Who Stole My Pressure Cooker (7)

Chapter 27

Mother Sun knew her son had a bad reputation in the past, but he had changed now; he had turned over a new leaf.

“He told me that he was just immature before. Now he has something to look forward to in life, and he just wanted to live a good, honest life.”

“He was digging coal in Xiangjin Town. His hands were covered in blisters, and every time he came back, his face was pitch black. When I brought him water to wash, the water would turn black instantly.” Although Mother Sun felt a pang of sorrow, she still didn’t mention Chunfeng while she spoke.

After all, the matter with Chunfeng was just a small thing.

Mother Sun grew emotional. Fearing that Yun Song wouldn’t believe her, she pulled Yun Song back to her own house and started rummaging through a cabinet. “Every time he came back, he gave me his money to keep safe. He really had become a good man.”

There was a flash of white near the cabinet, which Yun Song quickly recognized. Was that a pressure cooker?

“This pressure cooker?” Yun Song thought of the Liao family’s pressure cooker and asked, “Did Sun Qiang bring this back from the city?”

Mother Sun said hurriedly, “No, Officer, please don’t mention this to anyone. It’s just a pot. My eldest grandson brought it back. It was just a disagreement between children, not an attempt to steal. I actually wanted to return it at the time, but the Liao family has such sharp tongues. If I’d gone then, they would have surely accused my grandson of being a thief, so I hid it. I was planning to return it after some time had passed.”

Yun Song nodded, indicating she understood.

Mother Sun didn’t think it was a major issue, and she quickly diverted Yun Song’s attention. “This money here, some of it was saved for him to get a wife, and some was saved to pay back the families he stole from in the past.”

As Yun Song listened, she felt like something was missing.

“Did he change like this suddenly? Did anything happen in between?”

Mother Sun thought back. Nothing specific had happened. She said, “Men are all like this. They’re reckless when they’re young, but once they reach a certain age and want to marry and have children, they settle down.”

As she spoke, she couldn’t help but start crying again. “Qiang’s life was just beginning. I don’t know who could be so heartless! Officer, you must get justice for us!”

Yun Song comforted her, “We will definitely find out the truth.”

The breakthrough for the truth lay at Changgui’s house.

When the investigators arrived today, Yun Song had sent Tong Jin and Tang Chao to keep watch over the couple. Yun Song still remembered the pesticide mentioned by Dayan’s grandmother.

Tong Jin and Tang Chao didn’t conduct an interrogation; they simply sat in Changgui’s house with stern expressions.

The couple sitting across from them was already panicking. They desperately wanted these two officers to say something.

Finally, Yun Song, whom the couple was somewhat more familiar with, arrived.

The couple hurried over. “Officer…”

Then, remembering what Yun Song had said before, they immediately corrected themselves. “Comrade Police, this is…”

Yun Song said, “Hu Changgui, Gu Youpeng, I have some questions for you regarding the murder of Sun Qiang.”

The two looked at each other, swallowed hard, and said, “The two of us killed him.”

Beside her, Tang Chao and Tong Jin were both a bit surprised. Was it really going to be this straightforward?

The two of them had only rushed over this morning. Since the body was found in a rural village, a place without any surveillance cameras, they had expected another grueling battle.

And yet…

Yun Song didn’t seem surprised. She simply asked, “Why did you kill him?”

“That afternoon, he took advantage of the fact that no one was around to come into our house and steal. We caught him.”

Yun Song stood up and asked, “Where were you standing at the time?”

The couple fell silent.

“What did you use to kill Sun Qiang?”

The couple pointed toward the fire pit, where there was a whetstone.

The village was quite far from the town, so people brought back their own whetstones to sharpen their knives and tools.

“You mean to say that Sun Qiang came in, saw you were home, and tried to steal right in front of you? And then you killed him with a whetstone?”

Changgui’s mouth twitched a few times, but in the end, he said nothing.

Yun Song sighed and said, “You need to tell the whole story exactly as it happened.”

The two remained silent.

Yun Song said, “There were skin fragments under Sun Qiang’s fingernails. Are either of you injured?”

Changgui cautiously extended his left hand, preparing to give his right wrist a scratch.

Yun Song added, “New injuries don’t count.”

The wound on her neck was feeling a bit better. Chunfeng touched the back of her neck; the place that had been bleeding had already scabbed over, though the bruised area still held the dark color of stagnant blood.

At the very beginning, the bleeding part looked frightening, but the rest of her neck had only been slightly red. By the time she reached the town, the neck area had started to turn dark. After a night’s sleep, the bleeding had stopped by the next morning, but the area that was originally red had turned into a black ring.

Consequently, she hadn’t left the house all week. When her husband asked what happened, she just said she ran into a madman on the way back to her hometown.

Her husband kept expressing his relief. “It’s good that you’re okay. As long as you’re fine, that’s all that matters. Just rest up for a few days.”

Of course, her husband didn’t ask if the other person was okay.

She had been feeling restless these past two days, especially after hearing her husband mention that the police had gone to her old village because of a murder case.

“Teacher Chunfeng! Teacher Chunfeng!” A voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

A small head suddenly appeared against the window.

Chunfeng and her husband lived in teacher housing provided by the school. It was on the first floor and wasn’t large. She had pasted a thin layer of paper over the window from the inside; people couldn’t see in from the outside, but light could still filter through.

Chunfeng’s husband was a second-grade Chinese teacher and a head teacher. Everyone called him Teacher Gao. He usually looked after more than eighty rowdy children, while Chunfeng helped steam rice for the kids at the school.

There were many village schools in Tonglin Town, but most parents in the villages still preferred to send their children to the central primary school. These children usually had to walk one or two hours along mountain paths to get there, so they naturally couldn’t go home for lunch. Parents would buy tin boxes and fill them with rice and potatoes. When the children arrived at school in the morning, the first thing they did was go to the tap to put water in their tin lunchboxes, then place the boxes in the iron crates designated for their respective classes.

Chunfeng’s daily work involved working alongside the mother of another teacher at the school. Every morning, they carried iron steamer cages to the steam room, lit the fire to cook the rice, and then hauled the steaming cages back out at noon.

When Chunfeng first started, she carried the cages one by one, but her colleague criticized her for being too slow. Possessing a competitive nature, she eventually began stacking two cages together to carry them at once.

The children’s meals came with no side dishes. They either ate plain white rice or, if their circumstances were slightly better, they would buy a few sheets of dried bean curd from the school canteen to mix with their rice.

Watching the children eat their rice mixed only with spicy bean curd, Chunfeng came up with an idea. She bought two large iron buckets and began selling soup at lunchtime.

The two iron buckets of soup were very heavy. At first, she had to slowly shuffle them out from the teachers’ dormitory, but gradually, she learned to carry one in each hand.

A scoop of soup cost ten cents. It contained some solid ingredients, such as eggs, shredded potatoes, or seaweed.

As soon as she launched it, the soup became an immediate hit with the children. Every day, she sold both large buckets until they were bone dry.

Her colleague, Mama Zhang, who was the mother of the third grade math teacher, Teacher Xiao, saw her making money from the soup and followed suit, starting her own soup business.

However, making soup wasn’t something just anyone could do well. The children always lined up at Chunfeng’s stall, and only after her soup was sold out would they reluctantly go to buy from Mama Zhang.

Every time Chunfeng saw this, she couldn’t understand how soup could be made to taste so bad. She once peeked at Mama Zhang’s soup. It was tomato and egg soup that day, but the tomatoes hadn’t been sautéed beforehand, so the resulting broth still had the raw, acidic smell of uncooked tomatoes.

This week, Chunfeng had been feeling unwell and hadn’t left her room much, so naturally, she hadn’t been selling soup. The children called out to her through her window.

“Teacher Chunfeng, Teacher Chunfeng, are you feeling any better?”

“Teacher Chunfeng, when are you coming out to sell soup again?”

“The soup Mama Zhang sells doesn’t taste good,” one child whispered.

Chunfeng hid in her room, not daring to go out. After the children left, she went to the window and saw them grudgingly buying Mama Zhang’s soup.

It was clear that Mama Zhang truly did not know how to cook.

Sigh.

She touched her belly, and her tears began to fall again.

The child in her womb was four months old. During her last trip home, besides bringing back some vegetables, she had gone to tell her family the good news.

She never expected… sigh.

Chunfeng stroked her belly. The child inside her was so pitiful.

Losing a mother at such a young age, the child would surely be told by others that their mother was a murderer. Although the father was a teacher and could live at the school, he wouldn’t have time to cook. He would surely only be able to steam rice, and the school only had Mama Zhang, who made terrible soup…

The more she thought about it, the more distressed she became. No, this wouldn’t do. She had to do something for her child.

So, she pushed open the door and walked out.

The school playground was nearly empty, as the children had all returned to their classrooms to eat.

Mama Zhang still had a bucket of soup left. She saw Chunfeng approaching.

The two of them usually didn’t get along. Seeing her come over, Mama Zhang assumed she was there to gloat. She was about to give her a piece of her mind, but as she opened her mouth, her eyes first caught sight of the bruises on the young woman’s neck that had not yet faded.

Mama Zhang’s fire died out instantly.

Chunfeng walked over, her voice still somewhat raspy. “Mama Zhang, I probably won’t be selling soup anymore.”

“For tomato and egg soup, you need to sauté the tomatoes until they turn into a pulp before adding the water. Don’t fry the eggs; just pour them directly into the boiling water.”

“For shredded potato soup, use cured lard to fry the potatoes until they’re cooked through before adding boiling water. The kids have to walk mountain paths every day and sweat a lot, and they eat it mixed with rice, so add a bit more salt so it actually has some flavor…”

Mama Zhang didn’t remember a single word of the instructions, because at that moment, her mind and eyes were fixed entirely on the marks on the young woman’s neck.

What was going on? It looked terrifying.

“Are you planning to…”

“I’m going back to my hometown to find my parents. When Teacher Gao finishes his classes later, he might come looking for me. If he asks you, just say I went to the factory to find my brother and sister-in-law.”

Hearing this, Mama Zhang immediately said, “Little sister, don’t you worry. I’ll definitely help you keep it a secret.”

Although Mama Zhang usually didn’t have the best relationship with Chunfeng, her sense of justice surged in an instant!

And so, Chunfeng set off alone toward her hometown.

She didn’t know what she should do. The last time she was at a loss, her mother had told her, “Don’t involve yourself in this matter. Forget about it.”

In reality, ever since she returned, Chunfeng had been thinking about it constantly.

Now, she had decided to take matters into her own hands.

When Chunfeng arrived, the village was incredibly lively, with everyone gathered at the grain-drying ground.

She didn’t go to watch the commotion. She returned to her own home, where two police officers stood at the door.

She wiped away her tears with a sense of tragic resolve, then walked step by step toward the two officers. “I’ve come to surrender. I accidentally killed Sun Er.”

Standing across from her were Tong Jin and Tang Chao.

Tong Jin: “…”

Tang Chao: “…”