As the newspapers spread the story, and the victims and other passengers from the carriage where Wang Yan had handled the incident passed it along by word of mouth, his reputation could be said to have spread throughout Northeast China to a certain extent.
Of course, it was not as though everyone in Northeast China knew his name. It had merely spread within certain circles, mainly breaking beyond the local area so that he had a name across the Northeast, rather than only at their own Ningyang Station as before.
His name was especially well known among certain groups, thieves and pickpockets, for example. To some extent, these people all had connections with one another. Some had fought over territory and become acquainted through conflict; others had exchanged pointers while furthering their studies in the lockup.
If Wang Yan had arrested ten or twenty of them, it certainly would not have made much of an impact. But he had caught several hundred. That was different. One way or another, they were bound to know someone. Upon hearing that so-and-so had been locked up, they naturally understood what had happened and learned Wang Yan's name.
The other group was public servants, especially those in the police, procuratorate, and court systems.
Although railway police still belonged to the railway system rather than the Ministry of Public Security, making them separate from ordinary police, the law was the same. The process for handling all kinds of offenders was the same in the end. Besides, railway police and regular police also worked overlapping cases and exchanged information.
For example, if Wang Yan caught a pickpocket on a train, that pickpocket could not possibly have stolen only on the railways. He would surely also have slipped into homes, picked locks, and rummaged through boxes and