Betrayal
Having sped off the airport expressway, Lin Yan made a quick dash into an exit just as the green light was about to turn red. She swerved up the overpass with seven twists and bends, successfully shaking off the pursuers in her rearview.
With a screech, tires squealed against the asphalt, piercing the air with their shrill cry.
She flung open the car door: “Let’s go!”
The others didn’t budge.
Duan Cheng slowly looked at her, his lips moving slightly: “Sister Lin…”
Clutching the steering wheel, Lin Yan looked back at them, “This has nothing to do with you. Don’t ask anything, the less you know, the better.”
“But—” several people protested.
Lin Yan turned her face forward again, staring straight ahead.
“You’ve seen it too, the people after me are not just the cops but also other unknown forces.”
“Get out of the car, it’s for your own good.”
Zheng Chengrui pushed up his glasses, still relatively calm, as the pursuers had not yet caught up, so they had a moment to talk.
“But if we go, how will you find Captain Song on your own? After all, there’s strength in numbers.”
“I have my ways.” Lin Yan took a deep breath, urging them, “Hurry up. If you don’t leave now and the cops catch up, do you really want to throw your future away by getting mixed up with me?”
Duan Cheng’s face showed a hint of confusion, “Although I don’t know if what you’re doing now is right or wrong, Sister Lin, I feel like I should stand by your side.”
“You’re not just my superior; you’re my friend.”
The word “friend” was an extravagant luxury.
In Lin Yan’s life, the people who could be called “friends” were few and far between.
She curved her lips into a smile but quickly reverted to her stern demeanor.
She had thought Duan Cheng was alone in his thinking and turned to dissuade him, only to see those pairs of eyes uniformly fixed on her.
In that moment, the solitude and anguish Lin Yan felt from being abandoned by Song Yuhang, the sorrow and heartache of being betrayed by a loved one, even her restless anxiety, were all somewhat soothed.
An invisible strength seemed to flow into her body.
She was invigorated by it.
“If we’re friends, then get out of the car.”
She said coldly, as she tossed a communicator his way.
Duan Cheng was taken aback for a moment, but when he saw the communicator land in his arms, a smile appeared on his face. He pushed the car door open and got out.
A group of people stood by the roadside, watching her white car drive off into the distance before casually entering an empty restaurant.
They had only just sat down when police sirens wailed past them.
Following at a neither too-close nor too-distant range were several cars with local license plates, each of a different model. Duan Cheng picked up a steamed bun from the plate and took a bite.
It seemed Sister Lin’s words were right.
She really was being targeted by various forces.
“This… the person’s already passed out. Should we stop the electric shocks?” a little kid, with her head drooping, slumped in the electric shock chair.
The man with a covered face asked the question.
The man standing beside with his hands behind his back, clad in a black suit, was expressionless, seemingly nothing more than a messenger.
“The boss said, as long as she hasn’t arrived, keep the shocks going.”
Another slightly more corpulent thug swallowed hard, “If we keep this up, it’s going to kill someone.”
The man in the black suit finally lifted his eyes lazily, his tone still flat and matter-of-fact, “You’re all wanted criminals now. Even if you do nothing, the police won’t let you off. Once the job is done, the boss will send you out of the country and give you 50 thousand dollars as a reward. With that, you’ll be free as a bird, no need to fear the cops again.”
In the jungle at the border…
Kuba hurried down from the cabin and shared the news with the old man who was basking in the sun in the courtyard.
The old man, a tea aficionado, had an Asian girl by his side humbly brewing tea for him. She couldn’t have been more than in her teens.
With a wave of his hand, he signaled everyone to leave.
The girl, barefoot, bowed deeply, revealing shocking marks of abuse on the back of her neck.
Kuba approached him: “Should we send someone to stop this? It’s pretty much like startling the snake by hitting the grass.”
Having spent time with the Chinese, he even picked up using their proverbs.
The old man chuckled, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan, his face the picture of tranquility.
“No need, let him go. If he doesn’t have the skills to avoid this much, he doesn’t deserve to…”
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He gracefully lifted the brewed tea to his lips and took a sip, leaving enough of a pause to stir curiosity.
On the old man’s shoulder was a colorful parrot that mimicked after him: “Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy…”
Kuba retreated.
The old man spread the seeds he held in his palm and gently stroked the soft feathers of the parrot.
“Good child, eat.”
Once they entered the city, the road conditions worsened.
Lin Yan, left with no choice, engaged in a high-speed urban chase with her pursuers.
The white sports car weaved through the alleys; its side mirror became askew, its wheels running over the washboards that the common folks used to do laundry, overturning basins and eliciting curses.
“F***, do you even know how to drive?!”
No sooner had her words faded, a few more black cars squeezed in, tipping over cages at the entrance of the pet store opposite, causing a chaotic flurry of chickens and dogs.
In such a tense moment, Lin Yan didn’t forget to stay sharp.
Why did Song Yuhang take the USB drive?
She knew her well enough; she would only do that out of desperation.
But then…
She recalled the words of the mysterious figure from the provincial city who had once spoken to her.
“Song Yuhang, you can trust her, but not completely. Don’t forget whose apprentice she is. You’ve faced danger time and again, and yet the evidence you’ve passed to the provincial department has vanished without a trace. How can you be sure it wasn’t someone close to you?”
“You’re in the shadows, she’s in the light; it’s uncertain whether one day she may abandon you for what she calls justice and righteousness.”
Lin Yan bit her lower lip until it bled, feeling a fierce fire burning in her chest, almost consuming her sanity.
In a moment of distraction, it was already too late to brake for the wall that appeared in front of her.
Lin Yan crashed head-on, her head buzzing as the airbag deployed with a pop.
“Crash—” The windshield shattered, and the broken glass grazed the corner of her eye, drawing a line of blood.
Chunks of brick and tile came raining down, denting in half of the car’s roof.
Lin Yan gritted her teeth and jerked the steering wheel to the right. Sparks flew from the tires as they scraped against the ground, racing out of the ruins.
A police car appeared on the side, blocking the way, but she revved up the engine, stepping hard on the gas pedal and executed a perfect drift onto the main road.
The black car tailing her wasn’t so lucky, coming out full throttle only to crash headlong into the police vehicle.
Both cars were moving fast when, with a thunderous “Bang,” the black car spun around and smashed onto the sidewalk, flipping over instantly and belching out black smoke.
The crowd panicked, screaming in terror.
The police car was knocked into a landscape tree on the side, breaking the tree trunk as thick as a bowl’s mouth, and it stopped dead.
The driver was slumped over the steering wheel, and from the gas tank trickled a stream of clear gasoline, the pungent smell quickly filling the air.
In the midst of the bustling city, the sound of ambulance sirens began to rise.
Lin Yan glanced back, a cold sweat breaking on her forehead, as the voice of Zheng Chengrui came through her earpiece.
“Sister Lin, I’ve found out – Captain Song has taken a car towards Yeling Mountain in the north of the city.”
After evading their pursuers, several of them hid in Zheng Chengrui’s house, with the curtains drawn, and Duan Cheng keeping watch at the door.
Zheng Chengrui tapped away at the keyboard, while Fang Xin joined him to monitor the surveillance.
Lin Yan headed onto the highway leading out of the city.
“Okay, I’ve got it.”
She closed her eyes briefly, pursing her lips slightly: “Go and verify something for me, I don’t trust anyone else to do it.”
She gave the address of Song Yuhang’s home.
Zheng Chengrui scooped up his laptop, shoved it into his bag, and they all headed out the door.
The car arrived downstairs at the Song residence.
As they were about to step forward, Fang Xin abruptly pulled them to a stop, frowning at the footprints in the remnant snow on the ground.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s been a struggle here,” she noted, gingerly stepping on the bits of icy snow, circling the area.
“One set of footprints, two, three, four…”
Tracing and identifying footprints is a fundamental skill, after all.
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Fang Xin crouched down, reached out to touch the mark, and then took out her phone to snap a photo.
“This is a woman’s footprint, with plenty of dragging traces, stretching from here all the way to there.”
Following the direction indicated by her finger, two distinct tire tracks were clearly visible.
Thank goodness for last night’s snowfall.
When the photo was sent to Lin Yan, she recognized the footprint instantly—it was someone she knew.
This morning, as they brushed past each other in the corridor, she noticed that Ji Jingxing was wearing a pair of thick-soled leather boots.
That brand was all the rage this year, and of course, she had a pair as well.
Lin Yan’s fingers pinched her brow center, irritably leaving a red mark on her fair skin.
Just as she had expected.
With a creak, she pulled over to the side on the highway, heavily exhaling a breath of stale air.
“Stop chasing after Song Yuhang. I refuse to believe it. In such a large city as Jiangcheng, three people get kidnapped in broad daylight and nobody sees anything?!”
“Old Zheng, change our investigative approach, track down where they might have gone.”
Duan Cheng nodded: “I’ll go from door to door asking.”
Fang Xin declared: “I’m also on it.”
Zheng Chengrui plunged into his own car, his being the only one with a car among them due to his longer work tenure.
As soon as he settled into the car, he immediately turned on the computer, fingers flying across the keyboard.
“Sister Lin, I can’t use my internal network account; I don’t know how much longer I can hack into it. I’ll be quick. Also, do you have their photos? Send them to me so I can have Duan Cheng and the others search for them.”
Lin Yan picked up her cellphone, intending to scroll through Song Yuhang’s updates to see if there was anything, but instead, her gaze was instantly drawn to the photo she posted that day.
“I will forever be loyal to my ideals and to you.”
Her eyes brimmed with warmth, almost spilling over with tears.
Damn scammer, big fat liar.
Don’t you know that by leaving today, you’ve betrayed both your ideals and me?
Lin Yan felt as if a long crack had suddenly split open in her heart, wind howling in, chilling her to the bone, every organ aching with pain.
“Sister Lin, Sister Lin?” Zheng Chengrui called out to her anxiously.
Lin Yan wiped away the gleam of tears in her eyes and kept scrolling through her updates, but there was nothing there.
This was her first and only update.
Lin Yan propped her forehead with her hand, sniffled, and forced the tears back. For a moment, she wanted to throw her phone away.
But in the end, she just gripped it tightly, clenched her back teeth, and quickly adjusted her emotions, sitting upright.
“No, nothing on my end.”
“Name? I’ll see if I can dig something up.” Zheng Chengrui asked.
Lin Yan gave him the name, then reached out to the dashboard’s cigarette case to fumble out a cigarette, trembling as she lit it.
Her car was badly damaged, the biting winter wind pouring in through the shattered windows, quickly turning her hands pale, even snuffing out her cigarette several times.
She took a harsh drag, the sparks flickering in the twilight.
She was forcing herself to stay calm.
This was the technical team’s first case on their own, breaking away from Song Yuhang.
If she lost her measure again, the kids following her would only fall into disarray.
In that USB drive, lay the lives of Guo Xiaoguang and his mother, and possibly Chu Nan’s as well.
She had to save them, no matter what.
Song Yuhang carried on her back the lives of three members of the Song family – those she was determined to save at all costs.
But what if she really had to choose the lesser of two evils?
How will Song Yuhang choose?
She should know that taking the USB drive is as good as signing her own death warrant, snuffing out all hope for her future and burying the “Fenyang Port Dismemberment Case” once and for all, never to see the light of day again.
Lin Yan clenched her fist, her fingernails digging deep into her flesh, her mouth tasting the metallic tang of blood.
Song Yuhang, how will you choose in the end?
“Not bad, Officer Song sure is punctual.”
Following the agreement, Song Yuhang found a phone hidden inside a waterproof bag in the cistern of a toilet at the gas station off the highway entrance. It only had one number saved and called it back.
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The man, with a hint of a smile in his voice yet it was raspy, said, “Alright, let’s move on to the next game. See you at Yeling Mountain Tunnel.”
“What the heck do you want?!” Song Yuhang’s eyes were red, her appearance had worn to a frazzle within just a few short hours, her hair in a mess from the intense running, piled on her forehead.
“Haven’t I told you? I want something from you.”
“Then let’s make the exchange face-to-face. Let me see them,” Song Yuhang replied hoarsely.
“Oh, you agree so readily?”
She composed herself reluctantly and started to leave. “Nothing is more important than the lives of my family.”
The other party chuckled, as if they had already understood her intentions.
“Don’t even think about stalling or using that phone to call for help. The signal receiver terminal for the phone is with me. Whether you make a call or send a message, I’ll be alerted. You make one call or send one message, and I’ll kill one person. Hahaha…”
The phone spat out his maniacal laughter.
Song Yuhang was beside herself with rage, feeling all her insides twisting in agony. She gritted her teeth, spitting out each word with venom.
“You dare to lay a finger on them, I swear, you won’t get a thing from me!”
The man returned to his own place, plopping down into a chair and pouring himself a glass of red wine, clearing his throat.
“No worries. Destroy it if you wish—that actually works better for me. It’s just…”
He gazed at the image of a child’s cherubic face on the screen, his tongue flicking over his lips.
“Such a little kid, having to endure so much hardship, it quite breaks my heart.”
LP: … I wish people like this just… disappear…
LY she didn’t betray you
LY she didn’t betray you