Then, Long Hai asked them a few more innocuous questions, and told them that they could go back to the hotel.

Long Hai, who seemed to be in the dawn of hope for solving the case, didn't notice at all, the teacher he had been with for nearly twenty years seemed to be a different person tonight, and his speech and demeanor were abnormal.

The four of them returned to the hotel together, and the staff in the lobby were all in their places, and the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful, as if the news of a similar incident had just happened last night had not yet reached here.

Chen Wendong invited Wu Yun and Wei Xiaofeng to their guest room. After the four of them sat down on the sofa in turn, he began to tell the heavy story of six years ago: "Six years ago, our daughter Chen Xinlian was eighteen years old and had just entered her third year of high school, which was the last year of sprinting for the college entrance examination. It's not me boasting, Xiaolian - oh, it's not this 'pity' of the lake, it's the 'lotus' of the lotus. This name with the same pronunciation may also doom our daughter's final fate - our Xiaolian is a smart and self-reliant girl when she is a child, and Linlin and I have never worried about her studies, to be precise, there should be no effort to worry about. Maybe it had something to do with our work, I was a police officer at the time, and Linlin was a junior high school teacher, so we were too busy to take care of her often. In the same way, we lacked communication with her and had no way to understand her thoughts, which led to the tragedy that followed. ”

Wu Yun and Wei Xiaofeng nodded in agreement. They also came from adolescence and understood that it was the age when the gap between parents and children slowly appeared, and children would hide their hearts and would not take the initiative to confide in their parents, and if parents did not take the initiative to inquire to help guide and solve, children were prone to problems in mental health and code of conduct.

Chen Wendong took a sip of the hot water sent by his wife and continued: "Of course, parents hope that their children will succeed in their studies and be admitted to first-class universities. However, although we have always had this expectation, we have never put pressure on Xiaolian, but fortunately, Xiaolian's grades have always been excellent, and her previous class teachers have praised her, saying that it is not a problem for her to be admitted to the '211 Project' university. But in the first half of the third semester of high school, Xiaolian's grades plummeted. We never asked her to show us our report cards, so we didn't know until her homeroom teacher reached out to us to report the situation. At other times, we would have thought that her decline was only temporary, and that she would rise again after a while, and that we didn't need to worry too much. But when it came to the juncture of the college entrance examination, we rarely took the initiative to ask her about the reason for the decline in her grades. However, Xiaolian only told us at the time that the reason for her declining grades may be that she was temporarily not in a state of study, so she proposed to take advantage of the days when the school held a sports day and was not in class to travel outside to change her mood and adjust her state. We didn't think much of it at the time and agreed to her request. ”

"Didn't she tell you at that time that the place she was going to was the lake?" Xiao Feng asked.

Chen Wendong shook his head.

Yue Lin took over the conversation: "She told us at the time that she was going to the provincial capital city for a few days. In the days when the school held a sports meeting, Xiaodong and I couldn't spare time to accompany her, but fortunately, we had good relatives in the provincial capital to take care of her, so we were relieved to let her go alone, and greeted them in advance, and asked Xiaolian to live in their house for a few days and take care of her. The night after her departure, our relatives in the provincial capital called to say that Xiaolian had not gone to them and that they had no way to get in touch with her. We were also panicked at the time, afraid that something would happen to her. We rushed to call her phone, but her phone was turned off. It was already late at that time, and we didn't know where Xiaolian was or what happened, so I couldn't help crying because I was so anxious......"

Yue Lin seemed to be back to that night six years ago, and her eyes couldn't help but turn red.

Chen Wendong stroked his wife's back and continued: "As a policeman, I was still calm at the time, and immediately asked the relevant departments to find out the identity information of the person who took the public transport out of the city that day, but I didn't find Xiaolian's name, so I judged that she didn't leave the scope of H City." Later, I accidentally remembered that she had told us that if she had the opportunity, she would most like to go to the lake in the mountains west of the city, and I guessed that she was very likely to come here. However, six years ago, the transportation between Lihu and the outside world was not convenient, there were no direct bus flights, only two buses a day, or the kind that had to walk a long mountain road to the station. The road into the lake is also very difficult to walk, even people who are familiar with the road conditions do not dare to drive after dark, so the couple planned to set off for the lake at dawn the next day.

"What we never thought was that when we arrived at the lake the next day, we heard that the fishermen in the village had fished in the lake early in the morning and had recovered a drowned female corpse in red clothes, who looked to be less than 20 years old, while fishing in the lake early in the morning. Our hearts were half cold at that time, and we kept secretly praying that the drowned girl would never be Xiaolian. But the moment we saw the corpse, I felt that my whole world collapsed in an instant...... "I don't know when, Chen Wendong was already in tears, "I have been a policeman for more than 30 years, and I have seen so many lives and deaths, and human tragedies, but when this scene happened to me, when the cold body lying in front of me was a little lotus that I regarded as a pearl in my palm, I didn't ...... at all" Chen Wendong couldn't say any more, his eyes were closed tightly as if he wanted to squeeze out all the tears in his eyes, The shallow wrinkles on his face are as deep as a canyon on the earth.

Yue Lin was already crying like a tearful person, as if their daughter's death was not six years ago, but not long ago.

At this time, Wu Yun and Wei Xiaofeng also felt that their noses were sour, and they didn't dare to speak, they were afraid that as soon as they opened their mouths, they couldn't suppress the tears in their tear ducts and burst out of their eyes.

The sadness lingered for a long time before it gradually dissipated. Chen Wendong wiped the tears from his face, sat up straight, and continued with slightly red eyes: "Our daughter drowned, so there was no autopsy, but a simple autopsy was done, and it was deduced that the time of death was between nine and half past ten the night before. At that time, there were several B&Bs for tourists to stay next to the lake, but the management was lax, so Xiaolian went out late at night, and the owner of the B&B was not clear. However, some villagers witnessed Xiaolian walking alone to the lake that night, which can rule out his killing; If it was because she accidentally fell into the lake while watching the lake from the cliff, it is impossible to explain why she went to that place in the middle of the night. Considering that Xiaolian was distressed by the decline in her grades before coming to Lianhu, although she did not find the suicide note, we finally came to the conclusion that she committed suicide due to the pressure of her studies - after all, such examples are not uncommon. ”

Wu Yun opened his mouth and asked, "But in fact, your daughter committed suicide for another reason, right?" ”

"Yes. When we were sorting out the relics that Xiaolian left in the homestay room, we found that there were some burned ashes in the trash can in the room, and we didn't pay much attention to it at the time. On the same day, we returned home with Xiaolian's body and relics to prepare for her funeral. I won't say much about the funeral here, but during this period, a girlfriend of her life secretly told us something. It turned out that Xiaolian had been hiding that we were in a relationship with a boy from another school, which lasted for a year, and the two broke up before entering the third year of high school, and it was the boy who unilaterally proposed the breakup, and since then Xiaolian has been emotionally depressed and unable to give up, and her academic performance has naturally plummeted.

"After learning the news, I was hot-headed and admitted that it was the boy who dumped Xiaolian that caused her to commit suicide by jumping into the lake. After Xiaolian was buried, I asked the bureau for a period of leave to start investigating the boy. Through the investigation, I learned that the boy was studying in a high school with a mediocre admission rate, and he was not the kind of gangster who didn't like to study, but because he was more serious in his subjects, he couldn't get into a good high school. His liberal arts grades are good, especially his writing skills, and he often participates in essay competitions and has won many awards, but his results in mathematics, physics and chemistry are simply disastrous, so it seriously drags down his overall score.

"My daughter Xiaolian and the boy used to be in the same junior high school, but they were in different classes, and they may have met each other a few times in junior high school but certainly didn't know each other. When my daughter was a sophomore in high school, the two of them officially met because they participated in an essay competition held in the city at the same time, and Xiaolian was impressed by his literary talent, so the two slowly began to date. Generally, when male and female students socialize, boys will give girls flowers, fluffy dolls, trinkets and the like as gifts, but because the boy's family conditions are not very good, he often writes some poems and articles for Xiaolian. It occurred to me that maybe the ashes in the trash can in the guest room where Xiaolian lived before her suicide were the poems and articles that the boy wrote to her. ”

"Isn't this almost exactly the same as the legend from which the name of the lake came from?" Wu Yun and Wei Xiaofeng gasped and exclaimed in unison. They now understood why the old couple had walked away halfway through hearing the old man's story on the boat the previous afternoon, because some of the details of the legend were almost identical to those of their daughter when she committed suicide six years earlier.

"Indeed," Yue Lin admitted, "when we heard the legend from the old gentleman's mouth, our husband and wife were stunned on the spot, because what happened to the girl in the story was really too similar to what happened to our daughter......

Chen Wendong cleared his throat: "Put these aside first, I'll continue to talk." After finding out what was going on, I went straight to the boy and asked him why he had abandoned Xiaolian, and after Xiaolian committed suicide, he refused to even come to Xiaolian's spiritual seat to put incense on it. He told me that he was in love with another girl, so he proposed to break up with Xiaolian. After hearing that Xiaolian had committed suicide, he felt scared so he didn't dare to come to see Xiaolian on her last ride. As soon as I thought of Xiaolian dying for this kind of man who had not yet taken on the responsibility, I ......" Chen Wendong's facial muscles twitched, obviously the upper and lower rows of teeth in his mouth had been clenched together, and his fists were also clenched to the bulging green tendons.

"What did you do to that boy after that? As a result, you will no longer be able to stay in the police world. Wu Yun asked.