In 2007, Baimu Town was still backward; still old, broken, and worn-down. Residential buildings pressed close together, the walls mottled and covered in moss. The ditches hadn’t been cleaned for years, dark grime piling up; a half-dry, half-wet rat could crawl out of the cracks in the stones at any time.
In the air, besides poverty, there was also irritability: they were here discussing truth and evil over a murder case, yet from the corners of these clustered homes, you would constantly hear couples shouting and scolding; sometimes with beating and wailing mixed in.
Qi Xuan was used to this place, so he didn’t think much of it, but…
Bang!
A second-floor window in a nearby house burst open, and an old teapot was thrown out, along with a woman’s crying, furious curses.
The commotion drew their attention, and at that moment…
Zhen Wuyu reacted fast. He strode forward, yanked Su Li’s arm and pulled her back, long legs springing; smack!
Qi Xuan had been holding his backpack with one hand, the back of his hand outside. His right hand, though, was on the inner side of the bag, inside a compartment. From innocent at first to later calm panic, he acted it vividly. No one expected that he would suddenly pull a dagger from the inner pocket of the backpack.
A sudden thrust, aimed at Su Li.
He wasn’t trying to kill her. He just wanted to take her hostage to escape.
Zhen Wuyu was police. His reaction was a little faster than even the two bodyguards. After yanking Su Li away, he lifted his foot and kicked the dagger out of Qi Xuan’s hand.
This teenager’s physical ability really was impressive. After losing his weapon, he used the chaos to dart into an unguarded side alley and sprint away.
Chase!
Zhen Wuyu released Su Li and immediately went after him.
“Miss…”
“What are you looking at, chase him!”
The four of them chased after him one after another.
In terms of speed, a police officer and two bodyguards wouldn’t lose to a teenager, but Qi Xuan had studied in Baimu Town for years and knew it well. These winding alleys were familiar territory to him.
Most importantly, the sun had already fallen. Darkness came. Between tightly packed houses, the darkness arrived earlier than outside. As Zhen Wuyu and the others chased, they couldn’t fully see the shadow of that kid sprinting ahead. In the dim, grey space, frantic footsteps stood out more than a human outline.
Qi Xuan’s heart thundered like a drum. His pale face shook with his running. He ran at the fastest speed of his life.
In that moment, he had a strange feeling, like he had gone back to when he was very little, the first time his father came home drunk after losing at gambling and beat him… his mother shouting: Xiao Xuan, run!
Back then, he refused to run. He threw himself forward to push and hit his father, got kicked away, and the mother and son were beaten together.
Later, his father finally died under the beating of other gamblers.
It wasn’t hard. He even vaguely felt: great, no one will hit me and Mom anymore.
Then came poverty.
Poverty was the purest state in the world. There were no complicated factors to confuse it.
If you had no money, you were poor.
After that, he didn’t know where his mother got money from. He only knew that on the first few late nights, half-asleep and half-awake, he heard other men coming and going, in the attic.
The bed frame creaking, creaking.
Later he got up in the middle of the night and threw up. After vomiting, he thought it was fine; once he grew up, it would be fine. It would be fine.
He never thought that while he was growing up, his mother would change too.
She became addicted; drugs.
She became another version of his father. After drinking and losing at gambling, she would stare at him expressionlessly, her lipstick smeared a mess, then suddenly jump up and beat him, but this time she didn’t shout for him to run.
She only cursed him, cursing him for dragging her down.
He ran. He rushed out the back door, barefoot again, sprinting across the fields.
The earthy stink of soil, the night after dusk, the horizon where plains and fields interwove and sank into darkness, the cool wind pressing down the tips of the wheat heads.
He was in the world like he had fallen into water.
Behind him, she, or he; Mom, or Dad, seemed to be chasing.
Why, why could they always catch him.
It was like someone behind him held a stick, and it was about to smash into his head.
Soon, soon, they were about to catch him. In panic, he heard water ahead, his eardrums seeming to vibrate. His ankle twitched, and he was about to leap into the stream ahead…
He never thought either.
That he would grow up and become another version of his father.
A family of three, all jumping into the same river.
The two bodyguards saw it. Even in the darkness, they saw the boy ahead suddenly act like he’d snapped. Right when Zhen Wuyu took a shortcut and came up behind him, about to catch him, Qi Xuan—
Jumped over the railing.
Below the railing was a river.
The problem was, the snow had only just stopped. Frost had formed below. The river was frozen. With that jump…
Even if he didn’t die, he would be crippled.
Su Li was at the very back. With high heels, there was no way she could keep up. Of course, in young-miss mode, her main thing was elegance.
She barely chased. Carrying an overseas designer handbag, she went click-click-click in high heels through the dim, filthy alley, following the commotion of the four people ahead, along with the sounds of nearby households arguing. She was like a mismatched Cinderella.
One moment a simple, down-to-earth Cinderella; one moment a noble, proud rich young miss.
But she suddenly stopped and looked back into the alley behind her, thoughtful.
She felt like… she was chasing the footsteps ahead, but behind her there also seemed to be footsteps.
Very light, like someone was following her.
Su Li only stayed silent for a moment. She turned around and continued walking out, but her pace quickened.
Light and shadow interlaced. Her face sank into darkness, about to walk out of the alley and reach the street under the glow of streetlights.
But.
Someone was in front.
Someone was smoking under the streetlight. Hearing the sound of high heels, they turned to look.
Three scruffy young men, with a bit of a thug vibe. Dirty grey fingernails. Fingers stinking of smoke and barbecue grease holding cigarettes. Their round bellies bulged and loosened their belts. Six eyes, like dead fish eyes soaked in formalin.
Rolling, turning.
One of them shifted expressions a few times, then finally said meaningfully, “It’s you, Su Li.”
Another one had been scanning Su Li up and down. Hearing that, he froze, then cursed.
It was her?
Damn!
“She’s alone,” he said.
Like flipping a switch.
Alone. A woman. And this woman was Su Li.
Su Li from high school.
Bitch.
The three looked around. No one. Then they flicked their fingers, cigarette butts dropping to the ground.
They rushed at Su Li.
She hadn’t even stepped out of the darkness, and people from the lit street charged into the dark alley, closing in on her.
Smack!
Qi Xuan, about to fall onto the ice below, was caught by Zhen Wuyu at the last possible moment, gripping his wrist. But a high school kid weighed over 130 jin; the force of falling—
Zhen Wuyu grabbed the railing with his other hand, barely avoiding being dragged down too. The two bodyguards and nearby residents who saw the commotion rushed over and helped pull him back up.
Zhen Wuyu cuffed him and handed him to the local forestry bureau staff he had called on the way, then turned back and saw the two bodyguards and instinctively scanned around.
Quite a few residents had gathered, town people who came out after dinner to stroll. Heads crowded together. He looked around and didn’t see her. He looked into the alley and didn’t see her either.
“Where is she?”
The two bodyguards froze. Just as they were about to look, they heard a shrill scream from somewhere deep in the alley behind them.
When Zhen Wuyu and the others arrived, flashlights and searchlights swept across, bright and glaring, and they quickly saw Su Li standing with her back against the wall, her pale little face full of panic.
But what drew the eye first was her outer coat torn open, exposing half a snow-white shoulder and the thin strap underneath.
That kind of white was snow that could reflect light even in darkness.
But there were obvious scratch marks on it: red, bleeding lines where fingernails had broken skin.
People raised in comfort had delicate skin; touch it once and it left marks.
Her eyes held tears that didn’t fall. She looked like pear blossoms in rain. When she turned to look at them, her gaze was so frightened and fragile it made your heart ache.
When Zhen Wuyu took off his coat and covered her, he noticed she was holding something.
She had self-defense items in her handbag.
An electric baton.
It was already on; you could even see the crackling, buzzing electric arcs.
And the attackers on the ground were unconscious.
All three were out cold.
Out cold was out cold.
She cried, crying as she said, “They wanted to bully me… I, I just zapped, zapped, zapped…”
The two bodyguards flew into a rage and charged in with a barrage of kicks.
If Su Li hadn’t been yelling for them not to kick them to death, those three punks would have been stomped into mush.
Zhen Wuyu, now only in a thin turtleneck sweater after taking off his coat, didn’t say anything. He just looked once at the young miss wrapped in his coat.
“Go to the hospital.”
At the hospital, Chen Liao rushed in with officers and saw the people who had finished their checks.
Yes, people.
Qi Xuan, Su Li, and the three attackers.
Zhen Wuyu sat there, brows tightly furrowed, speaking in a low voice with cold sarcasm to someone.
“Can you stop crying?”
“Your makeup is ruined.”
“You look like a ghost.”
The young miss froze at once, took out a mirror from her bag and checked her makeup carefully, then skillfully took a tissue that Zhen Wuyu had already pulled out countless times. “Classmate Zhen, my electric baton still has plenty of battery. You’d better reflect on yourself and speak properly.”
Zhen Wuyu: “You’re made up like a ghost.”
Su Li narrowed her eyes. The two bodyguards instantly tensed, afraid their young miss would pick a fight with a cop.
Chen Liao hurried over in a few big steps, smiling and smoothing things over, then went straight to asking what happened.
“The female officer already did checks, collected traces. A lab test to confirm is enough. Self-defense.”
Three grown men surrounded her, plus physical contact and harm. If that wasn’t self-defense, then the law was a joke.
Besides, the Su family’s lawyer wasn’t soft. Look, here he came.
Chen Liao heard footsteps, turned his head, and his scalp went numb when he saw a well-dressed lawyer in a suit.
They coordinated briefly. As the victim, Su Li definitely knew what had happened.
From what Chen Liao and the others heard, thought, and could judge at the moment, they believed it was “attempted rape.”
It might not even reach that. If the other side kept arguing and refused to admit it, it could end up as forced molestation, insult, an even lighter charge.
What could they do? Chen Liao and the others had no solution to that.
The lawyer had other ideas and looked toward Su Li.
Su Li had already spoken to him.
And only after finishing her makeup did Su Li slowly add a sentence.
“These three know me.”
What?
Everyone turned to look at her.
Zhen Wuyu frowned, recalling their faces, and vaguely remembered something.
They did look a little familiar.
Su Li: “High school classmates. Back then they played hooligans and spread dirty rumors, and I suffered a lot. Under the streetlight they recognized me right away… and in the alley I already heard footsteps like someone tailing me. I’m thinking they might have been bought off. Otherwise how could it be so coincidental? It was clearly a planned kidnapping or murder.”
“Am I being punished by heaven? Why do this to me.”
“It hurts so much.”
“I’m going home to cry.”
Su Li didn’t look at anyone. With a sad face, accompanied by her lawyer and bodyguards, she walked out of the hospital…
The moment she stepped out that door, while her back was still under Chen Liao and the others’ eyes, her expression changed.
She said flatly to the lawyer, “Doesn’t the family have news outlets? Report it. Say they likely wanted to extort Dad, or were bought by the people behind these cases… anyway, word games, reasonable analysis. Someone will link them to those cases. I’m a victim in the case. The police can’t do anything about it, can they.”
Lawyer: “Understood, but it’ll take some time to see the effect.”
Su Li lowered her head and tidied the torn clothes.
“Doesn’t matter. Just money. Drag their whole family to death.”
She walked down the steps.
Her fingers lightly flicked her little handbag.
“I hate this kind of dirty thing the most.”
“Not a bit of improvement.”
She suddenly stopped on the steps and looked at the person in front of the few small cars outside the hospital.
Su Ye. He stood there, brows furrowed, like he was looking at something good-for-nothing… staying at home properly, running out, getting hurt, getting bullied.
Serves her right.
But no matter how angry he was, he still had to come pick her up.
After all, she was his biological, only daughter.
“Su Li, those three…”
Zhen Wuyu had chased out, wanting to ask Su Li about those three, but when he saw Su Ye he stopped too.
Su Li didn’t notice Zhen Wuyu. She looked at Su Ye. “Dressed so formally. Dad has business to discuss here in Baimu Town?”
“About the Liu family, they helped you before. Social obligations, you’ll have to learn in the future.”
When the lawyer and the others heard that, their expressions shifted slightly.
She was just a child, so it seemed reasonable, even though over the years they rarely heard their boss mention this young miss.
They only knew she had been abroad.
They had even suspected the boss had an illegitimate child, or didn’t plan to cultivate this daughter at all.
After all, big bosses who only had one daughter were extremely rare.
Now it seemed they had been narrow-minded.
“Can we go?” Su Ye saw Zhen Wuyu and asked Su Li.
From these small interactions, you could see Su Ye respected his only daughter; unlike most fathers.
Only then did Su Li notice. She turned to look at Zhen Wuyu.
“Classmate Zhen, if there’s anything else you need to ask about the case… contact me anytime.”
Zhen Wuyu: “Today was my fault.”
Su Li: “?”
Zhen Wuyu: “I left you alone behind us, in danger. Luckily you were prepared.”
Su Li narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t really preparation. It’s just something I always carry.”
Zhen Wuyu: “I didn’t mean anything else.”
Su Li: “I didn’t say you meant anything else. Then do you have any other meaning?”
Zhen Wuyu: “The coat. After you wash it, remember to return it.”
Chen Liao in the back thought these smart people were really something.
Su Li gave a snort of laughter, yanked off the coat, and tossed it back, landing it over Zhen Wuyu’s face.
Outside the hospital, Su Ye saw that and frowned slightly.
Zhen Wuyu pulled the coat off, only to see this person, in a cool thin camisole, walking down the steps in full view.
Like a model walking a runway in a TV drama. He was about to say something when suddenly…
Bang!
A gunshot.
A whole windowpane in a building next to the hospital shattered.
Someone fired a gun.