Chapter 37 (1/2)

Chapter 37 – Getting Injured

Tang Can stayed silent as they left the house where the two siblings lived. He was clearly deep in thought.

Commander Jin and the branch secretary had finally come back to the village. When they arrived, the branch secretary’s wife immediately told her husband what had transpired while they were gone. As soon as he found out what happened, the man became angry and almost lost his temper. He ran to the town hall to summon the villagers.The horn souded for a long time.

Shen Yu didn’t care to find out what the branch secretary was planning to do with the townspeople. Since Commander Jin and Xiao Qiu had come back, she thought that they could finally leave this village. Security issues and other problems were no longer within their scope to control or investigate.

The others talked for almost half a day. Shen Yu had thought they were communicating that they were going to leave the village, but, in the end, she found out that was not to be the case. Tang Can had to translate and explain to her what they had decided.

“We can’t leave right now, not after what happened,” he said quietly. “Since Song Geng’s grave got defiled, we need to make sure things settle down before we leave.”

Since Tang Can and the others had already agreed on this course of action, she couldn’t reject their consensus. That evening, things became rowdy at the branch secretary’s house. Commander Jin had reported the desecration of Song Geng’s grave to the local police. Not only did the local police come, but the deputy district chief and someone from the district army also came along. They all treated Tang Can with trepidation and respect. Shen Yu watched the scene with wry amusement. She suddenly felt like she was watching a scene from the imperial times. Tang Can was the Imperial Chancellor making his rounds and inspections, and the other people were the local officials bowing and scraping before him.

It was within Tang Can’s expectations that the district office got notified.. Although he didn’t want make such a fuss about things, the events had already gone out of his control. Even though the crime got reported, they were still unable to catch the grave robbers. In fact, the police came with so many other people that the whole fiasco had become an unholy mess. Tang Can felt like his head was about to explode. He started to regret meddling with this village’s doings.

The most important factor was that all of the clues had been destroyed in this crime. The villagers had trampled all over the scene of the crime, so the police were unable to extract anything useful.

The only valuable piece of information that came from this whole investigation was something that the experienced detective deduced. From his experience, grave robbers were never people from the villages themselves. In fact, judging from the tools used in this crime, it looked like the criminals responsible for this desecration were professionals.

After hearing the old detective speak, Tang Can and Commander Jin exchanged a look. It was hard to say if they were on the same page, but afterwards, the two of them talked privately to each other.

Shen Yu felt like her presence was unnecessary throughout all of these proceedings. The branch secretary had initially asked his wife to take care of Shen Yu. Unfortunately, neither of them spoke the same dialect, so they simply sat together with awkward smiles on their faces. After sitting for a while, Shen Yy’s smile had been frozen on her face.

Time passed and the evening had arrived. The branch secretary’s two children were making a lot of noise and havoc. Their mother yelled at them and ordered them to go to sleep. When that proved fruitless, the branch secretary’s wife then grabbed a broom and started chasing them around the room. The room quickly exploded into chaos again.

Shem Ui couldn’t sit any longer with nothing to do. It felt like she had a lump underneath her throat. Without a word to anyone, she slipped out of the living room with a flashlight in her hand. Before long, she was out of the house.

Without any hesitation, she walked down a street that lead her south of the branch secretary’s house. After making a couple of turns, she was in the outskirts of town, where Song Geng’s old house was located.

Shen Yu looked at the ruined house and tried to recall where she had fallen that morning. She had fallen on glass earlier and she could still recall how it felt when it cut into her. It was pitch-black outside and in the dark, it was difficult to see things. The ruins that seemed so straightforward in the day had turned into a maze at night. The light from her flashlight didn’t do much to help her pick out specific objects.