Eight years ago, I killed a beast and buried him beneath the great tree at Buddha Temple.

Now, the temple is being renovated, and that corpse has been dug up.

I had my passport and was boarding the plane when they came and stopped me.

“Ms. Qi, we’ve found your brother who went missing eight years ago!”

I was brought back to the interrogation room by a middle-aged officer named Lin Tao.

“Where were you off to in such a hurry, Ms. Qi?”

Lin Tao stared at the snakeskin bag at my feet, asking with deliberate casualness.

I understood instantly—this experienced officer had his sights on me.

“I’ve been looking for my brother for eight years. I’d given up hope. I just wanted to move somewhere else and start over.”

The excuse was reasonable enough. Lin Tao had to drop it.

“Officer, you said you found my brother—can I see him?”

Tears welled in my eyes. I pressed my lips together, anxious.

But Lin Tao bit down on me, his eyes locked on mine, as if trying to find a crack in my gaze.

“We found him. His corpse—”

Of course I knew. After all, I’d watched them dig up those bones wrapped in a rotting straw mat.

Crystal tears rolled down at just the right moment.

“Officer, why was my brother buried under a temple tree? You must find out the truth!”

Lin Tao ignored me and handed a file to the junior officer beside him to ask the questions.

The junior officer said: “When you reported it eight years ago, you said your brother went out to buy groceries at night and then disappeared, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your parents committed suicide by drinking paraquat a month later, correct?”

“Mm, that’s right.”

“You were a stepfamily, weren’t you!”

I paused, then nodded. “Yes.”

The next second, Lin Tao slammed the table in the interrogation room and pointed at me, declaring I was the killer.

“Qi Yu, you killed your brother!”

Oh? I killed him?

I dropped the act and wiped the tears from my face.

“Officer, speculation isn’t evidence.”

Lin Tao grabbed a sheet of paper from the table, thick brows furrowed, and said to me:

“Qi Yu, the autopsy report is out. Tell me—why is your DNA under your brother’s fingernails?”

“We never said we found your brother’s body under the temple tree!”

My fault. I’d let it slip.

I stared back into Lin Tao’s eyes without flinching.

“I went to watch the excavation. Of course I know.”

Quickly, Lin Tao caught another bug in my story.

“Since you say you went to watch, then you should have known it was your brother. So tell me—why did you run? Why were you in such a hurry to board a plane abroad? Are you going to claim you didn’t know that was your brother’s corpse? But just now you yourself said we found your brother under the temple—and we never told you it was found under the temple!”

“Ms. Qi said she witnessed it all, but in fact, besides the excavator workers and two young monks at the temple, nobody knew. And nobody goes to burn incense at a temple at five in the morning to ’watch.’ So all of this only proves you’re lying!”

The junior officer beside Lin Tao looked at him with admiration.

As for me, I’d dropped the sniveling act from when I first walked in. I propped my head on my hand and watched the “clown” perform.

Good. He said it well, airtight. Sounded like a great story.

After a while, I looked at Lin Tao with half-lidded eyes.

“Officer Lin, you must have just been transferred here. I understand the eagerness to make your mark. But without evidence—even if I did kill him—what can you do to me?”

The junior officer slammed the table, telling me to watch my attitude.

Then someone knocked three times on the glass window, and this round of interrogation ended.

Before Lin Tao left, I waved at him.

“Officer Lin, you’d better find that evidence carefully~”

Did they really think they were so clever they could pry the truth of that eight-year-old case from my mouth in a few moves?

Naive.

Those were cracks I’d deliberately let show. After all, the more people dragged in, the more fun it got.

Besides, no matter how capable he was, how could he find evidence pointing to me for something I didn’t do?

After twenty-four hours under the interrogation room lights, the door opened.

Lin Tao, eyes bloodshot, unlocked the door for me.

“Qi Yu, your parents didn’t die from paraquat either, did they? I’ll find the evidence!”

Looks like he studied the corpse all night and found nothing. Hahaha!

I hummed a laugh and walked out of the station. Lin Tao offered to drive me home.

“No need, Officer. My place is way out in the mountains. Two hours’ drive. Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Lin Tao smiled and opened the car door for me—a smiling tiger.

“I’m off today. Driving the people home is my duty. No trouble at all!”

At this point, going abroad was definitely off the table.

But what worried me was the trace of him surviving in that house.

“Ms. Qi sold her city apartment and moved back to the countryside—do you like farming that much?”

Whatever he said, went. He was here to dig for evidence and bait information. Going along with him was the safest bet.

“Yeah, I love farming!”

Along the way, Lin Tao talked a lot—seemingly irrelevant, but every sentence was fishing for information.

Unsurprisingly, I deflected all of it.

Before long, Lin Tao’s private white car stopped in front of a three-story red-brick house.

“Thank you, Officer Lin. I don’t know why you’re convinced I’m the killer, but I have to tell you—I wouldn’t kill my own brother. He was so good to me. Please find the truth quickly!”

I slammed the car door shut.

“Ms. Qi, won’t you invite me in for tea?”

If he got inside, it would really be all over.

“Alone man and woman—not appropriate. Next time I’ll buy you coffee!”

Lin Tao coughed into his hand and drove off.

Only after the white car disappeared from sight did I take out my keys and unlock the front door—three locks.

The moment I stepped inside, she threw herself at me, but her body was too heavy and she crashed to the floor in front of me.

I grabbed her by the collar, lifted her up, and barked:

“Who said you could come up? Get back to the cellar!”

Her grape-like big eyes rolled around. She bit her lip and held out a chubby, dirty little hand.

I impatiently brushed her hand aside—and got a grape.

She timidly mouthed the word “sweet.”

I took the grape without mercy, threw her into the cellar, and locked it.

“Behave!”

Two days of staying indoors, then there was a knock at the door.

I was about to open it when the second-floor window was punched in!

Lin Tao climbed in with a self-righteous, triumphant look.

“There’s a new development in the case. I came to verify with you, and I saw your house looked like it was on fire. Emergency situation—I climbed in!”

I glanced down at the front of the open back window—a burned-up roll of toilet paper. Obvious.

“Officer Lin, if you wanted to come in, just say so. No need for the fire-rescue act. If there’d really been a fire, it’d be over!”

If there really had been a fire, I wouldn’t have minded dragging a cop down with me. Hahaha!

“Jingle jingle—”

The bell tied to her ankle rang as she ran.

Lin Tao was alert in an instant, pulling her over before I could.

“Is this your child? Ms. Qi, you’re not married—where did a child come from?”

Should’ve gotten rid of this troublemaker long ago. Annoying.

I hid the anger in my eyes and put on a smile: “The neighbor’s busy, dropped the kid off with me. Didn’t you say you had something to discuss, Officer Lin?!”

Dingdang broke free from Lin Tao and ran out—I’d told her long ago: when someone comes, she must get out.

“We pulled the autopsy reports of Qi Dazhuang and Gu Hongmei and found traces of a sedative in their systems. The paraquat is believed to have been poured in after death. So I need Ms. Qi to come back to the station with me again to cooperate with the investigation.”

Eight-year-old autopsy reports—what could they possibly find?

“Of course. I want to know who has it out for my family too!”

I followed Lin Tao back to the station and sat in the same interrogation room from two days ago.

This round, it was still the junior officer and Lin Tao.

The junior officer made me repeat, again and again, where I’d been the night Qi Dazhuang and Gu Hongmei died.

“Officer, the night my parents died, I was trapped in a bookstore by heavy rain. The bookstore owner can testify! I even got his books wet and he chewed me out. That counts as an alibi, right?”

It had really happened exactly like that. They wouldn’t find a single trace.

Besides, didn’t some famous person say: when lying, mix truth with falsehood—doubles the effect.

Lin Tao leaned back in his chair, watching me idly.

After a long while, the junior officer stopped questioning and walked out with Lin Tao.

The next time I saw Lin Tao, he came in to bring me food.

“Qi Yu, right? You’re really a brilliant person. But even the most brilliant criminal gets caught, because the net of heaven is vast—nothing slips through.”

My hand paused mid-tear of the lunchbox lid. I looked up.

“Can I go home after twenty-four hours, Officer Lin?”

Yes, I was provoking him.

It had been a long time since I’d dealt with such an interesting cop.

Lin Tao left with only four words: “Watch yourself.”

Watch myself? Once you’ve made your move, there’s no taking it back.

Twenty-four hours arrived on schedule. The door opened.

But not to let me out—to drag me to hell.

“Qi Yu, birth name Gu Yu, admitted to Zhongcheng Orphanage at age four!”

Lin Tao held a thick stack of files and read out my past, word by word.

The past I hated most.

I slammed my fist on the table. “Enough! Shut up!”

Lin Tao ignored me and kept reading.

“At five, recovered by biological parents. Verification confirms you were abducted at four, then recovered from the orphanage. One year after being taken back by your parents, someone reported seeing you wandering the streets, half-dead. Here’s a photo a journalist took of you!”

Lin Tao held up a yellowed photograph and pointed it at me.

In the photo, that thing—neither human nor ghost—limbs covered in blood scabs, hair matted, face full of wounds, moving on hands on the ground, lower body propped on a wooden board. And standing in front of me in the photo was a woman in red heels and a red dress, frowning back at me.

My nails dug deep into my palms.

Suddenly, laughter erupted in the interrogation room—mine.

“I heard police use extreme measures during interrogation, but I didn’t think they’d abandon all decency and try to fool me with fake evidence!”

After a while, Lin Tao gave me a skin-deep smile.

“Haha, Qi Yu—if I’m not mistaken, the woman in this photo is Gu Hongmei, isn’t she?”

Lin Tao slowly stood up, both hands braced on the table, speaking faster and faster.

“You’re not Gu Hongmei’s biological daughter. Your name isn’t Gu Yu either. You had no name—your only designation was 0085 at Zhongcheng Orphanage. Isn’t that right, 0085?!”

I rubbed my head like a madwoman, hair a mess.

“Shut up, stop talking!”

I covered my ears, trembling uncontrollably, wanting only to crawl into a dark corner and hide.

But the voice in my ears didn’t stop, pressing closer and closer.

“Qi Yu, Zhongcheng Orphanage is near the Myanmar border. You were eleven when you begged your way back into China! Because this photo was taken in Myanmar!”

The last word fell. My hoarse roar tore through the room.

“I burned all those files, I burned them all...”

Suddenly, I calmed down. I smoothed my messy hair and glared at Lin Tao, who was sneering at me.

“You cops set me up? So what if you know my background? Their deaths have nothing to do with me. Nothing!”

“You just said you had no reason to kill Gu Hongmei and Qi Dazhuang. But what if they treated you badly—and what if your stepbrother wanted to rape you? All evidence points to you having ample motive. It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out, Qi Yu. Confess and be lenient!”

Lin Tao finished speaking and slowly opened the door.

The moment I saw him walk through that door, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving the station.

Of course. The only person who knew everything about that place was him—because everyone else was dead.

The moment his cloudy eyes saw me, they filled with tears.

He called softly: “Liu Liu~”

The name Liu Liu—I’d casually said it once, six-six for smooth sailing, and it stuck.

My heart trembled.

“Uncle Liu, long time no see!”

Lin Tao gave us time to talk. Though I was in handcuffs.

Uncle Liu set down the big backpack on his back—a rolled-up quilt, pots and pans. The only light thing on him was the plaque around his neck: a missing-person notice, with a photo he’d taken of me before I left that place.

Uncle Liu unshouldered his pack and held out a milk candy with his black, calloused hand.

“I carry candy every day. Afraid that when I found you, you’d want some and I wouldn’t have any!”

Uncle Liu asked me nothing. Not about the fire at the orphanage back then.

He only used his rough palm to carefully wipe the tears from my eyes and whispered that I was truly foolish.

Half an hour later, Uncle Liu left. He said he’d wait for me to get out, wait for me to go with him this year to sweep Rourou’s grave.

After a long silence, I smiled and promised him: “Okay. This year we’ll go see Rourou together.”

This time, Lin Tao came in alone.

He took a deep breath and said slowly: “That little girl in your hometown house is Qi Dazhuang and Gu Hongmei’s daughter, isn’t she?

She’s a mute—born that way?!“

“And we’ve found you have sufficient motive. Hatred alone is enough to drive murder.”

I’d thought I could escape this round. Didn’t think the net of heaven, vast as it is, finally closes.

“How about I tell Officer Lin a story? After you hear it, you can judge whether I’m guilty or not.”

Lin Tao asked: “Yours, or theirs?”

I didn’t answer. I just started telling an old story from twenty years ago.

At four, I was abducted.

But actually, I wasn’t abducted—I was sold to a trafficker by my parents. The trafficker got caught on his first job, and my parents were too afraid to claim me, so I was taken to the orphanage.

Zhongcheng Orphanage.

In my year there, I discovered the director’s secret.

He always called us into his office one by one, then greedily sniffed us.

The thing he said to me most was: “You’re so beautiful, 0085. Let the director give you a physical exam~”

Countless times, he stripped me and the other girls naked—until he made one girl cry.

That girl was pinned under him, wailing: “I’m not an orphan! I have a dad! My dad’s phone number is 183...”

Hearing this, Lin Tao suddenly interrupted.

“What were you doing? Watching? And what happened after?”

I crushed the paper cup in my hand and said: “I took the fountain pen on his desk and drove it into his arm.”

The result: I was put in solitary confinement. And the dark room they used for solitary confinement was the director’s own room.

He gave me no water, no steamed buns. Only when I knelt on the floor begging him, again and again, would he toss me a bottle-cap’s worth of water.

He was a pervert. A pedophile pervert.

The first day out of confinement, the girl who’d been pinned under the director found me and handed me a milk candy.

“My name is Liu Rou. Thank you for helping me. My dad says good people deserve rewards. I hid this candy for a long time—consider it your reward. Thank you!”

Lin Tao impatiently asked again: “What does this have to do with you killing the Qi father and son and Gu Hongmei?”

“Officer Lin, the interesting part of a story always comes later!”

At the orphanage, Liu Rou and I depended on each other.

The director was not only perverted but petty. He held a grudge about me stabbing his arm, so every night he called for Liu Rou.

And the reason Liu Rou had to go: he threatened her with me. If she didn’t go, I’d be thrown into the river—because the orphanage didn’t keep disobedient children!

Every morning when she came back, Liu Rou was exhausted. Beneath her white dress hem, red lotuses bloomed.

“I’ll kill him!”

Liu Rou took my hand and whispered in my ear: “Actually I was abducted too. But don’t be scared. My dad is really powerful. He’ll definitely come save us!”

Only then did I know there were many children like us in that orphanage. And the reason we existed was to satisfy the director’s perverted desires.

Hearing this, Lin Tao couldn’t sit still. He grabbed the folder at hand and slammed it to the floor, cursing: “Animal! I’ll definitely cuff him!”

But what I wanted to say was: probably too late for that.

At five, I was adopted.

And the ones who adopted me were my biological parents.

They put me in a pretty little dress and took me out of the orphanage. And on the day I left, Rourou died in the director’s office.

All of this, I heard later from Uncle Liu, through his sobs.

My parents put me on a green train and took me to the Myanmar border.

I thought I was a lucky kid. Maybe I could even convince my parents to bring Rourou back too.

It didn’t take long for me to realize how naive I’d been.

They locked me in an iron room and forced me to fish soap out of boiling water. One second too slow—one electric shock.

After my hands got fast enough, they taught me lock-picking. They discovered I had a gift—no matter how hard the lock, I could open it easily.

So they patted my head and praised me: “Born to be a thief. Now we can sit at home and count money!”

My first time on the streets, I couldn’t bring myself to steal from a pregnant woman. So that night, I was hung by my wrists with wire and locked in a dog cage, fighting wild dogs all night.

My mom cracked sunflower seeds, spitting the shells at my face, her saliva sticky and disgusting.

“Ungrateful little thing. You want us to starve? One extra mouth to feed for nothing? In your dreams!”

After that, I gave up on humanity. As long as there was food to survive, I’d steal anything.

Every time, flawless. So for over half a year, I ate my fill.

Until that one time.

Lin Tao pinched the bridge of his nose, voice gone hoarse: “You got caught?”

“Not only caught—I got beaten. That photo of yours is what I looked like after the beating. And that was the first time I met Gu Hongmei.”

I paused at the name Gu Hongmei.

Gu Hongmei was a selfish woman. Money was all she saw.

She noticed me, beaten black and blue—not because she pitied me, but because she saw people would give me money out of sympathy.

So the red heels stopped in front of me.

“Come with me. From now on I’m your mom. I’ll feed you.”

I agreed. I thought I’d found salvation. Didn’t realize it was another abyss.

Gu Hongmei took me begging around Myanmar for a long time. She loved looking pretty, but the money I begged wasn’t enough for her vanity.

So she made me take clients.

At this point, Lin Tao stopped me again.

“Your parents? After you were beaten, where did they go?”

I said calmly: “They ran. Took the train. Before boarding, they gave me two words—’you deserved it.’ Maybe they’re dead now, maybe alive. But I hope it’s the former.”

We begged and took clients in Myanmar, scraping by.

And I never actually took a client. Every time I’d find an excuse to slip away.

The world was big—let them search!

Then one day, Gu Hongmei told me there was going to be war in Myanmar and she was taking me back to China to beg.

I was eleven then. Seven years since I’d escaped the designation 0085.

All these years, Gu Hongmei had watched me closely, afraid of losing her money-making tool. So I’d never been able to go back to the orphanage to see Rourou.

Until this time, I firmly told Gu Hongmei I had to go.

Luckily I still had use to her, so she agreed.

That night going back was the first time I ran into Uncle Liu.

He was being pinned to the ground by the director’s shiny polished shoe. The director wore gold-rimmed glasses, his face twisted.

Uncle Liu struggled, fighting with everything he had: “Give me back my daughter’s life! She was only five! How could you—”

The director stamped hard on Uncle Liu’s face: “It’s her fate. Here’s five hundred yuan. Take it and get lost, or I’ll kill you!”

Five hundred yuan was thrown in Uncle Liu’s face.

Beaten black and blue, Uncle Liu still got up and hugged the director’s left leg, begging through tears: “Give me Rourou’s body, please. I’ll pay anything. Please...”

My memory flashed back to that sweltering summer evening—the girl with dimples, smiling and holding out a milk candy to me, so cute. The beast inside me could no longer be contained.

I lifted the steel bar I’d prepared and beat the director savagely.

In the end, the director, face swollen and bruised, had no choice but to reveal where Rourou’s body was.

“I buried her... in the mud behind the school latrine!”

Uncle Liu went and found her. Truly found Liu Rou’s body.

But she’d been dead seven years. Only a little flesh and blood still connected to white bones...

Then Uncle Liu and I talked a lot about the fun times with Liu Rou at the orphanage. We talked late into the night.

Finally, I put sleeping pills in Uncle Liu’s wine, stuffed the money from the director’s office into his pocket, and put him on a bus back to China.

This was what I owed Rourou. Without her, maybe I’d have been nothing but rotting 0085 my whole life.

After sending Uncle Liu off, I did something big.

Lin Tao fought back tears and asked: “What big thing?”

I didn’t answer. I just kept telling my past.

I carried gasoline and poured a full circle around the director’s office, making sure he’d burn to death the moment he walked in. Then I found the other girls in the orphanage.

Hundreds of them!

So the instant the director stepped into the office, they blocked the doors and windows with wire and tables. And I set the fire that burned that office to ash.

Burned everything related to 0085.

And the girls like me were saved.

Uncle Liu said I saved many Rorous.

Lin Tao told me the same.

I shook my head and said: “But I couldn’t save Liu Rou.”

“The Myanmar story ends here. I imagine your China story is just beginning.”

Lin Tao said.

Back in China, I was twelve.

To make me her real daughter, Gu Hongmei gave me a name: Gu Yu.

A single woman with a child easily drew sympathy, so we got by easily enough.

Three months after returning, Gu Hongmei got married.

To a wealthy man in steel materials.

Named Qi Dazhuang.

He had a son, Qi Qianghui, two years older than me.

For Qi Dazhuang’s money, Gu Hongmei made me change my name to Qi Yu.

Gu Hongmei knew about the orphanage incident—because I’d burned the director to death. She used it to blackmail me: I had to obey and be her “daughter.”

Qi Dazhuang and Qi Qianghui, of course, knew nothing about my real relationship with Gu Hongmei.

Qi Dazhuang had a face full of fat and always groped me in the bathroom.

And his son was exactly like him—fish rots from the head down.

On my eighteenth birthday, they threw me a birthday party.

Gu Hongmei did my makeup beautifully and wheeled out a two-tier cake.

I’d never had a birthday before. There’d always been an empty place in my heart.

That day, it was briefly filled.

But before I could be happy, my heart was completely shattered.

They’d drugged the cake. By the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late.

And Gu Hongmei sat to the side counting money, coldly watching what the father and son did to me.

“So you fought back and killed them? Where did you bury them? Eight-year-old records show you refused to let police perform autopsies. The bodies were kept less than two days before you took them back. Where did you bury them?!”

I smiled coldly and calmly looked at Lin Tao, holding out my hands: “I killed them. Arrest me, Officer Lin. Use me for your merit.”

Just then, the interrogation room door was slammed open. It was the junior officer who’d questioned me before.

“Brother Lin, that Liu Gang who just came in confessed. He killed the Qi father and son and Gu Hongmei and buried them at the temple! The evidence chain fits.”

Lin Tao’s face changed. He whipped his head around to look at me.

Oh. He seemed to realize he’d been played by me.

But everything I said was true! Don’t you think so?

Uncle Liu’s sudden confession got me detained temporarily. If no new evidence surfaced, I’d be released.

But Uncle Liu was going to prison.

From bits and pieces at the station, they said Uncle Liu turned over a paraquat bottle with the Qi father and son’s fingerprints and his own.

That bottle had also been buried at the temple.

After realizing he’d been played by me all along, Lin Tao stopped interrogating me and shifted to Uncle Liu.

Lin Tao examined Liu Gang with piercing eyes.

“You say you killed the Qi father and son and Gu Hongmei. What was your motive? And why have you been looking for Qi Yu all these years? To find her and kill her?”

At Lin Tao’s words, Uncle Liu’s eyes suddenly turned sinister, crinkling layer upon layer at the corners from his smile.

“If it weren’t for her, would my daughter have died? Why did my daughter die while she got to live and have birthdays? Why did my daughter suffer and die in her place, while she refused to save her? Why? Her life is a life, but my daughter’s life isn’t? She should’ve died. Just didn’t think she’d slip through the net. Her whole family died, only she lived!

But it doesn’t matter. The living suffer most. She still thinks she killed those three bastards herself. Stupid. But I want her to live her whole life in guilt. I want her to atone!“

Hearing this, Lin Tao looked at me through the one-way glass.

That’s right—I heard everything Uncle Liu said.

But I wasn’t surprised. I just thought he was foolish.

Lin Tao continued: “How did you kill them?”

“Just drugged them beforehand. I used to run a pharmacy. Qi Dazhuang had high blood pressure. I just soaked all his pills in paraquat, then dried them and bottled them. Simple enough. As for Gu Hongmei—that woman was too cunning, so I poured some paraquat down her!”

“And Qi Qianghui? How did you bury him at the temple, and why there?”

Liu Gang paused and said: “He liked Qi Yu, and Qi Yu liked him too. So I’ll make him never reincarnate—suppressed by a peach tree. I want Qi Yu to live her whole life alone and full of regret!

As for burying at the temple—it’s just a superstition about never reincarnating. Nobody went there back then. Didn’t think it’d become so famous now, or you’d never have dug up that body. My oversight!“

Behind the glass, I listened and scoffed. My nose suddenly stung.

After a long while, Lin Tao asked the final question.

“Why confess now, all of a sudden?”

“I don’t have long. Stomach cancer. So before I die, I have to make sure Qi Yu remembers my Rourou her whole life—living or dead, she’ll remember this. Hahaha!”

Afterward, I was brought back to the interrogation room. Coincidentally, it was the winter solstice and light snow was falling.

Lin Tao split his dumplings in half and gave me some. We sat face to face eating.

When I got to the last one, Lin Tao set down his chopsticks.

“Qi Yu, can you really bear to let it be like this?”

I slowly ate the last dumpling.

“Bear what? It was all destined. He hates me, he has every right. Don’t blame him. And thank you for the dumplings, Officer Lin.”

“Can I ask Officer Lin for one thing? I’d like a red string and a bell. Is that okay?”

Lin Tao’s brow shifted: “Qi Yu, I don’t trust what you say now. You’re very good at lying. So—can I trust you?”

In the end, Lin Tao bought them anyway.

When he handed them over, he sighed deeply, his tone helpless but with a post-storm calm.

“Qi Yu, your detention ends in twelve hours. Still won’t tell the truth? If you talk, I’ll do everything I can to help you!”

“I don’t know what you mean, Officer Lin. Since I’m innocent and broke no law, shouldn’t I be released? He hates me so much—then let him go to hell!”

Lin Tao’s last words kept me thinking for twelve hours.

He said: “Don’t let a good person be wronged. In the face of evidence, there’s nothing I can do to overturn it!”

Time flew. Dawn broke.

The interrogation room door opened, but Lin Tao wasn’t there.

The junior officer hurried me to leave. I sat still and only looked up at the sunlight.

I said: “I confess. But I want to see Officer Lin.”

They said Lin Tao was off today, but in the end he came.

I stated my crimes to them and went with them to the temple.

Before long, based on the evidence I provided, they found two more bodies buried in different locations around the temple—Gu Hongmei and Qi Dazhuang.

Uncle Liu was right. I wanted them to never reincarnate. I hated them.

As for loving Qi Qianghui?

That coward—who only wanted to run and coldly watched while his father abused me—deserved my love?

He’d raped no fewer than five girls. Hardly a good person. Besides, father and son were close—wouldn’t dying together be nice?

As for Gu Hongmei, it was purely accidental. I hadn’t planned to give her paraquat. She just didn’t get the hint in my words and ate that cake anyway!

Since I’d already killed several, what was one more life for Gu Hongmei?

The day before New Year’s Eve, I had my final interrogation.

Lin Tao read out my crimes one by one, and I confessed to all.

“How did you kill Qi Qianghui?”

“Beat him to death with a big rock, blow by blow. Then dragged him to the temple and buried him. I hate cowards. He drugged me trying to rape me—his death wasn’t unjust.”

Lin Tao coughed.

“Gu Hongmei and Qi Dazhuang?”

“They planned to put sedatives in my cake. I just happened to overhear it and swapped the sedatives for paraquat beforehand. Fed it to them!”

“Last one—the director of Zhongcheng Orphanage!”

“I burned him to death. Didn’t Officer Lin hear that whole story completely?”

“The whole story is half-truth, half-fiction. You sometimes deliberately distort facts with your own bias, so I don’t believe it. I only believe evidence!”

When I was being transferred to a maximum-security prison, I saw Uncle Liu at the station entrance.

He had a sign hanging on him that read “I am a murderer,” but nobody paid him any mind.

Seeing Lin Tao, he frantically grabbed Lin Tao’s arm and wouldn’t let go.

“I killed someone! Why aren’t you arresting me? Why...”

I walked over to Uncle Liu. “Get treatment. You still have a child to raise for me. Remember to have that kid sweep Rourou’s grave for me next year!”

Actually, after killing them eight years ago, I’d noticed the paraquat bottle was missing and that someone had cleaned up after me. But once I realized that person wasn’t trying to harm me, I let it go.

Now I understood. After I sent Uncle Liu back to China, he must have found me long ago—but didn’t approach me. Instead, he quietly cleaned up after me in the shadows.

I knew he’d come to see me as a daughter—a replacement for Rourou, making up for what he owed her.

On the way to the prison van, Lin Tao asked me a question.

“You killed everyone. Why leave that child?”

“Her name is Dingdang. Doesn’t Officer Lin think she’s adorable? Because she’s cute, I kept her. Is that reason enough?!”

Actually, no. It was when I raised the knife in front of Dingdang that she suddenly smiled at me and reached out her little hand to hold mine.

Only after wiping the blood off my hands did I dare touch such a clean child.

Children shouldn’t suffer for adults’ sins. So I didn’t kill her.

Four lives on my back. No escaping.

My death sentence was handed down within a week.

On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year.

On New Year’s Day, I received a drawing from Dingdang—a picture of me cooking for her. Ugly as it was, I thought it was quite beautiful.

Dingdang was born mute. Maybe she chose not to speak. Maybe she really couldn’t.

Early on the fifth day, I saw Lin Tao.

He’d specifically requested to escort me.

Walking to the execution ground, I looked up at the blue sky and the dazzling sun, and said slowly: “Thank you, Officer Lin.”

“We found him. His corpse—”

“But if—” I think you’re innocent, but the law cannot be shaken!“

I took the red string from my wrist and handed it to Lin Tao, begging him to give it to Dingdang.

It was the eighth-birthday present I’d promised her.

I knew that somewhere, Uncle Liu and Dingdang were watching.

After my last words, I was led onto the execution ground.

I said: “I don’t regret a single person I killed. Because I was born to be rotten through and through!”

When the black muzzle of the gun pointed at me, I wasn’t afraid. Because I thought this was liberation.

A second before the gunshot, I heard a voice call “Sister—”

It was the first time I’d heard her speak. And the last.

In the moment before I fell, I wondered:

If there were a next life, and I chose to be a good person—would the ending change?

But I never got my answer.

（The End）