Chapter 369: Zhang Zuochen Is Already Dead

2022-05-20

The person we were looking for was that little girl, Li Feiyan. She was the one who’d told me a few things that most people didn’t know, and it was pretty clear she paid close attention to her surroundings. I figured that if Li Feiyan knew Hu Ningning’s secret—the one no one else had caught—then she might’ve also noticed something about Zhang Zuochen.

Maybe we could get some useful leads from her.

Sun Qingqing didn’t live far from Taishan Elementary—just a ten-minute walk or so. Since the kids hadn’t gotten out of school yet, it was the perfect time for an investigation. When we arrived, the principal greeted us again. After Sun Qingqing rested, the school assigned someone else as the temporary homeroom teacher.

Science class was in session. We asked the principal to call Li Feiyan out of class. She seemed pretty shy around him, but when she spotted me in the office, her whole attitude changed in a flash. She relaxed right away.

I gave her a smile. “Remember me?”

Li Feiyan nodded, grinning. “Of course, you’re Little Wu!”

I ruffled her hair. “Good, glad you remembered.”

Then I said, “This time, I wanted to ask you about some of your classmates.”

Li Feiyan, sharp as ever, raised her brows at me. “Alright! I know lots of things, but what are you looking for, exactly?”

I nodded. “There used to be a student in your class named Zhang Zuochen, but he transferred out. Do you remember him?”

Li Feiyan took a seat in front of me, her face bright. “Sure, I know Zhang Zuochen! He used to give me snacks, and he’d let me play with his toys. I even heard his family has this huge video game console I always wanted to try, but he transferred before I ever got to play it.”

I pressed further. “Did you ever see anyone bullying him at school? You know Li Jun from your class, right? He bullies other kids a lot.”

Li Feiyan hesitated, then whispered, “Yeah, Li Jun liked to pick on people. He thought kids with more snacks or toys were just asking for trouble. Li Jun stole a bunch of Zhang Zuochen’s toys, but Zhang Zuochen never dared to speak up.”

Suddenly a memory surfaced—there was that Optimus Prime Transformer toy that was the real deal, worth at least a hundred yuan. Guo Li’s parents almost never spent time with her, and they’d never bought her any Transformers. That meant the origins of her Transformer were questionable.

According to Guo Li’s mother, the toy was given to Guo Li by a female classmate. But a girl being into Transformers was a rare thing. If the toy belonged to Zhang Zuochen, then everything would make sense.

I quickly asked, “Do you remember if Zhang Zuochen had a Transformer?”

Li Feiyan thought for a moment. “He did! Actually, he had two Transformers, not one. One was named Optimus Prime, and the other, um, I forget…”

I offered, “Megatron?”

Li Feiyan’s eyes lit up. “That’s it! Megatron. They were from some cartoon, right? One could transform from a robot into a car, and the car could drive around. If you took it apart it was a robot again. Us girls didn’t really care, but all the boys wanted to borrow them.”

So there were two Transformers, but I’d only seen one at Guo Li’s house—and there’d been no sign of the other in her cabinet. If Zhang Zuochen’s toy ended up there, where did the other go?

“Did someone take his Transformer from him?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Li Feiyan said, fiddling with her braids. “Li Jun stole it. Everybody knew, but Zhang Zuochen was too scared to tell the teacher or his parents because he thought Li Jun would beat him up. Nobody knows what happened to the Transformer after that—maybe it was given away. Li Jun was part of some group or club.”

“You know about this?” I looked right into her wide eyes.

She blinked, serious for once. “I know. My cousin’s a middle schooler. He comes to our school sometimes, and he’s always getting into fights. He knows all those guys—he’s the boss in his grade. He said he’d watch out for the boss here at our school.”

I couldn’t believe these kids were only ten or so—thirteen, maybe fourteen at most. Yet they already had their own little ‘underworld,’ their tangled connections. Turns out where there are people, there’s drama, no matter how young.

“So who’s the leader of their group? Did your cousin ever say?” I asked.

Li Feiyan frowned, thinking hard. Finally she shook her head. “No idea. My cousin doesn’t know either. But I heard it’s a girl, and she’s not very old.”

“A young girl? Could it be Guo Li?” I asked.

“Who’s Guo Li?” she replied.

I just shook my head and kept quiet.

If Guo Li really was the group’s boss, that actually made sense. So far, the killer had captured four people: Hu Ningning, Li Jun, Liang Zhengyu, and Guo Li.

The killer had taken Hu Ningning but hadn’t killed her, which was definitely interesting. Clearly, the intent wasn’t to kill Hu Ningning, but rather to make her identify others who’d bullied Zhang Zuochen. Otherwise, why leave her alive?

So Hu Ningning must’ve named some people, and Zhang Zijun had gone after those targets.

That’s why Zhang Zijun killed Li Jun and Liang Zhengyu, and now it was Guo Li’s turn. If Guo Li really was the ringleader, maybe Zhang Zijun would treat her differently. That would explain a lot.

But there were actually four in the group’s core: Guo Li, Li Jun, Liang Zhengyu, and a kid named Yang Ting. The others had all been taken, but Yang Ting was still fine. Now that the school had beefed up security, and the parents were all on high alert after so much tragedy, there wasn’t much chance for the killer to grab Yang Ting too.

So would the killer make another move? Where would Guo Li end up?

It was all still a big mystery.

I looked at Li Feiyan and said, “Alright, that’s all the questions I have for now. If I need more help, I’ll come back.”

Li Feiyan nodded, giving me those big puppy-dog eyes. “Okay, big brother. Oh, and is Hu Ningning alright?”

“Hu Ningning is going to be fine,” I said.

Li Feiyan added, “A few days ago, this boy named Liang Zhengkun—he’s in third or fourth grade, I think—said he found a game console at home with Hu Ningning’s name on it. He brought it to our class, said we should return it to her.”

“Liang Zhengkun? How do you know his name?” I asked.

“He told me when he brought the console. Said he found it at home, saw the class and student number written on it, so he brought it over,” she answered.

It was odd that Liang Zhengkun found something of Hu Ningning’s at his place. They weren’t in the same class or even the same grade. How had Hu Ningning’s stuff ended up in Liang Zhengkun’s house? Maybe Liang Zhengyu had taken it? I remembered that when Hu Ningning disappeared, she’d gone missing alongside Li Jun.

Or maybe Li Jun had taken the console from Hu Ningning, then passed it to Liang Zhengyu, and after Liang Zhengyu died, Liang Zhengkun found it when cleaning up and gave it to Li Feiyan to return to Hu Ningning.

It would explain why Hu Ningning left with Li Jun—maybe she was just going to get her game console back. That wasn’t so farfetched.

It felt like everything was starting to make sense—we just needed concrete evidence now.

I smiled at Li Feiyan. “Thanks, little sister. You did great.”

Before the words were even out of my mouth, Gu Chen’s phone rang. He kept the conversation brief, but when he hung up, his face had gone deathly pale. Something was wrong.

“Alright, got it. We’ll come over right now,” Gu Chen said into the phone.

Once he hung up, Gu Chen turned to me. “Little sister, you should go back to class. If we need anything, we’ll call you.”

Li Feiyan was quick on the uptake. Seeing we were busy, she left the office without another word.

Now there were just three of us left inside.

Mary glanced at Gu Chen. “What is it? You look like you’ve had some bad news.”

Gu Chen frowned. “Not terrible, exactly, but I just heard something from Uncle Chen. Uncle Chen was going through Zhang Zuochen’s records and stumbled on something that shocked everyone.”

“What?” I asked.

Gu Chen took a breath. “Uncle Chen found that Zhang Zuochen actually died half a year ago.”

“Zhang Zuochen is dead?” I could hardly believe my ears. “But shouldn’t the records have shown that? Why are we just learning this now?”