NOS Chapter 88

Chapter 88: Azalea Peak (9)

Guan Yao’s heart skipped a beat. He opened his mouth, wanting to defend Yu Chunming, but Yu Chunming still maintained his calm demeanor and replied without the slightest hint of panic, “Auntie, are you talking about… Qian Guowei?”

“Yes, you know him? Judging by your age, it doesn’t seem like you would…” Duan Mei was somewhat surprised.

Yu Chunming replied calmly, “I wouldn’t say I know him. I’m a police officer. Qian Guowei is a fugitive. I’ll only truly know him if I arrest him and bring him to justice one day.”

“Fugitive? Fugitive for what?” Duan Mei gasped. “Qian Guowei has been dead for thirty years. Comrade Police, don’t make fun of me.”

“Auntie, didn’t you know? Qian Guowei isn’t dead. He’s still alive,” Yu Chunming replied.

Duan Mei truly seemed unaware. She looked bewildered, her expression wandering, as if she had seen a ghost. She couldn’t help muttering, “I knew it, I knew it. My eyelids have been twitching these past few days. Something really happened.”

“Auntie, so you do know Qian Guowei, right?” Guan Yao asked at this moment.

Duan Mei nodded, her words evasive, “I guess I know him. My husband’s father was a comrade of Qian Guowei’s father back then, but it’s been thirty years, and they’re all dead. I don’t know anything.”

Guan Yao smiled, “Auntie, we haven’t even asked anything yet, and you’re already saying you don’t know anything. That’s not right.”

“I really don’t know anything. When Old Zhang was still around, I listened to Old Zhang. Now that Old Zhang is gone, I’m a martyr’s family member, and I listen to the organization. If you want to interrogate me, you have to, first, find the leaders of the Linchang Police Station to talk to me. Otherwise, I won’t say anything to you two young fellows.” Duan Mei was firm.

Yu Chunming narrowed his eyes and then asked, “Auntie, you were a dance teacher in the Linchang cultural troupe back then. You definitely hadn’t retired thirty years ago. When I mentioned Jiang Min just now, you gave a very quick answer, which means you know Jiang Min, and you should be very familiar with her, right?”

Duan Mei still looked stubborn and uncooperative. She pulled a silk shawl over her shoulders and shook her head, saying, “Not familiar.”

Yu Chunming smiled, not minding at all. He said, “I’m sorry, Auntie. I probably didn’t introduce myself properly, which caused you to misunderstand. My name is Jiang Xin, Jiang Min’s son.”

Hearing this, Duan Mei’s face changed instantly.

This little old lady had always been arrogant, looking down on everyone. In all her years, having taught so many students, the only one she valued was Jiang Min.

The year Jiang Xin disappeared, Duan Mei had just retired. After hearing about the incident, she specifically gathered a group of old colleagues who had a good relationship with Jiang Min in the past and searched along the Ning Nie Li Qi River for three days.

Later, after Jiang Xin was declared dead, Duan Mei even went to visit Jiang Min.

“Teacher Duan,” Yu Chunming immediately changed his form of address. He said, “Jiang Min got married when she worked at the Songlan Grand Theatre in her early years. You should have heard about it. Her ex-husband was called Yu Zhenshan, a police officer. When I was nine years old, Jiang Min dragged me to Songlan and stuffed me to her ex-husband as his son.”

Duan Mei’s eyes flickered slightly. After a long while, she uttered a sentence, “What a crazy girl.”

Yu Chunming smiled, “Teacher Duan, we’re here today mainly to understand what happened during the 9.24 fire thirty-three years ago. Don’t be nervous or resistant. After all… you’re over eighty years old. Even if you committed some heinous crime in the past, the punishment should be lighter during the investigation…”

“Pah!” Duan Mei instantly withdrew the hint of warmth that had just appeared. She glared, “I haven’t committed anything!”

Ten minutes later, in the reception room of the retirement center, a neatly dressed Duan Mei sat at the table with Yu Chunming and Guan Yao.

She stroked her short, permed hair again and said, “Ask what you want.”

Guan Yao opened his notebook, “Teacher Duan, do you remember why Secretary Zhang went to the No. 2 Timber Factory for inspection on the day of the 9.24 fire? We went to the city archives this afternoon and looked through the factory’s records from that year. We found that Secretary Zhang had frequently visited the No. 2 Timber Factory in the two weeks before the fire, each time using a different excuse. Teacher Duan, excuse my bluntness, but Secretary Zhang is the secretary of One Zero Three Forest Farm. He wouldn’t visit the No. 2 Timber Factory once a year, so why would he frequently go to the grassroots level before the fire?”

Duan Mei was a little breathless. She looked at Yu Chunming and said helplessly, “Since you two have already discovered the problem, then I have nothing to hide. Old Zhang always went to the No. 2 Timber Factory at that time, not for inspection, but to… find someone.”

“Find someone? Who?” Yu Chunming asked.

Duan Mei pursed her lips and replied, “To find my son, Zhang Yi Jun.”

“Zhang, Yi, Jun?” Yu Chunming said slowly, word by word.

Duan Mei said that Zhang Yi Jun was not her son. As for whose son he was, she wasn’t sure.

“My Old Zhang was injured in the war when he was young, which ruined his health. After we got married, I couldn’t get pregnant. When I finally got pregnant and gave birth, the child was born with congenital deficiencies, slight cerebral palsy, and his hand was deformed.” Duan Mei paused, took off her red plastic-framed glasses, and wiped them. “Actually, I didn’t care. What child isn’t worth raising? And it wasn’t serious. Maybe he would get better when he grew up. As for his hand… if he didn’t become a worker, he could become a cultured person. There are many ways to live. But Old Zhang wasn’t happy. He was a leader. How could he have a disabled son?”

“So?” Guan Yao instantly had a bad guess.

“So, Old Zhang found a distant cousin and wanted him to help.” Duan Mei sighed.

“Cousin?” Yu Chunming nodded. “Zhang Nan, right?”

“Yes, Zhang Nan.” Duan Mei had to admit, “At that time, Zhang Nan hadn’t started working at the No. 2 Timber Factory yet. I remember he seemed to be among the first batch of master’s students at the First Hospital of Songlan Medical University, studying pediatrics, but he was sent back because he made some mistake. My Old Zhang arranged for him to be a doctor at the Linchang Staff Hospital. He helped a lot when I was pregnant and gave birth.”

“What happened later?” Guan Yao asked. “Did Zhang Nan cure your son?”

“Did he have that ability?” Duan Mei put her glasses back on. She said, “My son was weak. He got whooping cough when he was a hundred days old. People said that he definitely couldn’t be cured, so it was better to give up and think of a way to have another one. But Zhang Nan guaranteed that he had a way and could definitely fix things. He also told Old Zhang that if he succeeded, he would have to be a small leader in the hospital office. At the time, I didn’t know what Zhang Nan’s method was. I thought he knew some famous doctor from Songlan. But when I got off work that night and stood in front of my son’s hospital bed, I realized that he had switched my son with another one!”

“What the hell?” Yu Chunming frowned.

Zhang Nan was so audacious that he swapped Duan Mei’s disabled son with another family’s healthy, normal, chubby baby for the sake of his future.

Whose baby was this? Where did Duan Mei’s biological son go?

Zhang Nan refused to say. Zhang Changqing pretended not to know. Duan Mei cried and screamed, but she couldn’t bring back her biological son.

“You are all sons yourselves. Tell me, which mother would dislike her own child?” Duan Mei wiped away her tears. “I had already resigned myself to fate. Actually, it didn’t matter if I didn’t have children in this life. Since he was born, I would take good care of him. If I couldn’t keep him alive, then it meant that our fate hadn’t arrived. But to have someone else’s child swapped with mine? What was that supposed to mean? But Old Zhang wouldn’t listen. He wanted face, not substance. Look, in the end, he lost both face and substance.”

“Lost both face and substance? What do you mean?” Guan Yao didn’t understand.

Duan Mei wiped her tears and replied, “That kid couldn’t be raised to be attached to me. Later, I don’t know what happened, but he actually found his biological parents!”

“Who are his biological parents?” Yu Chunming already vaguely knew the answer.

Duan Mei sighed, “I don’t know them, and I can’t explain it clearly. Old Zhang always hid it from me. By the time I understood, a fire had burned the entire factory to the ground. I only know that the child’s biological parents were probably workers at the No. 2 Timber Factory, and their family conditions were not good. I also heard that Zhang Nan had obtained their consent before swapping the children, probably to pay for medical treatment or something.”

Yu Chunming and Guan Yao looked at each other, their thoughts unsaid.

Who was Zhang Yi Jun? He was the adopted son of Linchang Deputy Secretary Zhang Changqing and cultural troupe dance teacher Duan Mei.

Who was Zhang Yi Jun’s biological father? Probably, it was Li Ying.

A child-swapping mystery from more than forty years ago suddenly surfaced, instantly explaining many inexplicable doubts in the previous cases.

But Guan Yao and Yu Chunming still didn’t understand what had happened before the fire that made Zhang Changqing frequently come to the No. 2 Timber Factory to find Zhang Yi Jun. How did Zhang Yi Jun find his biological parents?

“During that time, I was always worried about Jiang Min’s return to the cultural troupe, worrying about how I should persuade the organization and leaders to reaccept such an excellent female comrade, so I neglected my family,” Duan Mei said. “I just remember that my son was always running outside at that time. He also had a girlfriend, but the other family didn’t agree, and Old Zhang didn’t agree either, which made him so angry that he went to his dad and smashed things.”

“Girlfriend?” Yu Chunming asked directly, “Wasn’t it from our cultural troupe, right?”

“How could it be?” Duan Mei was confident. “I know the girls under my care. It can’t be from the cultural troupe.”

Yu Chunming didn’t believe it, “Really not?”

“Definitely not!” Duan Mei said firmly.

But after saying “firmly,” she started to doubt herself. After thinking for a moment, she said uncertainly, “Come to think of it, that kid did run to the cultural troupe to find me every now and then at that time. I’ve never seen him so diligent before.”

“Is that so?” Yu Chunming was curious. “What did he do when he looked for you?”

“Just chatting, sometimes bringing food and some snacks to share with the girls under my care…” At this point, Duan Mei also realized something was wrong, but too much time had passed, and she couldn’t analyze who Zhang Yi Jun was in love with back then.

Guan Yao smiled, “Strictly speaking, Teacher Duan, your son was probably not even eighteen years old at the time of the 9.24 fire, right?”

“Oh my, he was just seventeen.” Duan Mei replied.

“No wonder,” Guan Yao raised an eyebrow, “Young boys and girls are prone to problems.”

Yu Chunming asked from the side, “Then Teacher Duan, can you still remember if your son had any unusual behavior during that time?”

“This… I don’t remember very clearly,” Duan Mei said vaguely. “He just liked to argue with his dad. The two of them were always yelling in the house, which made me anxious.”

“Teenage rebellion?” Guan Yao laughed.

“Maybe,” Duan Mei looked gloomy. “My son was actually very obedient all along. To be honest, I later felt lucky, thinking… it was especially good to have such a healthy, excellent child, much better than my biological son. And he also grew up eating my milk. In the end, he was my biological son.”

“I heard that he was good at chemistry and even won an award?” Yu Chunming asked.

“Yes,” Duan Mei immediately responded, “He competed in the capital and won first prize. The teachers all said that my son would go to college and do research in the future.”

“What happened later? Why didn’t he go to college later?” Yu Chunming looked at Duan Mei’s expression.

Sure enough, Duan Mei’s face darkened, and she stopped talking.

Based on the information she provided, Guan Yao and Yu Chunming could barely piece together the story of One Zero Three Forest Farm before the fire.

Zhang Changqing and Duan Mei’s adopted son, Zhang Yi Jun, met Li Shengnan, who had played the young “Little Pear Blossom” in a troupe performance for the children’s school. Perhaps drawn together by blood, the two fell in love at first sight. Li Shengnan couldn’t wait to take Zhang Yi Jun home to meet her parents, but Li Ying, who knew the truth, told them.

Lovers suddenly become siblings. How could immature young boys and girls withstand such a blow? Zhang Yi Jun and Li Shengnan were in unbearable pain but had to accept reality, re-evaluating each other in sadness and anger.

And this also coincided with the information provided by Jiang Min.

Jiang Min said that Li Shengnan committed suicide because she was molested by Zhang Nan and framed by Miao Xiaoyun, which led her to her death. But thinking again, could Li Shengnan’s suicide have been because her affair with Zhang Yi Jun spread throughout the factory, and Zhang Yi Jun was determined to make things worse, so Zhang Changqing instructed Zhang Nan to find a way to shut people up?

Unfortunately, Duan Mei seemed to have a vague memory. She only said that Zhang Yi Jun kept making a fuss about exposing his dad and Zhang Nan’s evil deeds, so Zhang Changqing had to frequently go to the No. 2 Timber Factory to find Zhang Yi Jun, who was always unwilling to go home.

As for what exactly happened, Duan Mei claimed that she didn’t remember anything.

“After the fire, everything was in chaos. I had a mental breakdown and couldn’t take care of the family. After a few more years, Yi Jun left alone. He came back twice in between, but he was always in a hurry,” Duan Mei said with a wry smile. “Tell me, why did I bother raising someone else’s son? I raised him for so long, and he didn’t give me anything in return. Back then, Yi Jun certainly benefited a lot from my family. If it weren’t for Old Zhang, could he have competed in the capital?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Yu Chunming laughed softly.

Guan Yao interjected, “Teacher Duan, do you remember when Zhang Yi Jun came back to see you last time?”

“Last time?” Duan Mei hummed. “It must have been twenty years ago. At that time, he pulled a cart of goods and ran to that big market to sell them. I asked him to come home for dinner, but he ignored me. After that, I never saw him again. Who knows if that person is dead or alive now.”

Yu Chunming raised an eyebrow and stood up, “Alright, let’s stop here today. We’ll come to you at any time if we need your help in the future. Don’t be like today again, making such a fuss.”

Duan Mei pursed her lips and went to fiddle with her short, permed hair again.

Yu Chunming kindly added, “After all, everyone is dead, and we can’t prove your baby-selling business. Even if we prove it, the possibility of prosecution is not high. You won’t go to jail…”

“What are you talking about! Pah, pah, pah…” Duan Mei instantly became furious.

Guan Yao pulled Yu Chunming and said with an apologetic smile, “We’re going back. Get some rest early.”

As they spoke, the two were about to leave.

But at this moment, Duan Mei called out, “That… Jiang Min’s son, wait a minute. I have something to ask you.”

Yu Chunming stopped. He glanced at Guan Yao, nodded, and signaled him to leave first.

Seeing Guan Yao walk away, Duan Mei asked, “How is your mother… doing now? I heard a few years ago that Wu Lao San died.”

“Good,” Yu Chunming replied. “Her old son just went to jail, nothing could be better.”

Duan Mei was temporarily at a loss for words.

Yu Chunming understood very well. He said directly, “Teacher Duan, just ask what you want to ask. You don’t need to hide anything. My colleague has already left.”

Seeing this, Duan Mei slowly looked at Yu Chunming, “Do you know who your biological father is?”

“I know,” Yu Chunming raised the corner of his mouth. “Qian Guowei, right?”