Who Stole My Pressure Cooker (9)

Chapter 29

Yun Song and her team could only make a preliminary determination of justifiable defense. The case would next be handed over to the Procuratorate¹. The Procuratorate might directly rule it as justifiable defense and decline to prosecute, or they might file charges, leading the case into the court phase.

But that was only one aspect; Yun Song was worried about something else.

The Sun family had lost a son. They wouldn’t care whether Sun Er had intended to kill Chunfeng or not; they wouldn’t let the matter rest easily.

The Sun family wanted an explanation, and the explanation they sought was certainly not a ruling of justifiable defense or a result where Chunfeng’s family remained unharmed.

Mother Sun had been keeping watch outside all day. Several rounds of investigators had tried to persuade her to leave, but she refused to budge.

Yun Song decided to talk to her again.

The moment Mother Sun saw Yun Song, her first words were, “I already know! Changgui and the others did it! I heard Changgui admit it! Officer, you’re going to arrest them and have them executed, right?”

The hatred in her heart needed a resolution to find release.

Yun Song patiently explained the sequence of events to her.

“He tried to kill Chunfeng. If Chunfeng hadn’t fought back, she would definitely be dead. Chunfeng only struck him once; she didn’t intend to kill him,” Tong Jin added from the side.

These words were entirely incapable of providing comfort.

Upon hearing this, Mother Sun grew frantic and said, “Impossible, Officer. My son had a habit of petty theft, I admit that, but he would never dare to kill anyone. I’m his mother, I know him. He would never kill anyone! Chunfeng must be talking nonsense.”

“The existing evidence points to this.”

“Chunfeng is definitely lying. Officer, you don’t know, my son liked Chunfeng very much. How could he possibly want to kill her?”

“That doesn’t seem right. Chunfeng said they never even spoke.” Tang Chao still remembered Chunfeng’s words; Chunfeng herself couldn’t understand why Sun Er had suddenly gone mad.

“They didn’t speak much,” Mother Sun said urgently. On one hand, she wanted to prove Sun Er liked Chunfeng, and on the other, she wanted to prove her second son had changed for the better. “But he even fixed his habit of stealing for Chunfeng’s sake and went to work in Xiangjin Town. He really changed.”

As Yun Song listened to this, a faint feeling stirred in her heart. Something had always felt missing, but now the pieces finally clicked together.

“So that’s why he wanted to give Chunfeng five hundred yuan? That five hundred yuan wasn’t to buy the field?” When Chunfeng had mentioned this earlier, she kept saying she didn’t understand why Sun Er had suddenly flown into a rage.

Yun Song had also felt something was off. Simply being rejected when trying to trade five hundred yuan for a field shouldn’t have driven a man like Sun Er to murder.

If that was the case, the core of the matter was no longer about buying and selling land. In Sun Er’s eyes, what Chunfeng had rejected was him as a person. Furthermore, he had been rejected even while offering five hundred yuan. Since there was certainly nothing wrong with the money, then the problem, in his mind, had to be himself.

In this light, his madness became logical.

“What field? Chunfeng is talking nonsense! That money was what my son earned through hard work to give to her. How could he possibly want to kill her when he felt that way!”

Yun Song looked at her and asked, “Has he never behaved like this before? Suddenly exploding with rage whenever things didn’t go his way?”

“No! Absolutely not! Officer, I swear, he just had a bit of a habit of petty theft!”

Yun Song felt a wave of helplessness. She didn’t exactly know Sun Er, but she understood the laws of how things developed. A person’s behavior doesn’t just suddenly become abnormal; there is always a process behind it.

The problem was that this matter couldn’t be explained away.

Under these circumstances, what would happen to Changgui, her husband, and Chunfeng?

Changgui was also wondering what they should do.

Liao Shanchun soon arrived at Changgui’s house. She came to invite the couple to her home.

“Come over and sit for a while. I have something to tell you.”

The couple went with her.

“It just so happens I have eggs and brown sugar at home. I’ll boil some brown sugar eggs for you.” Liao Shanchun already knew the couple hadn’t murdered anyone, so she was naturally no longer afraid.

Liao Shanchun had been present when Chunfeng came forward to turn herself in, so she had naturally heard those words.

In her heart, she now understood the couple.

Although dragging a corpse out to bury it in the middle of the night was terrifying, if one thought about it carefully, there had been no other choice.

On one hand, you couldn’t drag a body around in broad daylight; that would be too horrifying. So it had to be at night. You couldn’t blame the couple for that.

On the other hand, they couldn’t just leave the body. It would have started to smell in the house. The person still needed to be laid to rest in the ground.

Overall, Liao Shanchun was very understanding toward Changgui and her husband. She even felt she might have done the same thing.

“Don’t you worry. I just heard those two officers say you might not be locked up. They said Sun Er tried to kill Sister Chunfeng, and she had no other choice.”

Thinking about it seriously, if she hadn’t struck Sun Er dead, he would have killed her. She really only had the option of striking him.

Liao Shanchun wanted to comfort the couple, and what she said came from the heart.

“Sigh, no matter who this happened to, there would have been no other way.”

Previously, Liao Shanchun had projected all her malicious suspicions onto Changgui and her husband. Now that the truth had come out, she felt an inexplicable sense of guilt.

Especially when she recalled that night; Changgui and her husband had gone out to bury a corpse, yet they still helped her dig for eels upon their return and warned her not to go out at night for fear of danger. What good people they were!

She hadn’t understood before why her mother-in-law always said Changgui’s family were good people, but now she finally did.

Looking back, the “danger” mentioned at that time must have referred to encountering someone like Sun Er. Thus, she redirected all her malicious suspicions onto someone else.

“Since he wanted to kill Chunfeng, who’s to say he wouldn’t have tried to kill someone else next time? Looking at it that way, Chunfeng actually did a good deed.”

Changgui found it hard to respond.

Liao Shanchun continued, “To be honest, you two shouldn’t feel bad for his family. My old village had people like that too. There were two brothers who were petty thieves since they were kids. Later, the two of them went to Xiangjin Town to steal wires and got electrocuted to death.”

“With Sun Er’s habits, if he hadn’t died this time, he surely would have died before long anyway.”

“Don’t let anyone hear you say that. Their family is going through a hard time right now,” Changgui cautioned, her emotions deeply conflicted.

She hadn’t told anyone about the specifics of the death. That day, when she and her husband returned from the mountains and saw their daughter’s basket under the eaves, they knew she was back.

The couple had only two children, and neither usually stayed in their hometown. Every time the children returned, they were overjoyed.

That day, she opened the door as usual, only to see a massive pool of blood.

Changgui’s vision went black and her legs gave way. Chunfeng!

Chunfeng emerged from the side, her hands covered in blood.

“Where… where are you bleeding?” How could there be so much blood, heavens!

Chunfeng didn’t point to herself. Instead, she pointed toward the inner room.

The couple went inside to look. The source of the blood was Sun Er’s head.

In that moment, Changgui actually felt a sense of relief. It was something she could never say out loud, but she felt it in her heart.

From that moment on, she was already thinking about what to do.

Changgui wasn’t well-educated. For years, the messaging in Tonglin Town had always leaned toward “a life for a life.”

The scenario where someone tries to kill you and you accidentally kill them instead was a legal gray area in Tonglin Town.

Changgui’s initial thought was that they would have to pay for the Sun family’s loss with their own lives.

Now, that path was no longer inevitable. She had been worried her daughter would be taken to the city and executed by firing squad, but now, hearing Liao Shanchun speak, it seemed she might not even be locked up.

After all, Sun Er had tried to kill her daughter. If her daughter hadn’t fought back, she would be dead. Changgui began to form a favorable impression of the city.

For days, she had been harboring a sense of grievance that she couldn’t vent. It was clearly Sun Er’s fault, yet why was her family the one suffering in the end?

Now that she heard such things might not lead to a firing squad or prison in the city, she naturally felt better about the city’s ways.

But the village was different.

The Sun family had lost a son; they would never let it go.

Her own household, her son’s family, her daughter’s family – the Suns would never leave them in peace.

Changgui didn’t eat the brown sugar eggs. She quickly left Liao Shanchun’s house.

She wanted to go to the Sun family to reason with them.

But when she actually reached the Sun house and saw Sun Er’s mother with eyes swollen from crying, Changgui decided against it.

In any case, her daughter was the one who survived. That was enough.

Yet she knew clearly that in the eyes of the villagers, her daughter was already a murderer.

Even if they said Sun Er started it, others would say, “Even so, you shouldn’t have killed him…”

Changgui looked at her fields. There were haystacks left over from the harvested rice, and potatoes were still growing in their plot.

In the past, all of this brought her peace of mind, but now, she felt a sense of unease.

Perhaps this place was no longer suitable for her daughter to live, nor for them.

She had originally intended to argue her case with the Sun family, but now she didn’t even want to go. There was no reasoning with them.

While Yun Song was still wondering what Changgui’s family would do, Changgui approached her.

“Can we go to the town with you?”

A farmer who had spent her whole life working the soil, someone who felt her fields were her very life, had made a decision.

She was pulling her legs out of the soil that had nurtured her. Since this place was no longer right for them, they would find somewhere that was. People had to survive; they had to live well.

She would no longer live in this village.

“I’ve thought about it. This has already happened. No matter what, the Sun family lost a son. It’s no use for me to keep saying it was Sun Er’s fault; they’ll never get over it. If we stay here every day, both families will be miserable. I want to go to the town first and see if I can find work. Once I have some experience, I’ll find a way to go to the city. After what happened, Chunfeng can’t stay in the town forever either…”

As she spoke, she was still very anxious, watching the police officer’s eyes to judge if her decision was feasible.

“Alright, you go to the town first,” Yun Song said.

Yun Song looked at the woman before her. This usually silent woman made Yun Song suddenly realize that while she had been worrying, they were also working hard to find a way to survive.

Translator’s Notes