucheng's animalistic nature, and he twisted Lou Ying and fought with him all the way out of the bedroom.

Zhu Shoucheng had the advantage of height and weight, and was a strong adult, while Lou Ying was only a 16 year old boy, even if he often repaired machinery, and had built up a beautifully proportioned muscular line, in the final analysis, he was not a troublemaker, and didn't know much about fighting techniques, nor did he have much experience, so he slowly lost the upper hand.

As the fight intensified, Chi Xiaochi knew that she could not go up to the fight in her drowsy condition.

Relying on Fang Cai's accumulated strength, he half staggered and half crawled all the way to the door, struggled to pull the bolt, struggled up his whole body, and shouted, "Fire! Put out the fire!!!"

Hearing Chi Xiaochi's cries for help, Zhu Shoucheng was immediately disoriented, and with a low shout, he lifted Lou Ying, who was holding him by the collar, from the ground, and pushed him forward with a fierce thrust--

Even Zhu Shoucheng himself didn't notice that he and Lou Ying were wrestling all the way to the window.

...... And when Lou Ying opened the window and came in, he didn't even have time to close it back up.

Chi Xiaochi also came back at just the right time.

He witnessed Lou Ying lifting himself out of Zhu Shoucheng's body in the air, knocking most of his body out of the window, then losing his center of gravity and tumbling backward. ......

He just disappeared out the window.

His body, tugging at Chi Xiaochi's heart, hollered and disappeared, leaving a big empty hole in Chi Xiaochi's chest.

Snap.

Knock.

Wow.

No one knows why a tricycle full of empty cartons was parked right under Zhu Shoucheng's window that day.

When Lou Ying fell headfirst, the back of his head hit the iron edge of the back of the tricycle, and then rolled to the ground, where a pile of cardboard boxes more than one person high tilted down with a crash, burying Lou Ying's body completely.

...... Chi Xiaochi has completely forgotten how to walk.

He doesn't remember how he rolled down the stairs, how he reached Lou Ying, how he threw away the mess of cardboard boxes.

After opening the cardboard box, seeing Lou Ying's face and open eyes, and feeling his chest for a heartbeat, Chi Xiaochi's breath caught in his throat and loosened slightly.

But only seconds later, Lou Ying coughed up a large amount of bloody foam.

Chi Xiaochi stayed.

Full of bright red, his brain wouldn't spin.

"...... Lou."

Chi Xiaochi didn't dare to scream too loudly, didn't dare to pull him for fear that he would shake the last bit of life out of him.

He became timid for a moment, and a hand gently touched his forehead and then his lips, as bewildered as its owner.

"Lou ......"

Chi Xiaochi is on her knees, looking up at the spot where Lou Ying fell.

It's just two floors, he thought, two floors.

It's okay, it must be okay ......

"You go call!" Zhu Shoucheng's hissing interrupted his self-delusion, "Call 120! Hurry!!!"

Chi Xiaochi froze and looked at him, bits of intermittent information flashing through her mind.

Phone.

The phone at his house is broken. So is the one at Zhu Shoucheng's house.

The line is down at the telephone office.

The phones in the whole building are out of order.

120, it's to call 120, to save Lou.

Gonna borrow the phone.

Should we leave Lou to Zhu Shoucheng?

No, no.

But if you don't go yourself, who else can?

Zhu Shoucheng?

What if he runs away.

In case he's deliberately stalling ......

Not daring to lose any more time, Chi Xiaochi staggered to his feet and ran off into the distance without a word.

Like a child just learning to run, he couldn't run more than five or six steps before he snapped to his knees on the jagged gravel road, blood oozing from his knees, his palms, in large patches.

Chi Xiaochi, unaware of the pain, regained his feet without a word and ran wildly through the hot, dry air, as if to run away from the gradually spreading stench of blood, from this horrible, horrible nightmare.

From the old, decaying security window in the corner of the first floor, the faces of two curious schoolchildren peeked out.

They were twins, no more than six or seven years old.

When their parents left the house, they locked the two sisters in.

Chi Xiaochi's cries and the loud commotion from the fall attracted their attention.

There was no way out of the door, so they had to watch from a distance through the window.

They saw the boxes all over the floor, and they also saw Mr. Zhu squatting and Lou Ying lying down, but when they saw that these two people did not move for a long time, they lost their interest and continued to play with their jigsaw puzzles,

Zhu Shoucheng's nose was filled with blood, most of it from the large drops of nosebleed that gushed out from his urgent fire.

He half-kneeled in front of Lou Ying, couldn't stop wiping his bleeding nostrils with the back of his hand, and his mind was overlapping all the messy codes.

Soon, however, he recognized a glimmer of a useful message amidst the chaos.

Lou Ying on the floor was still breathing faintly, his eyes half-open, and he didn't know whether he was conscious or had passed into shock.

Zhu Shoucheng looked at Lou Ying like this, and the idea in his mind gradually became clearer:

--He can't live.

Lou Ying must not live.

Zhu Shoucheng reached out, grasped a stone the size of an egg, and after a moment's hesitation, tucked it under the back of Lou Ying's head, which was resting on the rocks.

Immediately after, he trembled in the lapel of his shirt to wipe the nosebleed clean, and spit a few mouthfuls of saliva in the palm, rubbing evenly, to confirm that the hand clean, he only from the inner pocket of his clothes to feel out a roll of money, a simple count, gently tucked in the pockets of Lou Ying's pants.