Ming Qingfu’s Daughter

Chapter 49

Yun Song was not certain if these Egg-selling Women were the same ones Ming Qingfu had mentioned, nor did she know if they knew each other.

Over the past few days, everyone’s focus remained on screening the city. However, Yun Song still felt that Ming Qingfu’s past identity was vital, perhaps even the breakthrough point for the case.

The lead regarding the Egg-selling Women was a minor one, and there was a chance it would lead to a dead end.

Still, Yun Song did not give up. Sometimes, a criminal investigation followed the logic of “100 minus 1 equals 0¹.” This meant that if one out of a hundred leads, no matter how large or small, was overlooked, and that lead happened to be the crucial one, the progress of the entire case would be zero.

Unable to sleep that night, Yun Song simply drove to Guangcheng herself.

The Egg-selling Woman from back then was now running a supermarket. Having reached middle age, she had filled out considerably, and the anxious look caused by poverty seen in the old magazine photos had vanished from her face.

Yun Song stated her identity and confirmed the woman’s.

“I am Zhang Chunyan. Officer, what can I do for you?” As a business owner, Chunyan’s reflex upon seeing the police was to mentally scan the supermarket’s affairs over the last two days for any trouble.

Yun Song had a video of Ming Qingfu saved on her phone. “I need your help with a case. Take a look at this person. Did she sell eggs with you twenty odd years ago?”

Selling eggs twenty odd years ago? Chunyan thought to herself, so many people were selling eggs together back then, who could possibly remember?

That was her internal thought, but on the surface, she naturally looked at the screen intently.

The video showed a somewhat plump middle-aged woman being interviewed. She looked like a complete stranger.

At first, Chunyan did not recognize her. But when the woman spoke, the temperament she exuded and the way she looked at the camera when she talked made her look more and more familiar. This was especially true when she spoke about her experiences selling eggs.

“This is Sister Qing.”

“You recognize her?”

“It’s definitely her.” Although she had gained a lot of weight and her long face had become round, the way she looked when she spoke and that certain spark were things Chunyan found hard to forget.

“What is her full name? Where is she from? How much do you remember about her?”

“I don’t remember her full name. She rarely said it herself,” Chunyan said. “We usually just called her Sister Qing. She was a local.”

Not from a southwestern city?

“Did she have a southwestern accent?”

“I couldn’t tell,” Chunyan replied. “Come to think of it, back then many outsiders wanted to order eggs and live chickens. They couldn’t speak the local dialect, so Sister Qing was the one who spoke with them. I didn’t know how to speak Mandarin at the time, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying.”

For Chunyan, those were days worth remembering. Back then, they were so poor they could barely put food on the table; life was nearly crushing them. Sister Qing had led them to collect eggs. The roads were difficult and everything was frightening, yet every day was full of hope. Back then, they would calculate in their hearts every day how many people had pre-ordered eggs. They woke up thinking about the people in the mountains who looked forward to their visits. Every time they went, the mountain folk would pour tea and water for them.

Now she had her own small supermarket and her life was much better than it was then, but she still couldn’t forget that time.

“How much more do you remember about her affairs?”

Chunyan snapped out of her memories and said, “Her husband seemed to run a recycling station back then. Something happened and the police came looking for them. Sister Qing left after that.”

A case related to a recycling station?

Yun Song asked for the approximate year and went to search the archives again.

She soon found a case involving two people in the records from that period.

Useful information quickly caught her eye.

“Li Qingqing, native of Xinghua Village, San Gongli Town, Guangcheng. Wu Jie, native of Xinghua Village, San Gongli Town, Guangcheng.”

Upon seeing this location and these names, the image of a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl suddenly appeared in Yun Song’s mind. That was the Li Qingqing she knew – a girl who was somewhat timid and shy, always keeping her head down when she spoke.

Yun Song did not recognize Ming Qingfu, which was natural. This was because Ming Qingfu’s face and the sound of her voice were almost entirely shaped by the marks her later life had carved into her. That was a life trajectory unfamiliar to Yun Song.

Li Qingqing was Ming Qingfu?

Just as Yun Song was about to inform the investigation team of this discovery, she unexpectedly received a phone call.

“Someone called it in! The victim’s missing medical student daughter has been found!”

Ming Qingfu’s daughter was carrying a large backpack; she had emerged from the mountains.

She seemed to have been wandering in the mountains for several days. Her lips were cracked and bleeding, and she looked extremely haggard, though she had no other physical injuries.

By the time the police arrived, she had been taken to a nearby hospital by the person who reported it and was currently eating ravenously.

The person who reported it claimed that their family of several people had been planning a picnic in the outskirts that morning. When they passed a forest, the girl suddenly lunged out from the roadside and collapsed.

They were startled when they got out of the car to check. The woman saw them and kept saying in a raspy voice to save her, that she was starving to death.

The poor girl fainted right after saying that.

Consequently, the family skipped their spring outing, called the police, and rushed her to the hospital.

Yun Song asked for the hospital’s location and hurried there herself.

By the time she arrived, the girl had finished eating.

Ming Qingfu’s daughter was named Ming Donglai, a student at a medical university.

After Yun Song arrived, she did not ask the girl to recount her ordeal immediately because a local officer had already taken a statement.

“Your throat is uncomfortable, so rest first. I’ll just look at the statement they took.”

“If there’s anything you didn’t mention just now, tell me then.”

This was generally how Yun Song treated victims, trying her best not to make them relive the trauma multiple times.

Furthermore, giving the victim time to think again helped them recall more details.

On the statement, the girl had written clearly that she had an argument with her mother, so she packed a large bag and ran away from home, only to end up getting lost in the mountains.

Yun Song: “…”

The girl even asked her, “Where’s my mom? Have you notified her? I can’t get through to her on the phone.”

Yun Song observed her expression. Having already discerned the girl’s objective, she said, “Your mother is missing. The police are still investigating.”

The girl was still too young, completely lacking the ability to hide her emotions. Yun Song saw a look of confusion cross her face.

“How can that be?” She seemed somewhat anxious. “But I… I just heard that something happened to my mother.”

“Correct, she is missing.”

Ming Donglai grew frantic. “I heard others say that you found my mother’s… body…”

Yun Song sat down beside her. She looked at the young woman and said, “That was an error made earlier. We have verified the facts, and that was not your mother.”

“Then why did such a mistake happen in the first place?”

“The victim had swallowed fragments of your mother’s ID card, and her DNA matched what was found in your home. However, neither of those are conclusive evidence.”

Ming Donglai was becoming desperate. “Then on what grounds can you say it wasn’t my mother?”

At this point, Yun Song was absolutely certain that the girl knew the body wasn’t Ming Qingfu.

“We discovered another case. An elderly couple in that case had a missing middle-aged daughter. After a comparison-“

Before Yun Song could finish, Ming Donglai interrupted, “You found my grandmother and grandfather? My mother was abandoned when she was a child.”

Yun Song understood everything now. This girl was determined to claim that the corpse was her mother.

If they hadn’t already discovered the victim wasn’t Ming Qingfu, the daughter’s appearance now might have actually allowed her to get her wish.

Yun Song sensed the girl’s anxiety, as if something were chasing her. She stopped the interrogation and, after stepping out, assigned two people to keep a close watch on Ming Donglai.

She was hiding a secret.

On the way back to the station, the image of the young girl from the mountain village years ago, Li Qingqing, lingered in Yun Song’s mind.

She remembered her as a very hardworking girl. Yun Song had been genuinely happy when she eventually escaped that environment, but what had happened to her since then?

Where did she go?

What was her relationship with the family of three from the scrap recycling station? Why was she giving them money?

After that family of three died, why was the middle-aged daughter disguised as Ming Qingfu?

And why was her own daughter trying to identify the body as Ming Qingfu?

“Could it be that Ming Qingfu was swindled by that family of three? In a fit of rage, she killed all three of them, and only after calming down did she realize she’d made a terrible mistake. So, she disguised one of the victims as herself to make everyone think she was dead too,” Yun Song’s apprentice suggested from beside her.

Their colleagues reviewing the surveillance footage were certain that no outsiders had entered Ming Qingfu’s home. Therefore, the DNA traces found in the house must have been planted by either her or her daughter.

“It doesn’t add up. Ming Qingfu gave them a hundred thousand a year. Over six years, that’s only six hundred thousand. For her, that amount of money certainly wouldn’t drive her to commit murder.”

There was definitely something else going on.

Translator’s Notes