After the ‘soul search’, Liang Youkang could no longer control his mental state, which was already on the verge of collapse. He covered his head and trembled and growled:
“Don’t, don’t… I did it all, I said it all!”
The pain of being forcibly invaded into the soul and deprived of memory was far more painful than ordinary physical torture.
Until Gu Zhisang let go of her hand for a long time, the pain that was like tearing his soul still made him tremble all over, and he couldn’t muster any persistence or resistance.
Liang Youkang tremblingly admitted all the facts about killing his wife Liu Mouxin.
These words will also serve as testimony in court to overturn the case, retry and convict.
During the confession, he hesitated and struggled for a moment, wanting to conceal certain details to reduce his guilt.
But when Gu Zhisang’s cold eyes swept over him, the pain that made him faint when he was ‘soul-searched’ just now destroyed his courage to try to be clever.
When Gi Liaochan asked Liang Yongkang why he moved here, he said with a trembling voice:
“That bitch…after Liu Mouxin died, many mystic masters tried to suppress her, but she is still uneasy.”
At the beginning, Liang Youkang didn’t believe that there were ghosts in the world at all, and he scorned the so-called ghosts seeking their lives.
When Liu Mouxin’s body was recovered, it had been soaked in the lake water for several days. The body was swollen and eaten into disfigurement.
There might have been a bit of Liang Youkang’s skin tissue left between her nails when she struggled before, but now it was completely washed away by the water.
After forensic examination, no useful information was found, and Liang Youkang successfully escaped suspicion.
Therefore, he felt more confident.
When Master Yunyou proposed a method to suppress the resentment of his deceased wife, he didn’t take it seriously.
Since people around the village believed in the mystic master’s words, Liang Youkang also urgently needed a bit of ‘good reputation’ to further clear his suspicions and charges, so he readily agreed to the words of Master Yunyou and allowed him to stay in his wife’s mourning hall and do the three things.
During this period, there was a stench near the mourning hall, and Liang Youkang took a look from a distance outside the mourning hall.
He only saw a bit of Liu Chunxin’s swollen and purple body in the unsealed coffin. He immediately felt nauseated and a little horrified and left in a hurry.
He also did not participate in the subsequent process of sealing the coffin and burying it.
After Liu Mouxin was buried and Gangster Zhao was arrested, Liang Youkang felt that he was completely safe. However, he still couldn’t bear the pity and teasing eyes of the people in the village peeking at him and plotting behind his back.
No matter where he went, he felt that these long-tongued villagers were up to no good.
In the end, he moved to the city with the ‘compensation money’, quit his job of moving bricks at the construction site, and rented a two-bedroom apartment.
After spending a few days drinking and drinking with his wife’s “life money”, Liang Youkang, who was drunk at the bar one day, came home in the middle of the night and felt a chill behind him.
When we were in the elevator room, the elevator lights in the small space buzzed and flickered on and off.
Liang Yongkang cursed the property manager, and suddenly he saw a blurry figure reflected on the iron elevator door wall in front of him under the flickering light.
The figure was pale, except for her long, messy black hair, which was visible and blocked her face.
He was so frightened that he woke up and his legs became weak.
Because he clearly remembered that when he entered the elevator, there was no one inside except himself.
Then he felt wet around his feet. When he lowered his head, he saw that the elevator seemed to be filled with water, and there was water in all corners.
When he raised his head again, the white reflection on the elevator wall had raised its face at some point. It was a blurry image, but in Liang Youkang’s eyes, it was so clear and terrifying!
Under the white shadow’s hair, there was a face covered in blue and purple spots, half of his head was missing, and his hair and body looked wet as if he had just come out of the water;
Only those twisted black and red eyes, full of resentment, were staring at Liang Youkang.
Liang Youkang recognized it.
This was Liu Mouxin who should have died long ago!
At this moment, the elevator reached the floor and opened with a ding-dong sound.
Liang Youkang was so frightened that he peed his pants and ran out staggeringly, holding on to the handle.
That night, he found some Buddhist scriptures and amulets to recite, but when he went to bed, he still dreamed of Liu Mouxin who came to ask for his life.
After dreaming several times in succession, he became depressed. Thinking of the scenery of the Goddess Lake that he could see from the window of this high-rise building every morning when he got up, he suspected the reason why he always dreamed of ghosts asking for his life was because he lived too close to the lake.
Liang Youkang quickly moved to the city farthest from the ‘Goddess Lake’.
The reason why he did not leave the city immediately was because he was anxious and being careful.
He was still worried that Gangster Zhao had not been convicted. And that if he moved out of the city as soon as his wife died, the police might suspect that he wanted to run away.
After Liang Youkang moved here for a while, he found that although the number of times he dreamed of Liu Mouxin was decreasing, many changes appeared in his body.
Thirst for water, dry mouth, prone to sweating, and physically weak.
His vision and hearing were not as sensitive as before, and he was a little afraid of light. He has a layer of undulating hard bumps on his body, which itch and sting if he doesn’t scratch them.
Sometimes when he smells his own body, he feels he smells like a salted fish.
It was like his body was rotting and festering inside.
At first, Liang Youkang thought he had been infected due to his improper lifestyle, but he soon realized this was not a normal change.
He thought he got rid of Liu Mouxin, but in fact, he didn’t. His physical and mental condition was getting worse and worse.
After being burned by light several times and frightening the neighbors in the corridor with his strange appearance, Liang Youkang also went from temporarily unable to move to being unable to move.
Liang Youkang was like a street rat hiding in a cave, having lost the right to walk in the sun.
He was resentful and fearful, and searched in the darkroom every day for how to ‘kill ghosts and exorcise evil spirits’.
Until now after being exposed by Gu Zhisang, he still didn’t feel any guilt or regret for what he had done, only hatred and resentment towards Liu Mouxin.
When he finished speaking these words intermittently with his face full of snot and tears, there were footsteps outside the door.
People from the local police station were notified and rushed over, preparing to escort Liang Youkang back to the station for retrial.
After they opened the door, they felt dizzy by the stench in the room.
Many police officers who had participated in homicide investigations and smelled the smell of rotting corpses could not bear the smell in this room and felt sick in their stomachs.
When Liang Youkang was escorted out, he was like a blind mouse, desperately hiding his head behind the police officer, saying his eyes hurt.
Many neighbors who heard the noise opened their doors and watched.
Seeing the hard bumps all over Liang Youkang’s face and neck, they all thought he had some infectious disease, and they were afraid and disgusted to go out and approach him.
The neighbor lady who had chatted with Gu Zhisang and Qiao Liaochan before entering the house also raised her head to look at the excitement and gave them a thumbs up:
“Young girls nowadays are so awesome. I heard him screaming like pigs being killed outside!”
When she first heard the banging and smashing sounds outside, she was a little worried that something might happen to the two policewomen, but she didn’t expect the scream would be a man’s voice!
Gu Zhisang: “……”
Gi Liaochan suppressed her laughter, coughed lightly, and exchanged greetings with the aunt, then left the community.
Because of the detailed recording of Liang Youkang personally admitting his crime, the police directly reclassified him as a major suspect.
After being taken to the police station, because Gu Zhisang was no longer around, there was no sense of oppression, and the pain of the ‘soul search’ not long ago gradually disappeared. Liang Youkang, who regained his consciousness, denied what he had said.
He argued that those recordings were made by Gu Zhisang and Gi Liaochan who tortured him and forced him to confess.
But this time he couldn’t excuse himself.
Based on what Gu Zhisang ‘saw’ when she sensed Liu Mouxin’s ghost, people from the police station followed these clues to investigate and finally found actual evidence of Liang Youkang’s crime.
That night, Liang Youkang secretly returned to the village in the middle of the night. Instead of taking the main road, he took a small road. There was no surveillance on the small road.
However, after comparison and investigation, the police still caught a fleeting figure in the night in the surveillance footage of a certain intersection.
They sent people to revisit Liang Youkang’s workers.
According to a worker who vaguely remembered the incident, although he couldn’t guarantee whether Liang Youkang had left the construction site when he got up the next day, Liang Youkang had indeed changed his clothes.
The other workers stayed drunk all night and didn’t even have time to change.
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