Xia Hang looked at Wen Yu’s computer screen, where a video was playing: footage of him stepping on car roofs amid rushing traffic, leaping across lanes to save someone from a burning car.
Judging by the image quality, it appeared to have been copied from a dashcam and uploaded online by one of the drivers, with the view count already approaching ten million. Likes, shares, comments… every number was staggering.
“The Propaganda Department is going to lose its mind,” Ling Yue said. “They work themselves half to death editing official promo videos, and the stats don’t even come close to this one.”
“Whoever uploaded this,” Xia Ling added, “definitely knows how to run self-media… Look at the cover: Xia Hang’s blurred side profile, handsome but indistinct, and mysterious as hell. Not to mention the title: ‘AHHHH! Ran Into a Cop Whose Kung Fu Is Even Hotter Than His Face!’ High emotion, police officer, handsome guy, every keyword grabs traffic. Of course it blew up.”
Behind them, Zhang Tianhua laughed, before also adding: “And then you click it, totally unprepared, and suddenly it’s Xia Hang pulling off this whole ‘lightness kung fu, flying over cars’ sequence! Adrenaline straight through the roof. It’d be weird if people weren’t excited.”
“Hahaha, the comment section is crazy. Xia Hang, wanna take a look?”
Xia Hang glanced over.
[Thought it was clickbait! Clicked in and got hit in the face!]
[I don’t even dare imagine how lethal this would’ve been if he were in uniform…]
Well… he didn’t keep reading. After a moment, he asked Wen Yu, “Can this video be taken down?”
“Technically, yes,” Wen Yu answered. “But procedurally, no, not really. There’s no order from above, so I can’t just delete it. If you want it gone, you’ll have to ask Captain Han.”
“Don’t stress,” Xia Ling waved it off. “There’s so much news online these days. A small viral hit every three days, a big one every week. Netizens just watch for fun. Give it a few days, and they’ll forget all about it.”
Xia Hang nodded, but truth be told, he’d already decided to report it upward as soon as possible. Sheng Jun was still at large, and no one knew where he was hiding. They couldn’t afford to let the city bureau get dragged into trouble because of him.
But the rest of his colleagues were still busy having fun at his expense. Kong Qinmao walked over and squeezed his shoulder, asking, “Brother Hang, did you train anywhere else besides the police academy? First day I met you, I thought you’d be the least able to take a hit in the whole team.”
“…Trained a little.” Xia Hang said.
Kong Qinmao’s eyes lit up. “Then one day, let’s spar at the training grounds?”
Kong Qinmao was a combat fanatic. Before Xia Hang arrived, his skills were evenly matched with Han Huaixiao’s… And in the whole team, only Han Huaixiao was willing to trade moves with him. Everyone else avoided him like the plague.
“Sure,” Xia Hang said.
Separated by a single door, in the captain’s office, Han Huaixiao was also watching that same video. Someone from the Propaganda Department had sent it to him, asking whether reposting it on the official account would affect their current case.
Han Huaixiao tapped play. The moment he saw Xia Hang’s dangerous movements in traffic, he straightened abruptly from his casual slouch. Only when the video ended did he realize he’d been holding his breath the entire time. In the end, he tossed the phone aside and stood up, ready to go find Xia Hang for trouble, eager to ask him if he’d lost his damn mind! Did he have any idea that one misstep and he could’ve been hit by a speeding car, sent flying, then crushed into pulp?!
Han Huaixiao’s hand was already on the doorknob when he stopped and stepped back.
Ever since running into Xia Hang again, every encounter left him simmering with anger, and he knew exactly why.
He was mixing in personal emotions.
However, that wouldn’t do. He was Xia Hang’s superior now, so he had to keep public and private matters separate.
The video was short, and Han Huaixiao watched it over and over. In the end, standing firmly in his role as team captain, he rejected the Propaganda Department’s proposal.
Han Huaixiao might have been confident in his personal charms, but he wasn’t narcissistic. He had never believed that Xia Hang came to the Lang City Municipal Bureau simply to find him. After all, eight years had passed. If Xia Hang truly had something he couldn’t let go of, he would’ve come looking long ago.
There was no need to wait until now.
So the most likely reason Xia Hang was transferred to Lang City was an assignment from above: a hidden task.
Han Huaixiao thought of what he’d seen yesterday in Doctor Xiang’s office, all those knife wounds and gunshot scars on Xia Hang’s back. Even though he still didn’t know what Xia Hang’s mission was, his instincts were clear.
Letting Xia Hang’s photos and videos circulate online and exposing him to the public eye would definitely put him in danger.
Therefore, he turned down the Propaganda Department and also contacted the cyber monitoring unit, asking them to help remove Xia Hang’s photos and videos. The relevant departments moved fast, and, soon enough, the original video, reposts, and related images were all taken down within a short time. Wen Yu was the first to notice.
“Huh? Xia Hang’s video and photos are gone.”
“Who deleted them?” Ling Yue said. “Xia Hang, did you pay to have them removed?”
Xia Hang knew he was joking, so he calmly answered, “No. I don’t have that kind of money.”
“Must’ve been some higher up…” Wen Yu said. “Who else has that kind of speed and authority?”
Xia Hang thought the same, but the ‘higher up’ he had in mind wasn’t the same ‘higher up’ Wen Yu meant.
“There is someone,” Ling Yue said. “Captain Han could do it. He’s got both money and power.”
However, Wen Yu scoffed, rejecting the idea completely. “Captain Han’s too sharp for that,” she said. “There’s no way he’d watch online videos and act like an idiot on the Internet.”
Ling Yue was about to argue back when he suddenly saw Liu Yan from forensics stride in, clearly in a hurry.
“Sister Yan, what’s up?”
“Is Captain Han here?” Liu Yan asked.
“He is.”
Han Huaixiao had already seen her through the office window, so he pushed the door open and came out. “Sister Yan, did you find something?”
With that, Liu Yan handed him the test report, saying, “Ballistics analysis confirms that the gun used to shoot Chen Zhengde in the chest is the same gun that killed old policeman Guo Zhengqi in Sanshan County two years ago.”
Sanshan County was a county under Lang City’s jurisdiction. The fact that their case was tied to an old one immediately sharpened everyone’s expressions as they gathered around.
Xia Ling asked, “Then… do these two cases need to be merged?”
Han Huaixiao finished reading the report. “First, pull the Sanshan County case files,” he answered. “I’ll go see Chief Yan.”
……………..
After reading Liu Yan’s report, Yan Zheng picked up his teacup and took a sip.
“This case came up at a provincial meeting not long ago,” he said. “A criminal police officer was murdered, and nearly two years later, the case still isn’t solved. That’s a disgrace.”
The case had caused a huge stir back then. Han Huaixiao had studied it in his spare time and knew it wasn’t due to incompetence on Sanshan County’s side. More likely, the case itself was genuinely strange.
“What’s your instruction?” he asked.
“Merge the cases,” Yan Zheng said. “You’ll take charge.”
Han Huaixiao wasn’t surprised. “Understood.”
What Yan Zheng liked most about his capable subordinate was that he never dodged responsibility and never shrank back out of fear of accountability. Han Huaixiao always charged straight into the hard parts, but there was no need to say any of that aloud. Instead, he only reached out and patted the young captain’s shoulder.
And yet, Han Huaixiao dodged the hand in disgust, saying, “You’ve got ink all over it!”
Before Han Huaixiao came in, Yan Zheng had been practicing calligraphy. Now, he looked down, but there was only a little ink on his fingertips.
“You little brat,” Yan Zheng snapped. “As a criminal police officer, you should speak properly with your superiors!”
Already at the door, Han Huaixiao brushed imaginary dust off his sleeve and headed out.
“Take a look at your other hand,” he said.
Yan Zheng raised it, and sure enough, it was smeared with ink.
Tsk.
That damn kid!
……………
By the time Han Huaixiao returned to the office, everyone was already waiting in the conference room.
“We’re merging the cases,” he announced first. Then he asked, “You’ve all reviewed the files. What do you think about the Sanshan County case?”
The Sanshan County case happened two years ago. There were two victims: old policeman Guo Zhengqi and a young woman named Wei Zixuan.
Two summers ago, a middle-aged couple who made a living growing vegetables went to their fields at dawn to harvest; the night before, heavy rain had fallen, so the field was a muddy mess, full of leaves caked with dirt. Dirty vegetables like that would be looked down on at the market and sell for a poor price.
To the right of the field was a national highway; to the left, a small river. After cutting a load of vegetables, the husband carried them toward the river, planning to rinse them clean.
He set the baskets down on the riverbank and turned toward a patch of reeds nearby, intending to relieve himself. He had just unzipped his pants when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something not far away.
He focused and froze.
Two figures, dressed in dark clothes. A man and a woman. Lying motionless on the ground, their eyes wide open.
Just like that, the man’s surging urge to urinate vanished instantly. He didn’t even bother zipping up. Scrambling away on hands and knees, he fled the riverbank back toward the vegetable field. His hoarse, terror-filled scream tore through the faint morning light of the western suburban fields.
“De… dead people…! There are dead people by the river…! Quick! Call the police!”
The police arrived quickly. The victims’ identities were confirmed just as fast.
One was Guo Zhengqi, a fifty-three-year-old veteran criminal investigator from the Sanshan County Public Security Bureau. The other was Wei Zixuan, a young woman from the western suburbs, just past her twentieth birthday when she was killed.
At the scene, Guo Zhengqi’s body was pressed on top of Wei Zixuan’s, arranged by the killer into a pose resembling sexual intercourse.
At the time, the people of Sanshan County were in an uproar. Rumors spread everywhere that an old county police officer had been having an affair with a young woman, that they’d been caught in a tryst by the river, and drowned.
Police officer.
Young woman.
Affair.
Illicit sex.
Drowning.
A string of explosive words chained together, igniting a massive wave of online outrage back then.
However, that was far from the actual truth.
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