NB Chapter73

Li Yi had lost a lot of weight with dark circles hung under his eyes, and his face was etched with resentment. According to Shanshan, he had been forced to run back and forth between two places these past few days and had even been scolded by his superior for requesting leave from the police station. I hadn’t even been awake for a full day before he headed back to work overtime again.

My forehead was wrapped in gauze, which pressed down on one of my eyelids, causing me to subconsciously poke at it; an action that earned me several glares from Shanshan.

“Is Shimu doing okay?” I asked.

“It’s not like you’ve been gone for ten years; what could possibly have happened?” Shanshan curled her lip and looked down to tuck in the corners of my blanket. “Everyone is fine. She’s scheduled for surgery in a while.”

Seeing her avoid my gaze, I didn’t ask whether my mentor had visited the hospital these past few days. If he had, Li Yi wouldn’t have needed to run back and forth.

I looked at her lowered eyelashes, and the words caught in my throat.

Last night, she told me that by the time the police arrived that day, I was already unconscious. When Li Yi received the call from his colleague, his face turned pale instantly; before he could even explain the situation, he had bolted away like the wind. Fortunately, everything was handled in time; if I had been sent to the hospital any later, there was no telling what might have happened to my leg.

From beginning to end, she never mentioned the man named Zhang Mingsheng.

It was as if he had never appeared at all.

Was everything that happened that day merely a near-death hallucination? If so, then who called the police?

I hesitated for a moment, and just as I was about to speak, the ward door suddenly swung open. Li Yi strode in with a grim expression without even looking at me. He headed straight for the small cabinet beside the bed while carrying two large bags in his hands.

I didn’t know why he was in such a foul mood, so I looked away and asked, “Is… is he here?”

Before Shanshan could speak, Li Yi, who was bent over organizing apples, cut me off, “Why would he be?”

“I haven’t even said who ‘he’ is yet.” I responded flatly.

“And I just want to know exactly who you’re talking about.” Li Yi replied, refusing to back down.

“Then tell me first, who are those fruits for?” I leaned back against my pillow while looking at him with a faint smile.

“I bought them to reward myself.” Li Yi said, picking up an apple and tossing it into the air.

Shanshan gave a small smile and said, “He’s fine. He was just called in to give a statement.”

A weight lifted from my heart.

I said, “I remember his hand…”

“Here.” Li Yi said, and I hadn’t even noticed when he’d already cut the apple neatly in two. He extended one half toward me.

“Thanks,” I laughed helplessly, tolerating his childish interruption.

“You thank me, and he thanks you,” he said, passing the other half of the apple to Shanshan. “He saved you and even got you a good lawyer. He won’t even be punished for the beating; instead, he’s come out of it with a fine reputation. That rebellious, unfilial grandson is now a model citizen.”

“Was the beating very bad?”

“Bad? Not really. After all, the guy isn’t dead; he’s already in custody being interrogated,” Li Yi said as he casually switching on the television hanging on the wall. “That ex of yours is quite the dark horse. There were three sets of bones found in the yard alone.”

“There’s more than that,” I said while staring at the news briefs flickering on the screen. “Apply for authorization and take your men to his hometown to investigate.”

The next second, Zhang Mingsheng’s face suddenly appeared on the news.

His expression remained indifferent, his skin carrying a faint, exhausted pallor under the camera lens. The instant he walked out of the police station, reporters surged forward and surrounded him. The relentless burst of flashbulbs made his face flicker between light and shadow, his gaze shifting from the transparency of glass to the depth of black chess pieces. The bodyguards forced their way through the crowd to carve out a narrow path. While a black Bentley was waiting at the curb; the moment the door opened, he lowered his head and slipped inside. With a briefcase in hand, his lawyer stopped short, turned his back to the car, and began fielding the reporters’ relentless questions.

I only caught the gist of what the anchor was saying: Xu Yanzhou, who had become a primary person of interest for the police with at least three homicides linked to him, might be filing charges of intentional injury against the eldest grandson of the Zhang family.

It sounded like the perfect opening for some local gossip over tea.

Even after the news segment ended, Zhang Mingsheng’s image lingered in my mind.

His hair had been a mess, and there was a faint streak of blood on his left cheek; it was thin and seemingly already dried. There was a patch of reddish-brown on his dark sweater. It must have been a bloodstain.

Good. That was good.

If Xu Yanzhou still had the energy to sue, it meant two things: first, Zhang Mingsheng hadn’t hacked off his limbs, and second, he hadn’t beaten him into a vegetative state.

Zhang Mingsheng had exercised restraint, which in turn meant Xu Yanzhou was going to suffer even more through the legal grinder.

Suddenly, the television screen collapsed into a single line and vanished into a void of black.

Li Yi, who was clutching the remote, sat down side-by-side with Shanshan. They both looked at me like stern elders.

“Ge,” Li Yi said, “are you really going to marry into a wealthy family?”

“Why can’t it be me marrying them?” I asked while avoiding a direct answer.

“Fine, sure,” Li Yi replied briskly, then followed up: “Ge, are you planning on becoming a live-in son-in-law, then?”

Under his righteous gaze, I felt a bit guilty and gave a dry laugh. “Actually, he and I aren’t that close.”

“Not close? So, he’s a stranger, then?” Li Yi narrowed his eyes.

“En, en.” I nodded eagerly.

“No wonder. Since he’s a stranger, that’s why he only helped you pay the medical bills. If there were something between you two, he’d probably have hauled you straight to a private hospital.” Li Yi remarked with flat sarcasm.

So, Zhang Mingsheng paid my medical expenses.

“He has… a lot of money and nowhere to spend it,” I said, half convinced the doctor must have given me some kind of confusion-inducing medication.

“Don’t let all that cash cloud your judgment,” Li Yi said seriously. “Otherwise, Shanshan and I are done with you.”

“Done with me.” I nodded thoughtfully. “Does that mean you two leave together and I go off on my own?”

Li Yi froze for a moment, his eyes widening, but he remained silent.

Shanshan, who had been smiling and enjoying the show, couldn’t take it anymore. She said she was going to see her mother and took her leave.

Li Yi awkwardly gave her a few instructions, and Shanshan nodded back just as awkwardly.

Watching her back as she walked away, I thought to myself: It seems there are still several layers of “window paper” for those two to poke through. I had been too impatient.

“Why are you so tense?” I took a bite of the apple. “There’s really nothing between us.”

“There’d better not be,” Li Yi said, picking up the apple Shan Shan hadn’t eaten and taking a bite. “Your taste in people is terrible.”

It was my turn to glare at him.

“Oh, right.” Unable to hold my gaze for more than three seconds, Li Yi backed off. He turned and set an envelope in front of me. “A man in sunglasses delivered this. He said it’s something you wanted.”

I picked it up warily and pulled out the documents to skim them. After only a glance, I quickly pressed them face down.

“What? Is it something shameful?” Li Yi studied me.

“En.” I murmured before stuffing the papers back into the envelope.

As expected, there was a massive sum of money in my mentor’s account. The amount matched the figures in the initial accounts of those certain police officers.

My mentor had also taken Zhang Yaonian’s money.

If you take the money, you must do the job.

What exactly did he do?

Betraying one’s conscience in exchange for money suggests a genuine love for wealth. But if he already had the money, what was he still worrying about?

“Oh, right. Someone else at the station got promoted and made a fortune.” Li Yi said nonchalantly while switching the TV back on.

“Hm?” I turned to look at him.

Li Yi jerked his chin toward the screen. “Teacher’s classmate is also his colleague, don’t you remember? He’s been promoted again.”

I remembered. How could I ever forget?

This man was the first victim in the serial case of murdered police officers.

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