Eyes that are the same as those of evil

Chapter 138 Fourteen Years of Pursuit 4
A knife-selling man?
Tan Jia opened his eyes wide and asked Tan Ming, "What do you mean?"

She doesn't know much about this.

Tan Ming whispered from the side, "They are a group of people who go from village to village selling things, but they sell knives like kitchen knives, sickles, and scissors. They don't charge money at the time, they only give you credit. When they give you credit, they will tell you some prophetic things. They will only appear when these prophecies come true and charge a higher price for the knife. This is called 'divination sale'."

“In the 1990s and early 2000s, there were many people who sold knives on credit, and quite a few of them used this name to scam people.”

"There are such people?" Tan Jia was very surprised. "Is the prophecy true?"

"I don't know. Many people say that the predictions are very accurate, but the accurate predictions are basically related to agriculture and the economy. Anyone who has traveled around and seen a lot can guess these things."

"So the more reliable explanation is that the knife sellers were just a special group of merchants, and fortune-telling was just an alternative sales method. Their purpose was simply to increase the price of the goods, because when the prophecy came true, the money they charged for the knife would be many times higher than the market price. Most buyers believed in the knife sellers' ability and dared not not pay, and some would even give them extra money."

She understood: "So even if some people don't believe in this, they don't lose out if they get a knife for free, because the profit margin on a single knife is high enough."

“But,” she changed the subject, speaking of the murderer from fourteen years ago, “this person probably wasn’t really a knife peddler, was he? He traveled all over the country looking for wealthy people to swindle and rob, and in the end, he killed someone, got scared, sold all the knives, and went into hiding.”

Tan Ming nodded: "Very likely. Starting in the 1990s, there were a number of swindlers who impersonated knife sellers and cheated people out of a lot of money."

The murderer is most likely one of the con artists who wandered from this remote town to other counties, working as a charlatan knife seller by day and a masked robber by night.

So the local police station couldn't find this person no matter how hard they searched.

After they finished their hushed conversation, the scrap yard owner continued to talk at length about all the customs and taboos.

"He was selling knives back then, and I bought them for a higher price. Those were knives with prophetic meanings!"

Zheng Yan interrupted him: "So you still sold the knife in the end?"

"Well, that's another way of selling knives on credit. I've had those few leftover knives sitting there for years, not planning to sell them. A young man passed by and insisted on buying them, saying he made props for movies and TV shows and was drawn to the feel of these knives. When I sold them to him, I even made a prophecy, saying his business would be booming a year from now. But I took the money first. He was obviously just there for fun. If he ran off, where would I find him? It's better to take the money first. Be flexible, be flexible, right?"

"..." What's with all this talk about selling knives on credit? It's just that the person offered more money than he could sell scrap metal, so he happily sold them.

Wu Yang asked impatiently, "Do you remember what that knife-selling man looked like? Was he from around here?"

“The person shouldn’t be from around here. I’ve lived here for decades and I don’t recognize him. His appearance… let me think… it was so many years ago, I need to think carefully.”

The owner of the scrap yard was tidying up while talking. The yard was piled high with cardboard boxes and old appliances, and you had to walk along a "forest path" to get anything.

Tan Jia didn't have much hope for his memory and showed him the portrait drawn by Lin Zhiyue.

Before I could even ask, he exclaimed, "Oh dear!"

"It looks a bit like the person in this painting, all skinny, with a head as thin as Ultraman Tiga. Oh yes, I remember now! That person's head shape is a bit off, like it's been pinched. I didn't dare look at it too much at the time, afraid that someone would give me a bad omen."

Tan Jia immediately pulled Lin Zhiyue over and asked him to revise the portrait.

Then I asked the shop owner, "What specific shape is it that's been clipped? Is it like a slope on both sides with an arch in the middle? Is there any hair on the sides?"

The boss gestured, but the portrait artist in the middle seemed a little distracted.

Lin Zhiyue looked down at the hand holding his wrist, which had a mole on it, like a faint dot of ink from a ballpoint pen... "Draw." The hand squeezed his wrist for a moment, then casually withdrew.

He gripped his pen again, lowered his gaze, and began revising the portrait. Strands of hair obscured half of his eyebrows and eyes, making his expression unreadable, but his lips were pressed tightly together.

Zheng Yan stood to his side and slightly behind, and spotted him with a sharp look as his hand hung down, clenched uncomfortably, and the back of his neck turned red.

Just couldn't see it.

Zheng Yan turned his gaze to the scrap yard owner and asked another question: "He's not from around here, so has he ever done any knife-selling business on credit? Have you heard of any knife sellers operating around here?"

“Yes,” the shop owner said, quickly unpacking a cardboard box. “But I don’t know if it’s that person, and it was all a few years ago. There’s a cake decorating shop in Shangpogou. The owner, Sister Qin, used to tell people every day that she had asked a knife seller for a knife back then, and the seller said that a college student would come out of her family. A few years later, a college student did come out, and she was so happy that she set off firecrackers and went around asking people where the knife seller was so she could pay for the knife and fulfill her vow.”

"Is the time between when you bought the knife on credit from the cake decorating shop and when that person sold you the knife close to the time before they sold it to you?"

"It should be nearby, but I'm not sure. You'll have to ask Sister Qin; she really believes in this."

"Okay, thanks boss."

Before they arrived, they had expected not to find many clues, so they weren't disappointed that they didn't get any more information from the scrap yard owner.

At least the profile of the murderer has been further refined.

"Should we go find the owner of the cake decorating shop next?" Tan Jia habitually pinched the dough sculpting knife. The shape of the knife was already there. He just needed to refine it a bit more, then add some color to represent rust and bloodstains, and it would be finished.

Zheng Yan thought for a moment, shook his head, and then asked the scrap yard owner another question.

"The year that man came to sell knives, were there any robberies or thefts in your area?"

The boss couldn't remember, but the boss's wife, who was keeping track of the accounts on the other side, suddenly said, "There really is one."

Everybody looked over there.

"You still remember things clearly after all these years?" the boss asked in surprise.

The proprietress said, "Because I gave birth to my second child that year, you idiot. He was born at the beginning of the year, and I even hosted a dinner party for his one-month celebration. Not long after, you started complaining that a man came to sell knives, like he was selling them wholesale. He didn't look like a good person, and I thought he was going to stab me with a knife, so I gave him a higher price."

Tan Jia and the others glanced around and saw the boss's embarrassed expression.

It seems that half of what you just said was just empty talk.

The proprietress ignored him and continued to reminisce: "Before that, before I gave birth, I heard that Sister Lan, who runs a supermarket, had been robbed, and that... Sister Qin, who runs a cake decorating shop, had also been robbed. She cursed in front of her shop for two hours. At that time, the police station came to our place to ask, but you weren't there. I went out with my pregnant belly and was questioned. I almost slipped on a piece of cardboard and was so scared that I thought I was going to have a premature birth."

Things from a long time ago are hard to remember clearly, but things related to one's own children are often memorable.

Tan Jia boldly speculated: "If the time when the person who bought the knife on credit was also in that year, the person should have been observing and scouting the place when they went to the store to buy the knife on credit during the day, and then came to the store at night or a day or two later to commit the theft. This behavior pattern is very similar to what the murderer did in Sister Wu Yang's hometown."

This person should be the murderer they are looking for from fourteen years ago.

(End of this chapter)