Volume 1: Days Moving Bricks at the Construction Site
Wash Hands
He said he wants to go wash hands…
——it’s Ding Hou.
Shen Maomao’s legs were a bit weak.
Above the roof edge, used to hang light bulbs, there was an additional hemp rope, with a dead knot tied above, and Ding Hou’s neck hanging below. The rope was pulled very tight, yet it did not break. Ding Hou’s face was bluish-purple, his eyes wide open, eyeballs protruding, and his eyes were blood red. His tongue stretched out very long, the ligature marks on his neck were red and swollen, and the traces were chaotic, perhaps indicating he experienced a violent struggle before death…
The scream came from Yan Nan, but her face did not show much fear, probably because the scream was just due to being startled.
Besides Shen Maomao, the other three women were not panicked at all. Xiaolou and Yan Nan even worked together to take Ding Hou down, while Xuehua went to the men’s dormitory to get the men to come over. Shen Maomao simply knelt down. What the hell, what kind of courage is all this? Is she the odd one, or are those three not women?
Xiaolou squatted beside Ding Hou’s corpse, carefully studying it for a long time.
Shen Maomao did not dare to go over, just stood far away at the back watching.
Xiaolou said disdainfully: “What are you afraid of?”
Shen Maomao’s legs trembled: “I… I’m not afraid…”
Xiaolou: “Isn’t it just a dead person? You will die in the future too.”
Shen Maomao: “…” I thank you.
After getting along for a few days, Shen Maomao discovered that Xiaolou’s character was not cold or aloof at all; this guy was completely a natural black — or is it that being deeply silly naturally turns black?
The men hurriedly rushed over, and upon seeing the corpse, Golden Retriever let out a few strange cries, like a little dog whose tail had been stepped on, “ao ao” and then hid behind Shen Maomao.
Shen Maomao felt proud! Shen Maomao felt inflated! With the comparison, she instantly felt her own image also stood up greatly. She moved to Xiaolou’s side, squatted down with her to look at the corpse, and listened to Yan Nan asking Yun Shengjin what happened last night.
Yun Shengjin said: “Yesterday after we returned, we just fell asleep. In the middle of the night, I groggily seemed to hear them say they wanted to go to the toilet, but didn’t notice who all went…”
“Right.” He looked at the youth with dark circles, Wei Gu, who had always had no sense of presence, and asked, “Weren’t you next to Ding Hou? Didn’t you notice he didn’t return?”
Wei Gu, looking withered, stammered, “I… I fell asleep, I know nothing…”
Beidou said, “When they went out, I woke up for a while, didn’t all four of you go to the toilet?” He referred to Brother Long, Binzi, the honest Luo Xingbang, and Leng Bingbing.
It was fine when he didn’t mention it, but once he did, Brother Long exploded: “You still have the nerve to say? Didn’t your wife add something to the food? How come after we ate dinner, our stomachs hurt so much at night?”
Yan Nan certainly wouldn’t tell them about the spoiled pork, and just said, “Your own stomachs aren’t good, yet you blame the cook? If you think my cooking has a problem, then go cook yourself!”
No matter if he could or not, Brother Long definitely didn’t want to do it. When Yan Nan said this, he was speechless, yet still harbored dissatisfaction, only able to glare at Shen Maomao with his big eyes: “Was it you, this little sl*t, who tampered with the food?!”
Shen Maomao’s forehead veins jumped, all angered and amused by this shark idiot: “Can you speak properly? Do you understand what manners are? Did I seduce your dad or sleep with your grandpa for you to call me a sl*t? I should have let your dad ** you, this big stupid beep—s on the wall, to save you from coming out every day to display nima’s lower intelligence limit! If you don’t want your mouth, you can donate it to someone in need. If you f*cking talk nonsense without proof again, mother will sew your dog mouth shut…” Large sections of dirty words were blurted out without needing a draft.
Everyone present was shocked.
The Golden Retriever widened his eyes, finally understanding that Shen Maomao had held back when scolding him.
As a result, Brother Long was not only not angry, but instead looked at her with bright eyes, giving a greasy smile: “Putting my ** on the wall you can’t do, but you can try with me to put my son’s ** on the wall.”
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The sperm-brained idiot is truly remarkable.
His underling, Binzi, couldn’t help but tug at him, trying to stop him from speaking further.
Brother Long was dissatisfied with his underling’s pull, shook off Binzi’s hand, just about to say something more, when Xiaolou suddenly asked: “Did you go to the bathroom after nine o’clock yesterday?”
He originally disdained to answer a question from a woman as ordinary as Xiaolou, but under her direct gaze with pitch-black eyes, he somehow felt a bit afraid, and those vulgar words wouldn’t come out, so he answered honestly: “Almost, who checks the time when going to the toilet for nothing? Bored to death?”
“It was nine o’clock and three minutes.” Bored to death’s Leng Bingbing answered.
Xiaolou: “Didn’t you hear talking and whistling sounds?”
“No.” Leng Bingbing affirmed, “It was very quiet at that time.”
Yun Shengjin hurriedly asked: “Then was there anything else unusual besides that?”
Leng Bingbing said: “No.”
“Well…” Luo Xingbang suddenly said, “He said he wanted to wash his hands…”
What hands to wash in the middle of the night?
Moreover, Ding Hou knew about the corpse in the sink, so how could someone as timid as a mouse possibly go there to wash his hands?
“I felt his state at that time was a bit strange…” Luo Xingbang said, “I advised him to go the next day, but he insisted I shouldn’t worry about it. I was also a bit scared, so I went back first…”
The clue ends here; no one knows why Ding Hou said he was going to wash his hands but ended up hanging on the women’s dormitory window.
Besides Ding Hou, Glasses also didn’t return all night.
Yun Shengjin took the initiative to take charge: “Let’s go ask the foreman. Ding Hou cannot just be left here; we need to find a place to bury him properly.”
On the first night, one person died; on the second night, it was two. Out of fifteen people, only twelve were left. Tonight, we don’t know how many will die, but their investigation has made no progress at all.
The future is bleak, the future hopeless, nothing more than this.
Everyone had no mood to eat, but they still needed to exert effort later, so they could only eat a few bites casually to manage.
At seven o’clock, the elusive foreman appeared again, saying he would take them to work later.
Since Yun Shengjin wants to become the leader, then communicating with the foreman is surely a task for him. He said to the foreman, “Foreman, we have a colleague who had an accident. Can you find a place to bury him so he can rest in peace?”
The foreman was not surprised about the dead people and calmly said, “Then put them in the middle, in the pool where the wall is being built. It’s absolutely a good place.”
Undoubtedly, this so-called “good place” is meant for the dead.
The players looked at each other, and finally, Yun Shengjin asked, “What about our colleague who had to redo his work yesterday?”
At the mention of Glasses, the foreman became angry: “He didn’t do his work well, and I didn’t even say I’d dock his pay, just asked him to redo a bit, and he actually quit and left!”
Completely impossible. Glasses had seen the terrifying place outside, making it even more impossible for him to go out at night.
The foreman’s words were all lies, yet they had no way, or rather did not dare, to expose him.
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Silently finishing breakfast, everyone came to the construction site. Several men, under the foreman’s command, dug a pit in the middle of the pond, preparing to bury Ding Hou’s body there.
By the time Shen Maomao rushed over, the body was already buried. They worked near the body, setting up the scaffold under the foreman’s command.
Once the scaffold was finished, the foreman let them rest for a while and gathered them in front for a meeting.
“I didn’t expect Xiaoding’s psychological endurance to be so poor that he would be afraid to go out at night,” the foreman said. “But everyone saw, Xiaoding committed suicide, nothing to do with our construction site.” After a round of shirking responsibility, he finally stated the purpose of gathering them: “Although Xiaoding is no longer with us, his work still needs someone to do it…”
He looked around and picked out the next unlucky person: “It’s you.”
—The person he chose was Golden Retriever.
Golden Retriever muttered a curse under his breath but lacked the courage to resist, so he resignedly fastened his safety belt and climbed up the scaffold for high-altitude work.
After arranging the personnel, the foreman then leisurely left.
Xiaolou also stood up: “I’m going to the restroom.”
“Ah?” Shen Maomao hadn’t reacted yet, and she left like a gust of wind, the direction she went didn’t seem to be towards the dormitory.
From a distance, Yan Nan asked: “Where is she going?”
Shen Maomao truthfully answered: “To the toilet.”
Yan Nan didn’t believe her at all.
But even knowing Xiaolou went to do something else, not everyone has the courage to leave their position.
Shen Maomao also didn’t have courage, so she could only try hard to do more work, striving to finish Xiaolou’s work too, to save her from having to go out at night to redo it.
—If the one redoing work were Xiaolou, then the one who might die would be her.
Too real.
After being out for about twenty minutes, Xiaolou then unhurriedly returned.
Yan Nan sarcastically said: “Does going to the toilet take twenty minutes?”
“Shit,” Xiaolou answered expressionlessly.
Yan Nan: “…” So vulgar!
Shen Maomao quietly moved closer to Xiaolou: “How did it go, Sister Lou? Any discoveries?”
Xiaolou said: “Discoveries? The toilet paper in the bathroom is quite useful, but I don’t know what brand it is.”
Shen Maomao: “??” You were gone for ages and that’s all you found out? Did you really go to the toilet??
Xiaolou gave her a smile and, with her back to the others, made a “shh—” gesture.
So Shen Maomao suppressed her curiosity and didn’t ask any more questions.
At noon during lunch, Golden Retriever poured out his grievances to her: “Sister Rabbit, you have no idea, it’s really damn sunny up there! Plus, it’s all paint fumes, hot, dangerous, and full of toxic gas, it’s really not work meant for humans!”
Being a young master from a rich family, where would he have painted before? His work speed was obviously not as good as the other two, and he feared he would be made to redo the work tonight.
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Golden Retriever took a couple more bites of rice and said vaguely, “No way, I want to die with a full stomach!”
His fear, hidden beneath a playful facade, was easy to see, and Shen Maomao noticed his legs shaking nonstop under the table.
He is not unafraid; he just understands already—that saying it is useless.
No one can save him because everyone is struggling to protect themselves.
Xiaolou suddenly said, “If you work well in the afternoon, it won’t be your turn in the evening.”
The surprise came too suddenly, and Golden Retriever said, moved, “Really?”
She was so certain, as if she knew some inside information, which involuntarily made the surrounding people think more.
Everyone seemed thoughtful, with undercurrents surging beneath the small dining table.
Xiaolou answered, “False.”
Shen Maomao: “…” Are you sick or something?