Back in the day, Song Xi was destitute, unmarried well into his later years, and spent his days idling around the village, doing nothing productive. So when someone approached him to act as a middleman, he didn’t hesitate to agree, the pay was generous.
Besides Liu Hong’s child, he had actually brokered several other deals as a middleman.
After the brawl between Song Xi and Song Gui, both were bruised and swollen. The police separated them for further questioning.
From their confrontation, the police gathered a significant amount of useful information.
Song Xi had been recruited by a wandering Taoist. In coordination with the Taoist, knowing full well that Liu Hong was already seven or eight months pregnant and couldn’t have an abortion, he still claimed that her third child was a “cursed star” destined to kill its parents and urged her to abort it.
Song Gui and Liu Hong were torn. Abortion was out of the question, it would put Liu Hong’s life at risk. So later, Song Xi suggested that the third child was another girl. If they didn’t want to keep her, why not give her away or simply sell her? That way, the child wouldn’t harm the family, and they’d get some extra money on top.
But in the rural areas of that time, abandoned girls were common. No one was willing to pay for a baby girl, not even to adopt her for free.
So Song Xi offered another idea: he knew a wealthy couple who hadn’t been able to have children for years and desperately wanted one. If the Taoist put in a good word, they might be willing to pay. All Song Gui would have to do was give Song Xi a little finder’s fee.
And so, Song Gui agreed to sell his third child. On the day of the birth, the wealthy family sent people early to wait at the house. That day, a heavy rainstorm hit, and the child was born in the dead of night. Almost no one knew what happened.
At midnight, the baby was born. Liu Hong, weak from childbirth, fell into a deep sleep. The midwife had barely wrapped the newborn when the buyers took the child and left.
Even Song Gui never got to see the baby’s face.
He had his suspicions, after all, even if it was a girl, he still wanted to see his own child. But his doubts were quickly silenced when the buyers handed him 200,000 yuan on the spot.
To Song Gui at the time, 200,000 yuan was an astronomical sum. Selling a daughter for that much money, he was overjoyed.
As he recalled this, Song Gui’s eyes turned red. “At the time, Song Xi asked for a 20,000 yuan finder’s fee, and I paid him.”
He grew furious. “That bastard! He conspired with outsiders to deceive me, and then had the nerve to ask me for money!”
The officer asked, “How did you later find out the child was a boy? And how did the child die?”
Song Gui wiped his eyes and said angrily, “Three or four days after they took the child, suddenly in the middle of the night, the buyer brought the baby back. He was furious, cursed me out, threw the child on the ground, and demanded his money back.”
Even now, thinking back to that scene, Song Gui felt like vomiting blood from rage.
That night, also during a heavy rainstorm, the man arrived in a suit. Standing over the scene, he dropped the child on the ground, pointed at Song Gui’s nose, and said, “Didn’t you say it was a girl? Why is it a boy?”
Song Gui was completely stunned. He looked at the man in disbelief. “What? What boy?”
He was filled with regret, regret that he had been so blinded by the 200,000 yuan that he hadn’t even thought to check the newborn’s gender.
The man sneered, “Still playing dumb?”
Song Gui shook his head frantically. “No! If it had been a boy, why would I have sold him? He’s my son!”
Suddenly realizing the gravity of the situation, Song Gui rushed forward, picked up the baby from the ground, and checked. It was indeed a boy.
But before the joy could even appear on his face, he noticed something was wrong. “What’s wrong with the child? What happened to him?”
The man said coldly, “He got caught in the rain the night he was taken. Severe pneumonia, there was no saving him.”
Song Gui: “…”
For a moment, he couldn’t speak. He didn’t know whether he was more shocked or heartbroken.
The child was dead. The buyer didn’t actually demand his money back. After cursing Song Gui out, he left. Twenty thousand yuan had bought the life of Song Gui’s son.
At first, Song Gui didn’t believe it. But with the child dead, he finally thought to trust science and went to the hospital for a paternity test.
This had been Song Gui’s deepest wound. For years, he had kept it bottled up, never telling anyone except for the one time he confronted Song Xi about it.
Liu Hong, over the years, had carried immense guilt. Not only for her third child but also for her husband. With the traditional rural mindset, she felt she should have given her husband a son. He had wanted one so badly, and yet they simply hadn’t been able to have one.
In the next room, Song Xi also expressed his frustration. “I really didn’t know about this. I was just the middleman, asking Song Gui if he wanted to sell the child. The master calculated that it would be a girl, so I thought it was a girl too. Who knew it would turn out to be a boy? And the child died. Officer, no matter how much I wanted the money, I’m not that heartless. A baby so small, I couldn’t bear it either.”
Listening in from the monitoring room, Chu Mingjia, Han Fengchen, and the others were furious.
Han Fengchen sneered. “What a load of crap. He couldn’t bear it? He couldn’t bear it, yet he acted as a middleman making money off such a heartless deal?”
Liu Jun, the show’s driver, now in his forties with two children of his own, shook his head and sighed. “The most despicable one is the buyer. If you’re going to buy a healthy child, fine. But if you don’t want it, you can return it or send it to an orphanage. Why did you have to let the child die?”
A newborn is so fragile. Coming out of the warm womb, they are extremely vulnerable to cold. Not wrapping the baby in a blanket was bad enough, but leaving it out in the rain? That led to pneumonia.
Liu Jun added, “Severe pneumonia, how long must they have delayed before seeking treatment? Sigh.”
A child so spiritually gifted, gone just like that.
As the few of them spoke, the little jar ghost had been listening in. Liu Jun didn’t know, but Han Fengchen did. He couldn’t help himself, he kept glancing up at Jiang Mao.
The reason was simple: the little jar ghost was currently sitting on Jiang Mao’s shoulders, a chocolate bar in his left hand and a lollipop in his right. He was wearing a brand-new red bellyband and a pair of tiger-head shoes, happily taking a bite from one hand and a lick from the other.
Han Fengchen looked at the little jar ghost with a complicated expression. He had been worried that the little jar ghost might feel sad hearing them talk like this, because Chu Mingjia had said that although the little jar ghost had died right after birth, he had lingered in the human world for years and, being highly spiritually gifted, had already developed understanding, he knew everything.
But judging by the little jar ghost’s demeanor, he didn’t seem sad at all.
Jiang Mao said in a low voice, “Humans are utterly foolish.”
They believed every word from any random Taoist. And if the child hadn’t died, they wouldn’t have even thought to question anything.
Chu Mingjia said, “The claim about buying the wrong gender was just an excuse. The buyer knew from the very beginning that Liu Hong was carrying a boy. A child with such strong fortune was destined for great achievements. They set up this entire scheme to borrow that fortune and satisfy their own selfish desires.”
Back then, the Qishan area was plagued by hauntings. The local villagers were terrified and suspicious. Then a Taoist showed up, pointed at Liu Hong’s belly, and said the child was a cursed star destined to kill its parents. It’s no wonder anyone would be deceived, even the most clear-headed person would have been half-convinced.
Hearing this, Han Fengchen was shocked. “You mean… they deliberately let the child get wet and die?”
He frowned angrily. “Why did they have to kill the child?”
Liu Jun also asked, “Can’t living people borrow fortune?”
If living people could borrow fortune, there would be no need to kill them, right?
Lin Xiao had been killed. And now this child as well.
Chu Mingjia glanced at the little jar ghost but said nothing.
Of course, living people could borrow fortune. But as long as a person was alive, they would constantly consume their own fortune. To obtain purer, more powerful fortune, some people resorted to extreme methods.
Of course, such cases were extremely rare.
In this day and age, there were barely any legitimate Taoists left. Who still understood the concept of borrowing fortune? These arts were forbidden even in ancient times.
Back in the interrogation room, Song Xi was still explaining. “After Song Gui came to me, I went to find that Taoist. The Taoist said that Song Gui had indirectly caused his own son’s death, which damaged his yin virtue. And because the child was so spiritually gifted, he might come back for revenge. The best solution was to bury him in a place that never sees the light of day, seal him there, and place a deity’s spirit tablet on top to suppress him. That way, there would be no further trouble.”
Song Gui had been deceived by that Taoist once, so he no longer trusted him. He went to find another Taoist instead. To his surprise, the second Taoist said exactly the same thing as the first.
After much deliberation, Song Gui figured he hadn’t wronged anyone, and no one would go to such lengths to harm him. So he followed the Taoist’s advice: he placed the child’s remains in a funerary urn and sealed it inside the cellar.
And sure enough, over the years, their family had been fine. No paranormal incidents had occurred.
What he didn’t know was that the Taoist had instructed him to seal the child in the cellar because the fortune-borrowing formation worked best when placed in the child’s ancestral home. The spirit tablet was used to suppress the child because his spiritual energy was too strong, the Little Seven Barriers spirit-gathering formation alone wouldn’t be enough to contain him.
And so, five years passed. Until one day, Liu Hong heard a “gulu gulu” sound in the middle of the night, which frightened the family.
Liu Hong wanted to consult a fortune woman to deal with the matter, but Song Gui, feeling guilty, refused to let her.
Later, the production team of Guess Where It Is came to Qishan County and announced that they were accepting commissions to handle paranormal incidents. On impulse, Liu Hong signed up.
With the interrogation reaching this point, the truth had more or less come to light.
The biggest challenge now was finding the buyer and the Taoist who had orchestrated the scheme.
The Taoist could likely be tracked down, as there were leads. But the buyer, the person truly responsible for the child’s death, would be harder to find.
Because, in the eyes of Song Gui and Song Xi, the buyer appeared as two completely different people. Their builds, appearances, and facial features were entirely distinct.
It wasn’t until three or four in the morning that Chu Mingjia and the others finally left the police station. Once they got into the car, Han Fengchen was too angry to sleep. Not daring to talk to Jiang Mao, and with Liu Jun needing to focus on driving, he turned to Chu Mingjia.
“Sis, was there really only one buyer? Why do Song Xi and Song Gui describe him so differently?”
The buyer was clearly wealthy. Could it have been a bodyguard or a butler instead?
But the police, based on the timeline and the two men’s testimonies, firmly believed that the two different figures were actually the same person.
After a long silence, Jiang Mao spoke in a low voice. “Could this person be a glamour ghost?”
A glamour ghost excelled at “painting skins”, one face, a thousand forms. Moreover, every time the buyer met Song Gui and Song Xi, it was in the middle of a rainy night. Considering all this, it was certainly possible.
Chu Mingjia neither confirmed nor denied it.
Han Fengchen, however, felt a chill run down his spine. He suddenly thought of something and asked, “What about Lin Xiao’s case? Was that a glamour ghost too? Could it have been the same ‘person’?”
In Lin Xiao’s case, it hadn’t been a rainy night, nor had it happened in the middle of the night.
Of course, since no one had been present at the time the formation was set up, there was no way to verify that.
By the time they returned to the hotel, it was nearly five in the morning, almost dawn. No one had the energy to talk anymore. Finally, Chu Mingjia could sleep in a hotel room by herself, without having to share a haunted room with Han Fengchen.
Fortunately, this mission had been successfully completed. The production crew watched as Chu Mingjia once again caused a sensation, not only dominating the trending charts but also getting taken to the police station once more.
Chu Mingjia’s live stream had been offline for a full day. During the day, while the other two groups of guests were streaming their missions, Chu Mingjia’s entire team was asleep.
The millions of viewers who had watched Chu Mingjia and Jiang Mao dig up the grave yesterday and followed the aftermath waited impatiently. The next day, the moment Chu Mingjia’s live stream finally came back on, viewers flooded in.
【Ahhhhh, Sister Chu’s live stream is finally open! Finally! I’ve waited so long!】
【What happened with the grave you dug yesterday? Will there be a follow-up today?】
【Hmm??? What’s going on? Sister Chu is actually sleeping? How did things go yesterday?】
【Chenchen is sleeping too. They must have been up very late last night.】
【I believe Sister Chu was up late… but as for Chenchen…】
【That’s a bit harsh! Isn’t the hype squad tired too?】
【Smart people have already gone to tag the Qishan County Police Bureau and are waiting for their official statement.】
……
Regarding the case of Song Gui selling his child, there was initially a disagreement between the police and the special department over whether to issue a detailed public statement.
The special agents argued against full disclosure to the public. Since the case involved fortune-borrowing, and two such cases had occurred in a short time, they feared it might cause public panic.
The police, however, argued that millions of viewers had already learned about the incident through the live stream. If they tried to hide the details now, it would likely backfire. The public would panic even more, rumors would spread, and dispelling them later would be a huge undertaking.
In the end, the police issued a public statement about Song Gui being deceived by a Taoist into selling his child.
The statement didn’t explicitly mention fortune-borrowing, but it didn’t hide it either. It simply laid out the facts of the case in a straightforward manner.
At the same time, it was revealed that five or six other children had been sold through the middleman Song Xi. The police were working to locate them. In the statement, the police also tagged Chu Mingjia’s account, thanking her for her assistance.
The “Qishan Child Selling Incident,” which had occurred five or six years ago, once again made headlines, pushing Chu Mingjia’s grave-digging trending topic down to second place.
Even though Chu Mingjia wasn’t on a mission, simply sleeping on her live stream attracted over ten million viewers, who poured in to throw “mines” and “rockets” at her.
Her popularity was higher than that of some top celebrities.