Ji Zimo had to return to the funeral home before eight o'clock, so he grabbed the time tightly, Zhang Yang acted in accordance with the procedures and regulations, gathered all the men in the surrounding area to come to the tea shop to drink tea, and then Qin Shuai Xiaogong collected the lip prints on the teacup.

Kang Min and Ji Zimo went to Hujiaao.

Hujiaao is surrounded by mountains on all sides, green mountains and green waters, standing on the high of the way overlooking Hujiaao can see the panorama.

Zhang Yang, Ji Zimo, and Kang Min stood in the wind and stood on a high place looking at Hu Jiaao. There is a weir pond near Hujiaao, which is very beautiful to see from their perspective. There are a few urchins who hide and seek under a large locust tree. From time to time, there was the sound of hip-hop laughter, and the sound of women yelling at the chicks.

Zhang Yang learned from the young owner of the roadside shop that Hu Xiaomei's home was on the side of the weir pond. All they could see was a gray wall and a soft thatched roof, and the young boss said that there were basically no people living in the house now, but it was used to pile up some sundries, and occasionally fishermen came here, that is, to take a nap, and left before dark.

Dilapidated houses have always been repaired, and although they look dilapidated, they are not going to collapse.

Suddenly, Ji Zimo felt the gaze from behind him, he instinctively turned his head, and found that there was a sixty or seventy-year-old uncle standing behind him at some point, with gray hair, a little rickety back, and his eyebrows, because of long-term wrinkles, have several deep channels, as if he has endured infinite sorrow all his life.

The uncle raised his hand behind his back, and there was a long cigarette pouch in his hand, and looking at the empty smoking pot, it was not difficult to guess that he must have had enough of smoking in that place just now.

"Uncle, is you the Uncle Hu we are looking for?"

Uncle Hu nodded and said, "Are you Team Zhang?" The old man squinted his eyes, missing a tooth, and his speech was a little leaky, but his spirit and complexion were not bad.

Zhang Yang likes and is used to being called like this, he happily stretched out his hand and said, "Hello Uncle Hu." He clasped Uncle Hu's hand and introduced to the others: "Uncle Hu is the only one who knows about Hu Xiaomei's situation." ”

Ji Zimo wanted to know about Xiaomei the most, so after Zhang Yang let go of Uncle Hu's hand, he grabbed it tightly and held it tightly, and shouted crisply: "Hello Uncle Hu." ”

"You're all teammates on Team Zhang? Great work. ”

Ji Zimo moved his mouth to explain, but Zhang Yang took over and said, "It's not hard, this is what we should do." ”

Zhang Yang found Uncle Hu, which made Ji Zimo think that he was also suspecting that the girl's death case had something to do with Xiaomei. But later he learned that he was looking for Uncle Hu completely to make him understand that Xiaomei did not exist.

In other words, the woman who broke into Ji Zimo's life has long since ceased to exist, and what he saw was not a person at all.

Zhang Yang introduced Ji Zimo to Uncle Hu, leaving Kang Min to go and collect lip prints.

Uncle Hu took Ji Zimo and Kang Min to walk on the potholed and winding mountain road, walking faster than both of them.

Kang Min loves face and chases hard. made the trouser legs splashed with yellow mud, Uncle Hu looked at the approving Chao Ji Zimo and gave a thumbs up and praised: "You are like a baby in our mountains." ”

Ji Zimo smiled and didn't say much.

Uncle Hu said again: "Xiaomei is a very well-behaved child, but unfortunately her life is not good. ”

"When was the best time you saw her, and how old was she?"

"People are old, they have a bad memory, and they forget." Uncle Hu stood in place, seeing that Kang Min was running hard, he waited a little and said, "Girl, you still have to practice." ”

"Uncle, I'm not a lady in the metropolis." Kang Min pouted unhappily.

It's easy to go up the mountain and difficult to go down, and when you go down the mountain, the whole person is tilted like that, Ji Zimo is worried that Uncle Hu will fall.

Uncle Hu said, "You still take care of that little girl!" I'm an old man with hard bones, and I'm fine. ”

Kang Min was not convinced, and he ran down the mountain, and fell down several times, if it wasn't for Ji Zimo to support Tie Ding in time.

They stopped all the way and finally came to Hu Xiaomei's door.

A three-bay broken tile house. Thumb-sized cracks were stuffed with all sorts of hay, and there were a number of bees buzzing around a hole the size of a round middle finger. The dilapidated wooden door was crumbling, and a few thick trees at the door covered the sky and the sun, covering the entire roof tightly.

The roof tiles are covered with weeds and a thick layer of dead leaves.

"Come into the house?" Uncle Hu asked for Ji Zimo's opinion.

Kang Min was interested in the fish swimming on the surface of the water in the weir pond, she squatted on the edge of the weir pond, her eyes were shining and staring at the fish, and Ji Zimo couldn't help but want to laugh. If a dead girl wants to eat fish, she doesn't have to be so explicit!

Ji Zimo wanted to go into the house to see, so Kang Min went to see the fish in the weir pond, and he and Uncle Hu entered the house one after the other.

Uncle Hu said that this house was originally occupied by Hu Xiaomei's relatives, but later I don't know what happened, and their whole family moved away to build a house elsewhere. Since then, the house has been vacant and unattended.

Looking at this dilapidated house from the outside, it was really not very good, but I didn't expect to find that it was clean and tidy inside. It doesn't look like it's been abandoned in an empty house, but like someone is cleaning it up.

Ji Zimo was confused, Uncle Hu smiled and said, "Occasionally, I'll clean up." ”

"Oh."

The room was damp and dimly lit. In addition, under the shade of the tree, there was no sunlight penetration, it was cold and gloomy, Ji Zimo walked into the room, and suddenly heard movement in the house, like the sound of something falling on the ground. Uncle Hu also heard it, and he coughed dryly and said, "There are many rats in the empty house." ”

When Ji Zimo heard Uncle Hu say this, he originally wanted to go to see it, but he retreated. He hates rats, especially their tails. He witnessed rats leap out of rural pits and burrow into human bedrooms.

There was nothing to see in the house, so he withdrew and walked to the edge of the weir pond to see Kang Min.

Just as he walked to the edge of the weir pond, he suddenly felt a cold gaze in the window made of three wooden sticks, he quickly glanced at the window, and walked in quickly without waiting for Uncle Hu to speak.

Ji Zimo suddenly came back with a horse pistol, which surprised Uncle Hu, so he hurriedly followed.

A girl with thick braids came out of the back room, she lowered her head embarrassedly, as if she was afraid of Uncle Hu, and explained: "Dad, I was afraid to hide in the back room just now, but I knocked down the plank, and I ......"

Ji Zimo stared at her, his body stiffened, and he had a hunch that she was Xiaomei.

Uncle Hu saw Ji Zimo staring at the girl, and hurriedly quipped: "She is my daughter, her name is Qiao'er." As he spoke, he introduced Miss Qiao'er: "He is a guest from the city and a teammate of Team Zhang, what is his name?" ”

With Uncle Hu present, Ji Zimo retracted his gaze slightly embarrassed and said, "You're welcome, my surname is Ji." ”

Qiao'er still lowered her head and shouted softly: "Brother Ji is good." ”

Ji Zimo wanted her to raise her head, but unfortunately the other party didn't raise her head, and with a shout, she slipped away between him and Uncle Hu like a fish. Her back, the way she walked, and the voice were exactly the same as Xiaomei's appearance that night.

Ji Zimo didn't wear it, and it was not easy to wear it, and the other party couldn't do it if he didn't admit it.

Uncle Hu said that she was Qiao'er and his daughter.

Uncle Hu told Ji Zimo that Xiaomei's life was hard, and her parents died when she was a child, and she was fostered at a relative's house. The relatives had their own children, and then they let her do rough work, cut pigweed, herd sheep, and starve without food.

The little girl couldn't stand it, so she secretly ran away several times and got lost in the mountains, but he found it and brought it home.

But the relatives still didn't want to see Xiaomei, lived in Xiaomei's house, but didn't give her a good life.

Finally, Uncle Hu couldn't bear it anymore, so he called on all the Hu family members to question Xiaomei's relatives. and asked them to send Xiaomei to study and read, and at that time, Xiaomei's parents had a compensation, which was kept by Uncle Hu's nephew, that is, the grassroots cadres of Hujiaao.

With this compensation, Xiaomei successfully completed her primary school and went to junior high school.

After high school, Xiaomei grew up and never wanted to return to this bitter place, she looked for a job outside and fell in love, and many years passed. The whole Hujiaao people forgot that there was such a little girl who used to be Hujiaao, but later, some people rumored that she died.

Xiaomei has a little memory in the impression of the older generation of Hu Jiaao, but in the younger generation, she has no impression. She died, and was soon forgotten, but the house by the weir pond could occasionally be remembered, and this was Xiaomei's home.

I thought that this time I would find a breakthrough point, but I didn't expect it to be nonsensical. Returning to the roadside shop from Hujiaao, Ji Zimo was still pondering, he always felt that something was wrong, thought for a long time, and suddenly asked Ji Zimo: "Uncle Hu has a daughter, have you seen it?" ”

Zhang Yang frowned and thought for a while: "I haven't heard that he has a daughter, I don't believe the shopkeeper." ”

The young shopkeeper said that Uncle Hu was indeed single, just because he had been poor all his life, so he didn't marry a wife, how did the person who didn't marry a wife come to his daughter? The more Ji Zimo thought about it, the more wrong it became, so he told Zhang Yang about seeing Qiao'er and the suspicions in Xiaomei's house.

It stands to reason that the empty house that no one cares about should be overgrown with weeds, similar to the haunted house in the movie! But in the empty house I saw just now, it was clean, although the furniture was dilapidated but well organized, and the courtyard dam outside was also clean and there was not a single weed, even a fallen leaf was cleared.

Uncle Hu must have a problem, Zhang Yang couldn't wait to collect lip prints, so he immediately returned to Hujiaao with Ji Zimo and Kang Min. It's a pity that they went one step late, and Uncle Hu and his so-called daughter are gone.

Led by the villagers, they ran to Uncle Hu's house, next to a thatched house that was so dilapidated that it could no longer be broken, there was a small three-room green tile house. The villagers told Ji Zimo that this was built by the village on his own initiative for the five guarantee households.

Since Uncle Hu is a five-guarantee household, how can he say that his daughter is here?

At this moment, Zhang Yang received a call from Qin Shuai, saying that the lip prints collected did not match the lip prints at the scene of the crime.

Why did Uncle Hu escape with Qiao'er? Could this be a coincidence! What are they afraid of? These are all questions that Ji Zimo and Zhang Yang want to know, so they found the grassroots department and conducted a carpet search of the mountains and forests near Uncle Hu.

Ji Zimo had to return to City A, and before leaving, he told Zhang Yang to capture Uncle Hu and Qiao'er alive and not to hurt them. and told him privately that Xiaomei might be back.

Zhang Yang was very shocked, according to the information provided by Uncle Hu, what happened to Xiaomei is now dozens of years old, it should not have existed a long time ago, what does Ji Zimo mean when he said that Xiaomei is back?

Kang Min on the side clicked through Ji Zimo's riddle and said: "People can't come back, but souls can come back." And they came to Hujiaao this time to find Xiaomei's body and soul, and only by finding her body and soul can Fang Xingcai's grievances be resolved.

But Ji Zimo felt that things were not so simple, he had a premonition that the girl's death case was also inseparable from Xiaomei.