Chapter 44: As lonely as snow
What followed was neither thrilling nor bloody. The summer day was dim, with weather that promised a passing shower that night.
Leaves rustled down from the unevenly spaced plane trees, spinning to the ground.
Zhao Lijun kicked Li Jianyang to the ground. Li still tried to struggle, but four or five officers rushed him and pinned his limbs down. Zhao Lijun planted a foot on his back and pressed a pistol to his head, and he finally went completely still.
At that moment, Zhao Lijun turned Li's head toward him, secretly alarmed. Five men had nearly failed to hold him down just now, which showed how formidable this "Martial Arts World expert" was. In a one-on-one fight, Zhao Lijun would not have dared claim certain victory over him. They might have been evenly matched. In modern society, however, true strength often lay not in individual fighting prowess, but in the power to turn the tide of events.
The sports school students and enforcers Li Jianyang had trained had never dreamed this day would come. Faced with police who were "playing for keeps," they all crouched down with their hands over their heads amid the surrounding red and blue lights.
Zhao Chengyan and his two close friends, Qian Long and Liang Xiao, looked no different from the other thugs now, crouching on the ground without daring to move. This show of force was overwhelming. Even the "worldly-wise" enforcers who had accompanied Li Jianyang in and out of police units and police stations many times fell silent with fear, clutching their heads and murmuring in trembling voices, "Don't shoot, don't shoot."
The streams of students farther away and pedestrians around the block stopped. When they learned that the man being arrested was Li Jianyang, principal of