The entire hospital was thrown into chaos.
Su Ye strode forward and pulled Su Li behind him. The area was noisy. Chen Liao shouted, “Lao Liu is over there! Damn, something happened over there!”
Zhen Wuyu didn’t need reminders. Gripping the coat, he sprinted toward the building in trouble, pulling the gun from his waist with one hand.
“What’s going on over there…” Su Li still wanted to look, but Su Ye shoved her into the car.
Bang, the door shut.
Sitting beside her, Su Ye’s usually gentle, refined tone turned sharper.
“Su Li, you must not, and cannot, get involved in these cases. It’s dangerous.”
He pulled out the blanket from the car as well. This man had a compulsion; even while taking it out he still fixed the folded corners.
Su Li raised her brows. “I can’t get involved, but you can, Dad?”
Su Ye placed the neat, squared blanket on her legs. Under the dim orange glow of the car lights, his brows and eyes gained sharp shadows along their contours.
He looked out the window at the building where the gunshot came from.
“If someone wants to hurt you, I will naturally get involved.”
How many hospitals could Baimu Town have?
A small place, just one, and not very good. Luckily, carbon monoxide poisoning was a clear condition, and the locals had experience. After the people were rescued from the shoe factory, they were sent nearby to Baimu Town Hospital for emergency treatment, and it could handle the situation. Once the hospital confirmed their health condition, they could be transferred back to the station.
It had only been within twenty-four hours. The people were still there. Liu Duan and the others were still there too.
The teams split into three routes and each gained something. The 315 case even found the real culprit. Liu Duan’s side also had clear evidence to take down Huang Xiuling, and then, based on Huang Xiuling’s relationship with Lin Zong, bring the other two back for a thorough investigation.
This day really counted as major gains.
When Zhen Wuyu brought Su Li and the others back to the hospital, he had contacted Liu Duan on the phone. Liu Duan, after learning the situation and confirming Su Li was fine, relaxed. He was even excited when talking about the case and planned to return to the station together; everyone would pull another all-nighter and push the case forward.
They already had a feeling: 315 had broken. Huang Xiuling’s side was also within reach. They could soon revisit the old case and clear away the gloom hanging over the Changlin and Baimu justice system.
Liu Duan, the director, and Xiao Li brought the verified evidence and went to bring in Huang Xiuling and the others.
The three wards were adjacent. There were two officers guarding the doors. Liu Duan and Zhen Wuyu had repeatedly urged them to be cautious and absolutely not leave their posts.
Mainly because these three had an old case behind them; they were dangerous. There was likely someone behind them too. They had many methods and couldn’t be underestimated.
The two officers were also very serious and had been standing guard the whole time.
Liu Duan felt reassured. At Huang Xiuling’s ward door, he asked, “She’s inside?”
“She is. We’re watching. The doctor just came to change the medicine.”
“Got it. Get ready, we’re leaving. The director already went to handle the procedures.”
As he spoke, Liu Duan pushed the door open and looked inside. He saw someone lying on the bed, head covered, but hair showing.
His gaze swept under the bed. He saw two pairs of shoes: a pair of slippers and a pair of flats.
Flats?
The size seemed a bit small, and… were those flats?
Liu Duan’s pupils constricted. He strode forward and yanked up the blanket.
Under the blanket was a female doctor, unconscious. Where was Huang Xiuling?
The room was empty!
The flats were the female doctor’s. She had been knocked out and had her clothes swapped… Huang Xiuling disguised herself as her and left.
The two were similar in height and build. With a white coat and mask, pushing equipment out…
The reason she didn’t swap shoes was that their shoe sizes were different. Huang Xiuling couldn’t fit into the doctor’s, so she could only wear her own out.
Shoes too big could still be worn. Too small couldn’t be forced in.
But the guards outside didn’t notice.
They let her go.
Damn it!
Liu Duan rushed out and harshly questioned the guards about when that female doctor left and which direction…
After confirming the direction, he brought Xiao Li and chased out. In the stream of people in the hospital, they pursued fast. After asking around, they learned the female doctor’s direction seemed to be toward Logistics…
Bang, he shoved the door open. A deep corridor. The quiet logistics department managed many hospital back-end devices, like…
Smack!
The main power switch was suddenly shut off.
The entire hospital plunged into darkness. In the dark, Liu Duan drew his gun and sprinted toward the power room, when a shadow flashed out of the dimness…
“Police, stop!”
Bang!
A shot hit the wall, but the person had already rushed out the back door.
Liu Duan gritted his teeth and chased. After firing, the other side was scared and immediately squatted, holding their head.
Liu Duan hurried forward and found… huh?
A man?
Wearing hospital staff clothing, he explained in panic that he saw the hospital lose power and, after confirming nothing was wrong inside, ran out to see what was happening. “I didn’t cut the power. It looks like the wires were cut.”
After Huang Xiuling disguised herself as the female doctor and got away, she found the main power line and cut it, causing the outage… but why?
By time calculation, she already had the chance to get out of the hospital and disappear. Why cut the hospital power anyway?
Not good!
Liu Duan told this man to immediately restore power, to avoid delaying treatment work in the hospital. His face was dark as he ran back the way he came, toward where Lin Zong and the other person were being held…
When he arrived, there were guards at the ward door, and Zhen Wuyu had arrived too.
The door was open, but the people inside…
When the power went out, Zhen Wuyu immediately sensed something was wrong. He gave up looking for Liu Duan and went straight to the wards. He didn’t let Chen Liao follow; he ordered him to watch Qi Xuan to the death.
If something happened on Huang Xiuling’s side and Qi Xuan was also gone, it would be a complete collapse; all the key connected figures in the case would be severed.
Then there would be no way to keep investigating.
Unfortunately, Zhen Wuyu didn’t know how Chen Liao’s side was doing. In the dark, chaotic crowd, he reached the wards and saw two guards holding their posts tightly at the door.
Huang Xiuling was gone. They were already extremely tense. In the darkness, they would absolutely keep watch over the remaining two.
The director and the others arrived too, their expressions neither good nor bad. Liu Duan lowered his gun, walked over, and looked into the ward.
No power meant no lights, but there was light from outside the window. It fell on Lin Zong’s cold old face. His eyes seemed to hold the chill and lurking of a venomous snake.
Liu Duan met his gaze for a few seconds, closed the door, and asked Zhen Wuyu and the guards, “These two didn’t make a move?”
“No. They didn’t move. Maybe they didn’t get the chance.”
The guard sounded uneasy, unsure if this counted as making up for anything.
It was understandable that Lin Zong and the other person couldn’t make it work: Liu Duan’s reactions had been cautious. He didn’t panic and give them an opening. He also didn’t blindly split up manpower. And these two guards were still police. Even if they were caught off guard in the outage, it wouldn’t be that easy for Lin Zong and Zhang Cheng to take them down.
However, Zhen Wuyu went to Huang Xiuling’s ward and shone a flashlight on the female doctor’s neck.
She wasn’t dead. She had been knocked out. There were red finger marks on her cheek.
It was likely Huang Xiuling covered her mouth while she wasn’t paying attention and quickly injected something into her neck…
There was a small red dot on her neck.
Direct injection was faster and more effective than covering the mouth and nose with cloth and letting something seep in through breathing.
“Anesthetic needle.”
“While they were admitted, someone provided them resources to fight back and escape.”
Zhen Wuyu looked at Liu Duan. Under the limited flashlight reflection, the ward looked like scattered circles of light. Everyone’s face had bright spots and shadows.
Liu Duan and the others felt their scalps go numb. They understood what this meant: either there was someone on their side in the hospital, or the insider within their own system had acted.
Before, it wasn’t certain. Now it was certain, because this operation clearly pinched the police’s arrangements and movements, and even showed deep knowledge of Liu Duan and the others.
An outsider would struggle to do that.
All earlier predictions were now confirmed.
1. There was someone behind Lin Zong’s group of four.
2. Chief Zhan’s death had continued to the present. The other side had finally shown their head.
Because everything was chaotic, during the outage, people running around made it impossible to search. The hospital cameras were useless too. Looking for someone inside was like scooping the sea with a needle. But even if the hospital cameras failed, street cameras outside would still work.
Electricians quickly restored power. Zhen Wuyu and the others investigated the hospital scene and found where Huang Xiuling had cut the wire.
In 2007, the power system was far from advanced. Many wires were exposed. As long as you knew a bit about circuits, it wasn’t hard to do, but you had to know something first.
Either Huang Xiuling had been to this hospital before, or someone told her exactly which wire to cut.
Not every wire you cut would knock out the hospital’s power on a large scale.
Zhen Wuyu hadn’t eaten. He checked the wards and the wire area continuously, then went to review the cameras outside the hospital.
“All the footage after 7:15, when the outage happened, is here. Too many people went in and out, cars, crowds. We screened once and didn’t find her. Seven vehicles left: vans, rickshaws, cars, all kinds.”
“We’ve contacted and tracked the owners of those seven vehicles. After we traced their current positions through road cameras, we also ordered them to return right now.”
They couldn’t see what happened inside the hospital clearly, but once cars and people left and passed onto the streets, the cameras could still identify them. They checked repeatedly and carefully and still didn’t find Huang Xiuling.
The vehicles all came back. They checked them. No Huang Xiuling, and no traces of her in trunks or elsewhere.
She seemed to vanish into thin air.
But it was also possible they had made a mistake.
“It might be a blind spot, or it was too chaotic and we didn’t see clearly.”
The officers looked exhausted, their eyes numb. They had done everything they could…
Zhen Wuyu had also watched the footage. He watched very fast, almost like he was being perfunctory, but the result was the same: nothing. He was silent for a moment, then said, “There’s another possibility. The outage was at 7:15, but according to Chen Feng and the other guard, the doctor entered the ward at 6:50. Because Huang Xiuling is a woman, the ward door was closed for examination and medication. After about ten minutes, Huang Xiuling, already disguised as the doctor, came out.”
Chen Feng and the other guard nodded.
As police, they were sensitive to time.
Zhen Wuyu: “From the ward to the place where the wire was cut is about a five-minute walk. Why didn’t she do it until 7:15? Isn’t something like that better done earlier? The ten-minute delay is strange.”
Liu Duan’s expression shifted. “What do you mean?”
Zhen Wuyu: “You saw someone run out by the power room and thought it was her, because people kept saying they saw her go that way. But maybe those directions weren’t wrong. She really did go toward the power room.”
“Because there were several people who pointed you that way, and you grabbed random people to ask. They couldn’t all be bribed, and they wouldn’t all be convinced to give you false information. That means they truly saw Huang Xiuling, wearing a doctor’s badge, go toward that side.”
Liu Duan: “That’s not right. That side and the wire-cutting spot are two directions. There isn’t enough time.”
“Wait, you mean the one who went to the power room really was Huang Xiuling, but the one who cut the wire was someone else?”
Director: “If those nurses’ statements are correct, the time contradiction also proves the person who cut the wire wasn’t Huang Xiuling.”
“But why? She could’ve just left. She still insisted on cutting the power. Was it to save Lin Zong and the other one? But they didn’t escape…”
There was a clear problem here: Lin Zong and Zhang Cheng judged the guards outside would be hard to handle, so they chose not to make a move.
Or they never intended to participate from the start.
Zhen Wuyu stood up and picked up his coat.
“They don’t need to escape.”
“As long as Huang Xiuling gets away and we can’t investigate and charge her and expose them, they won’t be in trouble. When the forty-eight-hour interrogation window is up, they can get out of our hands.”
“And if Huang Xiuling did all this for herself, not to save them, then it was to make her own escape easier. Our screening target window starts after 7:15. So can we move it up to 7:00, the time right after Huang Xiuling left the ward?”
“All vehicles and all people going in and out.”
“Everything has to be checked.”
While they were reallocating surveillance resources, Liu Duan saw Zhen Wuyu outside, drinking water while preparing to leave.
He looked hurried.
Liu Duan stopped him and handed him an old-style egg bread bun.
“Here, eat something, or you won’t hold up.”
Zhen Wuyu really hadn’t eaten much all day, but he was past hunger and didn’t feel it anymore.
He glanced at Liu Duan, took the bread and ate, then grabbed his car keys and was about to leave.
“You have a suspect? Su Ye?”
Liu Duan asked. Zhen Wuyu looked at him. “You know?”
Liu Duan: “At that time, the timing matched, and the only one with a lot of cars was that family. If Huang Xiuling hid in his car, it would be reasonable.”
“But there’s no evidence. And in terms of stance, Huang Xiuling and Su Ye’s father and daughter are completely opposed. There’s no motive. If you rush over like this, without a warrant, the logic doesn’t match. Once the time window expands, more vehicles and people get involved. Why lock onto the Su family?”
“You’ll easily get a complaint from the Su family’s lawyer. It won’t be easy to handle.”
It was harsh, but rich people were simply harder to offend than ordinary people.
They also didn’t fear the law the way ordinary people did.
Insight, exploitation, loopholes, even turning the law around to use it for themselves, that was their baseline.
And Su Ye was the kind of clever person who, because of Zhan Qing, understood the legal system deeply and even hated it. How could he allow Zhen Wuyu to offend him like this?
“I know you have backing too, but if something blows up, it becomes my responsibility.”
Liu Duan spoke earnestly, afraid this provincial-department rising star would ruin his future because of these cases and his own request.
“There is risk, but time is urgent.”
“If we drag it out, traces will be removed.”
Zhen Wuyu insisted. But before leaving, he rolled down the window and said to Liu Duan, “Don’t feel burdened, Shifu. I didn’t come to Changlin to investigate because of your request. I came because society needs it, and because Shen Hui’s mother, Luo Zhen, needs it.”
“Innocent people, and their families, need it.”
The car started and left.
No snow in the sky. It was night, but there seemed to be light, like the car’s tail lights crushing over wind-swept snow on the ground as it drove into the busy streets.
Would the long night eventually have dawn?
In a residential building near the hospital, a woman who looked very ordinary stood behind a window, watching that police car leave with cold eyes.
A red long dress, high heels, wavy long hair, tall and beautiful, with a graceful figure.
She smoked a cigarette. After smoking half, she pressed the cigarette butt into the snow-white wall, rubbing off any possible saliva marks, then flicked it into the trash can.
She turned around, revealing a face as pale as snow.