Suspicion

After Lan Mu finished his IV drip, it was nearly noon. He got out of bed and searched for a long time, but couldn't find his charger.

All his belongings were in the bedside cabinet. After living in the deep mountains for seven straight days, his charger and everything else had long since disappeared who knew where.

With no other choice, he went to the nurses' station to borrow a charging cable and hurriedly charged his phone.

Then, deep in thought, he went to the cafeteria to eat.

After eating and drinking his fill, he was still thinking while using the restroom. Why had he been blocked? Even if he really had been fired, Editor-in-Chief Liang had no reason to do that!

Although his relationship with Editor-in-Chief Liang had always been ordinary, blocking him outright clearly meant cutting off all ties with him.

"I can't figure it out! I'll ask Cheng Ming later what happened at the newspaper."

Outside the restroom was the corridor leading to his ward. He saw several burly men enter his room. One look told him they meant trouble, and he was instantly alarmed.

"I don't know anyone in Fuzhou. Other than the police and reporters, who else could be looking for me?"

Lan Mu thought of a terrible possibility. He wanted to check the time, only to realize he hadn't brought his phone.

But it was around one in the afternoon now, and Qin Yu had left two or three hours ago.

If someone suddenly came looking for him at a time like this, and they weren't police or reporters, then they could only be those people...

"Damn it, now I know why the anonymous letter was mailed to Modu. It seems the sender knew it would be useless to mail it locally."

"The poachers were let in by the forest ranger himself. They probably have a network of connections in Fuzhou—either someone in the media, someone in the police, or maybe both! That's why the anonymous letter was sent to Modu. It also explains why I learned about the poaching situation in Modu while Fuzhou itself still knew nothing."

Lan Mu took a deep breath, hurriedly turned around, went downstairs, and left the inpatient building.

He didn't dare return to his room. Who knew what those people wanted with him?

First, he left the hospital and found a convenience store. He located a copy of the Fuzhou Metropolitan Daily, then used the number in the paper to call Qin Yu's newspaper from the store's phone.

He first claimed to be Qin Yu's classmate and said he had a news tip. After being transferred several times, Qin Yu finally came on the line.

"Hello, is this Mr. Lan?"

"It's Lan Mu. Is anyone beside you?"

"Uh... no. Everyone's busy."

Lan Mu immediately said, "Come to my place alone right now. I need to properly thank you."

Qin Yu froze. "Uh, there's no need. It was just a small favor..."

"You have to come!" Lan Mu's tone was forceful. After all, this concerned his life.

Qin Yu was baffled by his insistence and could only say, "All right, I'll be there right away."

"Do you know where I am?"

"Hm? Aren't you at the hospital?"

At that point, Lan Mu was basically certain there was nothing wrong with Qin Yu herself. Thinking about it, if there had been, she wouldn't have needed to save him in the first place.

Besides, Lan Mu's instincts told him Qin Yu was a straightforward person. She couldn't possibly have anything to do with poachers.

"When you submitted the material, who knew about it? In other words, who else at your newspaper knows I'm in this hospital?"

"Editor Yu knows, and the editor-in-chief definitely knows... Two of my colleagues know too. What's wrong?" Qin Yu had no idea what was happening.

"I'm at the convenience store across from the hospital. Tell those people where I am. Don't say anything else, then come over immediately! I'll give you a huge story!"

With that, Lan Mu hung up. However, he couldn't leave the convenience store because he didn't have a cent on him.

The store owner eyed him suspiciously, considering he was wearing a hospital gown.

Lan Mu smiled apologetically. "My friend will be here to pay soon. Sorry about that."

After saying that, Lan Mu crouched in the convenience store and stared intently at the hospital.

About ten minutes later, the group of burly men who had entered his room came out of the hospital.

Lan Mu stared at them, his right hand clenched into a fist, tense as could be.

But then he breathed a sigh of relief. The group didn't even glance in his direction and got straight into a black Toyota.

"Whew..." Lan Mu let out a breath. He could basically rule out the newspaper as the problem.

But that only made him even less willing to call the police. Originally, if he had directly contacted the police and said a suspicious group was looking for him, they would certainly have protected him as an important witness.

But who knew what problems there might be within the police?

Qin Yu arrived belatedly only after the Toyota had driven away.

Lan Mu had originally wanted to follow that group, but he definitely couldn't catch up now, so he simply gave up.

He first asked Qin Yu to pay for him, then the two returned to the hospital and cautiously approached his room.

"What exactly happened? What huge story?" Qin Yu had followed Lan Mu in a daze and still didn't know what was going on.

Lan Mu shushed her. He first looked into the room, and only after confirming there was no one else inside did he enter.

He hurriedly grabbed his phone and his clothes, though his shirt and pants were already tattered beyond repair.

He wanted to leave the hospital. No matter how he thought about it, the hospital didn't feel safe at all.

He had narrowly escaped death at the poachers' hands before. The threat of death had shaken him too deeply, and in this unfamiliar place, he felt terribly insecure.

"Ugh, nowhere is safe. Thinking about it now, I was most carefree back in the mountains."

Lan Mu somewhat missed the days when he had been the White-haired Lion. Just as he was about to leave the room, he suddenly heard his only roommate crying beneath the covers.

The crying was very quiet, but he still heard it.

"Hm?"

Lan Mu suddenly thought of another possibility. He stiffly walked to the bed and asked, "Why are you crying?"

The man stopped crying but said nothing. He merely poked his head out and looked timidly at Lan Mu. For a grown man, he looked utterly pathetic.

Lan Mu asked again, "That group from earlier... They weren't looking for you, were they?"

The man wiped his tears and slowly nodded.

"Hell!" Lan Mu's mouth twitched as he slapped his forehead.

He was speechless. He realized he had made a colossal blunder. Fortunately, he hadn't actually tried to follow those people.

Qin Yu was still confused and pressed, "Mr. Lan, what huge story are you talking about?"

Lan Mu didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I... this... the huge story..."

His eyes darted, and he immediately pointed at his roommate. "Ask him! A group of fierce-looking men came looking for him just now. Maybe he's being threatened!"

The two looked over together. The man froze, his eyes seeming to ask, How did you know?

Lan Mu curled his lip, thinking, Just as I thought. Then he said, "Reporter Qin, he must be in trouble. Maybe he's being threatened by criminal forces or something. This is firsthand coverage for you... Mm, I'll call the police first."

The man sat upright in panic and shouted, "Don't call the police!"

"I'm calling the police for myself. It has nothing to do with you." With that, Lan Mu walked straight out of the room.

Officer Xiong had left him a number before leaving, and the call went through shortly after.

Lan Mu got straight to the point. He said he felt unsafe at the hospital and hoped to be discharged immediately. He also told Officer Xiong about the anonymous letter.

Officer Xiong considered it and agreed, but the police had to make the arrangements. After all, Lan Mu was an important witness, and they couldn't let him disappear without a trace.

Lan Mu casually asked about the case as well. From Officer Xiong, he learned that the forest ranger, Xiao Tang, had been detained immediately. Following the trail, they had caught four poachers. Unfortunately, they seemed to have been prepared: aside from cages, there was nothing in the truck. The four men looked like ordinary truck drivers, but they matched the sketches extremely well.

Hearing that the case had made major progress, Lan Mu was relieved. He could leave it to the police and didn't need to meddle any further.

After hanging up, Lan Mu leaned against the door to the room. Now he only needed to wait for the police to come pick him up.

He called his colleague Cheng Ming again while listening to Qin Yu repeatedly question the man inside the room.

But Cheng Ming never answered. Lan Mu was restless and decided to ignore the matters in Modu for now and settle the problems here first.

He returned to the room to help Qin Yu interview the man. With Lan Mu stepping in, they got the full story out of him before long.

It turned out the man had offended someone, who had hired local thugs to beat him up. Not only that, they had extorted fifty thousand yuan from him and threatened him not to call the police.

The man was utterly cowardly. He had been beaten badly enough to be terrified and truly didn't dare report it.

"Qin Yu, expose this, use public opinion to push the police into action, and this will be easy to resolve. Your name is Li Zhou, right? Don't be afraid. The more afraid you are, the worse it gets. They're only extorting fifty thousand yuan—it's not a big deal. You don't have to give them a single cent, and they'll even have to compensate your medical expenses."

Lan Mu had seen plenty of situations like this. Often, victims feared the other side and ultimately paid money to keep the peace. Back in Modu, he had also helped many victims through public pressure. Once the police stepped in and took things even a little seriously, the cases were resolved. This wasn't some major case.

After resolving the matter, he used it to explain why he had called Qin Yu over so urgently. Still, Lan Mu felt he had troubled her too much. She was his lifesaver, after all. If he weren't completely broke right now, he really wanted to thank her properly.

He got Qin Yu's phone number and promised to treat her to a meal once the poaching case was resolved.

To show his apology, Lan Mu walked Qin Yu all the way downstairs from the inpatient building.

Qin Yu didn't mind at all. "Stop seeing me off. I told you, it was just a small favor. I only took you to the hospital. And following my senior, I learned quite a lot too. Don't be so polite!"

Lan Mu smiled. He thought Qin Yu was a good person—pretty and kind-hearted. But a life-saving favor was still a life-saving favor. Lan Mu never liked owing people favors. He felt that treating her to a meal was nowhere near enough, and he would repay this debt slowly in the future.

After seeing Qin Yu off, Lan Mu simply sat down in the hospital's small garden to rest. All that fuss earlier had been nothing but him tormenting himself.

"I'm way too suspicious. Those poachers are probably still worrying about how to escape Fuzhou. How could they possibly find the hospital? I'm ridiculous."

Lan Mu laughed at himself. He felt his occupational habit was getting a little serious—always analyzing things at random. He wasn't a police officer or a detective, so why was he being so paranoid?

This wasn't his field, and there was no need for him to get involved. He could leave it to the police and just identify the suspects when the time came.

Not long afterward, the police arrived. A police officer got out of the squad car, and Lan Mu spotted him the moment he entered the hospital.

"Over here!" Lan Mu called out and walked toward him.

The newcomer was a police officer around twenty-seven or twenty-eight. When he saw Lan Mu, he said, "Brother Xiong sent me. Let's go. There's a clinic at the station, and you can recuperate there too."

"Oh..." Lan Mu looked at the officer's ID. He really was a cop, named Wang Jinghu.

"Officer Wang, don't I need to go through discharge procedures or something?"

Wang Jinghu said, "No need to make things so troublesome. We'll take care of it all. You're an important witness, so just come back to the station with me as soon as possible."

Lan Mu nodded. He had no luggage to bring, so he got directly into the police car in his hospital gown.

The police car drove away from the hospital. Sitting in the passenger seat, Lan Mu habitually probed, "How's the case going? Did you catch anyone?"

"We just caught a few. They basically match the sketches. We're waiting for you to identify them in person!"

Following that thread, Lan Mu asked several more questions, but Wang Jinghu kept his mouth shut and stopped paying attention to him.

Lan Mu smiled without minding. The Fuzhou police are pretty tight-lipped.

The police car drove for half an hour. Lan Mu said nothing the entire time, but when he saw the car leave the city and head into the outskirts, he finally sensed something was wrong.

He wasn't local, so naturally he didn't know Fuzhou's roads. But he could still tell when they had left the city.

"Officer Wang... Is the Fuzhou Police Department in the suburbs?" Lan Mu asked tentatively.

Wang Jinghu's expression didn't change. He casually replied, "Of course not. The suspects we caught are temporarily being held at the Zaolin District Sub-bureau. Didn't I say I was taking you to identify them?"

"Oh..."

Lan Mu didn't ask anything further. Wang Jinghu's words were consistent before and after, without any contradictions.

He thought he should stop being paranoid. He had seen countless police IDs before, and Wang Jinghu's was unquestionably genuine. It couldn't be fake.

So Lan Mu didn't say another word and sat obediently in the car.

However, a few minutes later, Lan Mu regretted it.

Because the police car drove into a villa complex...

Lan Mu hurriedly tried to open the door, only to find it locked. He turned to Wang Jinghu. "You..."

Before he could finish, Wang Jinghu honked three times. The iron gate of a villa courtyard opened, and the police car drove directly inside.

Watching the iron gate slam shut, Lan Mu forced himself to remain calm, but his heart sank to the bottom.

Several strong men had clearly been waiting for them. They walked straight to the car door, leaving Lan Mu with nowhere to escape.

Lan Mu was taken out of the car and hemmed in between several men.

"This is the sub-bureau you were talking about?" Lan Mu sneered through gritted teeth. He had never imagined that even the police couldn't be trusted.

Wang Jinghu ignored him completely. With a stern face, he told one of the men, "I'm leaving first. I won't be seeing Boss Zhao."

"Hurry back. Tamper with the dashcam and traffic surveillance records. Don't let anyone get suspicious." After saying that, the man opened the iron gate.

"You don't need to tell me that!" Wang Jinghu drove off in the police car.