Chapter 53#
Couldn’t Even See Him for the Last Time#
Luo Wenyun turned and left.
His pace gradually quickened.
There were many people at the airport, and someone recognized him, calling out his name.
Luo Wenyun ignored them all.
The manager and the others were a step slower. Just as they reached security, they saw Luo Wenyun running back.
Across a row of iron railings, Luo Wenyun asked the driver for the car keys. The manager didn’t have time to stop him. The driver was frightened by Luo Wenyun’s expression and handed him the keys without much thought.
“Hey, why did you just give him the keys like that! Is he in any state to drive?”
The manager was hopping mad with anxiety but couldn’t immediately turn back. By the time they passed security and circled back to the parking lot, the black nanny car was nowhere to be seen.
The assistant stood aside and asked: “Brother, what exactly happened? Why does Brother Luo look so anxious?”
The manager ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t know either.”
He also wanted to know what had happened.
He had just been passing the lounge at the film set when he saw everyone looking toward it. He moved closer, and the sounds coming from inside were intermittent. The only clear words he heard were “Mo Xuzhi” and “live well.”
He wanted to ask Luo Wenyun about the whole story, but there was simply no time. From the film set to the airport, Luo Wenyun hadn’t paid him any attention at all, completely immersed in his own thoughts.
“I’ll tell the studio people to go find him. Lili, contact the company’s PR. If there’s any movement online, suppress it immediately. Don’t let Mo Xuzhi drag Luo Wenyun into this at this critical juncture.”
The manager lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, then threw it into the trash can with a frustrated expression.
As expected, nothing good happens when Mo Xuzhi is involved.
The main hall was bustling with people.
The seminar had been going on all morning, and now there was finally some time for a break. Most people were sitting in their seats, taking the opportunity to drink some water and organize their meeting notes. After organizing his materials, Wang Zhifeng stood up, left the main hall, found a relatively quiet place, took out his phone, and turned it on.
During the seminar, no one was allowed to make calls, and all researchers had to turn off their phones.
When he left, Mo Xuzhi said he wanted to take a nap in his room; he should have woken up by now.
It was lunchtime now, and he wondered if Mo Xuzhi had eaten.
The phone turned on slowly. Wang Zhifeng leaned against the corridor wall, looking sideways at the snow-covered pines outside the window, thinking about what to say later.
The phone turned on, paused for a few seconds, and then returned to normal.
Wang Zhifeng first clicked on WeChat.
He wanted to send Mo Xuzhi a WeChat message first to test the waters.
Sending a message was better than calling; if Mo Xuzhi was awake, he would reply, and if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t disturb his sleep.
The moment the chat list appeared, the phone also showed that he had five missed calls, all from the same landline number.
Wang Zhifeng paused.
Mo Xuzhi had sent him a message. It was very simple, saying he was going out to play and would be back within the day.
Clicking on the dialogue box, Wang Zhifeng was about to type when his expression suddenly changed. He pulled the screen down and looked again at the number that had called him five times in a row.
It was the number of the Rongcheng Municipal Public Security.
He had made several calls to the municipal public security when he was handling the death certificate for Mo Xuzhi, and he remembered this number.
The municipal public security wouldn’t call him for no reason.
His heart skipped a beat for some reason. Wang Zhifeng exited the chat box and called the municipal public security back.
The person on the other end answered quickly, as if they had been waiting by the phone.
The person on the phone stated the events quickly and calmly, without a single wasted word.
It started with someone reporting an avalanche in Rongcheng, and someone was suspected of being buried under it.
That person’s name was Mo Xuzhi.
The people at the bureau wanted to pull up the records for this person named Mo Xuzhi, only to find that his records were a national [Level ?] secret. Their clearance was too low to view them.
Coincidentally, someone in the archives group at the bureau remembered that he had asked them to help prepare a death certificate earlier, and the name of the “deceased” was Mo Xuzhi.
They were currently unable to pinpoint Mo Xuzhi’s location, so they wanted to call and ask if he knew Mo Xuzhi’s trajectory.
Wang Zhifeng gripped his phone tightly.
He immediately stood up straight and ran back toward the venue.
Although the main hall was noisy, few people were moving in the aisles. Wang Zhifeng, running while making a phone call, was particularly conspicuous.
He told the person recording the meeting process next to him that he had something to take care of and then immediately grabbed his briefcase and left the venue.
“What’s wrong with Dean Wang? Is something the matter?”
“Isn’t he going to continue the meeting?”
All the voices were left behind by Wang Zhifeng.
The sound of leather shoes stepping on marble tiles was exceptionally clear, echoing in the corridor and constantly striking his eardrums.
The guards and drivers stayed in the car dutifully. They couldn’t enter the venue, so they had been waiting in the car, and even at noon, they hadn’t gone out for lunch on their own.
Wang Zhifeng got into the car, hung up the phone, and then called Mo Xuzhi.
The other party remained in an unanswered state. The phone rang until it automatically disconnected. Wang Zhifeng called again, and this time it directly showed a prompt saying it was out of the service area or turned off.
He didn’t make any more useless efforts but closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down, and began to think of the places Mo Xuzhi might go.
He had already accepted the fact that the person who encountered the avalanche might be Mo Xuzhi. Rather than constantly doubting whether something had happened, it was better to accept it more quickly and then solve it more quickly.
This was the most efficient and best way.
He had called the hotel to confirm, and the hotel said he had indeed left the hotel this morning and had taken a taxi to an unknown location.
It was originally a matter that could be solved by checking surveillance, but due to the unexpected heavy snow, there was a power failure in some circuits. The result was that the surveillance footage at a key intersection was interrupted, and then other surveillance footage was blurred by water from melted snow. All the license plate numbers were unclear. At that time, many buses passed through the intersection, and they all looked the same, making it completely impossible to distinguish which vehicle Mo Xuzhi took.
It could be analyzed, but it required image restoration, which was very time-consuming. By the time the image analysis came out, it wouldn’t be of much use.
The driver saw that Wang Zhifeng looked very anxious but remained silent, so he spoke up: “Professor Wang…”
“Wait, don’t speak yet.” Wang Zhifeng stopped the driver, closed his eyes, and unconsciously tapped his fingers on the seat. He said, “Let me think.”
Mo Xuzhi had said he wanted to come to Rongcheng to see the snow, saying he wanted to find a place with good scenery to lie down.
He said that place had better have no one, so he could lie there freely until the end of time.
Wang Zhifeng opened the map.
All the scenic spots in the city were crowded and safe, and no news of any avalanches had been received so far, so they could be directly excluded.
Next was the outskirts of the city.
An avalanche requires a mountain peak or slope with a certain height and gradient, so the north of the city was excluded.
Then there were the west, east, and south of the city.
Wang Zhifeng tried to recall.
Yesterday, Mo Xuzhi asked him about several places, and those places happened to correspond to the three directions out of the city, so it was obviously a one-out-of-three choice.
—Thought of it.
Wang Zhifeng opened his eyes, dialed the number, and said to the driver, and also to the person on the other end of the phone: “Go to Linhai Shiyuan.”
“Go to Linhai Shiyuan!”
His voice coincided with the voice of the person on the other end.
The driver didn’t waste words and immediately stepped on the gas.
“We received a call from a taxi driver. He said he took a passenger today who asked him to drop him off at Linhai Shiyuan. According to the driver’s description of his dress, it should be Mo Xuzhi.”
The driver said he saw the passenger’s health didn’t seem very good and his condition looked very poor. In addition, there were few people there, so he was afraid of an accident and stayed there for a while longer. He didn’t expect to suddenly hear a rumbling sound. He didn’t dare to go over at the time, but after a while, he went to take a look and found that an avalanche had occurred.
At that time, several young people in the park came out, looking very flustered. After they came out, they drove away in a car parked on the roadside. They were probably frightened out of their wits by this sudden avalanche, their faces pale.
The taxi driver waited a while longer and found that the passenger who had gone in earlier still hadn’t come out.
An avalanche had already occurred here; most people should have come out.
Sensing something was wrong, he called the police.
The destination was confirmed, and subsequent matters became smoother.
Wang Zhifeng and the police arrived at Linhai Shiyuan at the same time.
The police brought search and rescue dogs, and firefighters and medical staff also arrived at the scene.
Before the police could speak, Wang Zhifeng proactively took an ID card out of his briefcase and handed it to the police dog handler, saying: “This is his ID card. He always wears it in the lab.”
The handler took the ID card and gave it a quick scan. His hand shook, but then he quickly regained his composure and put the ID card under the search and rescue dog’s nose for it to smell.
The search and rescue dog began to run.
Running in the snow in a white coat was difficult. Wang Zhifeng took off the white coat that he always wore and followed behind the police dog, not falling behind a single step.
Nearly half an hour had passed since the avalanche occurred.
The best rescue time for snow disasters is fifteen minutes. After fifteen minutes, the chance of survival drops sharply.
No one dared to delay, their nerves constantly tense.
The search and rescue dog stopped at a place and kept circling around it.
The area marked out by the search and rescue dog was somewhat large, and the rescue personnel dispersed, all digging continuously.
Wang Zhifeng immediately crouched down and began digging the snow without a word.
His expression looked very calm, and he had indeed been acting very calmly since meeting the police. But by now, others saw that his hands digging the snow were trembling uncontrollably.
With professional personnel present, everything progressed very smoothly.
After finishing probing one area and finding no trace, a rescue worker came over to Wang Zhifeng’s side. Seeing the bloody color in the snow, his expression changed, and he said: “Mr. Wang, your hands are bleeding from digging. Take a rest, I’ll take over here.”
“This isn’t my blood.”
Wang Zhifeng took a quick look at his fingers, then at the fine snow clearly stained with blood. He paused imperceptibly, and then his movements became even faster, faster and faster.
Until the blood seeping from his fingers mixed with the blood in the snow, Wang Zhifeng’s movements slowed down, and he began to gently clear the snow layer by layer.
The rescue worker aside was stunned, then quickly bent down while shouting at the top of his lungs:
“Person found! Here!”
Everyone crowded around.
After emergency artificial respiration, the young man lying quietly in the snow was quickly sent to the ambulance.
The moment after the ambulance left, everyone received instructions from their respective superiors. This rescue mission had special significance and could not be disclosed in the slightest.
The scene was quickly cleared, including the white coat that Wang Zhifeng had thrown on the snow, which was also picked up.
The heavy snow was still falling, and everyone’s footprints were gradually covered by the wind and snow.
A black nanny car parked on the roadside, its tires screeching against the ground, and a stumbling figure tumbled out of the car.
A staff member who was detecting the cause of the avalanche asked him what he was doing there.
Luo Wenyun looked at their unhurried appearance and felt an inexplicable panic. He asked: “Where is the person buried here? How is he? Did you find him?”
The staff member asked: “Who are you, please?”
“I’m his… friend.”
The staff member shook his head, looking at Luo Wenyun with complete regret.
“He’s been found. If you had come earlier, you might have been able to see him for the last time.”