Rebirth 78, the beginning of the marriage was broken off by the female educated youth

The tungsten filament lamp on the ceiling of the interrogation room hummed, making Hu Qiyi's pale face look bloodless.

He was like a clay statue with its soul drained out, slumped in a cold iron chair, with only his eyeballs occasionally trembling nervously, revealing the earth-shattering roar within him.

The last words Li Xiangnan uttered were like a red-hot iron, burning through all the crazy beliefs that supported him.

Li Xiangnan did not sit in the presiding judge's seat.

He went to the next room and came back ten minutes later. He and Guo Qian were still the only ones in the interrogation room.

He leaned in the shadow by the door, like a sword in its sheath, silent, but with the power to see through everything.

In his hand he held a small evidence bag, which contained the old photo with the face scratched and the edges curled and blackened.

The photo shows a family of three.

All I could vaguely see was a young woman gently hugging her son - that was Zhao Cuifen and her only son Hu Qiyi.

But her face was scratched and riddled with holes, leaving only the charred jagged edges, silently telling the story of the night ignited by hatred many years ago.

"Hu Qiyi!" Li Xiangnan's voice was low, but as clear as an icicle, piercing the stagnant air in the interrogation room. "Where is that person you mentioned who 'can give your mother true justice'?"

He took two steps forward and gently placed the charred half of the photo on the iron table, facing Hu Qiyi's empty gaze.

"He's just using your mother's story to stir up hatred in you. Now, he wants to use your hand, Shen Yujing's life, to keep his current job. Hu Qiyi, you burned the table with He Caili's name engraved on it, but do you dare to burn this half of the photo? Can you burn the look in your mother's eyes when she looked at you?"

Hu Qiyi's eyes were fixed on that half of the photo.

The mother's clear and smiling eyes in the photo had long disappeared, but he could still see the tenderness that belonged only to his mother in his memory, looking at him quietly through the charred edges and twenty years of time.

Those eyes were once the only warmth in his childhood, but later became the pain he dared not touch, and later, became the banner of his crazy revenge.

But now, these eyes just looked at him quietly, with no resentment or blame in them, only a calmness that was almost compassion.

This calmness is sharper than any accusation.

"what--!!!"

A howl that was not like a human voice suddenly exploded from the depths of Hu Qiyi's throat!

He was like a wild beast pierced by a spear, his body convulsing violently, and his forehead slammed hard into the edge of the cold iron table!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The dull sound of impact echoed in the interrogation room, accompanied by the hoarse, bellows-like wheezing in his throat.

Blood quickly flowed down from his broken forehead, flowed across his pale cheek, and dripped onto the iron table, spreading a small area of glaring dark red. A few drops splashed onto the half-burned photo.

"Stop him!" Li Xiangnan shouted.

Guo Qian and Wei Jingfei who rushed in immediately stepped forward and held down Hu Qiyi's wildly twisting shoulders.

Hu Qiyi was pressed on the chair, his head hanging limply, his face covered with blood mixed with tears and snot.

He no longer roared, but his shoulders shook violently, and he let out an extremely suppressed whimper like a dying animal.

The high wall built with hatred and madness completely collapsed when he realized that he had become the sharpest and stupidest knife in the hands of others.

All his paranoia, all his revenge, all his self-righteousness and his desire to uphold justice turned into a huge, absurd and vicious joke.

Not only did he fail to seek justice for his mother over the long years, but he became a pawn for others to clear obstacles and consolidate power. He used another innocent life to add a heavy shackle to his mother's wronged soul.

What's even more ironic is that he almost pushed his own father into the abyss and took the blame.

"Your father, Hu Erliu," Li Xiangnan's voice rang out again, calmly, as if stating a fact that had nothing to do with him. "He's in the detention room next door. He knows the whole truth, including how you forced him to drink and how you deliberately manipulated and framed him. He said nothing, only repeatedly asking us one question: 'My son... Qiyi... is he still alive?' Your father asked me if he could take the blame for you, and if he would let you go."

Hu Qiyi's sobbing stopped abruptly.

He suddenly raised his head, his bloodstained face was distorted, and his bloodshot eyes stared at Li Xiangnan, with incredible, great pain and something deeper surging in them.

"You hated him for being a coward, for having hit your mother."

Li Xiangnan took a step closer, his eyes as sharp as torches, as if to burn through the last bit of disguise in Hu Qiyi's soul.

"But this 'coward' you hate to the core, after your mother's death, blamed himself for his impulsiveness, and then, despite the whole world's curses, protected you like an old dog, even though you turned into a monster that everyone avoided!

He dragged his rotten leg and begged the school not to expel you and the prison to give you a chance to replace you. He just wanted to keep you by his side, fearing that you, a mad dog, would go out and bite people to death!

He took the blame for you, not because he was stupid, but because he still regarded you as the kid who played with ants under the locust tree and would smile because he brought back a piece of candy!

He is using his life to exchange for your last chance to live! Even though this may be the stupidest and most unworthy thing he has ever done in his life! "

Li Xiangnan's voice was not loud, but every word he said was like a heavy hammer, hitting Hu Qiyi's already broken heart.

Those images that he had deliberately forgotten and distorted came to his mind uncontrollably.

His father's hunched back and forced smile in front of the teacher; his father's grimace in pain during an arthritis attack on a rainy night, yet he still put his only raincoat on him; his father's eyes instantly turned gray and desperate when he saw the dirty things he had stuffed into the female teacher's drawer...

And at home, when he handed over the glass of drugged wine, his father's eyes were defenseless, even a little dependent...

"Ah...ah..."

Hu Qiyi made a meaningless hoarse sound from his throat, and tears mixed with blood gushed out like a dam breaking.

This time, it was no longer a roar of anger and collapse, but a deeper and more complete despair and regret.

He was like a child who had been lost for many years and finally saw that he was standing on the edge of a cliff. The huge fear and confusion instantly engulfed him.

He slandered his father and used him as a stepping stone and scapegoat, thinking that this was the ultimate revenge for his father's "cowardice" and "killing his mother."

But in the end, he was the devil who was blinded by hatred and pushed the only person who tried to catch him into the abyss.

frame?

The crudely imitated buttons and the so-called "evidence" deliberately left behind, in the face of Li Xiangnan's meticulous insight and overwhelming evidence, were simply like a farce directed and performed by a lame clown.

He felt like a child who had spent a long time carefully building a sand castle and was proud of his masterpiece, but Li Xiangnan poked it lightly with the calmest and most ruthless finger, and the whole thing collapsed, revealing a messy, real, ugly mud underneath.

Li Xiangnan stopped looking at him, turned around and walked to the window, and pulled open the heavy curtains with a "swish".

Outside, the sky was already beginning to brighten, with a faint, hopeful glow showing through the edge of the gray-blue sky.

The cool morning breeze rushed in with a moist breath, blowing away the turbid smell of blood and despair in the interrogation room.

"It's dawn, Hu Qiyi."

Li Xiangnan's back was to him, and his voice came through clearly, but his emotions were indistinguishable. "Your dark night is over. But some people, because of you, will forever remain in that rainy night."

Li Xiangnan picked up the confession letter and pen that had been prepared long ago and filled with cold facts, walked back to the iron table, and placed it on the blood-stained table in front of Hu Qiyi.

The half-burned family photo lay quietly beside it.

"Sign it. For everything you've done, and for everything you didn't have time to do, and may never have the chance to do again. For your father, and for yourself, a closure..."

For the first time, there was an imperceptible, complex emotion in Li Xiangnan's voice that was almost like a sigh.

That was not a mockery from a winner to a loser, but more like a professional and heavy declaration made by a doctor looking at a patient who was terminally ill and beyond help.

Hu Qiyi's vision blurred.

Trembling, he stretched out the hand that was stained with his own blood and tears and that had once skillfully prepared poisons and written framing letters, and grasped the cold pen with difficulty.

The tip of the pen hung above the signature column of the confession, shaking like a fallen leaf in the autumn wind.

He lifted his heavy eyelids and took one last look at the half photo.

In the photo, the mother's gentle eyes seemed to have grown out, as if they were looking at him calmly through the blood and tears.

The pen tip finally fell.

After signing.

The pen tip suddenly moved again, uncontrollably drawing a long, trembling, ugly ink mark on the paper, like the last struggling trajectory of a desperate soul.

He let out a suppressed whimper from his throat, his body suddenly leaned forward, and his forehead hit the iron table again with a dull sound.

This time, he didn't raise his head.

The pen slipped from his weak hand, fell to the ground with a "thump", and rolled to the corner of the wall.

"Want to die?" Guo Qian quickly grabbed the back of his neck.

Li Xiangnan stepped forward to check his breath and breathed a sigh of relief: "He's unconscious!"

Guo and Wei stepped forward, picked up Hu Qiyi, who was limp as mud and had completely lost all his spirit, and took him to the infirmary.

His head hung limply, blood dripping down his chin, leaving a few dark red marks on the cold concrete floor, like a line of belated ellipsis leading to the abyss.

Li Xiangnan bent down and picked up the pen that had rolled to the ground. He then carefully picked up the half of the burnt photo stained with blood on the table and put it back in a clean evidence bag.

He walked to the window and watched Hu Qiyi being carried out of the interrogation room. His hunched, lifeless back cast a long, twisted shadow in the dim light of the corridor, and finally disappeared around the corner.

Outside the window, the first ray of golden sunlight finally broke free from the constraints of the horizon, pierced through the gray-blue clouds, and shone brightly in, instantly filling the entire interrogation room and completely dispelling the gloom and despair left over from last night.

The sunlight illuminated the glaring bloodstain on the iron table, as well as the long, desperate ink mark on the confession.

Li Xiangnan stood at the junction of light and darkness, his shadow stretched very long.

He lowered his head and looked at the half of the old photo bathed in the morning light in the evidence bag in his hand.

He seemed to have seen the woman in the photo, her smile still gentle.

The case was solved, the chain of evidence was perfectly closed, and the murderer was brought to justice.

But in the air, there was only a heavy silence as if one had survived a disaster, and a bone-deep chill that even the sun could not completely dispel.

There were no cheers for this victory, only a silent sigh that weighed heavily on everyone's heart.