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墨書 Inktalez
In the blink of an eye, countless images flashed through my mind. I was indeed thinking of something, yet in a daze, it felt as if I thought of nothing at all, my mind blank. Zhao Qin had fallen, but not into the large pool; instead, he landed on the platform.
With a heavy thud, he cried out, "Why? Why!" Zhao Qin's voice was heart-wrenching, like a wailing ghost. "Why didn't you throw me in? Your anger has clearly buried your reason. This is unreasonable! Anger and revenge are humanity's most primal emotions; everyone is a slave to their emotions—it's innate!"
I rushed up the steps and said, "Humans have the Seven Deadly Sins, and in contrast, there are seven virtues. Not everyone is like you." I hadn't seen Yan Junde for several months; I had expected to see him at the wedding but never imagined we would meet under such circumstances. I wondered if this could be considered a brotherhood of misfortune.
We embraced Yan Junde tightly. Then he squatted down and said to Zhao Qin, "You seem to enjoy stories. Let me tell you one."
"I've wanted to be a police officer like my father since I was little; that has always been my dream," Yan Junde began to share his memories slowly. "When I was very young, my father once took a blow meant for a thief from an angry mob. Blood flowed from his head."
"I think someone like you wouldn't understand why, just as you don't understand why I didn't throw you into that pool," Yan Junde continued, looking at Zhao Qin. "At that time, I was just a child and couldn't comprehend why my father acted that way. I felt heartbroken and furious. I asked him why he would take a hit for someone who stole from others! Wasn't he a bad person?"
"But my mother said it was the right thing to do," Yan Junde continued. "My father told me that stealing is inherently wrong, regardless of any tragic reasons behind it. However, taking the law into one's own hands is even more wrong. No matter how righteous the crowd feels or how indignant they are, it's still wrong."
Yan Junde spoke clearly: "The reason we have laws is precisely because of this. We allow others to defend killers; we allow them to hire lawyers for this very reason. Only then can we determine whether someone is truly guilty and understand why they deserve the death penalty."
"Your self-proclaimed justice—this kind of justice," Yan Junde stood up and declared, "is utter nonsense."
He stated seriously, "Even though I'm no longer a police officer, these fundamental principles will never leave me." While his words were directed at Zhao Qin, we all understood they were also meant for me and for himself.
"Haha!" Zhao Qin laughed loudly before turning and jumping into the large pool. Yan Junde reached out to grab him, but I tackled Yan Junde to the ground instead. Just as we did so, we heard a whoosh as a shadow flew past where we had just been standing. Lying on the ground with Yan Junde, we turned our heads and felt cold sweat break out on our foreheads.
A massive axe blade emerged from where we had stood moments ago. If we had been even a moment slower, we would have been cleaved in half by the blade that had sprung from the ground. The furious punishment was dismemberment; just as I suspected, Zhao Qin's final plan was to take Yan Junde down with him.
As the axe blade swung, a hidden door appeared beneath the stairs. We looked inside to find Yan Junde's mother bound to a chair with her mouth gagged. Fortunately, she seemed to be in good spirits; we all breathed a sigh of relief. The officers immediately rushed to rescue her while I hurried to check on Zhao Qin in the pool.
The icy water wasn't poisonous; it wouldn't kill instantly. I looked down and saw Zhao Qin shivering in the frigid water. The pool was deep—over ten meters—and while the icy water was only three or four meters deep, there were still seven or eight meters left to reach safety. The edges of the pool were frozen solid; anyone who fell in could not climb out by their own strength.
"Get a rope! Bring me a rope now!" I shouted.
Several officers quickly untied the ropes binding Yan Junde's mother and tossed them up to us. I caught one end of the rope and tied it around the protruding axe handle before throwing the other end into the pool. "Grab the rope and climb up!" I yelled.
But Zhao Qin in the icy water trembled as he shouted back, "Impossible! The rules of this game are set! I can't break them! Haha! Even if you save Yan Junde, my life will never be in someone else's hands! I am justice! The spirit of justice will always exist!"
It seemed that Zhao Qin was determined to die in the icy water. I cursed under my breath, took off my coat, and prepared to descend the rope to pull him up. At that moment, Yan Junde said, "Team Leader, let me do it!" Before I could respond, Yan Junde had already removed his coat and was by my side.
"Be careful," I warned.
Yan Junde nodded and began to slide down the rope. Alley, who had arranged for the rescue of Yan Junde's mother, also arrived at this moment. Alley whispered, "No wonder he's an Armed Police Instructor; he can go down just using his strength. If it were me, I might have fallen straight down..."
As he spoke, Yan Junde had already descended four or five meters. Zhao Qin was trembling inside; it seemed he had reached his limit. Although he kept his eyes on Yan Junde, he couldn't utter a word. Yan Junde grabbed the rope with one hand and tightly held onto Zhao Qin's arm with the other.
"Pull!" I shouted urgently.
When Zhao Qin was pulled up, he was already unconscious, seemingly on the verge of slipping away. Alley quickly hoisted Zhao Qin onto his back and ran towards the exit of the bomb shelter. By the time we got outside, an ambulance and police car were waiting for us. Watching the ambulance drive away with its sirens blaring from the eastern suburbs, a heavy weight lifted from my heart.
"Dezi!" Mary exclaimed as she jumped into Yan Junde's arms.
A day later, Zhao Qin woke up in his hospital room, staring blankly at the ceiling. Meanwhile, we were eating dumplings at Yan Junde's home. Yan Junde's mother joked, "We should have eaten these dumplings a week ago; who would have thought we'd wait until now? Dezi, I heard everything you said in that room. Congratulations! You've become a police officer like your father, even though you're not one right now."
"Salute!" Dezi shouted.
The next day, news came in. Zhao Qin had injected air into his body using an IV needle in the hospital and committed suicide. According to the police who watched over him, he had been cooperative after waking up and showed no signs of suicidal tendencies. But in a moment of carelessness, this tragedy occurred.
From the very beginning of the case, Zhao Qin had no intention of living.
Yan Junde furrowed his brow and said to us, "Zhao Qin didn't act alone; during my kidnapping, I occasionally saw some documents."
"Oh?" Yan Junde's words caught our attention.
"That's right," Yan Junde continued. "It seems Zhao Qin was involved in some sort of deal with someone. He helped them create some kind of machinery, and in return, they helped him abduct people. There were more than one person who captured me, and they all wore those Law Enforcer masks. After such prolonged contact with them, I concluded that none of those who captured me were Zhao Qin."
I frowned; I hadn't expected this case to involve another one. I asked, "Did those people show themselves again afterward?"
Yan Junde shook his head and replied, "No, they never showed up again. It seems that after they took me away and secured me, they completely vanished. Those people looked very professional; they definitely weren't ordinary individuals but must have undergone special training. Their tying techniques resembled those taught by armed police forces..."
"Armed police?" I exclaimed in surprise.
"Exactly!" Yan Junde asserted firmly. "I've been with the armed police for five years; there's no way I'd mistake that."
I rubbed my temples with my fingers, feeling a headache coming on. The Seven Deadly Sins case was entangled with other cases. Who were those professionally trained individuals? Why did they possess the knot-tying techniques used by the armed police? Everything was becoming incredibly complicated, and it was giving me a headache. Ever since I joined the Special Investigation Team, I had the unsettling feeling that someone was watching me from the shadows.
It seemed that behind those cases lay an invisible hand, pushing me toward an uncontrollable direction. The mysterious disappearance of the sixth body in the Captain Gao case, the inexplicably lost important documents in the Hypnosis case, and now this emerging mysterious organization. It felt as if someone was playing a grand game of chess, and we were merely pawns in it.
But perhaps it was just a coincidence; maybe I was overthinking things.
Although the case had concluded, my mood didn’t lift for long. The reason was that I had to return to Yuzhou City, facing the mess I had left behind two weeks ago. I found myself at a loss for how to justify my return; I had embarrassed my family greatly. Especially concerning Juan Juan, I had no idea what the situation was like there now.
For these past two weeks, ever since I smashed my phone, I had cut off all contact with the outside world and had no clue whether Li the Tiger had explained anything on my behalf.
As if sensing my troubled thoughts, Mary approached me and said tentatively, “I just received a text from Sister Juan. She says she’s getting married to a professor from the medical school.”
“A professor? No way!” I replied firmly. “I can’t believe she would marry an old man.”
Mary whispered, “What if he’s a handsome and wealthy young professor who just returned from studying abroad?”
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