Chapter 113: Extra Chapter 13 – Performance Records
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
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[Yan Wenbin – Car Accident – Duan Yanfeng]
[Serial Killer – Car Submersion and Disposal – Unknown Male Victim]
Chu Feng listed 17-year-old Little Xie’s “achievements” in an Excel spreadsheet on his computer. The blue light from the screen reflected on his profile, and Chu Feng had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t the full story.
Yan Wenbin’s car accident wasn’t caused by Xie Shiyu. At most, Xie Shiyu only leaked some personal information, while the murderer was the one who harmed him, and it was Duan Yanfeng’s friend who hit him with the car. None of these actions were directly linked to Xie Shiyu.
Through his connections, Chu Feng inquired about the accident responsibility report issued by the S City traffic police. This car accident happened 13 years ago and wasn’t a confidential document. The police had determined that the accident responsibility was shared equally between both parties: Duan Yanfeng’s friend compensated Yan Wenbin’s family 147,000 yuan, most of which was covered by insurance.
Yan Wenbin’s family was not satisfied with this. At that time, an online post emerged, accusing the school bully Duan Yanfeng of deliberately hitting someone with his car and documenting Duan’s usual arrogant behavior. This was posted on the school forum and various websites.
Many students at S City No. 1 High School saw the post. Although they weren’t sure if Duan Yanfeng was driving, they confirmed his bullying and that the car belonged to him.
Upon learning this, Yan Wenbin’s family quickly took advantage of the situation. Chu Feng found out that Yan Wenbin’s father took many gory photos of his son’s amputation and shared them in various WeChat groups and social media circles, asking for support. The Yan family even hired internet trolls to spread the news and invited media coverage, claiming that an official’s child had broken their son’s legs and then used his background to escape responsibility, with the police turning a blind eye, leading to a loss of social justice.
The issue escalated, and the Yan family officially demanded a total compensation of 4.875 million yuan from the Duan family for medical expenses and emotional distress, claiming they would drop the matter if paid. The Duan family refused, leading the Yan family to continue making a fuss, but in the end, the issue was resolved as per the police accident responsibility report, compensating the Yan family 147,000 yuan.
Out of this amount, 103,000 yuan was paid by the insurance company. Duan Yanfeng’s friend, who was responsible for the accident, paid 36,000 yuan, and Duan Yanfeng, as the car owner, paid an additional 8,000 yuan.
Chu Feng tried to find the original online account that exposed Duan Yanfeng but found that much of the information had been deleted after 13 years. After several searches, he finally found a page titled “Top 100 Reversal Events on the Internet.”
[Event No. 57] – 13 years ago, a rumor circulated that an official’s son from S City, Duan, had hit a classmate, Yan…
The post included many screenshots in chronological order, from the initial exposure to Yan’s family spreading the news, media reports, and interviews. It was all clear and well-documented.
The editor of this review included the police announcement at the end, confirming that Duan wasn’t in the car at all. The car had been lent to a friend three days earlier. On the day of the accident, Yan rushed home and ran onto the road, and the friend couldn’t brake in time, resulting in the tragedy.
Thus, the story of the official’s son hitting someone was completely overturned. Chu Feng noticed that this reversal event had many comments:
[Feel sorry for Duan, being scolded for no reason for so long…]
[Come on, even if he didn’t hit someone, did he really bully people? Is his family’s collusion with businesses real?]
[His family’s Tianyuan Hotel made a fortune. Even the disciplinary committee investigated them. How can they play innocent now?]
[His family is at fault, but he didn’t hit anyone. On the contrary, Yan’s actions are more disgusting, exploiting public sympathy for money…]
[His family is at fault, but he must have made enemies. How else would someone immediately expose him right after the accident, detailing every incident?]
[Agree, the timing is too coincidental. Did anyone investigate the original exposing account?]
[Maybe it was a political rival of the Duan family. Using this incident to take them down, but now they’ve probably risen higher. Do you dare to investigate? (dog head emoji)]
Chu Feng thought, the Duan family’s quick downfall might have been pushed by political rivals, but the initial online exposure was likely not from them. If Yan Wenbin’s family hadn’t stubbornly insisted on making a big deal out of it, the exposure would have only caused small-scale discussions in school forums and a few websites, and the heat would have died down quickly.
Chu Feng clicked on the initial screenshot exposing Duan. The account was a small one, with a gray avatar and an ID that was a string of random English letters: jtkyjgfslm?
At first glance, it looked like a system-generated default account. Chu Feng stared at the string of letters for a minute, gradually focusing on two letters: There were “fs” in it.
Chu Feng squinted, thinking: fs… Maple Tree.
Following this logic, jgfs… Watering Maple Tree.
The entire ID: jtkyjgfslm? … Can I water the maple tree today?
— It was indeed Xie Shiyu.
Chu Feng chuckled internally. The 17-year-old Little Xie dared to use such an account name, yet that summer, when they stayed at the hotel next to the school, Xie Shiyu would only lie next to him in neatly worn pajamas every night, saying with a gentlemanly air: “Good night~”
Click, click.
The silent keyboard emitted a faint typing sound as Chu Feng now was completely certain that Xie Shiyu had indeed been manipulating things behind the scenes. In his Excel spreadsheet, Chu Feng listed the deeds of 17-year-old Little Xie:
- Disclosed information to the murderer, indirectly causing Yan Wenbin’s leg to be broken in a car accident and resulting in mental instability.
- Used the car accident incident to spread rumors about Duan Yanfeng on the internet, while manipulating things behind the scenes.
- Drowned and disposed of cars in Lake, where the serial killer and another male body were found.
If these two incidents were Xie Shiyu’s handiwork, then… Chu Feng looked at the Excel sheet. Little Xie, at 17 years old, had directly taken action against only two people: Yan Wenbin and Duan Yanfeng were merely manipulated indirectly, somewhat like what 7-year-old Little Xie did.
However, 7-year-old Little Xie was only ranked fourth in terms of combat strength, and managing to navigate around serial killer Ji Shiming at such a young age, Yan Wenbin and Duan Yanfeng didn’t quite measure up to that level.
Ranked third in combat strength was 24-year-old Xie Shiyu, who directly eliminated four people. Currently, Little Xie had directly eliminated two people and indirectly involved in the demise of two others. With this record, he definitely wouldn’t rank second.
—This means there are still some not found.
Chu Feng stared at the computer screen and repeatedly reviewed the three items he listed, all related to “cars.”
In Xie Shiyu’s graffiti book at the time, there was a picture of a car.
Could there be a fourth item related to cars? For instance…
Chu Feng pondered briefly, then gradually focused on the name “Duan Yanfeng.”
Among the four individuals who had been handled, Chu Feng fully understood Xie Shiyu’s reasons for handling Yan Wenbin, and the serial killer who saw his face would surely come looking for him, so he too had been dealt with by Xie Shiyu. It wasn’t clear who the male body found with the serial killer who died along with him was; the police suspected him to be an accomplice. Chu Feng encircled this male body for further consideration.
These three individuals had all stemmed from the Niujiaogang murder case, and the only one not connected to the entire incident was Duan Yanfeng.
Why would Xie Shiyu have gone after Duan Yanfeng?
From Chu Feng’s preliminary investigation, Duan Yanfeng was a school bully at S City No. 1 High School, with influence and wealth, poor academic performance, somewhat mixed in society, arrogant and domineering, and often beating classmates.
However, none of this seemed to have any connection to Xie Shiyu, so why would Xie Shiyu secretly go after Duan Yanfeng?
Chu Feng had looked into several of Xie Shiyu’s little secrets and summarized some experiences. The outcomes of those who had been dealt with generally reflected the extent to which they had provoked Xie Shiyu.
For example, in the case of Xie Shiyu’s father, Chu Feng thought that if it were just a matter of killing him, disguising it as a drug overdose or a traffic accident would have been much safer. However, 13-year-old Xie Shiyu, at the height of his power, resolutely chose to dismember the body.
Furthermore, instead of burying the remains deeply, Xie Shiyu discarded the body in the southern suburbs. The police, upon discovering the remains, took the case very seriously and immediately set up a task force to investigate. Ultimately, they successfully pinned the crime on the serial killer Ji Shiming.
Chu Feng believed that was the time in Xie Shiyu’s life when he was most likely to be discovered, so he had to act before he turned 14. If he was discovered, according to the laws at the time, he wouldn’t be held criminally responsible. Moreover, given that his father was a drug addict and abuser, his death would be seen as deserved, and the judge would take this into consideration during the trial.
His father was dismembered and brutally killed, the rapist was drowned and violently murdered, and Yan Wenbin suffered a car accident resulting in a broken leg. Chu Feng had investigated Duan Yanfeng’s current situation. Although he was still alive, his family’s financial situation had significantly declined. This indicated that, while he had angered young Xie Shiyu, his offense wasn’t severe enough to warrant death, and it was less serious than Yan Wenbin’s case.
Xie Shiyu had merely said a few things about Duan Yanfeng online. The final outcome was largely due to the entanglements with Yan Wenbin’s family and the inherent corruption within Duan’s family, rather than being solely orchestrated by Xie Shiyu.
Chu Feng re-examined the information on Duan Yanfeng.
S City No. 1 High School held special summer training sessions, attracting top students from other schools across the province. According to leaks from one of Xie Shiyu’s online aliases, this school bully, Duan Yanfeng, would choose an out-of-school student to beat up every summer. The worst incident involved a student who ended up in the hospital with broken ribs.
Summer training.
Chu Feng suddenly recalled a detail from many years ago. On his first day of summer training, he encountered Duan Yanfeng at the entrance of the boys’ restroom. At that time, Duan Yanfeng deliberately blocked his way. Chu Feng remembered asking him if something was wrong, but Duan Yanfeng didn’t respond. After a pause, he eventually stepped aside.
——Beating up out-of-school students every summer.
Chu Feng frowned. Could it be that during that summer, he had been chosen by Duan Yanfeng as the target for a beating? He casually compared the profiles of previous targets of Duan Yanfeng and found something didn’t quite add up.
Most of the chosen students came from Z City, N City, and other economically underdeveloped areas, with very ordinary family backgrounds and no connections.
They didn’t dare to speak up after being beaten by Duan Yanfeng, until he was exposed online and they came forward to corroborate the story. This indicated that Duan Yanfeng chose his targets carefully, only daring to attack those without backgrounds.
Chu Feng knew his own family background—his grandfather was the director of the finance bureau in B City. If he had been inexplicably beaten, Duan Yanfeng wouldn’t have gained anything from it. Moreover, that day was the first day of summer training. Chu Feng thought that since he had just entered the No. 1 High School campus, Duan Yanfeng shouldn’t have recognized him. Why would he have targeted him?
——What if… someone had told Duan Yanfeng to beat him?
That would make sense. Chu Feng followed this line of thought. Someone knew he was going to the summer training and contacted the school bully, Duan Yanfeng, asking him to beat Chu Feng. But before Duan Yanfeng could act, the car accident involving Yan Wenbin happened, leaving him with no time to carry out the plan.
Chu Feng began to recall if he had offended anyone back then, someone who might have wanted to mess with him like that. His family shouldn’t have had any enemies either…
His thoughts paused, and Chu Feng felt something was off. He pulled up the relationship diagram he had previously created on his computer, with Xie Shiyu’s name in the center.
——The entire event was connected to the 17-year-old Xie Shiyu. Chu Feng shifted his perspective. Instead of thinking about whether he had any enemies, he needed to consider if Xie Shiyu had any enemies back then.
Someone might have tried to use him to threaten Xie Shiyu, only to be dealt with by the 17-year-old Xie.
Seventeen years old, enemies…
Chu Feng quickly recalled that Xie Shiyu’s mother had stomach cancer and was hospitalized. During high school, Xie Shiyu lived very frugally and even borrowed from loan sharks to pay off debts.
…Loan sharks.
Thinking about this, Chu Feng figured it out. At the time, Xie Shiyu’s mother was hospitalized at his grandfather’s hospital. The hospital director, his grandfather, had mentioned to him once that a few unsavory characters had barged into Little Xie’s mother’s ward and caused a ruckus there.
The hospital had called the police immediately and security had controlled the group, later relocating Little Xie’s mother to a new room for her safety.
There should be a police record of the incident… Chu Feng immediately picked up the phone.
It had been 13 years, so he wasn’t sure if he could find anything useful, but those who deal in loan sharking usually have a criminal record. By asking the local police in charge of that area and carefully investigating, he should be able to uncover something.
Four hours later, Chu Feng found the people he was looking for: Huang Desheng, and three loan shark henchmen: Wang Fuli, Liu Fu, and Qian Yibing.
Huang Desheng had been in jail before for loan sharking, and after getting out, he went back to his old ways, even colluding with the former police station chief at the time, behaving lawlessly. As long as they didn’t kill or set fire to anything, calling the police was almost pointless.
These people had caused trouble for Little Xie numerous times, and even used his seriously ill mother to threaten him. But at the time, Little Xie couldn’t come up with extra money to repay the debt. Chu Feng guessed that their family had no debts to begin with.
Ever since Little Xie’s drug-addicted father died, their family’s life had been getting better. Later, when Little Xie’s mother was seriously ill with stomach cancer, Chu Feng would allocate a portion of his ample pocket money each month to the hospital director, his grandfather, to covertly offset medical expenses.
Every time the hospital issued a bill for Little Xie, only a small portion remained unpaid. Coupled with Little Xie’s extracurricular work and some savings his mother might have had, plus medical insurance reimbursements, they had absolutely no need to borrow from loan sharks for medical treatment.
Chu Feng suspected that the loan shark was the one Xie Shiyu’s father had borrowed from for drug use. After Huang Desheng was released from prison, unable to find the person to whom the money was owed, he came looking for Little Xie. Even if Little Xie and his mother had money, there was no reason to pay off the scum who made high-interest loans.
After several unsuccessful threats from Huang Desheng, Chu Feng guessed that this man might have started plotting against him.
Chu Feng had been relatively low-key during his school days, and his classmates were basically unaware of his family background, only knowing that his family’s financial condition was relatively good. Chu Feng estimated that Huang Desheng probably couldn’t even check his family background, but seeing him walking home with Xie Shiyu after school, he used him to threaten Xie Shiyu.
“Excuse me, could you help me check again…” Chu Feng said into the phone, “Huang Desheng, Wang Fuli, Liu Fu, Qian Yibing, what’s the latest on these four people?”
“The latest? What do you mean by the latest?” The officer on the other end of the phone was somewhat speechless. “These four people have long been dead.”
Chu Feng: “How… how did they die?”
“Car accident. Drunk driving and speeding, it was basically a rush to meet the King of H*ll. The four of them were in one car, and they all died.”
An hour later, Chu Feng found detailed information. The accident occurred on Fuxiang New Road in City S.
Thirteen years ago, during the summer vacation of his sophomore year, Huang Desheng had also been in City S.
According to the traffic police investigation report, at half-past ten that night, Huang Desheng and his henchmen had just finished a meal, drank a lot of alcohol, and wanted to drive back to the hotel to rest.
Drunk driving, speeding, none of them were wearing seat belts, and all resuscitation efforts were in vain. They died in the hospital early the next morning.
Back then, drunk driving was not yet criminalized. Chu Feng remembered that when his father took him to dinners, he would also drink alcohol. As long as he wasn’t unconscious, his father would drive straight home.
Others at the dinner did the same. His father had an even more bizarre friend who insisted on driving himself back to the restaurant after being dropped off at home.
As for speeding, anyone who has driven knows that as long as there are no speed cameras on that road, and no one in front or behind, exceeding the speed limit a little bit doesn’t really matter.
Not wearing seat belts… Safety awareness wasn’t as widespread back then, nor were there cameras specifically taking photos to check if seat belts were fastened. Many people in cars were too lazy to pull on their seat belts.
But in Chu Feng’s memory, most drivers would still fasten their seat belts. It’s possible that Huang Desheng had drunk too much that day and forgot.
However, in this world, so many people drive drunk, speed, and don’t wear seat belts. It doesn’t mean that everyone will have an accident. Moreover, since Huang Desheng and his henchmen had developed this kind of irregular habit, it indicated that they had been like this all along, and had never had any accidents.
But that night, all four of them died.
There must be some other reason…
Chu Feng immediately went to check the follow-up report from the traffic police. The authorities had questioned the “friend” who had dinner with Huang Desheng and recorded some details.
At the time, this case was classified as a traffic accident rather than a criminal case. The traffic police simply asked a few questions and noted that during the banquet hosted by Zhao Tianfeng, Huang Desheng received a phone call and called another friend, someone surnamed Xie.
When Chu Feng saw this surname, his heart skipped a beat.
Zhao Tianfeng, the host, said he didn’t know this Xie person, but described him as very friendly, helping them settle the bill for alcohol. Zhao paid only for the meal, and Huang was pleased, drinking several more bottles with his henchmen.
After finishing the drinks, Xie called a taxi to leave. He asked Huang where he was headed and if they could go together, but Huang declined, saying he would drive himself.
According to Zhao Tianfeng, Huang Desheng cherished his car and always insisted on driving it himself whenever they went out for meals, showing it off and returning after eating. He never allowed his henchmen to drive and never parked near the restaurant overnight, fearing the lack of surveillance and security in the restaurant’s parking lot might result in his car being vandalized.
In the end, Huang Desheng and his group died in a car accident due to drunk driving, speeding, and not wearing seat belts. It wasn’t entirely an accident, so the insurance company didn’t need to compensate for their deaths.
The traffic police at the time treated this as a typical case of a drunk driving accident and conducted a period of safe driving education. The incident was then closed.
According to Zhao Tianfeng’s account, when Huang Desheng had the accident, Xie Shiyu should have already left, meaning he had completed what he intended to do.
Even with drunk driving, speeding, and not wearing seat belts, there was no certainty that Huang Desheng would have had an accident that night. How could he be sure that Huang Desheng would definitely get into trouble?
As Chu Feng thought carefully, he suddenly remembered something: when Xie Shiyu came to City S, he had lied to him, saying he came with the owner of the auto repair shop.
Xie Shiyu, at 17 years old, had worked in an auto repair shop, which meant he had a good understanding of car mechanics. Moreover, because he was underage, Xie Shiyu couldn’t sign formal labor contracts and worked off the books. The boss paid him in cash without any welfare benefits or registrations.
In other words, except for Xie Shiyu’s boss, Xie himself, and Chu Feng, no one else knew that Xie Shiyu actually had a good knowledge of cars.
Huang Desheng’s reluctance to park near the restaurant and his insistence on driving back himself indicated that the parking supervision near the restaurant was subpar. On that evening of the banquet, 17-year-old Xie Shiyu tampered with Huang Desheng’s car.
If Huang Desheng had refused drunk driving, not exceeded the speed limit, or at least worn a seat belt, he might not have died. But Xie Shiyu knew about Huang Desheng’s bad habits.
The computer screen flickered with a faint blue light as Chu Feng added a new entry to his Excel spreadsheet: “Huang Desheng and his henchmen, four people, died in a car accident.”
With this entry, it made sense that 17-year-old Little Xie ranked second in combat power. Most of the secrets had now been unraveled, leaving only one final piece…
Chu Feng re-examined the third entry: “Luolian Lake submerged car and body dumped, besides the murderer, there was also another male corpse.”
Who was this guy?
And most importantly, in the Dream City game, the 17-year-old with the second highest combat power was Little Xie, who came to him at the school gate one night in their Maple Tree black T-shirt with a bloodstain on the left shoulder.
How did that bloodstain happen? What “good deed” was 17-year-old Little Xie up to at that time?
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