It’s Him – Ch14

Elimination Method

Li Hao was the student from back then. Teacher Sun had been deeply affected by these two words for a long time, and whenever she saw them, she experienced a feeling of dizziness and heart palpitations. She avoided any situation where these words could appear.

And now, someone was asking her whether this matter had anything to do with Teacher Zhao.

Back then, she had suspected that Teacher Zhao played a role in the development of the situation, manipulating her when she was young. These unpleasant and concealed thoughts, she had never shared with anyone.

Teacher Sun didn’t have the courage to reply to that message. She didn’t even dare to ask who the other person was.

Fortunately, the other person did not continue to inquire.

She didn’t want to be dragged back into that past event. If it were brought up again, it would mean reopening old wounds, repeatedly proving whether she had indeed forced her student to death. She instinctively feared that experience. She had already borne it once, and she didn’t want to go through it again.

Li Xun did not have an omniscient perspective; she did not realize how complicated things were behind the scenes, nor did she understand the psychological trauma a teacher could suffer after such a severe incident.

This was also related to the information she had gathered.

At the time, the school had settled the matter privately with the parents in order to protect its reputation, downplaying the seriousness of the incident. Therefore, the materials from that time did not mention that the student had left a suicide note, and naturally, it didn’t mention the content of the note either.

The information Li Xun saw only said that the high school’s academic pressure was too much for the student to bear, leading them to choose such an extreme method, and it merely denied the existence of school violence.

By general logic, the fact that something was denied could imply it had indeed occurred, so Li Xun only thought that it was probably referring to school violence.

Li Xun had not received a reply, so she thought she had guessed wrong.

She had to rethink the entire situation.

The class had been a bit crazy these past few days. The school’s boarding students had Saturday afternoons off, but still had to attend classes on Sunday.

Everyone still worried about the homeroom teacher, after all, it had been several days, but that didn’t stop anyone from watching a movie during class meetings.

They were high school students, after all. Everyone was watching a horror movie together in class.

A recently released horror film, a domestic campus horror movie, with a large group of people as the main characters. But there was no need to remember their names, because they would all die soon.

The plot was full of surprises, but it must be admitted that it was perfect for watching with a large group of people.

On the big screen, people died very quickly.

Killing people was as easy as cutting radishes, and the classmates were both scared and excited.

Li Xun’s classmates were practically hiding in her arms, yet they still watched.

Killing people wasn’t that easy; it was only as simple as cutting radishes on TV.

Li Xun wasn’t in the mood to watch the movie. She was thinking about how to deal with the problem over the next few days.

If no solid evidence could be found, there were three possibilities:

Either her mother had lost control of her emotions and, like cutting radishes, killed someone.

Or Teacher Zhao had given in and revealed solid evidence, leading to the release of the person.

Or the police would find them.

Teacher Zhao was waiting for the third possibility, while she herself was hoping for the second.

In the afternoon, when she returned home, there was an additional Aunt Zhang in the house.

Aunt Zhang was talking to her mother, and when she saw Li Xun enter, she immediately stopped talking.

Both of their eyes were a little swollen, clearly from crying.

Li Xun’s heart sank, and her temples began to throb.

Aunt Zhang greeted her, “Xun Xun is back.”

“Hello, Aunt Zhang.”

She said nonchalantly, “Mom, I’m going to put something in the basement.”

“What are you putting? I’ll help you take it down.” Li Yugui immediately responded.

Li Xun’s gaze was fixed on Aunt Zhang’s face, and sure enough, she looked just as nervous.

She didn’t think that the other person had discovered her mother’s secret, cried with her, and helped her hide it.

So, these two were in it together.

Wait…

Li Xun had previously not had time to care about how her mother had brought the person back, as long as the police hadn’t found out.

But now that there was an accomplice, things had become much more complicated. Even if she didn’t study law, she knew that a solo crime and a joint crime were fundamentally different.

Many thoughts flashed through her mind. Her mother was still watching her, still waiting for her to say what to put in the basement. She could only say, “I was going to put the old books down, but then I thought I might need them for review later, so I’ll leave them upstairs.”

“Then go back to your room to study. Dinner will be ready soon, and your mom and Aunt Zhang have some things to talk about.”

Li Xun went back to her room. She wasn’t in the mood to study; she quickly searched for the victim’s family information to see if any of them matched Aunt Zhang.

The time was too long, and the victim information wasn’t complete. It didn’t even provide the full names of the family members. After all, it was from a news media source, and they usually focused on the most attention-grabbing details.

For example, the first victim’s grandfather committed suicide, the mother was a musician, and the family was wealthy.

Li Xun spent a long time searching through the victim’s family information before she found a Zhang, the mother of the first victim.

There were very few photos because the victim’s family focus had actually been on the grandfather.

But Li Xun still found related reports on an old newspaper website.

There was a photo of a young woman, beautiful and elegant.

No matter how she looked at it, this woman didn’t resemble Aunt Zhang at all. Aunt Zhang would drag the trash bin to the river to wash it, sometimes being lazy and not returning it the same night. Instead, she would take it back to her house and return it to the school early the next morning.

Li Xun suddenly realized how they had managed to move the person out unnoticed.

Pingcheng High School had cameras everywhere, but some places were exceptions.

Only insiders would know this.

The garbage collection at Pingcheng High School was entrusted to the relatives of the school’s leaders. Despite the humble-sounding job of garbage collection, the school was large, and the recyclable waste generated by students was substantial, along with the waste from graduates’ books and boarding students’ belongings that they couldn’t take with them.

The person in charge of this area could make quite a bit of money.

But for people, money was never enough.

They developed another route for making money—

Pingcheng High School had very strict rules. No mobile phones were allowed, and no electrical appliances were allowed in the dormitories. If any were found, they would be confiscated.

Hairdryers, water heaters, and other common electrical appliances were found in almost every dormitory.

Every time there was a dormitory inspection, a large amount would be confiscated.

The people in charge of garbage collection had been eyeing this for a long time. Some of them would use the school’s big garbage bins to transport things.

But if they did this too openly one day, they would be noticed, so they changed their routine. Instead of washing the trash bins in the morning, they started doing it at night and insisted on washing them outside the school, in the lake.

This way, when they pushed the large trash bins out, it wouldn’t be so obvious.

So, the plan was put into effect, and the cleaners, after finishing their work every day, had to push a garbage bin out. Some, for convenience, would even push the bin to their own home to wash it and return it the next morning.

Li Xun was getting more and more anxious.

This was really dangerous.

If her mother had acted alone and managed to move the teacher out without anyone noticing, it would be difficult for the police to trace it back to her.

Her mother had no substantial connection to the school, and since her mother wasn’t registered under the name Li Yugui, it would be hard to trace her unless they were specifically looking for her. It would be difficult for them to know that her mother was a family member of the victim.

But now, they had used the garbage bin to transport the person. Once someone realized that garbage bins could carry people, they would immediately pinpoint Aunt Zhang. Once Aunt Zhang was locked down, her mother, sitting next to her, would also be exposed to the police.

She had to find a way to fix this.

Li Xun was right.

Zhao Jingzheng had already realized this.

Zhao Jingzheng had originally been searching for clues online, and he saw many people speculating that his father was the killer from back then. The reason was: “Everyone noticed that the incident happened on a weekday, but didn’t pay attention to the fact that it also happened during the winter and summer breaks. Everyone had guessed that it might have been a homeless person, and clearly, the teacher fits this description.”

People who knew his father were explaining online that his father was really a good person.

But the more they explained, the more the netizens believed that his father was the murderer. Their reasoning was: “The kind of person who seems good on the outside is exactly the kind who could commit such a crime. If he were a hulking brute, the victim would have run away the moment he came near. There would have been no chance to commit the crime.”

It was absurd. These netizens were absurd.

He wanted to tell his friends about his frustration, but his college friends were all traveling.

He looked at the posts from their trips and felt more and more lost. They were once good brothers, but now that something had happened, no one even bothered to ask how he was doing.

He decided not to sleep and went over all the clues again.

He didn’t find anything.

So, he went back and watched the surveillance footage from the night his father disappeared again.

He had watched it many times before but had never noticed anything wrong.

His father usually came home around 9 p.m. They lived in a teachers’ dormitory next to the school, just 100 meters past the school’s main gate.

He began to focus on the surveillance footage after 8 p.m.

The school’s classrooms and corridors also had surveillance cameras, but since the school was an educational institution and not a prison, the maintenance of the cameras wasn’t thorough. Many of the cameras didn’t work properly, so they didn’t provide much useful information.

He had a copy of the school’s surveillance footage and also a copy of footage from a small shop outside the school.

At 8 p.m., teachers and students gradually started to come out, and Zhao Jingzheng paused the footage every time someone came out.

By 9 p.m., there were the most people, as the day students were heading home.

By 10 p.m., the school gate was nearly empty, and the cleaning staff were finishing their work.

One of the cleaners was pushing a garbage bin out, and when going up a slope, it seemed to be very heavy.

The garbage bin had wheels, and the cleaner wasn’t weak, so there had to be something inside the bin that was making it so difficult to push.

Zhao Jingzheng stared at the large garbage bin, which was about 1.5 meters tall, and his heart skipped a beat.

This!

How come he and Li Xun hadn’t noticed this earlier?

Eliminating all other possibilities, could it be that his father had been stuffed into the bin and then carried out?

The more he looked at it, the more it seemed like the truth, especially seeing how hard the cleaner was struggling to push it.