Different People, Different Treatment

"Detective Lin... Is Detective Lin here?" the woman called.

Lin Xiaosu came downstairs from the second floor. "What is it?"

Thud! The woman dropped to her knees. "Detective Lin, please, help me find my son! My son is missing..."

"Ma'am, get up!" Lin Xiaosu shot out a hand and caught her by the shoulders.

Tears streamed down the woman's face. "My son didn't come home last night. I thought he'd gone to his grandmother's house, but when I called my mother, I found out he hadn't gone there. I called the police last night, but they searched all night and couldn't find him... I heard people say Detective Lin was the best at finding people, so I rushed here to find you! Detective Lin, please help me just this once. I know your rates. It's fine, I'll pay! This is ten thousand as a deposit..."

Miao Ruolan stood dazedly in the doorway.

This time, it was a real son!

In weather like this, could they find him?

If they could, the police had already searched for an entire night...

"Put the money away for now!" Lin Xiaosu said. "Let me see a photo of your son!"

The woman hurriedly stuffed the money back into her bag, pulled out her phone, and showed Lin Xiaosu a picture of her son.

He looked to be about ten years old, a little skinny. In the photo, he was standing with several classmates. Their faces brimmed with youthful vitality, their smiles bright and cheerful. Only he hid in a corner, biting his finger, watching them with envious eyes. He wanted to join them, yet did not dare, his awkwardness plain to see.

Right, his clothes were very old.

"He disappeared after leaving the school gate yesterday, right?" Lin Xiaosu asked.

"Yes!"

"Did anything unusual happen before he left yesterday?"

"Before he went out yesterday, he... he said the school was buying uniforms and asked me for two hundred and seventy yuan. I didn't have any money on me then, so I scolded him a little. Those old uniforms could still be worn, so why did he have to buy new ones? He wiped away his tears and went to school..."

Miao Ruolan's heart gave a slight jolt. Could it be that the child had been dealt such a blow that he had gone down a road he should not have?

"Take me to the school gate!"

At the gate of Phoenix City No. 2 Elementary School, Lin Xiaosu traced back to yesterday's dismissal scene. He saw the child as well.

The child had left the school gate alone and walked to the Yishui Bund.

Most of the Bund had already been beautified, but no matter how beautiful a park was, there would always be dark corners. The child had walked through that scar, farther and farther away.

"He came here? This is the shortcut to my mother's home, but why hadn't he gone there..." The woman was both heartbroken and terrified.

She knew some children had strong self-esteem. The poorer they were, the more fiercely they clung to their pride. Everyone else had bought new uniforms, while only he had not. If his classmates mocked him and he could not get over it... He must not have jumped into the river. Please, anything but that.

Mom was wrong. Mom should not have complained, should not have laid the family's hardships before you. Mom only begged you—don't do anything foolish...

Lin Xiaosu suddenly stopped ahead of them and looked down into a deep ditch. Tall grass grew thickly within it. Beneath the cover of that grass, a boy lay motionless, his face deathly pale. It was the missing child.

Miao Ruolan's heart lurched. "He's here!"

The ditch was over two meters deep. She jumped down in a single step. The moment she landed, the wind stirred above her, and the woman jumped down too, crying out in a heart-rending scream, "Huai'er!"

Miao Ruolan's trembling fingers reached beneath the child's nose. "He's still breathing!"

His mother lunged forward, gathered him into her arms, and cried out again and again.

The child gave no response. Even his breathing was faint to the point of seeming absent.

Lin Xiaosu climbed down into the ditch as well. His fingers settled on the child's leg and lightly brushed it aside. The calf was red, swollen, and burning hot.

"Snakebite!" Lin Xiaosu said. "Get him to the hospital immediately!"

"Move!"

Miao Ruolan sprang upward, carrying the child directly out of the ditch. This was the first time she had displayed her skills.

Lin Xiaosu reached down, grabbed the mother, whose entire body had gone limp, and pulled her up.

The group raced toward the hospital.

Inside the emergency room, the doctors moved swiftly. About ten minutes later, a doctor came out with a smile on his face. "Good thing you got here early. Half an hour later, and there truly would have been no saving him!"

"Huai'er... Huai'er, he... he's all right?" his mother asked, trembling.

"Don't worry. The snake venom, combined with the cold and hunger, made him faint. The antivenom has taken effect. He's already awake..."

The mother rushed toward the emergency room, but after reaching the door, she came back. With a thud, she knelt before Lin Xiaosu and held out the ten thousand yuan. "Detective Lin, thank you for saving Huai'er's life. I only brought ten thousand yuan with me. The remaining twenty thousand, I... I'll definitely bring it to the detective agency tomorrow."

The doctors and nurses all froze.

A detective?

What an obscure term...

A reward of thirty thousand yuan was rather tempting too.

"Forget the money. Why talk about money for something done with a mere lift of the hand..." Lin Xiaosu helped her up, slipped the ten thousand yuan back into her bag, and turned to leave.

The sun sank in the west.

The Yi River shimmered with light.

The crowds on the streets gradually thinned, while the lights of the commercial district had just begun to glow.

A black sedan stopped outside the detective agency. A beautiful woman opened the car door and entered the office.

It was Zhou Mei.

As soon as Zhou Mei entered the detective agency, she accepted the tea Miao Ruolan handed her and smiled at Lin Xiaosu. "You've only been open for two days, and I've already heard two wildly different versions of your fee structure."

"Is that so?" Lin Xiaosu lifted his eyes from the book before him.

"Yesterday, someone came looking for a fake son, and you charged them real money without mercy. You could bring yourself to ask for thirty thousand! Today, someone came looking for her real son, handed you genuine cash, and you worked for free instead!" Zhou Mei said. "Buddy, is your pricing strategy just doing whatever you feel like?"

Lin Xiaosu sighed deeply. "You think I wanted to work for free? The problem was, she couldn't even come up with the two hundred and seventy yuan her child needed for a school uniform. How could I strip her to the bone?"

"You know enough to feel ashamed, and you still have a little conscience left. That's not bad..." Zhou Mei's eyes turned lightly. "Then it seems I won't need to worry about money whenever I need you to do something. I helped you get your license, I helped you rent this place, so you'd be too embarrassed to charge me..."

Lin Xiaosu's eyes slowly widened. "Cut it out! Bridge to bridge, road to road—we settle accounts separately. You got me that license and storefront because I helped you last time. If you want me to take a case for you in the future, carry on your provincial department leader family's fine tradition: ten thousand to start!"

"You heartless bastard. I was just praising you for staying true to your original heart and keeping your nature pure and kind."

"If you want to kidnap me, at least change the wording! I'm a businessman, and you want to talk to me about original aspirations? Even my mom knows what mine is—making money..."

While they bickered, Miao Ruolan smiled to herself nearby...

Zhou Mei noticed her smile and shot her a glance. "Stop smiling. He's making things difficult for you! How are you supposed to quote clients in the future? There's no standard at all."

That was true. If the leader had no standard, the subordinates would be at a loss. Lin Xiaosu's prices were as wild and untethered as a Heavenly Horse, entirely based on his whims. How was Miao Ruolan supposed to run the business?

Lin Xiaosu took over. "Quite the opposite. I'm opening the cage and releasing the sparrows for Ruolan. If I can do whatever I want, then naturally she can too. Ruolan, when you take cases in the future, price them however you like. If you like the client, do it for free. If you don't, strip them to the bone!"

Miao Ruolan was dumbfounded. "Is that really true? Let me tell you, I'm very slow sometimes. There are times when I can't understand other people's jokes..."

The three of them were about the same age. As they sat chatting through the night, they grew more and more relaxed.

Late at night, Zhou Mei finally rose to leave. Lin Xiaosu and Miao Ruolan walked her to the door. Before getting into her car, Zhou Mei crooked a finger lightly, and Lin Xiaosu leaned close to her.

A wisp of fragrance drifted into his ear as she whispered, "Be careful. Watch out for people trying to make a move against you!"

Then she got into her car and drove away.

Lin Xiaosu swept his gaze over the street ahead, then returned to the detective agency.

It was late at night. The door was shut and locked from within.

After going upstairs, Miao Ruolan entered his room. "Who was Zhou Mei referring to when she said someone might make a move against you?"

Zhou Mei had beckoned Mr. Lin over with a crooked finger, and it had looked rather intimate. If Miao Ruolan had been his girlfriend, she probably would have interrogated him thoroughly by now. What had she whispered in your ear?

But Miao Ruolan was an inheritor of Ancient Martial Arts, and her six senses were extraordinary. She had heard those words clearly.

Lin Xiaosu said, "She was probably referring to those drug traffickers, and the people behind them."

"I looked into it. The man who dropped the package back then was called Huang San. After the police arrested him, they caught six more people. I never expected that tiny Phoenix City would have a drug trafficking ring on such a large scale."

"Phoenix City may be small, but it connects three rivers!" Lin Xiaosu said. "There are signs that this is a drug distribution hub for the central region."

Miao Ruolan gazed out the Window. "Do we need to get involved?"

Lin Xiaosu said, "Who would want to get involved with an organization this filthy if they had a choice? But sometimes, even if the tree longs for peace, the wind will not cease. Even if we do not go after them, they see us as thorns in their eyes and splinters in their flesh. It's time to pull out this malignant tumor!"

"Fine! What do you need me to do?" Miao Ruolan asked.

"For now, we keep taking cases and investigating them as usual. We wait for an opportunity..."

Miao Ruolan left, and the door closed behind her.

Lin Xiaosu sat cross-legged and entered his usual nightly routine.

He was practicing martial arts.

Strangely enough, whenever he used to study, he always felt that someone needed to crack a whip behind him before he could get started.

But now, with no one forcing him, he was instead exceptionally diligent.

Perhaps martial arts stirred more passion in him than studying ever had.

Ever since unlocking the Rejuvenation Technique, he had not missed a single day, meditating and cultivating every day.

The Rejuvenation Technique differed from ordinary martial arts. In ordinary martial arts, the route through which true qi circulated was fixed. Sitting in meditation every day was dry and tedious, training only the strength of one's true qi.

But the true qi routes of the Rejuvenation Technique were not fixed.

Every day, he could try a new method and let his true qi travel along an entirely new route. It was like opening blind boxes in a game—you never knew what changes a route might bring once unlocked. Even the founding master did not know, because the meridians within the human body were nearly infinite, as were the possible combinations.

Lin Xiaosu had tried one route before. It was the original configuration set by the founding master.