Rebirth: He Decides to Lie Flat
Chapter 208 - 208 205 I Come to Find the Memory

Chapter 208: Chapter 205: I Come to Find the Memory Chapter 208: Chapter 205: I Come to Find the Memory Jiang Yan naturally couldn’t make it back to school at that time, and the second brother’s place only had a small bed, which couldn’t fit two people.

So, he legitimately stayed in the room right across from Jiajia’s next-door neighbor tonight.

For breakfast, Jiang Yan prepared fresh meat wontons, adding some seaweed and shrimp to cook together, making it both fresh and delicious.

Seeing celery in the fridge, he cooked it with peanuts, then tossed it with chili powder and sesame oil for a refreshing and tasty dish.

He also made a plate of fried sugar-crisp cakes.

All three were Jiajia’s favorites.

Mu Chenyan helped him while quietly talking about Jiajia’s sleep last night, “She woke up twice in the middle of the night and cried once after falling back asleep. She wasn’t aware of it; I had to hold and soothe her for a while before she settled down. She might be recalling more things, which is why she’s even more restless. By the way, were you able to find out where Jiajia escaped from in Yunzhou? Is your brother-in-law reliable?”

Zhou Youming was naturally reliable, but since so much time had passed, it was hard to say whether he could find anything.

….

Yunzhou.

After breakfast, Zhou Youming met up with his comrade Shen Zhi, who had transferred to the city bureau’s criminal investigation department, to head to the old district.

“You’re saying that a murder occurred around here fourteen years ago? Is it the one you asked me to look into?”

Shen Zhi looked at him with a headache, “Bro, please sober up. You’re asking me to find clues to a murder case from fourteen years ago, do you think we can find anything at all?”

The key is he doesn’t even tell you where he got the information.

“You got into a military academy through the college entrance exam, and you’ve been in the service for more than a decade, how can you lack such common sense…”

“Skip the nonsense. If I ask you to look, you look. We’ll talk about whether it’s possible after that, alright?”

Last night was pitch-black; even with car headlights and flashlights, it was still unclear what the area was really like.

So, taking advantage of his day off, Zhou Youming called Shen Zhi to explore this alley and its surroundings together.

“Old Zhou, is your information reliable?”

Upon reaching the destination, Shen Zhi got out of the car looking around as he stepped out.

“Reliable.”

“Alright, I won’t ask where you heard it from, but at least you should be able to tell me how the person died, who the murderer was, and why they committed the murder, right?”

Zhou Youming walked to the end of the alley, looked at a dog hole in the corner, and spoke slowly, “Preliminary guess, the murderer should be a human trafficker. The victim tried to save two kidnapped little girls and was killed while escaping.”

“Chased down and had their head split in two with a knife? How strong do you have to be, and how sharp must the knife be to…” Shen Zhi hissed.

Zhou Youming turned and asked Shen Zhi, “What’s wrong?”

“This method of murder sounds familiar. I think I’ve heard it somewhere.”

Zhou Youming suddenly stood up straight, looked at him eagerly, and demanded, “Where did you hear it? When? Think carefully.”

Shen Zhi frowned in deep thought, and then suddenly, without any warning, leaped forward, stepping on a pile of broken stones to vault over the wall, and scolded in a low voice, “What are you doing?”

On the other side of the wall, a girl who looked to be about eighteen or nineteen was pressing herself against the wall.

Because Shen Zhi’s jump over the wall was so swift and unexpected, the girl did not have time to retract from her eavesdropping pose with her ear pressed against the wall.

“Name, occupation, say it! And why were you eavesdropping?”

Shen Zhi’s tone was not softened by the fact that the girl was female. Due to his professional habits, he instinctively felt there was something wrong with her.

Zhou Youming, seeing his action, also jumped over the wall, landed on the other side, and stood in front of the girl.

He sized her up: a schoolgirl look, a baby face, not tall—barely 1.6 meters. She wore a pink, short, brand-name down jacket, black corduroy pants, and a pair of snow boots on her feet.

An ordinary attire, she looked like a student.

After being caught, the girl was a bit fearful, her round eyes quickly darting from Shen Zhi to Zhou Youming across from her before silently taking two steps back.

Zhou Youming stood still, using a much friendlier tone than Shen Zhi as he asked the girl, “Why were you eavesdropping on our conversation?”

The girl’s gaze fell on the camouflage jacket Zhou Youming wore, which had shoulder straps, indicating it wasn’t one of those counterfeit goods sold outside.

Instead of answering, she countered, “Are you a soldier?”

A soldier?

Zhou Youming couldn’t help but smile. Her words weren’t incorrect; these days, most people referred to members of the People’s Liberation Army as soldiers.

He nodded, “Yes.”

The girl looked up at Shen Zhi, her eyes clearly holding a trace of timidity, “Then, what about him?”

Shen Zhi was dressed in civilian clothes, which revealed nothing of his profession.

“He’s a police officer. Now can you tell us why you were eavesdropping?”

Hearing that Shen Zhi was a police officer seemed to relax the girl somewhat.

She bit her lower lip, “I, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just passing by when I heard you mention human traffickers and two rescued girls. Out of curiosity, I, I paused…”

“Passing by?”

Shen Zhi also jumped down from the wall, pointing toward a house with its gate tightly locked, “Were you heading to this house? Is that why you passed by here?”

Clearly, the girl was lying.

“Which school do you attend? What’s your name? Speak up!”

The last two words were incredibly stern, causing the girl’s neck to shrink as she stammered her reply, “Nor, Yunzhou Normal University, my name is, is Xu Qian.”

“Which year are you in?”

“Sophomore.”

“Normal University is to the south, this is the north side. It’d take over an hour to get here. It’s not even eight in the morning yet; you must’ve caught the earliest bus here, right?”

Even though not many people lived here anymore, the previous bus routes had not been canceled. Turning left out of the alley, there was a bus stop fifty meters away.

And why not take a taxi?

Shen Zhi, with a sharp eye, noticed that after being caught, the girl kept mindlessly fiddling with a slip of paper in her hand—that was a bus ticket, likely given to her by the conductor, and she had absently kept it in her grasp, probably forgetting to throw it away.

“Don’t say you came to visit relatives, there’s no one here.”

Xu Qian gritted her teeth, “I came looking for my memories, believe it or not, that’s your choice. Anyway, I’ve been here no less than thirty times, and it’s not true that no one lives here. Turn right and in the third alley there lives an old lady, you can check if you don’t believe me.”

“Looking for memories?”

Zhou Youming looked at her oddly and asked, “What memories are you looking for?”

Considering the two men’s identities seemed reliable, Xu Qian didn’t hesitate this time. She said, “I think I might have come here when I was a child, but I can’t remember clearly, so I wanted to walk around and see if I could recall anything.”

“What do you remember?”

Xu Qian looked at Zhou Youming. Judging by his voice, she could tell that the earlier words had come from him.

Human traffickers, murder, a head…

No, that couldn’t be it, definitely not. It wasn’t her mother he was talking about! It was not the events from her vague memory.

Xu Qian’s heartbeat began to quicken, her eyes slightly reddening as she looked into Zhou Youming’s eyes and said tremulously, “I remember… running through the alleys with another little girl. Later, we got separated. I wanted to go back and look for her, but there were bad people coming, and I climbed onto a car without thinking. When I woke up, I was at my foster parents’ home…”