This Is Immoral!

Lin Guodong felt as if the sky had fallen.

He knew his daughter was conscientious, responsible, and fiercely independent. When she encountered a problem, she liked to solve it herself, and she wouldn't stop until she found an answer.

That determination was a good thing.

But she couldn't obsess over something until it gave her a fever!

Was stealing a child illegal? Could that question really have come from Lin Yue, his daughter who excelled in both conduct and academics?

"No, Dad. I'm serious."

Lin Yue took a deep breath, uncertainty flickering in her eyes.

What Xu De had told her at the law firm a few days earlier had shaken her.

She had tried to find a flaw in his argument in the Criminal Code, but after days of searching, she had discovered... it really did seem legal!

"Sweetheart, do you actually have a fever?"

Worried, Lin Guodong even felt her forehead, but her temperature was normal.

Lin Yue shook her head and pushed his hand away. After a moment's thought, she said,

"Dad."

"Say a lawyer stole a child to fulfill a client's request... would that be illegal?"

At that,

Lin Guodong still had no idea what she was getting at, but he followed her reasoning and replied,

"Of course it would."

"Abducting a child for personal gain absolutely constitutes child trafficking."

That was basic law. He needed only to recall the relevant provisions to answer.

But the moment he finished speaking,

Lin Yue asked another question.

"What if the client is the child's birth mother?"

The person asking for the child to be taken was the child's mother?

Lin Guodong paused. He rubbed his chin, hesitated briefly, then answered.

"That... would still be illegal. In civil law, it would infringe on the other party's custody rights."

"In criminal law, it could constitute unlawful detention, forcible seizure, and affray."

As though she had been waiting for him to finish,

Lin Yue immediately pressed on.

"What if the child's father is dead, and the mother is the only surviving parent? What if the child is merely staying with people who are close relatives in name!?"

"Under those circumstances, would taking the child away... be illegal?"

Lin Guodong: ?

"Wait... hold on."

Lin Guodong froze. Her rapid-fire questions had caught him completely off guard, and his thoughts churned.

The father was dead? Then... the mother held custody?

No, if she had custody, why on earth would she need to steal her own child!?

Wait...

Suddenly,

Lin Guodong's eyes widened as something clicked. He looked up at Lin Yue in shock.

"Yueyue, you're talking about Wang Mei's case!?"

His cry echoed around the small bedroom, his face full of disbelief.

A dead father, a child living with close relatives, and only the mother alive—wasn't that Wang Mei's custody case, the one so deeply entangled with the Li Family Village case!?

And his daughter was the lawyer handling it!

"That's the case."

Lin Yue nodded without denying it.

At her answer, Lin Guodong stared at her, eyes wide.

Wasn't his daughter an idealist, just like him? Since when had she entertained such a wicked idea as stealing a child!?

At the thought,

Lin Guodong could no longer sit still. He shot to his feet and said urgently,

"Yueyue, I know the case is difficult. I know bringing the child back won't be easy."

"But... but just because enforcement is difficult doesn't mean we can steal a child! We absolutely can't do that!"

Lin Yue shook her head, sighed, and pressed him again.

"Dad, answer me first. Would taking the child away in this situation be illegal?"

Lin Guodong opened his mouth to say yes.

But the words stuck in his throat. He couldn't get them out.

He knew Wang Mei's case. The child's father was dead, so Wang Mei alone held custody. As for the so-called grandparents...

"But... the court still has to rule on who gets custody before..."

Lin Guodong hesitantly tried to object, but Lin Yue cut him off before he could finish.

"The court has already ruled. Wang Mei won."

Lin Yue helpfully added,

"And the child's birth mother would go along. The lawyer wouldn't go alone."

"Dad."

"Would it be illegal?"

Lin Guodong opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again.

His face flushed as thoughts raced through his mind.

Would it be illegal?

With both custody and guardianship rights in hand, the child legally belonged with Wang Mei. Calling it theft was a stretch... it was more like a little game between mother and child!

And what about the family whose rights were supposedly infringed?

No. They had no rights.

Given the conditions Lin Yue had laid out... as long as Wang Mei and the lawyer weren't going there to assault anyone, simply taking the child away carried no risk!

Not under civil or criminal law!

"Th-this... this..."

Lin Guodong's face grew redder, but he couldn't get another word out.

This was wrong. It was wrong.

This wasn't how the justice system worked!

If she wanted the child, she should spend a year fighting the lawsuit, then argue with the other side for months after winning. Then she should wait several more months for the compliance period to expire. After the other side failed to comply for two years, she could ask the police and court to enforce the ruling. Then, after waiting another few months for the enforcement application to go through, she could finally get the child back!

But the court had only just issued its ruling, and she didn't even want to wait out the compliance period...

She was just going to take the child outright!!!

And somehow, she really had found a whole pile of legal loopholes!

Damn it, that wasn't what judicial procedure and statutes were for!!!

"No..."

Face still red, Lin Guodong looked at his daughter as if she were a stranger. His chest rose and fell sharply.

"Who put this idea in your head!?"

Lin Yue didn't answer. She simply handed him the documents Xu De had prepared concerning the plan's legality.

She had asked Xu De about it, too. To put her mind at ease, he had said she could have someone verify his reasoning, provided she didn't disclose any confidential information.

So her father was free to read them.

Rustle!

Lin Guodong snatched the papers from her, making them crackle.

His eyes went straight to the documents. But when he read what was written there...

His eyes flew wide, and he practically pressed his face against the black print on the white pages.

The documents said much the same thing Lin Yue had just told him.

Only in far greater detail!

They cited legal authorities and analyzed the original statutory language as strictly as possible to show that taking the child would violate no law.

They even devoted more than half a page to listing evidence that Li Youcai and Liu Cui were the ones breaking the law!

By the time he finished reading...

Lin Guodong: ?

He stared, stunned. As a leading figure in legal scholarship, he had never had a document leave him feeling like this.

Shock.

Shock unlike anything he had ever felt!

The beliefs he had held for decades faced an unprecedented challenge. His entire worldview was shaking!

He stood there, reading the documents over and over from top to bottom, searching desperately for a flaw.

A long while passed.

Lin Yue could bear it no longer. Seated in her chair, she looked up at him and asked cautiously,

"Dad."

Lin Guodong came back to himself, though not entirely. He looked at his daughter with bewildered eyes.

"Hm?"

Lin Yue asked, "Would it be illegal?"

Lin Guodong: ...

Lin Guodong was stumped again. Looking into her earnest eyes, he struggled for a long moment before saying,

"It's immoral!"

Lin Yue raised an eyebrow and asked skeptically, "So, would it be illegal?"

"It violates professional ethics!"

Lin Guodong repeated himself loudly, his face turning even redder.

Stop asking whether it's illegal. It's immoral!

But that also meant...

"You can't find anything illegal about it, can you?" Lin Yue suddenly asked.

Lin Guodong fell silent. He had nothing to say.

"It really isn't illegal!?"

Lin Yue was astonished. She had already suspected as much,

but hearing Lin Guodong left speechless still shocked her.

Then she remembered Xu De's other devastating argument—that Wang Qiang had been unarmed and had bravely stepped in to protect an armed police officer—and the corner of her mouth twitched.

The case would go to trial in two days.

With a lawyer like that in Greenwood City, the local prosecutors were in for a treat.

Lin Yue almost laughed. She could already picture the courtroom.

With the question of legality settled,

Lin Yue seemed much more lively. She stood and said brightly,

"All right, go have dinner. I'm going to change."

With that, she ushered Lin Guodong out.

The door shut with a click.

But outside, Lin Guodong remained rooted to the spot, unable to recover.

His face was shaken, his eyes dazed. Beneath the bewilderment lay shock, and beneath that, a trace of horror.

He looked as though his soul had left his body.

Lin Guodong didn't even know when he had returned to the dining room or sat down at the table!

"Guodong, what's on your mind? You look completely out of it."

Beside the table,

his wife, Su Xin, watched him with a puzzled expression. He had been like this ever since returning from their daughter's room.

Lin Guodong regained a little clarity.

He looked at his wife and parted his lips.

Then this leading figure in the nation's legal community, law professor at a top university, and towering authority in academia asked a question from the depths of his soul.

"Tell me..."

"Is stealing a child illegal?"

Su Xin: ?

"Are you delirious with fever!?"