Such a beautiful girl, who should have been living in her prime, is now dismembered into pieces, her body shattered in the box right in front of him.

Su Wan came over to take a look and immediately collapsed to the ground, saying to Li Zu, “This… this is Shen Qiong.”

Li Zu, who wasn’t as well-connected as Su Wan, felt that this woman looked very familiar but couldn’t recall where he had seen her before.

Su Wan said, “Didn’t Shen Qiong go to another city with her father? How did it end up like this?”

Li Zu then remembered that this girl should have been from the same school; he had seen her once or twice on the playground during morning exercises when they first enrolled. Later, he heard that she had immigrated with her father. It now seemed that the place they went to was not what they had imagined.

Why did he have such a faint impression of Shen Qiong? Of course, it was because the girl was beautiful, and on another note, Shen Qiong’s parents had worked at the same unit as his parents, so they must have had some interactions when they were young. Many small connections might fade away over time, but they would never completely sever, which made him feel a certain familiarity when looking at this girl compared to others.

“Is it really Shen Qiong?”

“I used to pursue her; I was crazy about her back then. How could I be mistaken?”

Li Zu frowned. Seeing her body in front of him was shocking and left him feeling at a loss. Gradually, his emotions shifted from shock and fear to calmness and then to anger.

He was always contemplating, and compared to Wu Xie, who would never let anger cloud his judgment, Li Zu’s temperament was much fiercer. He kicked the coffin hard, his inner fury intensifying. He felt these people were incredibly twisted; what kind of person could dismember such a beautiful girl he had grown up with and send her to him?

“Fuck her mother!” Li Zu yelled at the warehouse door, as if the mastermind was right outside.

He took a deep breath and started laying out the heads one by one on the warehouse floor, then began to rummage through other coffins, pulling out the body parts inside. He suddenly no longer cared about anything, no longer feared the blood that stained his clothes, nor did he fear the coldness; he just wanted to piece them all together.

Many things initially feel terrifying, but once you become numb to them, they seem inconsequential.

Su Wan and Yang Hao had not come to help; they clearly did not share Li Zu’s empathetic feelings, leaving him alone to piece things together.

Soon, Li Zu had assembled thirteen bodies on the ground. When he finished putting Shen Qiong’s body together, he took off his clothes and draped them over her body, kneeling in front of her and beginning to cry uncontrollably. It was not sadness; it was a breakdown.

He suddenly felt a moment of daze. He realized that the unique sense of exhilaration he had felt before, the feeling of being destined for accelerated growth, made him proud. He felt he finally had a reason to escape his current life, even to look down on others and become the true chosen one in his heart.

He realized he had watched too much television and read too many novels, forming a strange pathology.

When one is truly caught in a certain fate, it is impossible to let all emotions pass through them. What is called fate, what is called accelerated growth, what is called being plotted against—all the confusion and the accompanying pain are burdens that someone of this age cannot bear.

After Li Cu cried, he found Shen Qiong’s parents among the thirteen corpses and gathered them together. He said to Su Wan, “This time we’ve really gotten into big trouble.”

In other circumstances, if the bodies had no names, he could handle them in his own way. But now these bodies have identities. Should he call the police? Should he notify Shen Qiong’s other relatives?

Otherwise, what should he do? He can’t just keep hiding these bodies; the pressure in his heart is too great.

He calmly thought for a moment and remembered many things that the person named Xie Yuchen had told him. He said that the other party sent these things to him for a reason, and that purpose must be hidden within all the items. He had to ponder carefully.

He really couldn’t do it before, but now he felt he had no way out.

Li Cu examined the bodies, pressing on their abdomens and other parts to see if anything was hidden inside. He kept silently praying that there wouldn’t be anything inside; he really didn’t have the courage to dissect the corpses.

He was just a high school student and didn’t want to bear such a “chosen one” fate. Which chosen one, which man bound by fate, has a destiny of constantly receiving corpses and cutting them open to find things?

After the examination, there was nothing inside the corpses’ abdomens. However, Li Cu discovered something intriguing: each of the thirteen corpses had a palm-sized scar on them, made with a very small blade.

The scars had already scabbed over, and each scar seemed to be different. Because his own back had been cut in a way reminiscent of erotic art, Li Cu vaguely felt that these scars were somehow related to the scar on his own back.

He took photos of each scar with his phone, planning to go back and see if he could piece them together on a computer to see if any clues emerged.

There were also a few very young boys’ corpses, about the same age as Shen Qiong, lives that had fallen in their prime. He arranged the bodies and noticed that Su Wan and Yang Hao had retreated to the doorway at some point, almost ready to escape.

Li Cu thought to himself, forget it, feeling cold all over. He walked up to them and said, “If you don’t want to stay here, that’s fine. We need an ice machine. Do you know where we can buy one?”

After a moment of hesitation, Yang Hao said, “I know there’s a square that sells refrigeration equipment.”

Li Cu replied, “Then you need to go buy three or four machines for me right away. It’s going to get dark soon, and if we wait too long, we won’t be able to buy any. You need to hurry, but you must come back.”

Yang Hao asked, “Can I think about it first?”

Li Cu said, “Bro, I don’t want to do this either. I’m a victim too. The most important thing in this world is loyalty. Don’t be so ungrateful, okay?”

Yang Hao could only smile wryly and said, “Money.”

Li Cu gave the money to Yang Hao, who then ran off like a rabbit. Su Wan looked at Yang Hao with envy and said to Li Cu, “What can I help you buy?”

Li Cu said, “I’ve already taken care of all the bodies myself. I’ve finished dismantling them. Now, can you open all the remaining boxes for me? I’m really tired and need to rest for a while.”

Su Wan looked at the boxes, sighed deeply, and shook his head, saying, “How about this: I’ll give you a back rub. You go wash up and change your clothes first, and then I’ll give you a proper massage. After that, you can continue working.”

Li Cu was indeed too exhausted to move. In the corner of the warehouse, there was a reclining chair left over from when the warehouse manager used it. He lay down on the chair, closed his eyes, and asked Su Wan to buy some dinner before starting to rest there.