Following our previous memories, we still arrived at the staff dormitory and walked upstairs, using flashlights to illuminate our way. We originally thought that apart from being a bit dark, there would be no other dangers here, but it seemed we were wrong. Not long after we went upstairs, we heard that nightmarish squeaking sound again. Although none of us spoke about it at the time, our gazes and expressions all told each other that the rats were back!
But weren't the rats cleared out before?
Not long after this thought surfaced, we looked out the window of the dormitory corridor and found a large pile of rats surging out from the various machines in the cement plant and the nearby walls. I checked the time and found it was 1 AM. Could it be that not all the rats were eliminated, and they had merely been hiding?
There was no time to ponder these things, because they were smashing through wall after wall, causing the entire dormitory building to tremble. It looked like if this continued, we would all collapse along with these cement walls. The floor we were standing on had already cracked. Those rats were truly too insane. If I guessed correctly, there must be their traces all over downstairs.
This time, we only had two flashlights, and not many people. We originally thought that since this place had been cleaned, there would be no danger, which was why we dared to come here with just two people. However, we had still underestimated this place, and these rats reappeared!
We were quickly surrounded. Although we had flashlights to resist, Lei Si (the place) probably only had us two now. Even if someone had appeared nearby just now, it wouldn't have changed anything. Those rats were extremely hungry now, and they just wanted to eat us. Therefore, all their attention was focused on us!
"What do we do? H-husband, are we finished?"
"It's all our fault for being so careless before. My grandfather used to say, never underestimate the danger in front of you, otherwise, as coroner's assistants, we would always be in mortal peril. It's the same logic for police forensic investigators."
"Stop talking, they're coming!" I felt that Liu Yuning was completely consumed by the fear before her and had no mood to listen to me talk about the past. Wasn't it the same for me? We didn't have any sulfur with us now, and we were about to be submerged by rats...
Just as we were all huddled together, awaiting the final moment of death, a familiar figure appeared again. That fatty, with a laugh, threw a firecracker directly onto the ground in front of us. The crackling sound echoed around. His figure was tall and sturdy, and his familiar face reappeared before our eyes!
"Didn't expect you to become so timid after not seeing each other for a while!"
"Gao Mingqiang!!!!!" Liu Yuning and I looked up at him standing high above and couldn't help but burst into tears!
"Heh, I have to go now!"
That guy seemed to be in a hurry. He turned, and a grappling hook appeared in his hand. Then he vanished. At that moment, we all thought we were dreaming. Didn't we see Gao Mingqiang die long ago? How could he be alive now?
In fact, in the cases I've handled recently, or even before that, I seemed to have more or less found someone secretly helping me. Could it be him?
Especially when we first came to Lei Si and encountered the rat attack for the first time. If he hadn't thrown a torch to me, we would have been eaten by rats at the Public Security Bureau.
But we clearly saw him pull the trigger of a gun himself back then, and the bullet went through his throat. How could he survive such an injury! However, the person we saw just now was indeed Gao Mingqiang. Could it be that all those scenes back then were deliberately fooling us, or that he was carrying out some mission and had to pretend to die, putting on a show for us? Now that the mission was nearing its end, he dared to show himself before us!
You must know that the Gao Mingqiang we saw just now, although his appearance was the same, his demeanor and personality seemed completely different from the one before, which made me suspicious again. Could it be that the person just looked very much like him?
As far as I remembered, he didn't have a twin brother, but I would have to get He Xin to investigate this later. Perhaps then we could confirm it.
For some reason, after that firecracker exploded, the rats around us didn't dare to come any closer. My nose twitched, and I smelled a strange pine wood fragrance. Could it be that rats were afraid of this?
We didn't have time to dwell on the matter of Gao Mingqiang. We had to keep moving forward.
Fortunately, our luck was still good. When we walked into a staff dormitory, we surprisingly found two large flashlights. But when we saw a note on a table nearby, I realized it was left for us by that person earlier.
"You came to Lei Si without bringing enough equipment, heh, this is for you."
"Who is this guy? Who is it?" Liu Yuning asked doubtfully.
"Gao Mingqiang, but it doesn't seem like him."
"Ah, but if it were him, it would be great. It would prove he's still alive!"
"But before..."
"I know what you want to say. Do you know what people's biggest weakness is? It's taking things for granted, always being deceived by their eyes. But often, what we see is not the truth of the matter. I've dealt with such cases before, where I personally witnessed my colleague commit murder, but do you know what the truth was later?"
"What was it?"
"It was indeed him, and he wasn't threatened. It's just that the person he killed was a death row inmate. That guy could hypnotize people and hypnotized that police officer. Later, although this officer was suspended, he didn't lose his job in the end. After three months of rest, he returned to the police force. If I hadn't continued to investigate deeply at that time, he probably would have been wrongly accused of murder."
"I see. Experience, sometimes I really can't compare to you!"
"Hmph, otherwise do you think I'm really, cough cough, never mind! With the large flashlights, let's keep going!"
After leaving that dormitory, we used our flashlights to advance down the corridor with their strong beams. We weren't as disheveled as before. However, there weren't many rats around now, probably because we were still within the range of that pine wood fragrance. After we traveled a bit further, the fragrance disappeared, and sure enough, the rats became agitated and came towards us again, crowding just outside the range of our strong beams. We really wanted to find that Gao Mingqiang, but we didn't know where he had run off to. Why didn't he stay longer when he saw us? Did he still have something to deal with, so he couldn't reveal himself to us yet?