A Shocking Massacre

What Brother Liu told us scared the hell out of both Meng Yifan and me.

We now knew who Li Xiumei was: the mummified corpse dug out of the wall.

But we had never expected that, when she was alive... that corpse had been a murderer, and one who had committed a major crime at that.

A woman had slaughtered an entire family?

"The case caused a huge sensation fifteen years ago. It even made the news."

Brother Liu looked at us and said, "The Qin Island family massacre. Have you ever heard of it?"

Meng Yifan and I looked at each other, then both shook our heads.

We had only been eleven fifteen years ago. Kids hardly paid attention to things like that, and the internet hadn't been very developed back then, either.

"There was something strange about that case, too. It started with a dispute between some tenants and their landlord."

"The tenants were a young married couple. Over nothing more than rent, they attacked the landlord's entire family of four."

"Three bodies were found at the scene, but the landlord's five-year-old daughter was missing. The police still haven't found her to this day. Nobody knows whether she's dead or alive."

We were halfway through our meal and had only just started drinking when Brother Liu began slowly recounting the family massacre.

Fifteen years earlier, on Qin Island, a young couple had rented a house. Outrageously, though, they hadn't paid any rent from the moment they moved in.

Their excuse was simple: they had no money. They had come from the countryside and had only just found jobs, so they hadn't been paid yet. They said they would pay the landlord as soon as their wages came through.

Under those circumstances, almost nobody would have rented a house to them.

But the landlord was kindhearted. Seeing that the young couple had come from the countryside, he let them move in for the time being.

A month passed quickly, and the landlord went to collect the rent on schedule. After a month of work, the couple should have had enough money to pay.

But they came up with another excuse. They said an elderly family member had fallen ill, and they had sent all their wages home to pay for treatment. They asked the landlord for another month's grace.

The landlord was kindhearted to an absurd degree. He actually believed them again.

Over the next few months, the young couple invented all kinds of excuses. In short, they refused to pay rent and lived in the house for half a year for free.

Kindhearted as he was, even the landlord realized something was wrong. He began to suspect that the couple had been playing him.

So he refused to listen to any more excuses and had a huge argument with them. He demanded that they pay all six months of overdue rent, no matter what, or he would call the police.

Realizing they couldn't keep the deception going, and afraid the landlord would call the police, the couple agreed on the spot to pay everything they owed-but asked him to wait until the next day.

The landlord wasn't in such a hurry that he couldn't wait one more day. He said nothing more and planned to come back the next day to collect the rent.

But the next day, the landlord had some errands to take care of, so he sent his wife to collect it instead.

What nobody expected was that the young couple were devils incarnate. The night before, they had already planned a shocking massacre.

When the landlord's wife arrived, the couple tied her up.

When his wife failed to return for a long time, the landlord sent his eldest son to check on her.

But once the son went over, he vanished just like his mother.

The landlord thought it was strange, so he went over himself.

The family were like the Calabash Brothers trying to rescue their grandfather, marching in one after another and delivering themselves straight into the monsters' lair.

In just a few hours, three members of the family of four had been tied up.

The young couple seemed to have planned all along to wipe out the whole family. They went to the landlord's home and tricked his five-year-old daughter into coming back to their place.

After tying up the landlord's family, the couple looted all the cash and valuables from his home.

Then the shocking massacre unfolded. The landlord, his wife, and his eldest son all died in the young couple's home. The police later found their three bodies at the scene, but there was no trace of the five-year-old daughter's body.

"There's still no definite answer about what happened to the little girl. She's never been found, dead or alive."

Brother Liu sighed. "Some people say she died somewhere else, and nobody knows where her body was buried. Others say she survived and the couple abducted her."

"That's the full story of the family massacre fifteen years ago. You can still find reports about it online."

By the time he finished, Meng Yifan and I were speechless.

It was a strange case, all right. But what was strange was how the landlord's whole family could have been so foolish. Hadn't they been on their guard at all?

It seemed people really couldn't afford to be too kind. As the saying went, you should never intend to harm others, but you should never let your guard down against them, either.

"So that mummified corpse-Li Xiumei-was one of the killers in the family massacre fifteen years ago?" Meng Yifan asked.

Brother Liu nodded. "Li Xiumei was called Li Yujiao when she committed the crime. Afterward, she and her husband fled, and she changed her name to Li Xiumei."

"The police spent fifteen years searching for the couple. Nobody expected that Li Xiumei had already died fifteen years ago."

Listening to him left me shaken.

I had thought Li Xiumei was a victim, a poor woman who had been murdered and hidden inside a wall for all those years.

I had never imagined that the bitch was a monster.

Apparently, she had been killed not long after committing that massacre. My guess was that her husband had killed her.

But there was still something I didn't understand, so I asked Brother Liu, "Who originally owned the house where her body was found? Could the owner really not have known there was a corpse in the house? Could he be the killer?"

Brother Liu sighed. "We're still investigating. We've looked into all the previous owners. The house has had three owners in total. The most recent one is surnamed Hu—you know him. He's hardly a suspect. And based on my experience, the second owner isn't particularly suspicious, either."

"The first owner is our main suspect. We summoned him for questioning just a few hours ago, but we don't have any concrete evidence yet that he killed Li Xiumei."

Who had killed Li Xiumei originally had little to do with Meng Yifan or me. But now there was a good chance her vengeful ghost had latched onto us, so I had to get to the bottom of it. I needed to learn about everyone connected to the case.

So I asked, "What's the first owner's name?"

Brother Liu thought for a moment and said, "I think he has the same surname as you. His name was... Chen Guowen."

The moment I heard that name, my scalp prickled violently, and my eyes went wide.

Meng Yifan reacted just like I did. The glass in his hand dropped straight onto the table.

Chen Guowen... We had both heard that name before. In fact, we couldn't have been more familiar with it.

Because my dad's name was Chen Guowen...