Chapter 75: First Visit to the Funeral Home
Women's sixth sense is accurate. No matter if she is a meticulous woman or a carefree woman, the sixth sense is their innate gift.
"Why are you looking at me like that? Don't you have anything good to say?" Xiao Di asked with a cold face.
"What are you saying? How can such a beautiful person say such vulgar words?" His little thoughts were seen through. Even though Tan Xuan was thick-skinned, he couldn't help feeling embarrassed. But he still wanted to cover it up. Unfortunately, his enemy Xiao Di would never give him this opportunity.
Xiao Di blushed and stiffened her neck as she said, "How is it vulgar? Do I need to act like a lady when I'm with you? I don't know your devious thoughts. When have you ever spoken to me in a friendly way? Now you're smiling at me. It's obvious that you must be using me to your advantage."
Tan Xuan chuckled, "What you said makes sense, but it's too straightforward. It doesn't match your temperament. Let's be more subtle when talking. I do need your help with something."
Without waiting for Xiao Di to say anything more unpleasant, Tan Xuan changed his attitude, put away his smile and continued, "It was you who said you wanted to investigate this matter with me, but you can't rely entirely on me. Isn't it your responsibility to contribute a little? Besides, I'm not asking you to do anything illegal..."
"Stop, stop!" Xiao Di interrupted Tan Xuan impatiently, "You're dithering like a woman. Just tell me what you want me to do."
Xiao Di is good at being unreasonable, and she knows that she will be no match for Tan Xuan by presenting facts and reasoning. If she lets Tan Xuan talk for a while, she won't know where he will end up.
Tan Xuan stated his purpose with a smile, "Um... use your connections to check whether the bodies of Wang Dongxue and Li Haoran have been claimed by their families? Where are they now? Have they been cremated?"
"What!" Xiao Di almost dropped his jaw in shock. He opened his mouth wide and looked at Tan Xuan in surprise.
"What do you mean? Are you planning to take their bodies?"
Tan Xuan nodded, "There is no other way now. Aren't their bodies also their relics? Go and ask them. If they have been cremated, I will have to think about other ways."
As he spoke, he saw the two movers coming downstairs again, and Tan Xuan hurriedly pulled Xiao Di away from downstairs.
The corpse is the remains of the deceased. Although this sentence makes sense, it also refreshes Xiao Di's three views. It is completely unique that such a thing can be put to good use. Even though she was somewhat resistant in her heart, she still started to contact her friends after returning to the car.
Xiao Di's network of connections is indeed quite wide, especially in the public security system. It seems that she has acquaintances in every department. Tan Xuan did not see her call her brother, but only heard her ask a few sisters and got the answer. Li Haoran's body has been claimed by his family and cremated. Although Wang Dongxue's family came, they did not take her away for cremation due to some other reasons. It is now stored in the morgue of the funeral home.
After listening to Xiao Di's retelling, Tan Xuan started the car and said, "Let's go to the funeral home."
Having worked as an online taxi driver for so long, Tan Xuan has been to most places in Jiangzhou, but he has never picked up a customer from a funeral home. He doesn't even know where the funeral home is in Jiangzhou. He has no choice but to open his phone to search and then follow the navigation.
Jiangzhou is not a small city; after all, it is a provincial capital with a large permanent population. However, there is only one funeral home in Jiangzhou, which is completely dominated by the company. All the dead in the entire Jiangzhou city have to complete their final journey there in a hurry.
The location of Jiangzhou Funeral Home is very remote. It seems that describing it as a suburb is not enough to explain its remoteness. After leaving the Jiangzhou city and driving northwest for half an hour, we finally found it at the foot of a mountain.
It was still morning when Tan Xuan and his friends arrived . There were still many people in mourning and crying in the courtyard of the funeral home. Tan Xuan knew that they were late. If they had come earlier, the scene would have been more spectacular, because the main departments in the funeral home only worked half a day. At noon, the crematorium was closed. If you wanted to be cremated, you had to come early tomorrow to queue up. Of course, those who had elderly people at home also knew about this custom, so no one came here to queue up a day in advance.
Tan Xuan parked the car in the corner of the parking lot, and then used the map in the parking lot to get a preliminary understanding of the environment of the funeral home. This is indeed the only funeral home in Jiangzhou, with very comprehensive supporting facilities. There are several farewell halls and viewing halls alone, and the incinerators are divided into several types, classic and environmentally friendly. Professional funeral guidance companies and representatives of cemetery real estate have set up offices here. Of course, the staff of the funeral home also have their own office building, which is not impressive, but occupies a large area.
Tan Xuan found the location of the morgue on the map, and followed the route on the map with Xiao Di, walking quickly from the noisy front yard to the backyard of the funeral home. There were many cars and people in the funeral home, but those who could chat were all acquaintances, except for those who were busy with their work performance. No unfamiliar people greeted each other in this occasion, and along the way, the two of them did not attract the attention of others.
There were quite a few people in the backyard. Groups of people were carrying urns from behind the incinerator to the urn storage area. A few people were carrying bundles of yellow paper and taking tablets from the urn storage area to a place further back. There was thick smoke, deafening cries of grief, and it was extremely noisy.
Tan Xuan learned from the map that the several buildings on the east side of the backyard were places for storing ashes. Walking west and passing through a gate in a high wall, the bungalow in the corner was the morgue. There was no one coming and going here, and although it was only separated by a wall, it was much quieter.
Tan Xuan and Xiao Di looked at each other and ran towards the door of the morgue.
"stop!"
Just when the two were a few steps away from the door, a sinister voice suddenly came from behind.
The two turned around and saw a hunchbacked old man standing behind them and walking towards them. They didn't pay much attention when they came in , but there was a duty room behind the door. The old man's hair was gray and he looked a little unsightly, especially his eyes, which were only the size of sesame seeds, and were shining coldly. Xiao Di shivered and hid behind Tan Xuan unconsciously. Meeting such a person in such a place was scary. Fortunately, it was daytime. If it was at night, it would probably scare people to death.
"What are you doing?" The old man asked the two of them with a grim look on his face. His voice was not loud, but it seemed to hit the heart directly, making Tan Xuan and the other two feel cold in their hearts.
Tan Xuan's mind worked quickly, and he immediately replied with a heavy expression: "Uncle, we are here to see our relatives off. My wife is in a hurry and wants to find a place to relieve herself. There are too many people in other places and she is timid, so I brought her here. Uncle, is there a bathroom here? We will use it and come out right away."
"Is it convenient to come here?" The old man looked at Tan Xuan and Xiao Di coldly. After seeing both of them take two steps back, he looked away.
"There is no toilet here. Can't you see that the door is locked? Let's get out of here."
"This house is so big, how could there be no bathroom? Why lock the door in broad daylight? Is there no one inside? Or it's almost noon, and they must have skipped work to go out." Tan Xuan continued to play dumb, and his tone was mixed with a hint of anger and complaint.
The old man looked up at Tan Xuan and smiled sinisterly, "There are people in this house, but they can't use the toilet."
"Why?" Tan Xuan asked stupidly, and his stupidity did not diminish at all because of the old man's smile.
"Because they are all dead. Have you ever heard of dead people going to the toilet?" The old man stared into Tan Xuan's eyes and said, as if he wanted to send this sentence directly into his heart through Tan Xuan's eyes.
"ah!"
Tan Xuan screamed and stood there for a moment, then pretended to be panicked, looked back at the locked door of the house, then pulled Xiao Di and ran away from the yard, as if he saw something terrible in the house about to rush out.
Without stopping or looking back, Tan Xuan ran straight to the intersection of the backyard, turned a corner, and stopped only when the house next to the incinerator completely blocked his view.
"Why are you running so fast?" Xiao Di asked breathlessly after stopping. Seeing that there were many people coming and going, she was afraid that others would hear their conversation, so she pulled Tan Xuan to the corner again.
"If I don't show fear and don't run in a panic, how can the old man believe me?" Tan Xuan said with a snort. He was not tired from running, but from pretending to be scared. After all, pretending was not his forte.
"Yeah, look at his smacking eyes. He looks at us as if we were thieves. What's there to see in there? Who could go in there to steal those dead bodies? I think he did it on purpose, just to scare us." Xiao Di also muttered along with Tan Xuan's words, obviously blaming the hunchbacked old man for the failure to sneak into the morgue.
Tan Xuan took two breaths and then returned to normal. He smiled and said, "He is right. We are here to steal the dead."
"You..." Xiao Di glared at Tan Xuan unhappily, frowning at the same time, and stretched out his hand to pinch Tan Xuan's arm, "Tan Xuan, you bastard, you stinky hooligan, who did you say was your wife just now? Who is in a hurry to go to the toilet and wants to urinate and defecate anywhere..."
"Hey, hey, don't pinch me..." Tan Xuan begged for mercy, and at the same time kept explaining, "I just said it in a hurry. If I don't say you can't find the toilet, I can't find where to go. If I don't say you are my wife, no one else will believe it."
Xiao Di still refused to give in and continued to scold: "Then what right do you have to say that I am your wife? You are just talking nonsense. Why don't you say that I am your mother?"
"Uh..." A tough person always speaks toughly. Tan Xuan was stunned by Xiao Di's words for a while, and then he said angrily: "I said you are my mother, do you think I am blind or stupid? How old were you when you gave birth to a son as old as me? Are you crazy? "
"Hey, you dare to refute me..."
Xiao Di moved his hands again, and with more force than before.
It was wrong not to explain, and it was still wrong to explain. Tan Xuan was completely speechless. He struggled twice but it was useless. Instead, Xiao Di attacked him even harder . Finally, Tan Xuan gave up resistance and let Xiao Di pinch him to his heart's content. Only then was the matter over. So in the solemn atmosphere of the funeral home where people were expressing their grief, two figures who were extremely inconsistent with the occasion appeared, fighting and making noises. Sometimes their screams even drowned out the cries of the mourners, and they seemed out of place in the entire funeral home. They didn't react until they realized that the way people looked at them was obviously wrong. They lowered their heads and ran back to the parking lot.
Back in the car, Xiao Di started to worry again, "The door to the morgue is locked, and there's an old man guarding the door. How can we get in and find Wang Dongxue's body?"
"If there is no other way, then find a way." Tan Xuan said in a flat tone and started the car.
Xiao Di's body shook. Seeing the car driving out of the parking space, he asked stupidly, "Aren't you going to find a solution? Where are you driving to now?"
"There are people watching there now. We can't force our way in because there are so many people watching. Let's wait until it's dark and there's only the old man guarding the gate. Then we can find a way to get in."
Xiao Di's eyes widened, and he asked timidly, "You said we should go to the morgue at night?"
"Yes, it's much more convenient at night. Are you planning to force your way in during the day?" Tan Xuan rolled his eyes at Xiao Di, then a smile appeared on his face and he asked, "Why, are you afraid to go at night?"
"No, what do I have to be afraid of? I've seen ghosts, so why should I be afraid of seeing a dead body..." Xiao Di shook her head and said firmly, gritting her teeth. But even though she was being tough, she knew better than anyone how frightened she was. She let Tan Xuan drive the car out of the funeral home without asking where they were going before dark or whether they needed to prepare anything.
