Chapter 208: Chapter 175: Innocence
"Be careful yourself, the ghost isn’t with me, it seems to be going after Sun Shengnan. Stay away from her."
"Okay."
Song Yan was a person who could distinguish priorities clearly, and he was quick-witted, too. His presence had taken a lot of pressure off Yang Xiao.
After putting down the phone, Yang Xiao turned around and headed back. From a distance, he could already see Xia Xiuyan. Incredibly, she had turned on her flashlight, looking like a giant lantern in the dark forest.
Yang Xiao quickly rushed over, snatched the flashlight from her, and turned it off. "Are you insane? Do you want Teacher Wang to find you that badly?"
Xia Xiuyan was curled up, with an expression of pitiful fear. "I’m scared, it’s too dark here, without the flashlight I can’t even see the path under my feet."
That’s when Yang Xiao noticed that Xia Xiuyan’s pants were torn at the knees, and he could vaguely see bloodstains, apparently from falling due to an unclear vision of the path.
However, this also reminded Yang Xiao that after the rain, the mountain paths were muddy, and it would be troublesome to sprain an ankle due to poor visibility.
But turning on the flashlight would expose their location, especially since Pei Qiuyu was nearby.
After a moment of thought, Yang Xiao came up with the idea of the camera in his backpack. The camera had night vision capabilities, which would be very useful at this moment.
While Yang Xiao was fiddling with the camera, Xia Xiuyan had understood what to do and, following his lead, took out her own camera. This was given to her by Xiao Wang from the crew not long ago.
The camera in Yang Xiao’s hands was old and slow to respond. After several attempts to activate the night vision, he accidentally played a video instead.
The footage was extremely unstable, shaking constantly as if filmed under great tension. The camera captured the lower half of several people’s backs, and judging from the background, the scene appeared to be inside a modest hotel, as there was a bed.
Yang Xiao immediately realized that this video was secretly filmed by Song Yan the previous night, at the hostel where they were staying. The three people in the footage were Principal Wu, a male teacher, and "Xu Yu."
This video was also shot at Yang Xiao’s behest to verify whether any of the people who came were possessed by the ghost.
But nobody expected that in the last ten seconds of the video, as the camera panned up, a scene so shocking that it stopped Yang Xiao’s heart appeared. They finally got a shot of the upper bodies of the three individuals, and "Xu Yu" had a twisted long neck, crowned by the face of a man, as if it was clenching painfully in blue.
Indeed, the face could be seen from behind because the deathly blue face had twisted 180 degrees and was staring dead into the camera.
Taking a deep breath, Yang Xiao couldn’t help but feel a wave of fright wash over him. He was fortunate that the camera malfunctioned at the critical moment; otherwise, if their cover was blown, both he and Song Yan would have been done for.
"Chu Xi, what... what are you watching?" Xia Xiuyan also noticed Yang Xiao’s unusual behavior and asked.
"It’s nothing, let’s go."
Turning off the video, he switched to night vision mode. Yang Xiao and Xia Xiuyan, one in front of the other, did not immediately rush to the next checkpoint, but returned to the cave where they had taken shelter from the rain not long ago.
Taking off their wet clothes, wringing them out, and putting them back on, they positioned the camera at an angle, aiming it at Xia Xiuyan. Yang Xiao was getting down to business.
"Xia Xiuyan, you know the situation now. Teacher Wang is looking for you. I think if you can tell the truth about Sun Shengnan’s crimes, Teacher Wang might forgive you," Yang Xiao said seriously to Xia Xiuyan in front of him.
However, in front of the camera, Xia Xiuyan seemed hesitant, wrangling for quite some time, refusing to speak.
"You won’t cry until you see the coffin, will you?" Yang Xiao scoffed, pulled out his own camera, and showed it to Xia Xiuyan. "Didn’t you ask what I was just looking at? See for yourself."
As expected, upon seeing Teacher Wang’s twisted, bluish face, Xia Xiuyan collapsed completely. The last thread of luck broke, and she was so stunned that she couldn’t utter a sound; she couldn’t scream out of extreme fear.
With a thud, Xia Xiuyan knelt in front of the camera, weeping bitterly and confessing her sins. "Teacher Wang, I’m sorry, I’m inhuman. Please forgive me, it was all Sun Shengnan, she forced me, she forced me!!"
Finally, it was time to uncover the truth, and Yang Xiao couldn’t help but clench his fists. "Xia Xiuyan, I’m asking you, did Teacher Wang ever do anything inappropriate to you all?"
"No, he did not," Xia Xiuyan said, having seen Teacher Wang’s ghostly face, she dared not lie, shaking her head eagerly.
"Then why did you frame him?"
"I was bewitched by the ghost, jealous that he peeled eggs to eat for other financially poor girls, so I decided to give him some trouble... but I really didn’t expect things to get this big. I truly just wanted to take petty revenge on him, I had no malice, please believe me!" Xia Xiuyan defended herself emotionally.
"What about Nie Hexiang and Sun Zhen?"
"They were close to me, and out of sisterly loyalty, they decided to help me cause trouble. In school, I was the one covering for them."
"Was Shengnan brought in by you guys?"
"No, it was her... she somehow heard about our situation and came to us on her own. She found my home."
"I remember you had already admitted your mistake to the school by then, and Teacher Wang had forgiven you. Why did it turn into a big deal again?"
At this, Xia Xiuyan’s face was full of regret, "It was all her. She frightened us, saying a woman’s chastity and reputation are most important. After such an incident, we would never be able to turn our lives around in the countryside. We would be the laughingstock of neighbors and passersby unless... unless we did as she said."
"What did she ask you to do?"
"She wanted us to insist that Teacher Wang had harmed us, saying the reason we admitted our mistake was due to unfair pressure from the school and townspeople. She... she even coached us on what to say, how to deal with the police, and warned us to fake crying and to look pitiful if we encountered any questions we couldn’t answer. We were just kids, the police wouldn’t dare to treat us harshly."
Suddenly, as if her conscience had caught up with her, Xia Xiuyan rushed over and grabbed Yang Xiao’s arm, "Mr. Chu, please believe me, I regretted it halfway through. When the situation got out of hand, I was scared too, so I begged Shengnan to stop. But she refused and even threatened me. She said if my parents found out about this slander, they would beat me to death and... and the townspeople wouldn’t let me off either!"
"I had no choice, really no choice! I was scared, I had already boarded the thief’s ship, and I could only sink or swim with them. Later... later Shengnan still frequently used this incident to control me, threatening me to work for her; she... she is a brute!"
Yang Xiao flung Xia Xiuyan away, struggling to refrain from kicking her, "Sit back down! Now tell me how did Teacher Wang actually die?"
"He... he committed suicide."
Yang Xiao let out a cold laugh, his gaze meaningful as he glanced outside the hollow, speaking ominously, "Xia Xiuyan, Teacher Wang is nearby, think carefully before you speak."
Xia Xiuyan broke into a cold sweat but still clenched her teeth, standing her ground. The next second, Yang Xiao shouted, "Xia Xiuyan, you went to see him the night before Teacher Wang died, won’t you tell the truth?!"
This sudden shout scared Xia Xiuyan to the point of collapsing on the ground. Yang Xiao didn’t waste words and started dragging her by the arm, "Since you won’t speak, let Teacher Wang ask you himself."
"No, let me go! Let me go!!" Xia Xiuyan struggled desperately as Yang Xiao punched her into submission and dragged her out like a dead dog.
"I’ll talk, I’ll tell you everything, just please... please don’t do this." Xia Xiuyan clung to Yang Xiao’s legs and wouldn’t let go, crying her eyes out.
"This is your last chance. I’m asking you one more time, did you visit him the night Teacher Wang died?"
"Yes, I did, but... but it was Shengnan who forced me to go. I didn’t want to!" Xia Xiuyan sobbed bitterly.
"What did you go there to do?"
"Shengnan sent me to pass on a message."
"What message?"
Yang Xiao’s patience was already wearing thin. If it weren’t for the fact that they needed Xia Xiuyan to testify in court, he would have been ready to make her disappear then and there.
"It had already been decided that Teacher Wang would apologize in front of students and parents in the auditorium the next day. We agreed to handle the issue quietly, which meant keeping it under wraps, not reporting it to the newspapers, to protect Teacher Wang’s reputation."
"But Shengnan ultimately had no evidence in her hands, she was afraid, worried that Teacher Wang would recant his confession in court. So... she thought of a way. She had me go and tell Teacher Wang... say we had someone find his adoptive parents and if he said anything out of line in the auditorium tomorrow, we would expose this affair to his adoptive parents and let everyone familiar with Teacher Wang in his neighborhood know."
"Teacher Wang was an orphan and had been raised by an elderly couple who had a very good relationship with him. Although they were not very cultured, they were good, kind people who were proud of Teacher Wang."
"But no one expected that the same night, Teacher Wang... he went to the classroom where he used to teach and hanged himself."
"Afterward, Shengnan was actually relieved. She had prepared in advance, otherwise, it looked like Teacher Wang had been fully prepared to recant at the auditorium. He was a stubborn man; it was easier to kill him than make him bow to such a thing."
"Dammit..."
His blood pressure soaring, Yang Xiao could no longer contain the fury in his heart and punched Xia Xiuyan’s abdomen hard in front of the camera.
Then he continued to kick the curled-up Xia Xiuyan while cursing loudly, "Are you even human? You drove a man to his death and still profited from his blood, smeared his name in the papers, and made money off that. Aren’t you afraid that Teacher Wang’s wronged spirit will come for you at night?"
Now that the truth had been uncovered, the malevolence of Shengnan and her group had once again lowered the bar in Yang Xiao’s eyes. To his greater regret, according to Xia Xiuyan, Teacher Wang’s adoptive parents ultimately found out about the news through the widespread reports and unable to accept this reality and subjected to a great deal of online bullying, they soon passed away full of resentment.
