Halfway through the last class of the afternoon, someone pushed open the classroom door. A school employee came rushing in, looking frantic.
"Something terrible has happened! Teacher Sun's daughter, Xia Xia, is about to jump off the building. Which of you knows Xia Xia well? Hurry over and talk her down!"
What?
Xia Xia was going to jump?
The whole class was startled by the news. Old Sun had been married for many years, but Xia Xia was his only daughter, and she had not even started elementary school yet. How old was this child? She wanted to jump off a building?
Jiang Yue rushed out of the classroom at once.
He was a frequent visitor to the Sun household. He had watched Xia Xia grow up over the years and was someone she knew and trusted well. Hearing that the sweet, adorable little girl was actually going to jump off a building, how could Jiang Yue sit still?
The tallest building at the school was the laboratory building, which had seven floors.
Xia Xia was sitting on the edge of the highest floor. All she had to do was lean forward slightly, and with nothing to block her, she would fall straight to the ground. The area below was surrounded by solid concrete slabs.
If she fell from that height, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Old Sun's wife and mother-in-law were already downstairs. They kept crying out and urging Xia Xia not to do anything foolish, telling her to come down first so they could talk things through.
Someone had already called the police, and the school's leaders and employees were also gathering from every direction.
The matter involving Sun Bin had already put the school in a difficult position. If his daughter jumped and suffered some mishap, Yangfan Middle School would really become famous.
"Xia Xia, I'm your father's supervisor. Could you come down first?"
"That's right, that's right! Xia Xia, if something's troubling you, tell everyone. We'll help you think of a solution, all right?"
"Xia Xia, look, Auntie has lots of tasty food here. Come down and I'll give you some."
From far away, Jiang Yue heard these brain-dead attempts at persuasion and nearly went over to punch each of them.
A child this young had been driven to the point of wanting to jump off a building. How much pain and inner turmoil must she have suffered? How desperate must her choice have been? And they were trying to tempt a child about to jump with food?
"Xia Xia, come down quickly, please. If anything happens to you, your mother won't be able to go on either."
"That's right. What's gotten into you, child? Your father's been taken away, and you're the only one your mother can rely on now. You mustn't be willful." This was Xia Xia's grandmother, who was notorious for her sharp tongue.
Xia Xia might have been better off not hearing that, but the moment she did, her little face became agitated.
"You're lying! You're all liars! Every day at home, you say that Daddy is bad this way and bad that way! Now that Daddy's been framed and locked up, you won't help him, and you still curse him at home. Bad people... You're all bad people. You have no conscience!"
"And you people too! My father doesn't have colleagues like you! He's already in this state, and instead of helping him, you laugh at him behind his back and badmouth him. You're all bastards!"
When Xia Xia became agitated, both her feet kept pounding against the wall. Her little arms flailed wildly in the air, and her entire body swayed like a ripe persimmon hanging from a tree, ready to fall at any moment.
"Xia Xia, your mother loves you. Your father made a mistake, but that isn't your fault. You can't punish yourself for your father's mistake. Come down, and I promise I won't curse your father when we get home."
"I'm not coming down! Daddy didn't do anything wrong. I don't believe it, I don't believe it! Daddy is a good person!" Xia Xia covered her ears in anger and shook her little head vigorously. She was clearly resisting her mother's words with all her might.
"If any of you say anything bad about my daddy again, I'll jump!" Xia Xia wailed.
Jiang Yue shoved aside these useless teammates and walked to the front, ignoring the strange looks from the others.
"Xia Xia, don't get worked up. It's me."
"Little Yue Brother, do you think Daddy is a bad person too?" the little girl asked as she wiped away her tears, her small eyes helpless and forlorn.
"Your father is a good person. He's not only a good father, but also a good teacher."
Jiang Yue's tone was firm and decisive.
The little girl was visibly stunned. Even the children at kindergarten said her father was an utterly vicious criminal, yet Little Yue Brother was saying that her father was a good person?
"Little Yue Brother, you're not lying to me, are you?"
"Lying makes me a puppy."
"But why do all the children say my daddy is a bad person and a murderer?" Tears streamed down Xia Xia's face. Speaking of it, her heart nearly broke.
"Your dad doesn't even dare kill a chicken. Do you really think he'd dare kill a person?"
"I don't believe it!" Xia Xia's attitude was resolute.
"Neither do I. Even if everyone in the world said he was a bad person, I still wouldn't believe it," Jiang Yue hurriedly said.
Jiang Yue's words clearly gave Xia Xia immense strength. A child's world was simple. At a moment like this, one person's support could outweigh the entire world.
"Xia Xia, everyone else is saying that your father is a bad person. So we need to find evidence to prove that he isn't. Think about it—if you jump, who will find the evidence for him? If your father is ultimately proven innocent, but you're gone when he comes out, how heartbroken will he be? Do you want to see your father spend the rest of his life crying and missing you every day?"
Xia Xia's young heart wavered.
That was right. Daddy needed help most right now. I have to help Daddy!
Little Yue Brother was right. If I died, how sad would Daddy be when he came back? I couldn't make Daddy sad.
"Good girl. Sit there and don't move. Brother will come up and get you. We'll find evidence for your father together."
Xia Xia's emotions clearly began to settle.
Jiang Yue reached the scene as quickly as possible and carried Xia Xia down.
"Little Yue Brother, you didn't lie to me, right?"
"I didn't."
After they went downstairs, Jiang Yue handed Xia Xia to Teacher Sun's wife. After thinking it over, he still could not hold back the words he had to say.
"Ma'am, you should know better than anyone what kind of person Teacher Sun is. Xia Xia is close to her father. At a time like this, you should stand with Xia Xia."
The implication was obvious. You had been cursing Teacher Sun for so many years. Now that he had fallen into this predicament, you were still cursing him? And in front of his daughter? How cruel was that to the child?
Sparse applause broke out at the scene.
Only then did the police cars arrive with their sirens wailing.
As the crowd gradually dispersed, Jiang Yue teased Officer Han in a corner of the field. "Officer Han, why do I see you everywhere?"
"This matter really isn't under my jurisdiction. I heard it was Sun Bin's daughter, so I came to take a look."
"You arrested her father, then came to watch her jump off a building? Isn't that a little cruel?"
"Listen to yourself! This isn't a personal grudge. It's a serious criminal case. Am I supposed to disregard the law? Besides, the evidence is ironclad."
"Heh."
Jiang Yue neither agreed nor disagreed. "If this had happened before, I wouldn't have objected to what you said. After everything you've been through lately, haven't you changed your 'ironclad evidence' mindset at all?"
"What do you mean?" Officer Han frowned.
"What your eyes see and what the surveillance cameras record may not necessarily be real. You saw the surveillance footage of the female car owner's death this morning. Did the footage capture it? It didn't!"
"But... Sun Bin's case is different. There's plenty of evidence at the scene."
"Fingerprints? Bodily fluids? Hair?" Jiang Yue sneered. "Let me ask you one thing: those bruised handprints on the female car owner and Xiao Yi—how would your methods explain them?"
"Have you heard the saying, 'When a vengeful ghost leaves its mark, not even chickens or dogs survive'?"
"No..."
"Right, what about the person who went to the morgue? Have they confessed?"
"No. But based on the fingerprints at the scene..." Officer Han found himself unable to continue.
Jiang Yue stared at him with a half-smile. "I knew it. Still the same old approach. Looks like what you've experienced these past few days hasn't shaken you enough."
"You mean all this evidence could have been fabricated?"
"Normal humans definitely couldn't fake it. But perhaps what we're facing isn't limited to normal humans anymore."
Officer Han fell into deep thought.
Another rape-murder had actually occurred that morning, and the circumstances were almost exactly the same. The culprit had been caught with ease, but he kept protesting his innocence and refused to admit guilt.
Yet a DNA comparison with the evidence at the scene matched the culprit's characteristics perfectly.
Three cases in a row.
Two murder cases and one incident involving a corpse being removed from the morgue.
The surveillance footage and evidence at the scenes were all extremely conclusive, fully deserving to be called ironclad proof. Yet not one of the three suspects had confessed. They had all continued to protest their innocence.
Officer Han had been suspicious too. He had seen plenty of criminals cry out that they were innocent. But three consecutive cases like this, with all of them insisting they had been wronged, truly seemed strange.
"Officer Han, how did my teacher claim he was innocent?"
"He said he did go to New Moon Bay at the time to visit a student at home, and that student was you. You, Director Luo, and I were all at Director Luo's place watching the Year Eater, right? He said he left the residential compound afterward and was by the river watching people fish when the crime occurred. Unfortunately, there was a surveillance camera along the route he mentioned, but it had been out of service for a long time. There weren't any cameras elsewhere."
"There were no cameras, so couldn't you conduct interviews and investigate the area?" Jiang Yue asked unhappily.
"The evidence in the case was too conclusive. Everyone thought it was unnecessary. Besides, too many things have happened these past few days, and there simply hasn't been time to investigate."
"You can't treat a human life so casually!"
Officer Han smiled bitterly. In the past, when handling serious criminal cases, evidence this conclusive meant there was no need to complicate matters further.
The surveillance footage alone, along with the hair, bodily fluids, fingerprints, and other evidence at the scene, would have been more than enough.
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