Return to Li Family Village

"Bastard... Bastard, you bastard!"

"I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!!!"

Inside the Yang Teng Law Firm.

Without warning or any apparent reason, Chen Wei lunged at Sun Hao like a wild beast.

Sun Hao had been about to ask how the case had gone and whether Xu De had lost.

But the next instant, his vision went dark.

Bam!

A fist the size of a sandbag slammed into his eye socket. Stars burst across his vision, and he staggered backward.

"Ugh..."

Sun Hao let out a choked cry and toppled to the floor.

Chen Wei did not stop. Eyes bloodshot, he straddled Sun Hao and rained punches down with both hands.

"You set me up together, didn't you!"

"First you said I'd only need the testimony, then you made sure no one would believe it!"

"Just an ordinary college student fresh out of school, huh!!!"

He ground his teeth, punctuating every sentence with another punch.

He was a lawyer. In theory, he could not resort to violence.

But then again...

Even if he beat Sun Hao senseless, Sun Hao would never dare call the police!

Whether the private tip-off or the trap Sun Hao had laid came to light, the Justice Bureau would make Sun Hao pay dearly. The Jinmao Law Firm would get rid of that parasite too!!!

Sun Hao wanted to beg for mercy.

He had no idea why he was being beaten, but he knew that if he did not beg soon, he would probably spend at least half a month in the hospital.

There was one problem.

Chen Wei's second punch had landed square on his mouth. His teeth had nearly been knocked out, and the pain made it hard to open his mouth, let alone plead!

All he could do was shield his head with both hands and whimper.

"Stop... Stop hitting me!"

Unfortunately.

Seeing him like that did nothing to cool Chen Wei's anger. It only burned hotter.

"Fuck! You even came here to rub it in my face right after court adjourned! Sun Hao, and to think I considered you a classmate!"

That finally snapped the stunned coworkers beside them out of it, and they hurried over to break up the fight.

"Stop, Lawyer Chen! Please stop!"

"Can't you sit down and talk this through?"

"..."

Several people rushed to restrain Chen Wei and pull the two apart.

"Let go of me! I'm going to beat this bastard to death today!"

Chen Wei kept struggling. Even a three-year-old could have heard the fury in his voice.

Once he had been dragged away.

Sun Hao staggered to his feet. Bruises had appeared on his face, and blood still trickled from the corner of his mouth. He touched it and hissed through clenched teeth at the pain.

He looked up at Chen Wei in disbelief.

"Have you lost your mind!?"

Chen Wei struggled furiously. "You know damn well what you did!"

What had he done?

He had not done anything!

Confusion spread across Sun Hao's face. He was about to ask, but when he saw Chen Wei nearly break free of the others, he shuddered and fled.

In the blink of an eye, he was out the front door.

When Chen Wei saw him disappear.

His anger finally eased a little. His face remained dark and grim.

The lawyers around him released him with lingering fear, then looked at him in confusion.

"Lawyer Chen, what... what happened?"

Chen Wei flushed with anger and embarrassment.

"Questions, questions! What the hell are you asking me for?"

"Do you have no eyes? Can't you read tomorrow's morning paper!?"

The thought alone nearly broke him.

Barring a miracle, all of Greenwood City would hear about Xu De's performance in the case by tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, Chen Wei, who had made the fatal mistake, would be the clown in the background...

A clown known throughout Greenwood City!

Reputation mattered more than anything to a lawyer. Once the morning paper came out, Chen Wei's career would take a serious hit.

After all, what client would pay a fortune to hire a lawyer who had made a mistake and lost so badly?

So when he said he wanted to kill Sun Hao, he was not joking.

He truly wanted Sun Hao dead!

"Tomorrow's morning paper?"

In the lobby.

The lawyers stared at Chen Wei's retreating back after he left them with that one remark, exchanging bewildered looks.

It was only a morning paper... How could it make him abandon all dignity?

They were not the only ones wondering. Sun Hao, his face bruised and swollen, thought the same thing.

"The morning paper? What morning paper?"

Outside the law firm's front entrance, Sun Hao had not gone far. He frowned and racked his brain for a reason he had been beaten.

He felt aggrieved. He had taken a beating for no reason, and he could not even call the police...

"What the hell has gotten into Chen Wei?"

"The morning paper will just report on Wang Qiang's case. It's not like something unexpected happened, is it?"

"Impossible..."

Blood still seeped from Sun Hao's mouth as he muttered, "That lawyer's just an ordinary college student. How could he pull off something like that?"

"Besides, the prosecutor was Hu Guang, and Zhang Bingxin presided over the trial... Impossible. Absolutely impossible!"

He kept talking as though trying to hypnotize himself.

Even though he did not believe it.

He made a point of remembering the morning paper. He would read it first thing tomorrow to find out what had happened.

"Wait."

As if something had just occurred to him, Sun Hao stopped short.

"Chen Wei's back, so... where's Xu De?"

Where was Xu De?

Naturally, he was carrying out his plan: move a child from one place to another without anyone noticing.

In plain terms, he was stealing a child!

Eight thirty that evening.

Night had fallen. Darkness covered the sky, with a few scattered stars shining through.

The silent wilderness was so dark one could not see a hand in front of one's face. An oppressive stillness hung over the bumpy dirt road, with low burial mounds on either side. When the wind blew, it sounded like restless ghosts crying out.

Then.

Vroom!

On the narrow path, a van rattled along, its dim yellow headlights cutting through the silence.

There were four people inside.

Xu De was driving, Lin Yue sat in the passenger seat, another Lin Yue sat in the back, and there was also a young man.

The young man looked to be in his early twenties. He had a buzz cut, stood around six feet tall, and had a sturdy build and ordinary features. He looked a little slow on the uptake.

At that moment.

The man watched the dark shapes of the burial mounds flash past outside. He could not help turning to Xu De in the driver's seat.

"You're a lawyer?"

"I'm a lawyer," Xu De replied, keeping his foot on the accelerator.

"You're really a lawyer?" the man asked again.

Xu De glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded. "The real thing."

The man looked down at the van and the assortment of sticks by his feet.

Then he looked out at the pitch-black night and finally blurted out:

"Why do I feel like what we're about to do might be illegal?"

He knew Lin Yue. They were not particularly close, but they could be called friends.

When he heard there was paid work that came with a meal, he had eagerly come along.

Only...

Once he got in the van, the job had started to seem a little off!

At that.

Xu De showed no reaction. He glanced at the man in the rearview mirror again while steering along the bumpy road, then asked:

"You graduated from a top-tier university?"

The man looked confident and thumped his chest. "Absolutely. I graduated from a Project 985 university!"

"What score did you get on the entrance exam?" Xu De raised an eyebrow.

To be honest, the man's manner and the way he talked... did not quite match the education Lin Yue had described.

"550," Wang Chao said.

Xu De: ?

"550?"

Xu De almost slammed on the brakes. He looked up and met the man's eyes in the rearview mirror, faintly stunned.

Given when the man had taken the college entrance exam, that score would only have gotten him into an ordinary first-tier university.

How could he have graduated from a Project 985 university?

"Heh. If I'd performed like I usually did, I'd only have scored enough for a second-tier university."

The man grew a little embarrassed. He scratched his head and said sheepishly:

"But the day before the exam, I had a dream. I dreamed I was taking the test. Then I woke up and went to the real exam, and hey, some of the questions were exactly like the ones in my dream!"

"Just like that, my score jumped from around 500 to 550. I scraped into a top first-tier university."

Xu De nodded, then frowned. "That still doesn't add up."

Xu De himself had fought tooth and nail to get into Yanda University with almost no resources, nearly dying on the way to school. Naturally, he paid close attention to exam scores.

"That's true."

"But right after I enrolled, guess what happened?"

The man clapped his hands with a crisp smack.

"The university got upgraded! It passed its evaluation and officially joined Project 211!"

"I figured I was already there, and Project 211 wasn't bad, so I stayed. But who'd have thought that a few years later, when I was almost ready to graduate..."

"Hey, the university got upgraded again!"

"It became one of the first key universities in Project 985!"

The man thumped his chest again.

"So I became a graduate of a Project 985 university!"

Xu De: ...

In the passenger seat, Lin Yue covered her face, at a loss for words.

A graduate of one of the first Project 985 universities whose usual score was 500...

The man suddenly asked, "Oh, right. I'm Wang Chao. What's your name, man?"

"Just call me Xu De."

Xu De took a deep breath.

He hid his emotions, his brow furrowing. He did not continue discussing it with Wang Chao. Silence settled over the van, broken only by the engine's rumble, proof that time was still passing.

In the passenger seat, Lin Yue's expression turned serious. Her brow creased, and her unfocused gaze made it clear she was deep in thought.

What were they going to do?

Steal the child back.

But... would stealing a child be that easy?

Li Family Village was every bit as dangerous as a dragon's lair. The people in that damned place did not even fear the police. The whole village acted as though it was beyond the reach of the law!

If they were caught during the attempt... they would be in serious trouble.

That was why Xu De needed more than his status as the lawyer on the civil case. He needed another man to help.

At the thought, Lin Yue grew tense, her breathing quickening.

She felt uneasy.

After all, she was risking her career and her safety to accompany a lawyer she barely knew.

But when she thought of Wang Mei and Xu Hong... Lin Yue's brow tightened, and her resolve gradually hardened.

Her thoughts were still racing.

Then, through the haze...

Lin Yue felt herself stumble, her body pitching forward beyond her control.

Screech!

The piercing sound of brakes tore through the deathly silence.

"What happened!?" Lin Yue snapped back to her senses and asked.

Xu De sat behind the wheel. Without answering her directly, he stared ahead and said,

"We're here."

Here... where?

Everyone in the car froze, then looked up together.

On the mountainside in the distance, countless buildings loomed as dark silhouettes. There was no electricity to speak of, and at this hour, not a single light shone. It looked like a city of the dead. Wind blew through the mouth of an alley, but there was no sign of life.

This place was...

Li Family Village!