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Zhen Liu frowned. "Didn't they test him for drugged driving at the time?"

"He hit someone and ran. Lawyer Jin only took him to turn himself in afterward, and because of that ridiculous voluntary-surrender stunt, his sentence was even reduced!" Second-generation Zhao truly hated him, the teeth-grinding kind of hatred. "Lawyer Jin isn't a good person at all. If he could defend drug dealers, then naturally he could kill people too. The victim threatened him with what the Second-in-Command had done. How could he possibly let Ying De live? Maybe Brother Hao would even praise Lawyer Jin for a job well done, out of respect for the Second-in-Command."

Zhen Liu could understand Second-generation Zhao's grief and indignation after getting immersed in the story, but...

"Whether Lawyer Jin is a good person or not, the law will punish him. Just like this Second-in-Command—he didn't pay for what he did back then, but he still got his retribution today. But that has no direct connection to whether Lawyer Jin is the murderer." Zhen Liu hoped Second-generation Zhao would wake up. It was fine to immerse himself in a game character, but he had become somewhat irrational.

Second-generation Zhao took a deep breath. He also knew that his current unstable state made him difficult to believe. After a long while, he asked Zhen Liu again, "Then who else do you think it could be?"

"I don't know. I can only say that I'm still doing my best to reconstruct this story." If they wanted to win, they not only had to catch the murderer, but also reconstruct everyone's story in the entire script as thoroughly as possible.

Second-generation Zhao nearly rolled his eyes into the back of his head. "Do you really think you're Bao Qingtian? Since you don't know, why can't you just vote with us?"

"Because wrong is wrong. If everyone solved cases as muddleheadedly as you do, what would be the point of laws existing?"

The two parted on bad terms. Everyone had their own ideas, and each held firmly to them.

Second-generation Zhao stubbornly continued trying to persuade Professor Lu.

Meanwhile, in Basketball Qiao's room, Zhen Liu found a bleary-eyed Basketball Qiao, who had just woken up, and got the footage of Lawyer Jin destroying evidence in the living room from him. Sure enough, it was exactly as Second-generation Zhao had said. The social news report that had sparked the conflict between the lawyer and the victim mainly covered the Second-in-Command's past illegal acts. One segment was surveillance footage of the traffic accident.

Though the footage had flashed by in an instant, Zhen Liu still spotted a key detail.

At that moment, 333's voice appeared again. [Ta-da! Congratulations, you have obtained over seventy percent of the information on Lawyer Jin's character storyline. Lawyer Jin's character card has been unlocked. Would you like to view it now?]

Zhen Liu froze. "A character card?"

[Yes, it's like a brief character biography. After all, the game also requires you to reconstruct the story. Once you have acquired more than seventy percent of a character's information, it will unlock automatically. Of course, information you haven't uncovered still won't appear on the task card. We will only record and connect that person's historical information for you.]

Zhen Liu nodded. This alone was already a huge help. It also indirectly proved that Lawyer Jin had not lied about his story when he explained it to Zhen Liu in the Black Room just now.

[I really didn't expect Lawyer Jin's character card to be the first one you completed.]

After opening the character biography, Zhen Liu saw the story from Lawyer Jin's perspective.

Lawyer Jin had been born poor, but he was naturally intelligent. From childhood, he had excelled in both academics and conduct, and had been determined to rise above others. At school, he had been the class monitor and appeared to get along well with everyone, because he was skilled at reading people and knew how to protect himself. When Doctor Zhen was bullied, he had successfully vanished from the matter.

After growing up, Lawyer Jin entered a prestigious local law firm as an intern with excellent grades. Unfortunately, becoming a full-fledged lawyer was nowhere near as easy as he had imagined.

It was then that Lawyer Jin ran into his former classmate, Ying De.

Of everyone, Lawyer Jin had been the first to reconnect with Ying De. Or rather, they had never truly lost contact. Ying De had not gone to college. After graduating high school, he became a gossip reporter, making a living by blackmailing celebrities.

Ying De also followed people connected to cases Lawyer Jin handled, using the intelligence he gathered to trade with Lawyer Jin for extra money.

At first, theirs had been a simple partnership: Ying De provided information, and Lawyer Jin paid him. Later, Ying De began not only blackmailing influential people whose secrets he held, but also introducing Lawyer Jin to "important figures" embroiled in lawsuits who did not want their privacy exposed. By helping these people clean up their messes in the gray areas of the law, Lawyer Jin gained money, fame, and support, gradually establishing himself at the firm.

Just after Lawyer Jin became a famous attorney, Ying De finally bared his fangs and introduced Brother Hao, the former School Bully and now a gang leader, to Lawyer Jin.

Naturally, Lawyer Jin had not wanted anything to do with Brother Hao at first. But this was not something he could refuse simply because he wanted to. Ying De had put Lawyer Jin in a terrible bind, but Lawyer Jin had no choice but to board Brother Hao's pirate ship, because he could not afford to lose. He had already acquired too many things he cared about: a house, a car, a wife, and both fame and fortune.

And so Lawyer Jin began going against his conscience, handling one shady lawsuit after another for Brother Hao. Among them was the Second-in-Command's "traffic accident." The person he had struck and killed was a deranged middle-aged woman.

Because of her mental illness, there had been much more room to manipulate the case.

That woman was none other than Basketball Qiao's mother, whom he had once rambled on about. Basketball Qiao had been playing Basketball out of town at the time. He had wanted to make his mother proud, but all he received was news of her death.

Basketball Qiao did not want to let it go, nor did he want the Second-in-Command's settlement money. He only wanted the man to pay for his mother's life. Unfortunately, he had been too far away to do anything. But Basketball Qiao did not give up because of that. He wanted to earn more money so he could pursue the Second-in-Command again, yet he accidentally went down the wrong path for money. Not only did he fail to teach the Second-in-Command a lesson, he also ruined his own future.

And the Second-in-Command? He had only spent some time in prison before strutting back out.

If Jin Zhuang's guess was correct—that Second-generation Zhao and Basketball Qiao were biological brothers born to the same mother—then there was a reason Second-generation Zhao was so determined to identify Lawyer Jin as the murderer. He was avenging the mother he had never managed to acknowledge in time.