Cheng Zheng could not breathe in that instant.Nonetheless, he chose not to say anything and closed his eyes to get some rest.
Xiang Wan did not look at the both of them. She was focusing on looking at her fingers…
Bai Muchuan glanced at her. "Sit tight!"
"Okay!" Xiang Wan made sure her safety belt was fine. She then sat with her back straight and eyes on the road.
Bai Muchuan"s eyebrows crinkled up in thought. "What are you thinking?"
"Nothing."
"Not feeling well?"
"No~"
"Hungry?"
"Not hungry!"
"Then why are you all scrunched up like a bun?"
Pffft! Xiang Wan burst in laughter. "Who"s like a bun? You"re the one who"s like a bun, a big bun!"
Bai Muchuan snorted a laugh, but he had no intention of arguing with her. "I like to see you smile."
Fine!
Dog food was everywhere.
Cheng Zheng"s eyebrows crumpled up when he heard that with his eyes still closed.
n.o.body noticed that change in his expression.
Xiang Wan knocked her finger on the door of the car gently as her eyes looked at the road. "I was thinking about the case…"
"Which case?"
"The entire case. Somehow, I feel that there"s something amiss…"
Bai Muchuan mulled over for a while and told Xiang Wan what he heard from Abdul during the earlier interrogation.
There was only three of them inside the car. Bai Muchuan was not worried about letting them know what was going on.
He was unsure if Cheng Zheng had heard that since he had kept quiet all these while. Xiang Wan"s face, however, really scrunched up together like a pale-colored bun.
"This Abdul… Does he really have no other recorded criminal activity?"
"Nope." Bai Muchuan"s face instantly turned gloomy, and his voice sounded cold. "His only crime was what he did to Lima."
Xiang Wan remarked after looking at his expression. "You seem to sympathize with Lima?"
"… Do you think it"s possible that I sympathize with each and every person involved?" Bai Muchuan frowned. "It"s just that I really hated such crimes."
"Mm." Xiang Wan nodded, agreeing with him.
She hated such atrocities too.
She really, really hated it.
Maybe, from Lima, both of them had thought about the young Xie Wanwan, as well as the young Lima…
"The one behind all of these must be someone who liked to do such things or—hated people who did such things."
"Mm? What do you mean?"
"There"s a strange similarity between Xie Wanwan and Lima… There are some links between all these cases which we"ve discussed before. And—" Xiang Wan pursed her lips in thought as she paused for a while. "I"ve a.n.a.lyzed before that this person is an extremist. He thinks he"s the embodiment of justice. He believed that the people he killed received their just deserts, they were all sinful people… He also believed that all sorts of laws or people opposing his ideas… should be eliminated!"
Xiang Wan frowned suddenly as she said this.
"Something"s wrong. Quick, stop the car!"
Bai Muchuan had a change in his expression. He met her gaze and immediately pulled the brakes without hesitation.
The next moment, he did a U-turn.
At the same time, he dialed the number of Nanmu police station.
Cheng Zheng did not understand the tacit understanding the couple had with each other.
When Bai Muchuan pulled the brakes suddenly, his body had lunged forward, he was puzzled why he had to do a U-turn.
"What"s happening?"
As Bai Muchuan was trying to reach the Nanmu police station, he had no time to explain to them.
Xiang Wan turned to him. Coldness filled her eyes.
"… Abdul and Lima could be in danger!"
…
The vehicle that was sending Abdul and Lima had set off to Xi City.
It was around that time when Bai Muchuan left Nanmu Police station.
He called them up to get them to contact the police officers who were escorting the two.
However, their reply was that they could not get through any of them.
This was because Nanmu was a mountainous region. The connection and signal had always been poor when they were on the road.
"Continue to call them!" Bai Muchuan gasped, "Call till they pick up their phone!"
After that, he stepped on the accelerator to chase after them.
Since they had driven a police car, their vehicle should be rather obvious on the road. Just one look and one could see it.
However, although he had been chasing after them desperately, they had yet to see the supposed police car.
Ten minutes later, Bai Muchuan called the Nanmu Police Station again.
"Did you manage to get hold of them?"
"Nope! Captain Bai, still can"t get through!"
"Continue to call!"
"All right! I"ll call when I get through to them!"
The party over the phone seemed calmer than Bai Muchuan. Apparently, they did not think that something bad might happen.
They had now lost contact for 15 minutes!
When the 20th minute had pa.s.sed, they still couldn"t get through to them—
Bai Muchuan was still driving on the road, his expression grave and somber.
"Look over there—"
Cheng Zheng, who was at the back pa.s.senger seat, suddenly sat with his back straight when he saw something.
Bai Muchuan slowed down out of reflex and looked carefully ahead.
The road was built along the mountain. Hence, it was quite narrow and b.u.mpy with a lot of turns and curves. There were many "hazardous spots" along the road too. Those who came here for the first time could easily tremble in fear once they looked at the cliff outside their car window…
The three of them were now looking at a spot where there was a really sharp turn that had an angle of almost 90 degrees.
At the edge of the curve nearest to the cliff, there were obvious marks left by the wheels indicating that someone had pulled their brakes along this track a few moments ago.
On the gra.s.s outside the road, there were also deep, clear marks a car had left.
Bai Muchuan stopped the car and the three of them made their way out hastily to check out what was below.
The bright sunlight shone from the top of the mountain and down to the cliffs. There were clouds and mists enshrouding the mountains. They couldn"t see the bottom of the cliff clearly at all.
However—
They could easily tell that a car had gone cras.h.i.+ng down the cliff.
…
It was a car crash.
There were a total of five people inside the police car. None of them survived.
Since this stretch of road was built along the mid-mountain, the terrain was too high and the rescue work nearly took half a day.
The Nanmu traffic police and relevant departments rushed to the crash scene and took part in the search and rescue operation. At last, they found the remains of the crashed police car in the dense forest below the cliff.
All of them—the three police officers, Abdul and Lima, died inside the car—
The cause of the car crash required further investigation—
However, the preliminary investigations suggested that this was just an accident.
It was a steep turn. The section of the road was quite foggy every morning, and that stretch of road was an accident-p.r.o.ne zone.
While everyone was sighing with regret, Xiang Wan felt a chill on every inch of her heart.
This is not an accident, she told herself.
This is not an accident, she told herself once more.
She was now sitting inside the car, facing Bai Muchuan.
"You know that this is not an accident, right?"
With a terrified expression, she spoke with a tense and rigid voice.
Bai Muchuan squeezed her shoulders. "Wait for the results!"
Xiang Wan did not know what to say.
This was Nanmu.
Moreover, the police required more evidence before they could conclude anything.
"There weren"t any traces to suggest that someone premeditated this!" Cheng Zheng had gone on ahead to study the traces at the crash scene. He just got back inside the car.
"If this was premeditated, that person must be much smarter than we could imagine. I have not thought about how he could achieve that… But I can tell you both in certainty that if I can"t tell from the traces that this accident was premeditated, no one else could!"
"…"
Silence took over.
Xiang Wan felt tense and her heart squeezed tightly.
This incident, somehow, felt so familiar to her.
Yes.
She felt that this was familiar.
It was just like all those previous cases.
"That person" had a penchant for perfection.
If there were areas that required a "touch-up", he would do so, to the best as he could.
He did so in order to make everything go according to his wishes.
There were no survivors and no witnesses, either.
…