PD -Chapter 56 The Survivor’s Concealment

However, regarding why Xiao Hu had been reinstated so quickly, I couldn’t directly ask him about it… so I continued following his explanation and asked about the specific condition checks of the aircraft wreckage after the accident.

Xiao Hu put down the airplane model in his hand and continued:

“After the crash, we collected all the wreckage and brought it back. We carefully inspected every component and the fuselage, but… we didn’t find even the slightest abnormality.”

“We screened every part that could possibly cause cabin decompression. The fact is, the aircraft was indeed intact at takeoff…”

“That’s also why we were able to return to work so quickly. Because there was truly no evidence proving that the crash was caused by any of us.” Xiao Hu said with a bitter smile.

“Could it have been… pilot error that caused cabin decompression?” Liu Xiaopeng asked the question I also wanted to ask.

But Xiao Hu still shook his head.

“The crew on that flight were all veterans with over a thousand flights. The captain was also my friend. We checked the black box flight data as well—there was no record of improper operation.”

“And…” Xiao Hu paused, once again looking out the window, his gaze sorrowful. “The captain of today’s flight… was also my friend.”

“What!” Tang Shanshan cried out in shock.

Xiao Hu was startled by her reaction, but soon sank back into grief.

“This time… I’m afraid he wasn’t so lucky.”

“You mean he was the captain of two different flights, and both had accidents?” I frowned and asked.

Xiao Hu clearly saw what I was thinking and shook his head.

“He has a wife and children. He’s an experienced pilot. It’s impossible for him to deliberately crash a plane—using his own life and the lives of hundreds of passengers as a joke. That’s absolutely impossible.”

“So… you think this is a supernatural incident?” I asked.

Xiao Hu neither nodded nor shook his head. He froze, as if he didn’t dare commit to his own conclusion. After a long pause, he finally said:

“I always feel these two accidents are too suspicious. There must be something we still haven’t figured out. When I saw you just now, that thought suddenly came to me… so I wanted to ask you to help investigate.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in this kind of thing.” I smiled at him.

In my impression, Xiao Hu had always been an earnest and ambitious student… someone who didn’t quite fit in with the rest of our family.

Moreover, he had always strongly opposed those so-called “superstitious” practices. I hadn’t expected people really do change—now he was actually asking me to investigate this matter.

He was momentarily at a loss for words, and the atmosphere became awkward.

Just then, Tang Shanshan leaned closer to me and broke the silence, asking softly:

“The dream I just had… was it the scene of that plane crash?”

I froze, unsure how to answer, so I asked her to describe what she had seen in her dream.

When Xiao Hu heard that Tang Shanshan had actually seen the crash scene, he looked at her in shock and asked me what was going on.

I scratched my head and said, “If I told you she’s a witch with precognitive abilities, would you believe me?”

Before Xiao Hu could react, I was stepped on hard by Tang Shanshan.

“You’re the witch! Your whole family is witches!”

Seeing her get angry, I quickly raised my hands in surrender and told her to continue.

Tang Shanshan glared at me again before saying:

“In the dream, I was inside the airplane cabin. I saw a man suddenly stand up during the flight, walk to the emergency exit, and—without anyone noticing—he opened the escape door. Then a powerful air current sucked him out, and the cabin fell into chaos. The plane lost stability.”

“That’s impossible!”

Before she even finished speaking, Xiao Hu shot up from his chair and shouted.

“Do you know that during flight, the cabin is pressurized? The pressure difference between inside and outside is huge. By calculation, the emergency door weighs at least one to two tons—no human could possibly open it by hand!”

He kept shaking his head, as if such a possibility was completely beyond his understanding.

“Then… what if the one who opened the emergency door wasn’t human?” Liu Xiaopeng suddenly said.

“Brother X… Xiaopeng, stop scaring people!” Zhu Zhu, who had been silent all along, shivered and looked at him.

After thinking for a moment, I actually agreed with Liu Xiaopeng.

“It can’t be ruled out,” I said to Xiao Hu.

“Did you see the person’s face clearly?” I turned to Tang Shanshan.

She thought for a moment.

“A middle-aged man. Wearing a plaid shirt, glasses… a bit balding.”

After hearing that, I immediately asked Xiao Hu to pull up the passenger information for both flights.

Although Xiao Hu still didn’t fully believe that Tang Shanshan could really see what happened inside the plane, under my urging, he quickly pulled up the data on his computer. The passenger list was extremely detailed, including ID photos.

Soon, among the more than one hundred passengers from the flight that crashed 25 days ago, we found the exact middle-aged balding man Tang Shanshan described. His seat was closest to the emergency exit.

Thus, it could be confirmed that Tang Shanshan’s dream was related to the flight that crashed 25 days ago—not the one that had just gone down.

So… this time, her dream was not a premonition of the future, but a glimpse of something that had already happened in the past.

I thought for a moment, then looked up at Xiao Hu.

“You said there were three survivors from that flight, right? Besides the captain who died in today’s crash, who else?”

My intention was clear: to further verify whether what Tang Shanshan saw in her dream was real, we needed to ask the survivors and see if they witnessed the same thing.

“One female chief flight attendant, and one passenger,” Xiao Hu said while looking at the data on his computer.

Suddenly, he stood up and pointed at the screen excitedly.

“The surviving passenger… his seat was right next to that middle-aged man!”

“Didn’t you question the survivors afterward?” I frowned.

Xiao Hu sighed.

“At the time, they weren’t in life-threatening condition, but they were unconscious due to oxygen deprivation. After they woke up, we only conducted brief questioning. Since this was a flight accident without signs of terrorism or violence, the survivor interviews were just routine.”

“So in the end, that person didn’t tell you anything?” I asked.

Xiao Hu nodded, recalling the survivor’s condition.

“He had a broken leg, and he was extremely frightened. We thought it was just a normal psychological reaction after a crash… but now that I think about it… it really was a bit strange.”