Winter Returns

Chapter 8 Something terrible has happened! (Please continue reading)
Generally speaking, the fishing ban period is usually concentrated in the spring and summer of each year, which is the season when fish breed and spawn.

Keyanlong Island has a special fish species, scientifically known as "snakehead fish," but they usually call it "flower dog." It has a bluish-green skin, tender flesh, and very few bones, and is used to make fish fillets and fish steaks. I heard that there is also a subspecies suitable for ornamental fish. This fish only appears in the surrounding lakes and spawns in winter. In order to protect it, the fishing ban period on the island is in winter.

This thing is very fierce. It's longer than a regular snakehead fish. It looks dull most of the time, but it will suddenly bite you. If I remember correctly, the small wound on Zhang Shutong's hand was from when it bit him while he was removing the fishhook.

There are also several protected animals on the island, such as a bird called the yellow ibis. The city museum has a specimen of it, which is now endangered. In earlier years, it was said that foxes, bears, wild boars and other animals could be seen on the mountain.

But since it was "supposedly" true, none of the children had ever seen it.

Their interest lies entirely in fish.

But they really just enjoyed fishing. Although the island was remote, their generation lived a pretty good standard of living. It wasn't as extravagant as Gu Qiumian's family, but they had no worries about food and clothing.

Not being poor or greedy, the two biggest obstacles were gone. So after catching a fish, I neither sold nor ate it. At most, I would take a picture in the bucket when I packed up the line, and then throw all the fish back into the water. The one I caught the most would treat everyone to soda, and we would ride home laughing and joking all the way.

That's how teenagers are. In their eyes, eating fish is more troublesome than fishing—you have to bring it home after you catch it, and you have to keep it for a few days. If you want to keep fish, you have to find a basin. Now that everyone lives in apartment buildings, you also have to think about how to kill the fish and how to cook it. If you cook too much, you have to eat it for several days in a row... It's not as carefree as fishing.

It's a lot like when we were kids and we bought pets. We'd bring them home with our eyes shining, but after a few days of novelty, all the eating, drinking, and cleaning up of those cats, dogs, and rabbits would become our parents' responsibility.

So even though it's the fishing ban period now, since they're just having fun and have a strong sense of responsibility for releasing animals back into the wild, they've accumulated a lot of merit. So even though they're just a few people, they still dare to secretly go fishing. They have no guilty conscience, as long as they don't get caught.

That's why, although the police officer surnamed Xiong spoke sternly, he didn't take the children too seriously; otherwise, he would have arrested Zhang Shutong on the spot.

It was just a coincidence that the two things happened together, and he suspected that Zhang Shutong was making fun of him again, and that his words were insulting to his intelligence.

Zhang Shutong was completely innocent, but he had no choice but to bear the consequences of his past misdeeds. Helpless, he once again became a lone wolf and went to the "forbidden zone" to check the situation.

Along the way, I saw food carts selling snacks. The island is famous for its fish and shrimp, and the snacks are related to these.

Take fried shrimp cakes, for example. The fresh lake shrimp caught every day are only a little bigger than a fingernail. There's no need to remove the shells. Just marinate them in salt water, add shredded carrots, shredded potatoes, chopped green onions, and minced onions, then add flour, water, and eggs to make a batter. Fry them in oil until golden brown. One bite and you'll find them crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, with an irresistible aroma.

That said, this was his breakfast today—referring to eight years later, when Zhang Shutong rushed to the dock early in the morning to catch a boat. He didn't even have time to eat, so he bought a few shrimp cakes on the island to fill his stomach. They cost ten yuan for two, which would only cost five yuan today.

He bought one, and continued walking with the shrimp cake in his mouth. He wasn't tired of eating it, but he wasn't particularly greedy either. He just thought he wouldn't have time to eat dinner, and he had a pack of toilet paper in his pocket so he wouldn't have to worry about getting his hands all oily. He bought it when he saw it on the way.

Zhang Shutong has always been a person with very low material desires. This is not only because he has been this way since childhood, but also because of his experiences over the years.

In several retrospectives, he realized he had the opportunity to buy lottery tickets. He wouldn't make a fortune, but a few thousand would be no problem. If he had deliberately followed this path and bought more tickets, it would have been a considerable income. But at the time, he wondered what the point of making so much money would be.

He couldn't spend his money, so he couldn't travel, and he had no plans to buy a car. He was content with what he had, such as his phone and computer. He had even gradually given up his only hobby, fishing. The only major purchases he could make were buying a house and getting married, but the former couldn't be solved by buying a few lottery tickets, and the latter was not something he should consider.

It's not that I have no woman in my heart, so fishing is naturally my forte;
He was fairly popular in high school, although he didn't know why he was popular with girls, or whether that was considered good luck in love... But Zhang Shutong did receive a few love letters. The reason it was only a few was because it wasn't fashionable to write confessions on paper back then.

Everyone has a grade-level group chat. Sometimes, he would come home after a "heroic act" was reviewed, and there would be screenshots on his phone from classmates asking if he was the boy mentioned on the school wall.
In his memory, this kind of thing had happened quite often. Perhaps the number of times wasn't actually that many, but his memory was distorted; under the influence of this replaying, the same event would often be experienced repeatedly. If asked what he felt about being confessed to, he could only say he was exhausted by the disorientation of time and space.

One of the reasons he felt he was quite popular back then was this—

Sometimes when he clicks into his social media profile, he sees gifts from strangers. On his birthday, he also receives birthday wishes from unknown classmates, which he replies to one by one with great care and joy. At that time, Zhang Shutong thought that he only had three best friends in junior high school, but he never expected that he would have friends all over the world in high school. Clearly, he had taken a big step forward in terms of interpersonal relationships.

Later, someone told him in a fit of rage, "Bullshit!"
Those are all girls, you jerk! If you don't need any of them, can you introduce me to some?
Zhang Shutong felt confused.

For example, Du Kang likes Lu Qinglian, which he can understand. Regardless of their relationship, they are both children who grew up on the island, going from elementary school to junior high. If you put yourself in their shoes:
If a pretty girl is always around in your life, and you inevitably exchange a few words, and you see her smile, her long hair, and smell her fragrance, then it's perfectly normal to fall for her. But what are your classmates' reasons for talking about these "girls"?
He simply couldn't understand it, even though they didn't know each other.

Since he couldn't understand it, he didn't have any way to deal with it. Later, he came up with a solution: he locked the space and changed his birthday. Unfortunately, he dropped out of school in his second year of high school, so he never got to use it.

He only ever liked one girl throughout high school;
She was a senior in the same club, and she had countless suitors. To be honest, Zhang Shutong was a little nervous. In the popular parlance at the time, she was a campus beauty, and there was no reason why she would favor an ordinary boy like him.

Although "ordinary" should be in quotes here, he was always acting like a chivalrous hero inside and outside the school, thinking he was super cool, but that did nothing to help him pursue girls.
You can't just say with a serious face, "Let me tell you a secret, I actually have superpowers," and then the girl will rush over and you'll win her heart. Didn't you see how much effort Peter Parker had to put in to win Mary Jane's heart?

Later, he transferred to a school in another city, and the other person happened to take a bus to visit him once.

That day, they found a bench in the park. In the darkness, they couldn't see each other's expressions, so they chatted casually. The senior looked down at her shoes, while Zhang Shutong looked up at the moon. The girl whispered to him about the future, but he remained silent because he couldn't see what the future looked like.

The moon was all alone, the bench was cold at night, and the future she spoke of seemed bright, yet it felt uncertain.

After this incident, he suddenly realized that he was indeed not suited for dating.
What should you do in a relationship? Maybe it's going on dates, maybe watching movies, maybe having meals, strolling hand in hand under the moonlight, kissing your girl's lips at a romantic moment... But as long as retrospection exists, he can never return to a normal life;

It is said that everyone is born with their own mission. The life of that human named Zhang Shutong is to fight this damned ability to the death, and only when he dies will he stop.

Unexpectedly, just a few hours earlier, he had actually fought to the very end, and only stopped fighting when he died.

An afternoon has passed since I returned to my student days;
The environment can greatly change a person. In a short time, he gradually felt his mindset become more relaxed. Therefore, if we were to reiterate this result in a lighthearted tone, we could simply say:
"I always thought I only had one ability, called rewind."

"But I never expected there would be a second one, called the Prophet."

Thinking about this, Zhang Shutong wanted to laugh. He felt that he did have a bit of a sense of humor. Others might not think so, but just like Gu Qiumian never thought that she was drawing a funny face, everyone could just have a good laugh in their hearts.

He himself had no idea what the situation was in that area of ​​water called "Restricted Area," so he could only be extremely careful and cautious, and try to think of a joke to keep his mind active.

Lost in thought, the great prophet arrived at the waters where he had fallen as the sun gradually sank below the horizon.

I recalled Du Kang's words from before the incident: fishermen had seen people moving around near the restricted area before the incident.

Gu Qiu Mian was murdered on December 10th. Today is December 5th, only five days left. Presumably, some clues can be found.

Logically, he should try to deduce the murderer's motive, but Zhang Shutong is not a professional detective. He has limited, or rather, very little, knowledge of Gu Qiumian. He doesn't even know that she drew a sheep on the glass, so it's difficult for him to make any deductions.

Let's start by talking about how the girl went missing:

There are currently three possibilities:

1. It was a chance event. Although the possibility is very small, it cannot be ruled out that she suddenly decided to come here for a stroll that day, and ended up getting separated from the crowd, which created an opportunity for the murderer.

Second, the murderer had scouted the location beforehand and deliberately lured her there to make it easier to commit the crime.

Third, although the location was scouted in advance, the first crime scene was not a "restricted area." Instead, she was kidnapped first and then brought to a restricted area.

The area is deserted, which explains why she wasn't found until two days after she went missing.

Zhang Shutong has temporarily ruled out the first possibility. The latter two are impossible to determine, but considering Du Kang's words, it is certain that the murderer came to scout the location in advance.

The next step is to verify the hypothesis—

He parked his car and looked around, but didn't see anyone.

I thought that since it snowed recently, I could tell if there were any people around by their footprints, but for some reason, all the snow here has melted.

Then we'll have to get closer.

The lakeside road hasn't been built yet, and the road underfoot is just a regular dirt road. Further in, it becomes muddy, so he parked his bike a little further away and turned it around to make sure he could run away if anything went wrong.

It was getting dark, so there was no need to cover his face. Zhang Shutong held a flashlight in his left hand and a baton in his right, exhaled a breath of stale air, and gently stepped into the reeds.

He immediately frowned, because the feel of his foot was off—

I crouched down and poked the ground with my finger. At first, I felt ice crystals and muddy water, but when I pressed down further, it was hard frozen soil.

Eight years later, however, things were not the same.

He thought back carefully and remembered that he had come here a few hours earlier that night. The ground was full of mud, and it was difficult to walk. He was stumbling and unsteady on his feet. But now the ground was hard. He couldn't remember it raining eight years ago...

what's the situation?
More memories are awakening, wait, it seems like I'm starting to make sense:
His parents were both geological explorers. It seems that the reason they came to work on the island under the guidance of Gu's father was to investigate something about a "subsidence area". The island is surrounded by lake water on three sides. Starting from the end of the last century, it has been developed one after another, and more and more buildings have been built. Over the years, the strata have been compressed and the ground has slowly subsided.

Gu Jianhong was planning to carry out engineering projects on the island, but he was worried that something might go wrong and cause the buildings to collapse, which led him to take the lead in establishing an exploration institute.

Perhaps the "restricted area" is located within the subsidence zone. Eight years ago, the ground beneath our feet was still hard soil; eight years later, it is estimated that the ground has subsided and the water level has risen, so it is all silt.

Zhang Shutong never imagined that one day what he was doing would be related to his parents' profession.

But that's troublesome...

He had originally planned to find traces of the murderer's activities by following the footprints, thus confirming his suspicions, but now that the snow had melted and the ground beneath his feet was frozen, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and continue deeper.

In winter, darkness falls early. The setting sun disappears, and dark clouds cover the sky, making the moonlight hazy.

The reeds beside him were almost as tall as him, completely blocking his view. The surroundings were quiet, with only the rustling of his body as he passed through the reeds.

He lowered his breath, turned on his flashlight, shone it on the ground, and moved forward inch by inch.

Stone……

Grass stems...

Instant noodle wrappers...

But the wrapping paper was old, nearly faded, and sealed in the soil. He glanced at it but didn't touch it.

Then, Zhang Shutong saw something dark.

When I turned it over, it turned out to be a dead turtle... Damn?

Yes, it's a "dried turtle," almost the size of an adult's palm, comparable to a soft-shelled turtle. The body is so shriveled that it's almost dehydrated, practically resembling a mummy.
He could tell it was a local grass turtle. Finding a turtle carcass by the water wasn't unusual, and he knew it was hibernation season for turtles; sometimes you could even find a shell while strolling around. But why…?

The turtle did not retract into its shell.

The turtle maintained an extremely strange posture, no different from a living turtle. It raised its head and stretched out its limbs, as if it were lying on a rock.

When Zhang Shutong found it, it was lying on its back, which made it seem strange. It was as if it was originally a grass turtle basking in the sun, and suddenly something happened, like Pompeii being buried by volcanic ash, and its body was dried up in an instant.

How could a turtle by the water dry up and die?
Zhang Shutong swallowed.

Ignoring the strange turtle for the moment, he continued forward with his flashlight. Suddenly, it felt like he had stepped on rubber; the texture was quite resilient, and goosebumps instantly spread all over his body. He quickly moved his foot away and shone the flashlight downwards:
It was a strip-shaped, dark red "stone".

It was about two fingers wide and half a foot long, covered in mud. He suppressed his nausea, pressed it with his hand, and confirmed his guess.

It is indeed a piece of meat.

The surface of the meat had dried out, making it difficult to determine how long it had been there.

Zhang Shutong found it hard to say whether he was familiar with it or surprised, because he had used meat as bait before when fishing, so finding it by the water was not unusual, just like that instant noodle packaging bag. Although few people come here to fish, rare does not mean nonexistent, and it is not necessarily related to the murderer.

He frowned and took a few more steps. His final discovery was a mineral water bottle, floating quietly by the lake. He picked it up and saw that the production date was October 27th.

There were some water droplets on the inner wall, but it had just snowed during the day, so it was hard to say what caused it, and it was also impossible to determine when it had been there.

There wasn't a single clue that could definitively prove the case.

Originally, it was thought that the murderer had scouted the location beforehand, and once the major premise was confirmed, more investigations could be carried out in that direction. But now, it's hard to even reach an equal sign.

Not to mention finding out who the murderer is.

I have a bit of a headache right now.

There was no need to stay any longer today, so he took out his phone and took pictures of the clues. They might not be of much use, but he could think about them when he got home that night. He took pictures of the strange turtle from several different angles.

Honestly, the camera quality of today's mobile phones is really terrible. Smartphones in 2012 hadn't even developed the "night photography" feature yet. That turtle photo looks like something out of a horror movie; it looks terrifying on the screen.

The one he was holding was an old hand-me-down from his mom. He couldn't remember if it was an iPhone 4 or 4s. Back then, it was a precious thing to him, but now it's not convenient in any way. He only remembered that the signal was so-so, which might be related to the lack of base stations on the island. Anyway, now there are no bars on the status bar.
Thinking about this, Zhang Shutong felt nostalgic for the technology eight years from now. He wouldn't even need to come in person; a drone could solve the problem, or he could buy a small camera to monitor the situation 24/7...

Speaking of surveillance, I've got a clue; I can build a small mechanism.

He has always been a boy with exceptional hands-on skills. On the island, he learned a lot of tricks from Qingyi, such as various ways to tie knots and various wilderness survival skills. Qingyi reads a lot of books and is best at these things.

Although they never thought it would be useful—were they going to reenact Robinson Crusoe's adventures on this island?—nobody wanted to be Friday. But boys, for them, are always just about looking cool, and they never expected it to come in handy today.

He returned to his bicycle, opened the back box, and had to admit that he was a true professional when it came to fishing back then; there were even fishing lines and scissors inside.

Zhang Shutong cut a few sections of fishing line, gestured, first tied them to the reeds on both sides, and then tied a knot in the middle.

This knot can be easily torn open with a little force, but that's exactly the effect he wanted. He adjusted the position to the height of his shoe, tested it himself, and made sure it was just the right tightness so that animals wouldn't accidentally touch it.

Then they tied several more fishing lines together.

In this way, if someone walks into the restricted area, they will accidentally trigger his "trap". Moreover, the knot is just the right tension, and it will come undone with the slightest touch. At most, it will trip the person. Even if they look down in confusion, no one will notice the fishing line. They will probably think that they tripped over the nearby weeds.

That way, he can easily tell whether anyone is here or not just by strolling around after school every day.

With his mission accomplished, he came to his senses, but the heat from the fried shrimp cakes had dissipated, and he felt a chill all over. He sniffed, thinking that the results should be available by tomorrow. He looked around to make sure no one was in sight, then got on his bike and rode back home with peace of mind.

He had only ridden a few steps when Zhang Shutong finally remembered that he had made plans to go fishing today. He belatedly slapped his forehead, thinking, "Damn it, I've been dragging this out for a while. My best friends are probably going to start nagging me."

I pedaled hard a few times, and when the car reached a certain spot, my phone seemed to get a signal, and it started vibrating one after another.

When I opened the caller ID, I saw it was a missed call from Ruoping. That woman is terrifying; she called four times in one go.

Zhang Shutong smiled helplessly. Just as he was about to send a message after connecting to the data, QQ messages started bombarding him.

Ruoping: Something seems off.

Ruoping: Answer the phone! Answer the phone! Answer the phone!
Ruoping: [Image]

Ruoping: Come quick!

what's the situation?
Zhang Shutong was stunned. It was a little past six o'clock in the evening, and the other party's last message was at 5:40.

A sudden chill swept over me.

Zhang Shutong quickly opened the QQ chat window, and upon glancing at it, he was so shocked that he almost fell off his bike because he couldn't hold on properly.

The background of the picture Ruoping sent was fine; it was their usual fishing spot, and her friends had already set up their stall—everything was just as it had always been. But the person in the picture was someone completely unexpected—

That was the back view of a girl wearing a green robe.

The girl sat upright on a portable stool;
He was also holding a fishing rod in his hand.

Thank you to readers "This user finds it hard to choose a name so he has no name" and "wjgtq" for the donations, and thank you to all the friends who voted. Thank you very much!

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(End of this chapter)