Chapter 200 - 145: Case Closed, Foreword to ’Natural-Born Criminal’ (3)

It was a metal net, fixed firmly over the opening. No one could get in.

Sun Jiang was lost.

He stayed there for a long time before heading toward the night market.

In winter, before the Spring Festival, business at the night market was usually very good, but today was different.

When he returned, he witnessed a brutal scene.

It was the girl—the flower girl.

Her face was a contorted mask, covered in blisters. Her entire head looked like a meatball sizzling in a pan of hot oil.

She was on the ground, wailing in agony.

Beside her lay her livelihood: a collection of bright, beautiful flowers.

But now, trampled by countless feet, they were already crushed and wilted.

In that instant, Sun Jiang’s mind went completely blank.

The world around him felt both familiar and strange. Endless terror and confusion flooded his mind, his breathing grew shallow, and he stood frozen in place like a machine.

Until someone next to him gave him a shove.

"Jiang, your grandma went that way! Go find her, quick! She might be hurt!"

The person pointed out a direction for Sun Jiang and gave him a hard shove.

Sun Jiang was like a wind-up puppet. He had lost his will, his mind empty of thought.

Terror tore the boy apart. The world spun around him, and his legs felt weak and powerless.

After a long while.

He saw the vegetable seller lying collapsed on the ground.

He carried her on his back, slowly walking toward home.

The vegetable seller didn’t pull through. Before she died, she told him his father was likely still in Penglai City and that he should go there to find a man named Sun Pengyu.

Later, a group of people came to the door to verify the death.

Later still, Sun Jiang learned of the "heavy punishment" doled out to the culprit.

A sentence of less than seven years.

He sat numbly by the roadside, watching people come and go at the morning market, watching the once-bustling street become "clean."

His gaze grew more vacant, his pupils hollow.

The world before him was like an endless, plunging abyss, pulling him down into a blur of unconsciousness, a sense of weightlessness flooding his body and soul.

.....

One day, Sun Jiang suddenly snapped out of it.

He set off for Penglai City.

...

1999.

Through the underworld connections of Huang Song and others, Sun Jiang found a trace of Sun Pengyu in Penglai City.

Sun Pengyu was, indeed, still in Penglai City.

But in the form of ashes.

He was dead, having died in a small alley.

However, before his death, Sun Pengyu hadn’t been going by that name. He had another one.

"Big Rat."

That was his name.

This was the answer Sun Jiang learned from another "Sun Jiang."

Upon hearing this, he fell silent for a long time. After asking around for information about the boy, he didn’t go up and introduce himself. He just asked a few questions and left.

The younger Sun Jiang said that the name "Sun Jiang" had been chosen at random.

The elder Sun Jiang thought back to the letter Chen Hong had left. It said that when their lives improved, if they had a child, he should be named Sun Jiang. The name "Jiang," she wrote, was full of profound meaning.

Even after "Big Rat" found a "Little Rat," he never forgot what had happened before.

He had taken "Little Rat" to wander outside the prison, but his cowardly heart could never muster the courage to go inside.

After that, the elder Sun Jiang settled down and began to live near the boy.

He watched the younger Sun Jiang scavenge for scraps, watched his silence, watched him chant scriptures with Father Zhao Kang, and watched the priest say, "The Lord will protect them."

He watched him walk all the way from Penglai City to Jiangsan City.

Sun Jiang followed him to Jiangsan City, always staying in the periphery.

He saw him torture and kill several people in the dead of night.

He also saw two people moving the bodies.

And he saw the police in their raincoats, investigating the crime.

He was always there, watching in silence from the shadows. Until...

The moment Zhao Kang closed his scriptures and turned himself in, Sun Jiang vanished.

September 3, 2003. One person disappeared from Jiangsan City.

No one noticed.

September 10, 2003. One person appeared in Linlan City.

December 2, 2003...

A shocking case of a cooked corpse emerged!

...

...

1993. A door opened, and Sun Jiang stepped out of Hell.

1993. A door opened, and Sun Jiang stepped out of one Hell and into another.

He said:

"I came from Hell, and to Hell I shall go."

...

(The "He Came from Hell" Case)

[Case Closed!]