You've Lost Your Mind!? [Come Take a Look]

[Moral decay! A shocking case rocks Greenwood City, and the victim could face the death penalty!]

[Does the law need reform? After searching for his family for ten years, he found prison instead of a reunion!]

[Outrage! Should human traffickers lose their human rights!? Should buyers face the same punishment as traffickers!?]

[A trafficked woman's account: the person chained up in a pigsty...]

[...]

November 8.

At half past six in the morning, dawn had barely broken. A bitter chill hung in the air, and white steam billowed from the breakfast shops' bamboo steamers along both sides of the road.

The striking headlines in the newspapers made everyone at the breakfast stall seethe.

"Damn it! The cops were nowhere to be seen when the girl was abducted or when she was raped. But the moment her family killed the trafficker, a whole bunch of them showed up!"

"What about Li Erniu's parents? Why haven't those two been arrested!?"

"Those two didn't take part in anything illegal..."

"Bullshit! She was there for ten years. You think those two old bastards didn't help abuse her?"

"I bet those two old bastards even paid for her!"

"Yeah, but the court doesn't have evidence."

"Fuck this world..."

"..."

Several people sat around the breakfast stall, arguing over the newspapers until their faces flushed. Their eyes blazed, and their chests heaved with anger.

Voices rose and fell around them, hardly pausing for a moment.

Lin Guodong stood a short distance away, waiting in line for breakfast. He turned toward the group and listened in silence.

The stall owner glanced up at him, then lowered his head and kept working as he asked casually, "Professor Lin, what do you make of this case?"

The question brought Lin Guodong back to himself.

He looked away from the group and toward the owner, shook his head, and sighed. "It's a hard one."

He hadn't read the newspaper.

But Lin Guodong knew what they were discussing.

It could only be the trafficking case in Li Family Village, Greenwood City.

The victim, Wang Mei, had been abducted for a full ten years. For all that time, she had been chained in a woodshed and assaulted day after day. She had lived worse than a dog.

Her father had killed her trafficker while trying to rescue her. Now Li Youcai and Liu Cui had taken him to court...

"In cases like this, lawyers used to line up to take them, even if they had to pay out of their own pockets," Lin Guodong said calmly, though his words were heavy with worry.

Lawyers cared about money, but the circumstances mattered too. If a case drew enough public attention, top lawyers would practically pay for the privilege of helping the victim.

Wang Qiang's case had drawn plenty of attention. It was the talk of Greenwood City, discussed in every street and alley.

Yet hardly any prominent lawyers had stepped forward to take it.

"Because it's hard to win."

Lin Guodong lowered his head and took money from his pocket as he continued, "The defendant struck first, and Li Erniu died right afterward. That fact alone leaves almost no evidence in the defendant's favor."

"And that's before you consider all the other objective evidence favoring Li Erniu."

He shook his head.

"It's a hard one."

The owner stopped working, unwilling to give up. "I heard the trial's the day after tomorrow. There are still two days."

"Is there really nothing anyone can do in that time!?"

Lin Guodong had mixed feelings. He hated saying it, but as someone in the field, he understood the difficulties better than most.

After a silence, he said, "Even if there is a way, it has maybe a one-percent chance of working. Calling it a miracle wouldn't be an exaggeration..."

He didn't wait for the owner to respond.

"Put it this way."

"The case happened in Li Family Village, so the police and prosecutors can only gather evidence there!"

"That includes statements, witnesses, and physical evidence. And as for the statements and witnesses..."

Where would those come from? The villagers of Li Family Village, of course.

What kind of evidence would they provide? It didn't take a genius to know it would be fabricated to favor Li Youcai.

And the police and prosecutors could only hold their noses and enter it into the record.

"That's why the case is so difficult. No one wants it."

Lin Guodong let out a long sigh.

Challenging evidence required genuine evidence, and the defense had none to offer. No shrewd lawyer would take on a risk that was nearly impossible to overcome.

"I..."

The owner's lips moved. He looked at his old middle-school classmate, then sighed and said nothing more.

He handed Lin Guodong his breakfast, turned away, and silently went back to kneading dough.

Lin Guodong looked over his shoulder at the diners.

They were still furious.

He shook his head, looked away, and left with his tofu pudding and flatbread.

November's air was cold.

Bundled in a thick, bulky coat, Lin Guodong walked along the road, pausing now and then as he turned through several intersections.

Before long, he reached a Taoist temple. He entered the courtyard and stopped outside a guest room, raising a hand to the door.

Creak.

The door swung open.

"You're back?"

A gentle voice came from inside. A graceful middle-aged woman walked toward him and closed the door behind him.

"Mm."

Lin Guodong nodded and set all the breakfast on the table.

"Eat while it's hot."

His wife, Su Xin, glanced at him, then slowly turned her back to him. As she laid out breakfast, she asked, "You're in a bad mood? What happened?"

"Ah."

Lin Guodong didn't try to hide it. He sat down and let out a long sigh.

"It's that case in Li Family Village. You have no idea how much people are talking about it out there."

"At the breakfast stall, the market, the supermarket... On my way back from buying breakfast alone, I heard people discussing it at least five times!"

As the wife of law professor Lin Guodong, Su Xin also worked in the field of law. Naturally, she knew about the case. "What do you think? Perhaps you could contact the local bar association and try taking it on..."

At that, he fell silent.

It was common knowledge that the field of law produced no shortage of depression.

Lin Guodong wanted a better justice system, a more stable society, and happier lives for ordinary people. But reality kept dealing him crushing blows, leaving him lost.

Take marriage, for instance: one of the simplest yet most contentious areas.

In divorce cases, courts first decided whether the marriage had irretrievably broken down. As a result, even when it had, a divorce could be difficult to obtain if one spouse insisted otherwise.

It sounded absurd, didn't it?

But suppose you were a man deceived into marriage. Without that rule, your wife could seek a divorce the very next day, and the court could grant it immediately.

What would await you then? Your assets could be divided in a flash!

So a waiting period was necessary.

That sounded reasonable now, didn't it? Not quite.

Suppose instead you were a woman suffering domestic abuse. You couldn't bear it anymore and wanted a divorce, but that same rule let your husband insist the marriage had not broken down, preventing you from leaving quickly.

Didn't that seem unreasonable too?

Yet the more finely the law tried to distinguish between such cases, the more loopholes it seemed to create instead of closing.

Lin Guodong, an idealist, had lost his way among these double-edged dilemmas that seemed enough to drive a person mad.

So he had moved into the Taoist temple for a few months to regain his peace of mind.

"Forget it."

After a moment's silence, Lin Guodong shook his head.

"I'm a theorist. Taking a case on the strength of my title as a professor at a prestigious university would be unfair to the client."

Su Xin didn't offer the reassurance he might have expected.

The corners of her eyes creased as she gently said to her husband, "So you do remember you're a professor of theory?"

"Yueyue's case seems to involve Li Family Village too. Why not give her some guidance from a theoretical perspective?"

Lin Guodong paused.

He had a daughter named Lin Yue. She, too, had studied law and become a lawyer after graduation.

Recently, she seemed to have taken on a child-custody case involving the victim of the Li Family Village trafficking case. And custody would inevitably involve how Li Erniu's family felt about the defendant after his death...

Looked at that way, Lin Yue must have had her hands full.

She was still young. It was only natural for her to find it difficult.

"But... she hasn't asked me anything these past few days."

Lin Guodong hesitated.

"She only graduated recently," Su Xin said. "Maybe she doesn't want you to see her struggling."

Lin Guodong thought it over and found that reasonable.

"Then I'll give it a try. I'll help however I can."

Having made up his mind, Lin Guodong stood and headed out.

Su Xin smiled as she watched him leave. Then she sat down and began eating her breakfast at a leisurely pace.

The guest room.

Knock, knock, knock.

Lin Guodong knocked on his daughter Lin Yue's door, but no answer came for a long while.

"Is she out?"

He raised an eyebrow, puzzled, then pushed gently with both hands.

The next moment...

Creak.

The door opened.

A simply furnished bedroom lay before him. Lin Yue sat at the desk, absorbed in a book, her face wearing the look of someone questioning everything she knew.

Seeing that his daughter was home, Lin Guodong hesitated.

"What are you doing?"

He walked over and asked gently.

"You've seemed distracted these past two days. What's wrong?"

When he reached her side and saw the book in her hands, his eyebrows rose.

She was reading the Eastern Kingdom's supreme legal text: the Criminal Code!

If he remembered correctly, she had gone out early a couple of mornings ago, then come home and shut herself in her room. She had spent the past several days studying that very book.

And judging by her expression... she had clearly run into a problem she couldn't solve!

"Huh?"

Only then did Lin Yue come back to her senses.

She turned and saw her father, then relaxed. Recalling what Lin Guodong had asked, she hesitated.

Finally, looking as if she were questioning everything she knew, she said, "Dad, I... I've run into a difficult problem. I've been thinking about it for the past two days."

Just as he thought.

She really did have a question!

Lin Guodong smiled and prepared himself to answer it.

His daughter might not have been one of the world's foremost lawyers, but she was a gifted graduate of one of the country's top universities!

Lin Yue was undoubtedly brilliant. If even she had a question...

What sort of problem could it be!?

"It's all right. You can ask me."

Lin Guodong pulled up a chair and sat beside her, speaking softly.

But Lin Yue gave him an unusually strange look. After a pause, she asked, "Can you handle it?"

Lin Guodong paused, then gave a rueful laugh. "If it were anything else, I might not be able to help. But when it comes to law... your dad is absolutely among the best in the entire Eastern Kingdom!"

Lin Guodong sounded confident.

He had the ability and standing to back it up!

He was a law professor at a top university, devoted to academia. He had supervised several doctoral students!

His papers had appeared in internationally respected journals, and countless people cited his work!

He even had some say in proposed revisions to judicial statutes. He was a giant in legal scholarship, right at the top of his field!

How could he fail to answer a student's question?

"Then I'll ask."

Lin Yue spoke hesitantly.

Lin Guodong nodded. "Go ahead."

With that, she took a deep breath.

Lin Yue frowned and fell silent. After a long moment, she said slowly, one word at a time:

"Dad, tell me..."

"Is stealing a child really illegal?"

Lin Guodong: ?

Lin Guodong froze, staring at his daughter.

A question like that wasn't just basic law... even someone who couldn't read knew the answer. How had it come from a Shuimu graduate!?

She had even spent days searching the Criminal Code without finding the answer, then come to ask him, a professor!

Sure enough, the next moment, disbelief spread across Lin Guodong's face. He blurted out:

"Are you delirious with fever!?"

P.S. Please vote with your monthly tickets, QAQ. Traffic's been a little slow; even with several boosts to visibility, I've only gotten 200 bookmarks.

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