Chapter 152: The Voice

"Yes, you guessed it right. I did it on purpose."

The voice on the other end of the line was calm and breezy.

As a nationally renowned senior lawyer whose consultation time was billed by the minute, Gu Hua appeared remarkably unhurried at the moment, explaining with patience: "Five years ago, I still had some impression of Wen Xinwu's son. Do you remember that there was no appeal after the first instance verdict of this case?"

Xiao Cheng possessed a photographic memory, so of course he remembered.

"At that time, the goal set by your family and me was to save his life at all costs! As long as it wasn't the death penalty, even a suspended death sentence was acceptable. Your father being sentenced to twenty years actually already exceeded our psychological bottom line."

"Lawyer Gu, surely that cannot be the only reason?"

Gu Hua chuckled on the other end. "Young man, how do you think I managed to secure those twenty years? By holding some evidence and arguing fiercely on legal grounds in court?"

Xiao Cheng understood.

Much like a game of chess, the factors that truly decided victory were often found outside the chessboard.

"You're suddenly asking me this. Have you discovered that piece of evidence and want to apply for a retrial?"

"Yes." Xiao Cheng saw no need to conceal it.

"Oh, it's been five years, and an entire term has passed. Where was Party Secretary Zhu from your county transferred to?"

Xiao Cheng understood everything instantly. This was a subtle prompt directed right at him.

"Secretary Zhu was placed under investigation two years ago, and he has already been sentenced. A whole string of people was implicated, and their offenses were extremely grave."

Lawyer Gu murmured an acknowledgement on the other end. "Then the time is ripe. You can bring out that evidence now."

Clearly, Gu Hua had withheld that piece of evidence back then precisely to plant a foreshadowing element for a future retrial. Because the outcome at the time had already been locked in through games of influence behind the scenes, presenting that evidence then wouldn't have changed the verdict in the slightest.

Just at that moment, a woman's voice came through the phone: "Honey, have you seen my car keys?" Following that, Lawyer Gu said, "I have some matters to attend to here. Call me again if you have any questions," and abruptly hung up the phone.

Wen Xiao Cheng stood frozen on the spot. It wasn't because he was pondering any bizarre twists in the old case, but rather because that woman's voice just now sounded remarkably like his mother's!

It was a voice imprinted upon him from the womb; Xiao Cheng was confident he could not possibly have mistaken it!

Calling Lawyer Gu "honey"—it went without saying that she must be his wife. But... could two people's voices really be that identical?

In his memories, his mother's voice was very sweet. She used to work as a nurse at the town clinic. It was said that when giving injections to little children, a single sentence of "Be a good boy, Xiao Pengyou, don't cry!" could instantly muster up a child's courage. Xiao Cheng had heard that voice countless times: how it sounded when she was happy, how it sounded when she was angry, how it sounded when she was calm, how it sounded when she was excited... That exact utterance of "Honey, have you seen my car keys?" was an exact replica of his mother's voice!

The phone call might have introduced some distortion, and due to the distance, the line might not have been crystal clear. Yet, as Xiao Cheng compared that sentence with the voice deep within his memory, the tone, the pitch, the timbre, and even individual habits such as the slight emphasis on certain syllables were an absolute match. He could even faintly detect a tiny trace of the local Xiangyang accent. Could it... could it really be her?

Back then, his mother had left without a word. What on earth had happened?

Just as Wen Xiao Cheng fell into a daze, the persona of Wen Xiaodao appeared in his mind. Right now, a conversation was in order.

With his composure shaken, Xiao Cheng asked in a daze, "Was that voice... my mother?"

Wen Xiaodao replied, "Judging by the voice, the probability is ninety-nine percent. However, that is not the crux of the issue. Even if it is, so what? And if it isn't, so what?"

If it wasn't, then of course it was just a misunderstanding. But if it was, what should he do?

"Even if it is her, she has already divorced our dad. Rebuilding a family is her freedom. What of it? Are you going to drop this case and go look for her?"

That, of course, was out of the question.

"Impossible. In that case, there is no need to be distracted by this matter. You have a great many things to do right now, don't you? Old Dad is still in prison, and you now have hope of rescuing him—as for your mother, she made her choice five years ago. Do I still need to spell out the rest?"

Many things could never return to the way they were.

Five years ago, by leaving without a word, she had already made her choice: a choice to abandon her young son and pursue happiness of her own. Perhaps she had already found it.

In the depths of his mind, the large round table appeared. The person who used to sit around that round table, the seat right next to his father, was now empty.

The person who ought to have been sitting there had gone to eat at someone else's home...

Seeing Xiao Cheng's distress, Xiaodao felt it keenly and consoled him: "Do you know the difference between being rational and being cold-hearted? Rationality and sensibility are opposites. When one reaches absolute rationality, one must cast aside all emotional factors, and at that point, one becomes very close to being cold-hearted. I am a rational entity within your mind, and relatively speaking, I am also somewhat colder. Your several acts of impulsiveness prior to this were actually irrational, yet I still chose not to stop you, perhaps precisely because I was afraid you might turn truly... cold-hearted."

A monstrous intellect could easily see right through the facade of human emotions, and sometimes, seeing through them brought even greater pain.

"So, if you want to cry, just cry."

………………

On the other side of the line, Zhou Qingyan had no idea that an offhand remark of hers had triggered such a butterfly effect. Gu Hua hung up the phone in heavy silence, and only after a long while did he say, "The person I was just speaking with on the phone was Wen Xiao Cheng."

"Your son."

Zhou Qingyan, who was still searching for her keys, froze in her tracks.

"He wants to overturn the verdict for Wen Xinwu. He has already discovered the foreshadowing we left behind back then, and specifically called to ask me about it." As he spoke, Gu Hua stood up, walked over, and pulled his wife into his arms. "If you miss your son, go back and take a look."

………………

Filing the appeal and drafting the petition—with all the lengthy preparations made beforehand, once the actual action was taken, there were no major hitfalls. Xiao Cheng organized the multiple pieces of collected evidence one by one and attached them to the back of the appeal petition. This included direct testimonies and settlement agreements from the three victimized families—the Zhangs, the Dings, and the Lües—along with interviews conducted earlier with over a dozen witnesses. All of them confirmed that before his death, the deceased Zhang Weihe had stated he intended to beat Wen Xinwu to death. With so many people testifying, there should be no problem.

Still, one had to marvel at Lawyer Gu's deep foresight. Without the piece of evidence reserved from before, relying solely on these testimonies might have given the court grounds to dismiss the appeal on the basis that "new evidence is insufficient to overturn the original verdict." Now, with the addition of a real estate ownership certificate and a land use right certificate, this evidence carried serious weight. It proved that the original verdict's determination of the crime scene being outside the defendant's house was indeed erroneous, thereby making the initiation of a retrial procedure mandatory.

Five years ago, the case of Wen Xinwu committing murder—resulting in one death and three injuries—had caused a sensation throughout Xiangyang City. It was just that back then, the internet environment was not as developed as it was today, and it failed to generate a massive nationwide impact. This time, however, on the second day after the appeal petition was submitted, the news made the trending lists across all major websites.

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Many readers have expressed that this chapter is a bit hard to accept. On one hand, the dream of a reunited family can never be realized again, which is too heartbreaking; on the other hand, they cannot accept the mother remarrying. But please consider another scenario, esteemed readers: suppose a different situation—Xiao Cheng's mother had died in a car accident five years ago, and the truth had been kept hidden from him until now. Between these two scenarios, which one do you think is more heartbreaking? Or which one are you more able to accept? When it rains, it rains; when a mother wants to remarry, she will remarry. Such matters indeed leave a bitter taste in the mouth. A mother remarrying and building a family with someone else feels almost like a negation of one's own existence. But then again, among those children who try to stop their parents from remarrying, how many are truly filial? We have all watched sitcoms where blended families live together and are just as happy. This is not a fairy tale where the prince and princess live happily ever after; this is a literary work where Xiao Cheng's mother and Lawyer Gu live happily ever after. Of course, things inside are surely not that simple either. Just like earlier in the story, whether it is Crippled Ding, Lü Songyan, Zhang Weishan, or Wen Xinwu, everyone has their own stance, and everyone has their own unspeakable hardships. Keep reading; what lies ahead is even more splendid.