Chapter 89

88 A Bandage

「…」

Are you poisoned? I’ve got my head covered—how did you even find me?

Although he’d acquired a decent badge from the female police officer, he’d encountered more than enough awkward moments; Li Ang really didn’t want to face her, so he tugged tighter on his coat collar and gritted his teeth, pretending to keep sleeping.

After a few light pats yielded no response, the female officer considered applying more force, but felt it would be impolite; she hesitated, biting her lip, unsure whether to continue.

At that moment, the female inmate beside her, who had been watching coldly, seemed to sense her intent; she lightly bumped the officer’s shoulder and said flatly:

“Don’t change it. I won’t run.”

「…」

You say you won’t run, so you definitely won’t? A man who claimed nobles were lice in their pants insisted he wasn’t a rebel too!

Though she pitied the woman’s plight, the female officer wasn’t foolish enough to believe a prisoner’s promise; she didn’t stop waking the man who pretended to be asleep—on the contrary, she pressed harder.

After all, disturbing someone’s sleep was merely impolite, but if the prisoner escaped and hurt someone, that was no longer a matter of politeness.

“Sir? Sir? Please wake up!”

“Sir?”

Watching the female officer persistently harass the man beside her despite the boiler’s deafening roar, the female inmate fell silent for a moment, then couldn’t help asking:

“Don’t you believe me? If you think I’m lying, why are you still insisting on investigating the Lyon family based on what I told you?”

“This isn’t about whether I believe you—it’s about me doing my duty.”

After checking the inmate’s condition and realizing her emotions were unstable, the officer turned back, determined to respond seriously amid the boiler’s roar:

“Though my duties are unusual, I’m still a police officer of the Public Security Force. I have a responsibility to do my job and minimize disruption to ordinary citizens’ lives.

So I can’t relax my supervision just because I think you won’t harm anyone, nor can I abandon the investigation because I despise your killings of civilians or fear offending the Lyon family.”

「…」

After listening carefully, the inmate fell silent for a moment, then stared at the officer as if seeing a monster, her eyes full of astonishment as she asked:

“Just because of that?”

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

“Never mind… I didn’t say anything.”

Looking at the bewildered female officer, the inmate suddenly reversed her earlier compliance, her face tinged with mockery:

“Respected Miss Isah, when I first learned your surname, I only had slight suspicions—but now I’m certain.

You must have a deep connection with the new head of the Military Department this year, right? At the very least, you’re a distant relative—perhaps even a direct blood relative?”?!?!

“I guessed right, didn’t I?”

“Heh, I should’ve realized sooner. Only a family like that could raise someone so naive and foolish.”

Watching the female officer’s stunned expression, the inmate—around forty or fifty, her face lined with crow’s feet and sunspots—let out a cold laugh, revealing genuine contempt and derision.

“Respected Miss Isah, you probably don’t understand what happens to those who try to uphold their duty and do what’s ‘right’ here!”

Before the officer could recover from the shock of her family background being exposed, the inmate pressed forward: she pulled her cuffed right hand from beneath her covering garment and jabbed hard at her own chest, speaking in a grim whisper:

“My husband was an investigator in the Military Department’s Preparedness Bureau. Six years ago, just before the War of National Defense broke out, he discovered that Lyon family companies were replacing premium medical cotton with cheap black cotton to produce bandages—bandages that caused severe wound infections.”

After reporting upward several times with no results, and driven by the same reasoning as you, he kept escalating his reports. When he received no feedback and was repeatedly reprimanded, he even wrote a denunciation letter to the then-head of the Military Department. Now, guess what he got?”

“Was he… dismissed?”

“Of course not—he received a great reward!”

Glancing at the stunned officer, the inmate smiled, leaned closer, and whispered coldly over the deafening roar of the boiler:

“The Military Department head received the letter and immediately ordered a full investigation, replacing every defective bandage. He earned praise from top to bottom. My husband, for this ‘merit,’ received his due reward: transferred from Preparedness Bureau to the more important Secret Affairs Bureau. My daughter and I moved into the assigned residence.”

Unfortunately, less than two weeks later, just after my husband finished his handover, the inspector sent down announced that his intelligence files had been massively tampered with—and he was immediately arrested on charges of espionage, interrogated for seven full months in your Secret Investigation Bureau!”

「…」

“Isn’t that interesting?”

Looking at the silent officer, the inmate sneered:

“If you take over files without careful verification, you’re bound to inherit someone else’s traps. But if you verify them thoroughly, you’re suspected of espionage. So from the moment of transfer, no matter what my husband chose, the outcome was always the same.”

And more interesting still—the investigator assigned to probe my husband was his former superior! Because he repeatedly blocked my husband’s proper reports, my husband’s superior was suspended and reassigned—and the very bureau he was reassigned to happened to be the Secret Investigation Bureau tasked with investigating my husband. Heh, isn’t that a coincidence?”

The inmate chuckled softly, though her face held no amusement:

“Fortunately, my husband had both a strong spine and strong luck. After being imprisoned for seven full months, he emerged alive—thin by forty pounds, and with one leg permanently crippled from a ‘misfortune’—without ever confessing.”

But the Military Department had too many affairs to wait for a suspected spy with a limp. His old position had already been filled, and no department would ‘take him in.’ My daughter and I were evicted from our assigned residence long ago.”

“Heh, during the War of National Defense, prices in the capital soared fiftyfold. When he returned, our savings were nearly gone—all we had left were a few silver coins.”

In the end, to ensure my daughter and I could survive—and for the sake of that so-called righteous War of National Defense—he accepted a resettlement stipend and enlisted. Then, because his limp made him slow, he was shot in the other leg.”

The female officer, heart aching, bit her lip, her face pale:

“Then your husband…”

“Dead. From a foolish cripple, he became a dead cripple!”

After calmly describing her husband’s fate, the inmate’s lips curled slightly as she whispered mockingly:

“By the way, there’s something even more interesting here. Do you want to hear it?”

“I…”

“If you don’t object, I’ll assume you do.”

The inmate smiled, rolled up her sleeve slightly, revealing a worn bandage tied around her wrist, stained with dried blood. From its rough stitching, a clump of coarse cotton, hardened black-brown with blood, stubbornly protruded.

“When they carried him home, this bandage was wrapped around his leg—and beneath it lay rotting flesh, oozing yellow pus, teeming with fat white maggots!”

Gently turning her wrist, the inmate gazed at her husband’s relic, her expression calm as she smiled:

“My crippled husband had strong luck—he didn’t die on the battlefield. He crawled back to his position. But in the end, he couldn’t survive the infection.”

And what killed him, ironically, was precisely the cheap bandage made of filthy black cotton that he’d risked everything to report—don’t you find that funny?”