From the moment Little Michael was sentenced in court, some media outlets had begun reconsidering certain issues. Was the conflict between Michael and Lin Qi really rooted in the relationship between an enforcer and a suspect, or was it because of a private matter?
If it was the former, then they did not need to concern themselves with anything else. But if it was the latter, then public opinion was heading in the wrong direction.
It was like Little Red Man and Little Blue Man getting into a fight, with Little Blue Man getting hurt. If it was merely an isolated incident, then it would always remain just an isolated incident, and no one would care.
The problem now was that everyone said Little Red Man was an enforcer and Little Blue Man was an innocent civilian. Without any evidence, Little Red Man had injured Little Blue Man, and the cause of all this was that Little Red Man possessed too much authority to enforce the law. He had abused his power and harmed a member of the public.
That was the current situation. But if that relationship were removed, and Little Red Man had beaten Little Blue Man because they had a personal grudge, then there would be no enforcer or innocent suspect, and no question of whether his authority to enforce the law was appropriate. It would simply be an isolated incident.
When Lin Qi saw the latest issue of the newspaper, he realized that the upper ranks of the Federal Revenue Service—or at least the administrative officials at the state level—had begun to apply pressure. He had not even had time to get Director Johnson to inadvertently leak some information to the outside world when the newspapers had already begun publishing certain speculations.
Some of the less