Chapter 5 The Bone Collector 3

  The old man nodded: "I've been there. A few days ago. His memorial day."

  "What time did you go?"

  "It's been a long time. The sky has just brightened." The old man let out a sigh of bitterness. "I'm getting older, can't sleep well, so I went early. An old friend for many years, like an own brother. It's embarrassing to say, your father passed away so many years ago, and this is still my first time visiting him." As he said this, the old man silently shook his head, looking very sorrowful.

  Zhang Tong didn't say anything else. He remained silent for a long time. The old man stood up, with an apologetic expression: "Tongtong, Uncle will leave first. You're busy, I'll visit your home another day."

  "Alright."

  In the distance, the lanterns had just been lit. She watched as the old man's figure gradually disappeared from view. Suddenly, Zhang Tong's heart felt a pang of sadness. Thinking about her own father, if he were still alive, he would also have grown so old by now. Zhang Tong's vision gradually became blurry. The old man in the distance seemed to have transformed into her father. Tears fell once again down her cheeks.

  When she got home, it was almost 9 pm. Zhang Tong stood at the dark entrance of her house, using the faint light coming from the gap under the door to feel for the key in her bag. The corridor was stuffy and hot, and soon Zhang Tong was covered in sweat. After finally finding the key, she reached out to insert it into the lock, but perhaps due to tension, the entire keychain slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground with a clatter. Zhang Tong cursed under her breath, bent down to pick it up in the dark, but suddenly her right index and middle fingers went numb. She gritted her teeth and tried several times, but eventually had to use her left hand to feel around on the floor.

  As the sound of the door lock opening came from beside her ear, Zhang Tong's eyes lit up. It turned out that the noise of the key falling to the ground had startled her mother who was passing by the entrance hall.

  "I'm back. From now on, just call me to open the door." A smile spread across Mother's face. These days, due to taking her medication on time, Chang Tong saw more and more smiles on his mother's face.

  Zhang Tong quickly picked up the keychain on the ground and stuffed it into her bag: "Don't worry, mom. I never come back at a fixed time every time. You don't have to wait for me. I can take care of myself."

  As soon as she walked into the house, Zhang Tong's eyes were drawn to several boxes of gifts on the coffee table in the living room. She put down her bag and asked, "Mom, who sent these gifts? Is it Uncle Chen?"

  "Mom came out of the kitchen with a bowl of cold noodles: "Yes, Chen Bo Bo has come to visit us and brought some things for you from America. I also asked about their Meimei, why didn't she come together? That girl must be as tall as you now. I remember when we were young, she often came to our house to play."

  Zhang Tong's heart tightened involuntarily. He asked cautiously: "What did Uncle Chen say?"

  "Mother still had a smile on her face. "Uncle Chen said that Meimei got married, to an American, and is very busy with work, so she won't be coming back for now. That child... I've been thinking about her all along."

  Zhang Tong suddenly felt like crying. Suddenly, he understood Chen Bo's good intentions: "Oh, I see. Mom, you can stop nagging now. They will come back to visit you." Looking at his mother's busy figure, Zhang Tong couldn't bear to burst this beautiful lie.

  "Right, Tongtong. This afternoon, there was another person who came to our house. He said he's your old classmate. The young man is quite nice. Tongtong, from his tone, it seems like he has a good impression of you. Tell mom, is he your boyfriend? Who is he? What's his name? Why did you keep it a secret from mom, you little rascal?"

  After listening to her mother's string of questions, Zhang Tong almost choked on the noodles in her mouth. She stuttered and asked: "Mom, don't think randomly, I don't have a boyfriend."

  "You're still so young and yet you're being secretive about what you want to do." Her mother's words sounded like scolding, but she said it with a smile.

  Zhang Tong wanted to explain, opened his mouth, thought for a moment, and still closed it honestly.

  It was late at night. The sound of the lights being turned off came from her mother's room next door. Zhang Tong furrowed her brow and thought for a moment, hesitating for a long time before finally giving up on the idea of calling Liu Chunxiao to question him. She knew very well why Liu Chunxiao would suddenly come to visit. He was still obsessed with his sister's missing case. Zhang Tong couldn't go and blame him. After all, Liu Chunxiao hadn't done anything wrong. His intentions were also justified. But this way, Zhang Tong had no choice but to open up her own dusty gray memories that had been sealed away for a long time. Thinking of this, she shook her head hard and started biting her right hand's fingernails out of habit. Every time Zhang Tong was in a state of confusion, she would bite her right hand's fingernails. She didn't know when she had developed this habit. But only when she bit her right hand's fingernails did she feel slightly calmer.

  The next morning, as soon as she walked into the Public Security Bureau building, the security guard stopped her.

  "Dr. Zhang, there is a parcel for you. It was sent from Haishi City."

  So fast. Zhang Tong couldn't help but secretly admire the efficiency of Chen Hai Municipal Public Security Bureau. She hastily signed for the express delivery and casually tucked the thick envelope under her arm, heading straight to her office.

  Just walking to the corner of the stairs, she suddenly bumped into Wang Yanan who was rushing out. Zhang Tong just wanted to greet her, but Wang Yanan interrupted her, with a serious expression: "Hurry up, there's a case. The abandoned aluminum alloy processing plant in Chengdong. You'll be right over. I'll wait for you there."

  Time rewound back to about an hour ago...

  In short, today's harvest should not be bad. It was only 7 o'clock in the morning, and Lao Wang had already collected a large bag of scrap aluminum alloy edges and corners. Looking at his own thick labor fruit, Lao Wang couldn't help but squint his eyes full of eye dirt. His old tree bark-like face also trembled unconsciously. He seemed to see a big pile of colorful banknotes waiting for him to pick them up not far away. What good luck did he run into today? He must have bumped into the God of Wealth. Lao Wang was very fortunate that he accidentally discovered this desolate and remote "feng shui treasure land". Thinking about his fellow villagers who collected scraps and didn't listen to advice, insisting on getting rich in one place, Lao Wang's mouth couldn't be closed from smiling. Since it was his own discovery, then he would honestly eat it all by himself without being polite.

  Suddenly, a severe cough surged up to his chest. Old Wang had no choice but to drop the "weed fork" in his hand and coughed desperately. While coughing, he cursed the "native tobacco roll" he had just finished smoking. He was old and useless, unable to quit smoking, yet smoking made him cough to death. Old Wang's heart felt depressed to the extreme.

  He coughed and looked around, always worried that a sly little thief would suddenly appear to snatch his territory and get rich. After all, he had been picking up scraps for so many years, and he had to learn to carefully protect his own interests at all times.

  The cough finally stopped. He bent down and pulled hard on the old, discolored glass bottle at his feet, trying to pull out the aluminum alloy scrap that was pressed underneath. But the glass bottle didn't budge.

  Old Wang tried again twice, but the glass bottle seemed to be at odds with him and wouldn't budge. He couldn't help but get a bit angry. "What's wrong? You're not going to let me win? You think you can look down on an old man like me?" As he spoke, he flexed his hands and feet, concentrated his energy, and used all his strength. With one final effort, the bottle was pulled out like a radish.

  As the saying goes, "pulling out a radish brings out mud". Old Wang's smile on his face had not yet disappeared. The garbage mountain in front of him, which was over one meter high, suddenly collapsed with a loud "rumble" sound.

  Heaven only gave Old Wang two feet and ten toes, yet he was standing on the slope of this garbage mountain, trembling all over. There wasn't a single solid foothold around him. To make matters worse, the garbage mountain was leaning to his left side. Suddenly, Old Wang's four limbs were pointing towards the sky as he tumbled down, still clutching that damned broken glass bottle in his hand.

  The noise by his ear finally disappeared. Old Wang, with a grey head and a dirty face, got up from the ground with his left hand supporting himself. Just as he was about to curse, he suddenly noticed that his left hand felt strange. It was red, sticky, and had a metallic smell.

  The first thought that came to Old Wang's mind was that his left hand had been cut by the trash scattered all over the ground. But then he felt something was off, because there wasn't a hint of pain on his hand. He looked again and indeed there was no wound. So where did this blood-like substance come from? Thinking of this, he turned around to look in the direction of his left hand with the "curiosity" that he had cultivated through years of picking up trash.

  That was a black plastic bag, commonly seen in trash cans all over the city. Those red things were what came out of this garbage bag that had been accidentally squeezed and broken by its own weight. Old Wang furrowed his brow, carefully opened the garbage bag, and looked inside under the sunlight. Before he could even react, a pungent smell wafted out, making him dizzy and disoriented. Suddenly, he felt his stomach churning, and he vomited up the two big buns he had eaten for breakfast.

  Poor old Wang firmly believed that he had seen something that only appeared in the 18th level of hell where King Yan lived. Due to curiosity, he opened the trash bag and his intestines turned green with regret.

  Old Wang's first thing to do after sobering up was to run to the roadside without looking back, take down the public phone covered with dust, and then tremble all over like he had seen a ghost. He stuttered for half a day before dialing 110.

  Zhang Tong and his assistant, Pan Jian, carefully opened the large trash bag. The damaged corner of the bag was still leaking a sticky substance that emitted a foul odor.

  She took a glance and Zhang Tong's head got bigger. She roughly flipped through the remains of the corpse, then solemnly instructed: "Pan Jian, we need to send these back to the bureau's autopsy room immediately. We can't delay any further. The degree of decay has already reached level three."

  The highest level is also the third level. The corpse was initially sealed in a black plastic trash bag. Now, under sunlight, it has accelerated the degree of decay of the corpse. The entire corpse is being devoured by microorganisms at an unimaginable speed. This also means that the evidence on the surface of the corpse is rapidly disappearing. Now, time seems to be more important than anything else.

  After settling the old scavenger who reported the case, Wang Yan accelerated his pace and walked towards Zhang Tong, asking loudly: "What's going on? What's the situation?"

  Zhang Tong's stern expression made Wang Ya Nan involuntarily stop in her tracks: "You mean it was that bastard again."

  "I didn't find bones in the trash bag."