Soul Patch

Chapter 80 is Sugar-coated Baked Buns

After parting ways at the haystack, Wenjie and Zhao Xiaolong went their separate ways.

Wenjie walked a long way along the dirt road, watching as the mounds of earth were leveled, the houses over there were demolished, a three-story shop was built in the small square, and the village officials' families carried out their new houses...

Every time I return to the village, the long-lost sense of familiarity is always mixed with a little bit of unfamiliarity.

This unfamiliar feeling is like finding sand in soft, sticky rice porridge—it's unpleasant and irritating.

As Wenjie entered the village, the face that came towards him looked familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

Those young men a few years younger than him grew very tall in no time and their appearances became more mature.

In the village, the men can develop beer bellies in just one summer, and the women who become mothers gradually lose their slender figures as their waists thicken.

Everything seems just as I remember it, yet it also seems that those familiar things have long since drifted away with the wind and can no longer be grasped.

At the village entrance, several old men were playing chess around a chessboard by the earthen wall below, basking in the sun. Old Man Li glanced towards the village entrance for a while, and when he saw Wenjie, a look of surprise appeared in his cloudy eyes. He stroked his gray beard and said:

"Xiao Jie, you've come back to see your mother?"

Upon hearing Old Li's words, apart from the two old men playing chess who were deep in thought, everyone else who was watching the commotion turned to look at Wenjie.

There was a familiar look in his eyes that Wenjie recognized.

The fickleness of human relationships and the coldness of the world have become indifferent to the elderly.

"Yes, let's go home and take a look. Uncle Li, Uncle Zhang... are you playing chess?"

Several old men watched Wenjie walk away with smiles on their faces, then sighed as they watched his retreating figure.

"This child has such a hard life, losing his father at such a young age!"

"Yes, but he's made something of himself now, and has a decent job in a big city. Xiao Jie's mother talks about him a lot."

After walking along the busiest road in the village, Wenjie turned onto a narrow dirt road.

It's supposed to be bustling, but it's really just a wet market, with restaurants, grocery stores, and ice cream shops on both sides...

His home was at the end of the dirt road.

It was an inconspicuous bungalow with an inner and outer room.

He and his mother each lived in a room, which together was about 60 or 70 square meters.

The yard wasn't big, but as soon as Wenjie stepped inside, he saw that the flowers, plants, fruits, and vegetables his mother had tended were growing very well.

The bright green scallions are neatly arranged in a row, and the cute little loofahs hang from the vines...

The family no longer grows corn. Since he went to university, there has been no man in the family, and his mother's health has deteriorated, so they stopped growing corn.

There is no longer the scene of golden corn cobs filling the yard in autumn.

Wenjie stood in the courtyard, looking at the familiar yard and the familiar old house, as memories surged up and overwhelmed him:

When he was five years old, his father disappeared.

Much later, the police found his father's body. A delicate knot was tied around his wrist; the white velvet rope was woven into the shape of a butterfly.

At first glance, it looked like a butterfly about to take flight had landed on the father's wrist.

He glanced at it briefly before his mother pulled him into her arms.

In that fleeting glance, he saw his father's pale, stiff hands bound by a rope knot; the butterfly knot had become a deadly weapon, cruelly taking his father's life.

From that moment on, the bow tie was tied to his heart, haunting him and becoming an inescapable nightmare.

He was taken away by the police, accompanied by his mother's wailing and crying.

The sound was heart-wrenching, filled with profound pain and despair.

He clearly remembered that it was a day in mid-June, with the sun high overhead, scorching the earth.

Despite his small stature, he felt icy cold in the policeman's arms, and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.

He asked his mother about the cause of his father's death, and every time he mentioned his father, it was like stabbing his mother's heart with a knife.

His mother just cried, saying it was bad luck that she had run into a desperate criminal... He dared not mention it again.

Later, by piecing together bits and pieces from other people's accounts, I managed to get a general understanding of my father's situation:

My father went to another city to do business with a partner. On the way, he encountered an escaped convict who robbed him of his money and then killed him to cover it up.

When the fugitive was caught, he had several lives on his hands and was sentenced to death.

The fugitive had connections with his father, possessed his father's wallet, and confessed to the crime, so the case was closed.

Losing his father and raising him alone was incredibly difficult for his mother... Thinking about this, he felt a lump in his throat and turned to wipe it with his sleeve.

Many years have passed, but he still dreams of that butterfly-shaped rope knot.

Therefore, he always suspected that there was more to his father's death than met the eye.

If the murderer isn't that fugitive, the real culprit might still be at large!

Things are different now! With this Soul Patch system, as long as the real culprit is still alive, there's still a chance for things to turn around.

……

He stood there blankly in the courtyard for a long time before he snapped out of his reverie.

Standing in the yard and looking around, he noticed that one of the nails hanging the door curtain was missing.

He ran down to the basement, found a hammer and nails, and started hammering them in.

The noise startled her mother inside the house, and she heard a familiar voice:

"Who?"

Hearing his mother's voice always brought Wenjie a sense of peace.

"Mom, it's me, Xiao Jie."

"Xiao Jie! Is that Xiao Jie?"

A series of light footsteps came from inside the house, and the curtain was lifted from the inside, revealing the mother's familiar face.

"It really is Xiao Jie! Come inside quickly!"

The wrinkles on her mother's face seemed to smooth out, and she looked at Wenjie with a smile.

She snatched the hammer from Wenjie's hand, refusing to let him touch the door curtain anymore, and dragged him into the house.

As soon as Wenjie sat down, his mother turned around, took a handkerchief out of the box, and mysteriously handed it to him, saying:

"Open it, open it and see..."

Wenjie stared at the handkerchief for a moment, recalling his childhood when his mother would always use the handkerchief to hold up any delicious treats and hide them in a box.

Pick it up when Wenjie is hungry and craving something at night, take it out and give it to him.

The small handkerchief in Wenjie's hand became heavy.

His nose stung again, and he quickly lowered his head, pretending to be examining the precious item in the handkerchief.

Urged on by his mother, he carefully peeled back the layers of the handkerchief, revealing another layer of oiled paper underneath. Wenjie paused for a moment, then slowly peeled back the oiled paper.

Oh, a golden-brown sugar-coated sesame seed cake, nestled among handkerchiefs and oil paper.

"Sugar-coated sesame cake?" Wenjie asked in surprise.

"Yes, it was given to me by Aunt Li. This stuff keeps well, so I saved one for you. Try it; I heard it was brought back from out of town, and it's really authentic."

The mother spoke cheerfully, a strange light flashing in her eyes.

Wenjie lowered his head, stuffed the sugar-coated sesame seed cake into his mouth, took a big bite, and chewed it hard. Perhaps because it had been sitting for a while, it had hardened a bit, and it scraped his throat when he swallowed it.

"Delicious!" Wenjie showed a blissful expression, as if he had tasted a heavenly delicacy.

Upon hearing that her son loved the food, Wenjie's mother beamed with joy.

"Xiao Jie, let me ask you, are there any girls at your workplace who are dating you?"

Wenjie choked on a mouthful of roasted bread, coughing repeatedly.

His mother quickly brought him half a bowl of warm water and told him to drink it to help him recover.

It seems that being pressured to get married by elders is a recurring theme.

Wenjie lowered his head, a little shyly: "There's a girl named Yang Shanshan... we're trying to date her."

"Then when will you bring it home for Mom to see?"

“Uh…” Wenjie thought of Yang Shanshan’s delicate face, and then, inappropriately, he thought of the system bug.

"There's a chance!" Wenjie chuckled.

A relieved smile appeared on her face as her mother got up and went to the kitchen to get busy.

Wenjie was also busy sweeping and mopping the floor, and he rebuilt the damaged parts of the courtyard wall with bricks.

He washed his hands, dusted himself off, sat down, and picked up his phone.

I see there are unread messages.

It's Zhao Xiaolong.

"Wenjie, I've inquired for you. The homeowner who was electrocuted was surnamed Jia and named Jia Lin. The one who was electrocuted was the eldest son, I think his name was Jia Song."

Wenjie was sitting on the sofa looking at his phone. After working for half a day, he was a little thirsty.

He picked up the bowl of water his mother had just poured from the table and brought it to his lips to take a sip.

Upon seeing Zhao Xiaolong's message, his body stiffened abruptly. Everything before him began to blur, and the image of that patch of grass uncontrollably appeared in his mind.

Hidden behind the bushes were a pair of eyes, watching in horror the bloody scene unfolding.

"Crack!" The bowl fell to the ground and shattered.

"What's wrong? What's wrong?" Mother rushed over from the kitchen.

He glanced at the broken bowl on the ground, threw the shovel in his hand aside, ran to Wenjie's side to check his hands and feet, and breathed a sigh of relief after confirming that he hadn't been cut.

"It's okay, it's okay, I'll sweep it away now. Don't move around too much, or you'll hurt your foot."

After saying that, he turned and went to the kitchen.

"Oh no... the pot's burnt!" came the mother's exclamation from the kitchen.

Wenjie looked up and saw thick smoke billowing from the kitchen. He ran to the kitchen and started helping his mother.

"Then you can sweep the house."

Seeing that Wenjie seemed a bit distracted in the kitchen, his mother assumed that her son wasn't used to kitchen work and found an excuse to send him away.

Wenjie picked up the broom and mechanically and numbly swept the broken bowl into the dustpan.

But deep in my heart, a name lingers, like a raging tsunami threatening to destroy everything.

Jia Nan!

(End of this chapter)