PD -Chapter 57 Investigation Hits a Roadblock

“We… need to go ask him again,” I said after thinking for a moment.

Since we had already agreed to Xiao Hu and stepped into this mess, we had no choice but to keep following the clues. Moreover, the airport was in this state now, and we wouldn’t be able to catch any other flights anytime soon.

And on top of that, this case had already appeared in Tang Shanshan’s dreams—no matter what, we had to deal with it.

“We need to move fast. I have a feeling… this isn’t over yet,” I said, a vague sense of unease rising in my chest.

Xiao Hu immediately pulled up the survivor’s detailed information. We had originally planned to call him, but after several attempts, no one answered.

I glanced at the time on my phone—it was already past midnight. In the end, we had no choice but to spend the night in Xiao Hu’s office. Early the next morning, we followed the address and went to the survivor’s home.

The survivor was a young man in his early twenties, recently graduated and working his first job. His surname was Li. He was renting alone in a house on the outskirts of the city. When we found him, he was still limping—his injury hadn’t fully healed yet.

After we explained our purpose, his expression immediately turned unpleasant. However, he didn’t chase us away. Later I learned it was because the airline still hadn’t paid him compensation.

He invited us in politely and even poured us tea. Since time was tight, I didn’t bother with small talk and went straight to the point, asking whether he had noticed anything unusual on the flight that day.

“Didn’t your people already ask me in the hospital? And the captain and flight attendant too—we all said we didn’t see anything unusual,” Xiao Li said, frowning. Then he lowered his head, his gaze drifting.

“Xiao Li, just say whatever you have to say. The captain and crew were in different areas, so they might not have noticed everything,” Xiao Hu said sincerely.

Even so, Xiao Li still shook his head, unwilling to speak further.

After thinking for a moment, I stared into his eyes and asked, “Did you notice anything strange about the man sitting next to you—the one in the plaid shirt?”

As soon as Xiao Li heard “plaid shirt,” his face changed instantly.

“Him…” He hesitated, only managing to say a single word before stopping again.

“If I tell you, you probably won’t believe me!” His eyes were filled with sadness. “I’ve always had neurasthenia and I’m on medication. Please… just let me go. I really don’t know whether what I saw that day was real or just hallucination…”

“Xiao Li, don’t be afraid. No matter what you say, we can understand it. We only want the truth of what happened. As for whether it’s real or not, we’ll judge that ourselves.”

“And you won’t bear any responsibility for it,” I emphasized seriously.

Only then did Xiao Li slowly relax and begin to speak.

“The man next to me had been sleeping since he boarded. I don’t know how long passed, but suddenly he stood up and walked to the emergency exit—and opened it.”

“And… the moment he opened it, I saw his eyes. They were completely black. No whites at all—just pure black!”

As he spoke, he gestured wildly with his hands, panic and fear filling his entire body, as if that scene from more than twenty days ago was still right in front of him.

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll investigate this clearly. You should just focus on recovering.”

After getting the information we needed, we didn’t stay any longer and immediately left.

“The man who opened the door was named Zhang Wenbin. I’ve pulled up his address,” Xiao Hu said, opening a map on his phone and starting navigation.

We followed him to a small supermarket in the city.

Inside, a middle-aged woman was running the shop while watching a child. This was a shantytown area; the building looked like it was waiting for demolition. The first floor was the supermarket, and the second floor turned out to be a dental clinic.

We explained our purpose and learned more about Zhang Wenbin. He was just an ordinary dentist—so ordinary that he would disappear in a crowd without anyone noticing.

He had taken that flight to go to the provincial capital to buy dental equipment. The ticket was cheaper than a train ticket because of a discount, so he chose to fly.

He never expected that this trip would be his last.

In the end, the investigation yielded nothing. Worse still, I felt frustrated that our questioning had disturbed the families of the victims and reopened old wounds.

Zhang Wenbin’s records were all verified. He was a real person—confirmed by his family, neighbors, and official records from both the archives and the police station.

So Zhang Wenbin himself was undoubtedly an ordinary man.

But as Xiao Hu had said, an ordinary person couldn’t possibly open an emergency exit during flight. Yet the eyewitness insisted that it was Zhang Wenbin who did it. The two accounts seemed contradictory, but they pointed me toward one possibility.

Zhang Wenbin might have been controlled by something on the plane. Something used his identity to open the emergency exit, causing the deaths of more than a hundred passengers and crew members.

“Can I take a look at the wreckage?”

We returned to the airport. In the office, I asked Xiao Hu quietly.

After some thought, Xiao Hu finally agreed to take us to see the remains, to see if we could find anything.

I immediately told Liu Xiaopeng to bring the EMF detector. Then, only the two of us followed Xiao Hu into a large warehouse.

Although the warehouse lights were on, the high ceiling made the lower area dim. Xiao Hu told us it had been unused for a long time.

Because there hadn’t been a major crash for over ten years, the warehouse used for storing wreckage had remained idle… but unexpectedly, within just one month, the remains of two aircraft had been placed here.

At the center of the warehouse were piles of wreckage and parts, all burned black. Staff had reassembled them according to their original positions.

What stood before us was the skeletal frame of a huge aircraft, surrounded by scattered components. I had never been this close to a plane before—even in this ruined state, it still left me in shock.

Liu Xiaopeng and I exchanged a glance. He turned on the EMF detector, and together with Xiao Hu, we walked from the tail into the hollow skeleton of the aircraft.