The guesthouses in Nepal are very cheap, and I estimate the cash we have on hand will last us a long time. We organized our luggage first. Since Liu Yuning was not present, He Xin shared a room with me.
She sat on the bed and comforted me, "Don't worry, Dad, I believe Captain Liu will wake up soon!"
"En, all I can think about now is solving the case!"
"We've come all this way, we're bound to find clues. The latest I've found is that Liu Dahai once ventured deep into the main city of Lumbini in Nepal. Let's go investigate there tomorrow!"
"Alright!"
This place is located at the border of Nepal and India, within Rupandehi District, 360 kilometers from Kathmandu. It is also the birthplace of the founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama.
When we arrived the next day, we found that the place was indeed filled with a strong Buddhist atmosphere. Thinking back, Tang Sanzang must have felt the same way when he came here on his journey to the West.
Countless golden buildings with pointed spires, strange human faces made of loess, and behind them a giant wheel, upon which unknown animals coiled. A huge, green, forked giant tree led us into the Sacred Garden of Lumbini.
I took out Liu Dahai's photo and asked a few monks in the Sacred Garden. To my surprise, they all spoke fluent Chinese. Others were also showing photos of Liu Dahai and his companions as they conducted their inquiries. We soon reached a conclusion: Liu Dahai, along with a few friends, the parents of the children in question, came here for pilgrimage years ago. After returning to China, they all became wealthy, but strangely, the parents of the victims' children all died mysteriously, while only Liu Dahai survived.
This made it impossible not to suspect foul play. It seemed this case had nothing to do with me; the problem likely lay in what Liu Dahai did at the Sacred Garden of Lumbini back then.
However, we searched the Sacred Garden for a long time without finding anything. We only learned that they had stayed in this place for a period.
We were about to leave when I suddenly spotted a mountain path behind the Sacred Garden. I told everyone to continue their inquiries and walked into the mountain path alone. I reached the back mountain behind the Sacred Garden and found a woman in white, seemingly driven mad and bound in a cage!
I approached her and anxiously asked, "Hello, why are you here?"
I initially thought she wouldn't understand Chinese, but to my surprise, she immediately said, "Let me out, I won't dare to speak nonsense anymore, let me out!"
"Miss, please don't be nervous, we are Chinese police. Did you encounter something?"
"Yes, take me away immediately, I don't want to stay here anymore!"
This woman's behavior seemed a bit deranged, but her tone of voice was normal. Seeing that no one was around, I raised my gun, intending to unlock her restraints. However, before I could pull the trigger, an abbot in a cassock quickly arrived with many monks, surrounding us.
"Officer, what are you doing? You cannot take this woman away!" the monk said, clasping his hands together, seemingly stern but with a hint of resentment.
"Why? We are Chinese police, and we are here to investigate the 2013 case."
"I don't know what you are investigating, but I will not let you take her away!"
"Heh, it seems this woman knows something, doesn't she?"
While I was speaking with the monk, I had already notified backup. Local police arrived at the scene, and along with Xia Hou and the others, we quickly surrounded the monks.
These fake monks were quickly subdued. In fact, I had already realized they were not monks at all. The calluses on their fingers were too prominent, and their faces bore deep scars. Even in their monk robes, they couldn't hide the aura of cruelty. This kind of aura is only found on criminals.
We took the woman to a local psychiatric hospital, and the monks were apprehended by the local police. After an investigation, it turned out they were a group of fleeing drug traffickers from the nearby area who had disguised themselves as monks to evade capture. The original monks of the temple had all been murdered by them.
As we took the woman away, we also assisted the Lumbini police in solving a major case, earning local praise. However, this was nothing to us, because when we took the woman to the psychiatric hospital, a doctor informed me that her name was Vinya, and she was a local of Lumbini.
Nine years ago, Vinya was brought to the Lumbini Rehabilitation Psychiatric Hospital for shouting and acting erratically in the street. It was said she had once stayed at the Sacred Garden. When the doctors examined her, they found male semen stains on her body, but the perpetrator's trace was never found.
After being confined in the psychiatric hospital for a period, Vinya escaped again. She returned to the Sacred Garden; this is my conjecture, as we found her in the Sacred Garden.
I searched online for cases that occurred in Lumbini nine years ago and indeed found a report of a rape case at the Sacred Garden. It was said that the suspects all escaped, and only the victim was found shouting in the street. It was a forensic investigator who discovered some injuries on her, leading to an examination. Later, it was determined she had mental problems, and she was sent to the psychiatric hospital.
"Then how did she escape from the psychiatric hospital? Weren't you paying attention at the time?" I asked the director, as we were all gathered in his office.
"We don't know. She seemed to have blended in with the nurses at the time."
"Blended in with the nurses? You mean she disguised herself?"
"Yes, so we had suspected if this woman was faking it."
I had observed Vinya's pupils and expression, and I couldn't detect any signs of deception. But if she wasn't genuinely insane, how could she have thought of disguising herself as a nurse to escape the psychiatric hospital?
I planned to take Vinya back to China for my younger brother, He Qing, to see. With hypnosis, she could recount the entire incident from that year, and we could likely uncover the truth. Furthermore, the perpetrator of this revenge might be someone close to Vinya, as only such a person would think of helping her.
After the task was assigned, the Lumbini police cooperated with our investigation. We quickly found Vinya's family information, but she was an orphan. Before she left the orphanage, a boy named Vidikang had a good relationship with her. The only information we managed to obtain was this.
More importantly, Vidikang was no longer in Lumbini. We checked his entry records, and he had indeed entered China before the incident.
On the plane back, I looked at this document and said sternly, "This person is a major suspect!"