"A letter?"
Su Mingzhe's gaze instantly sharpened.
He strode forward and took the rusty tin lunch box from one of the soldiers.
The lunch box had rusted shut and would not open at all.
"Big Kitty."
Nuannuan turned and called out.
The snow leopard, which had been crouching quietly nearby, immediately rose and walked over to Nuannuan.
Nuannuan pointed at the lunch box.
The snow leopard understood, extended a paw, and lightly sliced along the seam with a sharp claw.
Screech-
A piercing scrape of metal rang out.
The rust-speckled tin split like paper.
Su Mingzhe put on gloves and carefully pried the lunch box open.
Everyone held their breath.
There was no food inside.
There was only a stack of letters wrapped tightly in oilpaper, their corners already soaked through with moisture and moldy.
On the topmost envelope, the recipient's address was plainly written: Liu Guifang, Li Family Village, He Province.
The sender was Su Mingyue in the capital.
Su Mingfeng's fists clenched instantly.
These were letters his younger sister had sent to Liu Guifang!
Su Mingzhe carefully took out the letters one by one.
Most were addressed to Liu Guifang and sent by Su Mingyue.
These were probably the letters and remittance slips his sister had sent back then concerning Nuannuan's care.
However, when Su Mingzhe took out the letter at the very bottom, his pupils abruptly contracted.
Its envelope had yellowed badly, but the writing was still clear.
The delivery address was the Li Family Village committee.
The recipient, however, was not a specific name, but a code name.
"Green Pine."
The return address was a designation none of them understood: Northwest Base 713.
This letter had actually been kept together with the letters his sister had sent!
The instant Liu Guifang saw that letter, a flash of extreme panic crossed her eyes, but she quickly concealed it.
She was still making one last desperate struggle.
"I don't know! I've never seen any of these letters! That postman must have hidden them himself! He was a lazy bum who didn't want to deliver the mail!" she shrieked.
"Really?" Su Mingzhe sneered, holding up the letter addressed to Liu Guifang. "You've never seen this letter either?"
"N-no!" Liu Guifang stubbornly refused to admit it.
Just then, Nuannuan spoke again.
Pointing to a scrap of green fabric caked in dirt beside the pile of bones, she said in her childish voice, "Uncle, that man had candy in his pocket."
"The mice said he gave candy to the village children every time he came."
"The bad granny wouldn't let me have any."
"She said I was a jinx and didn't deserve candy."
Those few simple sentences struck everyone's hearts like a heavy hammer.
A postman who handed out candy to the children every time he visited.
A pitiful little girl who was abused by her adoptive mother and could not have even a single piece of candy.
An insatiably greedy, vicious woman who murdered for money.
Everything connected.
The villagers' looks toward Liu Guifang were no longer filled with disgust, but bone-deep hatred.
"I remember! It was Old Zhang! Old Zhang from the post office!" An elderly man in the crowd suddenly shouted. "It was him! He disappeared two years ago! Everyone said he'd fallen into the river and been swept away. Who would've thought... who would've thought he died here!"
"Yes, yes! It was Old Zhang! He was such a good man, always smiling whenever he came. He even brought things back for me!"
"Liu Guifang! You damned woman! What did Old Zhang ever do to you to deserve something so vicious!"
The villagers' emotions erupted.
They surged forward in fury. If the soldiers had not held them back, they might have torn Liu Guifang to pieces on the spot.
"It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!"
Liu Guifang broke down completely.
Every word Nuannuan spoke was like a precise scalpel, cutting away her disguise slice by slice and exposing her filthiest, most vicious inner self, raw and bloody, to the sunlight.
She did not understand.
How could this five-year-old brat know so much?
How did she know about the cellar, the pickling crock, the woodpile, and even the candy in the postman's pocket?
Could... could ghosts really exist?
Had that postman's ghost possessed this little brat and come back to claim her life?
The moment that thought arose, Liu Guifang's psychological defenses collapsed completely.
She looked into Nuannuan's clear, innocent eyes, yet seemed to see a vengeful ghost coming for her life.
"Ah-! Don't come for me! Don't come for me!"
She let out an inhuman scream, her eyes rolling back as her whole body convulsed and white foam spilled from her mouth.
She had actually been frightened into madness.
Yet Liu Guifang began uncontrollably spilling the crimes that had lain buried for two years.
"The money... it was all mine... I burned the letters too..."
"That old bastard insisted on taking the letter to the village committee... I told him to mind his own business, but he wouldn't listen..."
"My man hit him with a hoe... blood... so much blood..."
"We dragged him into the cellar... he wasn't quite dead yet... he was still moving..."
"The money in his bag, and the grain coupons, were all mine... hahahaha... Goudan could have white-flour steamed buns every day..."
Her crazed words were jumbled and disjointed, yet they pieced together the entire crime with perfect clarity.
Everyone present felt their hair stand on end as they listened.
As it turned out, on that rainy night two years earlier, after delivering Su Mingyue's letter and remittance slip to Liu Guifang, the postman Old Zhang had been about to take the letter addressed to "Green Pine" to the village committee.
Tempted by the money, Liu Guifang had wanted to pocket everything Su Mingyue had sent, so she pretended to invite Old Zhang to stay for some hot water.
Catching Old Zhang off guard, she and her husband, who had long since died of illness, attacked him from behind with a hoe. The two dragged the dying Old Zhang into the cellar and buried him alive.
They stole not only the money Su Mingyue had sent for Nuannuan's care, but also all of Old Zhang's belongings and the mailbag he had been about to deliver to the village committee.
From that day on, Liu Guifang told everyone that Nuannuan was a bastard she had picked up outside, shamelessly pocketing the support money that rightfully belonged to Nuannuan while working her own niece like livestock and abusing her.
As for the critically important letter addressed to "Green Pine," she could not understand it, so she deemed it an "inauspicious object" and burned it.
The truth was out.
All these crimes stemmed from her bottomless greed.
The villagers turned deathly pale as they listened to Liu Guifang's crazed rambling.
Those who had spoken up for Liu Guifang and accused the investigation team were so ashamed they wished they could sink into the ground.
They had been deceived.
Deceived by this woman's tears and lies for five whole years!
"Beat her to death! Kill that beast!"
"She doesn't deserve to live!"
The furious villagers grew agitated again. If the soldiers had not formed a human wall, they really would have rushed forward.
The village Party secretary, Li Laosi, was so frightened that his legs gave way and he dropped onto the ground.
He was finished.
Such a heinous murder and burial had taken place in his jurisdiction, yet as the village Party secretary, he had been completely unaware and had even helped the murderer obstruct the investigation.
His political career was utterly over.
Su Mingfeng had no interest in arguing with these ignorant villagers.
He walked over to Su Mingzhe, looked at the letter addressed to "Green Pine," and asked quietly, "What do you make of this letter?"
Su Mingzhe's expression was exceptionally grave.
"Brother, this is more complicated than we thought." He held the letter paper up to the light and examined it closely. "Base 713 is a facility with the highest security classification. Any letter sent from there is definitely no ordinary matter."
Su Mingfeng's heart sank.
His sister's mineral vein map.
The letter sent from Base 713.
Could this "Green Pine" be someone the spies had sent to watch his sister?
Liu Guifang's murder for money.
These seemingly unrelated clues seemed, at that moment, to be linked by an invisible thread.
His sister's death was definitely no accident!
Could she have discovered something during her research?
Behind all this lay an invisible web.
A sheen of cold sweat broke out on Su Mingfeng's back.
He glanced at Nuannuan, already fast asleep in his arms, and felt a surge of lingering fear.
If Nuannuan had not awakened her Beast Language Ability, if she had not found his sister's diary, if she had not learned the cellar's secret from the mice...
Then this truth might have remained buried forever beneath the soil of Li Family Village.
And Nuannuan would have been tormented to death by that monstrous woman amid endless abuse.
At that thought, an overwhelming killing intent surged from the depths of Su Mingfeng's heart once more.
He turned and looked at the still-deranged Liu Guifang and Li Goudan, who lay collapsed on the ground, having lost control of both his bladder and bowels.
His voice was as cold as ice in the depths of winter.
"Take them both away."
"Yes, sir!"
Two soldiers stepped forward and dragged Liu Guifang and Li Goudan toward the military vehicle like dead dogs.
The humiliation the Su Family had suffered, the vengeance owed for Su Mingyue's unjust death, Nuannuan's five years of suffering...
The reckoning for all of it would begin with these two.
Not one of them would escape.