Chapter 474: You've Got to Be Kidding—Even a Gentleman Has to Watch His Back?

"You had someone search my room?!" Liu Hai demanded loudly.

The veins on his forehead bulged as he glared at Yu Dazhang, his face full of anger.

"Don't get worked up."

Yu Dazhang soothed:

"Search your room? Not quite. I just want to tell you that it's already too late for you to destroy the evidence now."

He really hadn't had anyone search Liu Hai's room.

Out of habit as a police officer, without sufficient evidence he would not conduct a compulsory search of a suspect's residence.

"Are you sure you won't drink?"

Yu Dazhang picked up his glass again:

"If I were you, I'd drink up while I still can. After today, if you want to drink again, it probably won't be so easy."

It looked like he was urging a drink, but in truth every word he spoke now was guiding Liu Hai toward a full confession.

After a brief silence, Liu Hai also picked up his glass.

He took a deep breath, then threw his head back sharply and drained the beer in his cup in one go.

Yu Dazhang didn't drink. Instead he set down his glass, picked up the bottle, and filled another cup for him.

Throughout the whole process, his gaze never left Liu Hai, as though observing his reaction.

None of the three in the room spoke another word.

A moment later, Liu Hai picked up his glass again and once more drained it in one go.

This time, before Yu Dazhang could pour for him, Chen Yang had already beaten him to it and filled the cup.

The two of them knew well in their hearts that Liu Hai was wrestling with himself at this moment.

After another stretch of silence, Liu Hai once again knocked back the liquor in his glass in a single swallow.

After three full beers, a flush rose on his face, but his eyes had grown much clearer.

"You're really so sure there's evidence like what you described in my room?" Liu Hai suddenly asked.

Yu Dazhang shook his head:

"I told you, I don't really understand codes, so I can't be certain."

If he really could be certain, he wouldn't have come to share this drink.

Some things still had to be asked face to face to get to the bottom of them.

"There's one more question."

Liu Hai glanced at Chen Yang, then turned his head back to look at Yu Dazhang:

"Clearly his suspicion is bigger than mine—why did you end up suspecting me in the end?"

His eyes betrayed unwillingness and confusion, and a touch of bitterness as well.

"Remember the last time we drank together?"

Yu Dazhang looked at him seriously:

"Back then, when Chen Yang brought up Professor Ying's gossip, you righteously stood up for her."

"If it were just casual chatter, what you did wouldn't be a problem."

"But that time you'd drunk quite a lot of both baijiu and beer. Even drunk, you still tried hard to stay sober, doing your best to play the upright gentleman."

A note of mockery in his tone, Yu Dazhang went on:

"Being a person to the extent you are—it's just too fake."

"You think you've done it seamlessly, leaving no gaps, but in my eyes every move you make and every word you say is full of flaws and loopholes."

He was actually exaggerating.

At the time they were drinking, he hadn't noticed either; it was only when he recalled it afterward that he realized.

But it didn't matter—saying it now, no one would notice these details.

And upon hearing these words, Liu Hai's expression turned strange, as if to say: You've got to be kidding—even a gentleman has to watch his back?

Chen Yang beside him also wore a look of disbelief.

Last time they drank, he had argued with Liu Hai until they were both red in the face. At the time he hadn't thought anything of it, but looking back now, it really wasn't normal.

They'd drunk to that state, yet Liu Hai had somehow grown more and more proper the more he drank.

In short, it wasn't scientific.

"Originally, before this afternoon, I only had suspicions about you."

Seeing Liu Hai's eyes go blank and his expression a bit dazed, Yu Dazhang pressed his advantage:

"But when the gunshot rang out, everyone else's faces showed nothing but blankness or panic—only you were forcing yourself to stay calm, though the fear in your eyes couldn't be hidden."

If he only looked at Liu Hai alone, he really might not have been able to be sure.

But compared with the people around him, it was far too obvious.

Having said this much, Yu Dazhang stopped beating around the bush and got straight to the point:

"Since I've already locked onto you, whether there's evidence or not doesn't matter anymore. Do you really think you can fool the National Security Bureau? 'Believe me, they have plenty of ways to make you tell the truth.'"

"Even special-trained agents can't hold out, let alone you."

He paused briefly, as if giving Liu Hai some time to think over his words, then continued:

"Besides, you've already given yourself away."

"If I'm not mistaken, the codebook in your room is a storybook."

"That way it's both hidden and can achieve infinite non-repetition, because every character has many different encodings."

Yu Dazhang had once heard people say that the encryption method of a Chinese codebook is the most complex.

The two sides secretly agree on a book, then translate the Chinese characters into numbers by page, line, and character position before transmitting them outward.

Because the same character will appear many times in a storybook.

So there is simply no pattern to speak of.

Take the character "I" for example.

As long as it's a storybook, it will definitely appear many times.

So the same character can be encoded differently each time.

"You—how do you know?"

At this moment, Liu Hai was completely dumbfounded, and the look he gave Yu Dazhang was like looking at a monster:

"You even know what I was thinking."

Was it really worth making such a fuss… Yu Dazhang felt this kind of deduction was no challenge at all.

It was still that old saying: cleverness overreaches itself.

If Liu Hai had simply written Chinese characters on the note, he really would have had no way to trace it.

Just find any printer, print the message to be passed along on paper—that way even if it was discovered, no one would know who did it.

But Liu Hai simply had to play a trick and came up with a numeric cipher.

He might have thought this would increase the security of the message transmission, but in reality, this became his greatest blunder.

Because this way, the codebook in his room became the most direct piece of evidence.

They do say it's not good to be too clever—one careless moment and you end up outsmarting yourself.

"Stop struggling."

Yu Dazhang advised:

"I respect you as a man of learning, which is why I thought to leave you some dignity. If I handed you straight over to the Ministry of State Security, you should be very clear on what the consequences would be."

He really wasn't bluffing Liu Hai.

As long as the codebook was found in Liu Hai's room and matched up with the cipher on the note.

By then, what awaited him would be the Ministry of State Security's "warm hospitality."

Why not just do it directly?

Because Yu Dazhang had his own habits when handling cases.

Handing it straight to the Ministry of State Security would, for him, be taking a shortcut—and there are no shortcuts in handling cases.

This time, Liu Hai thought for a full ten minutes.

Yu Dazhang wasn't anxious either; he knew Liu Hai would think it through.

"Am I going to die?"

Liu Hai suddenly raised his head and asked this.

"I'm not sure either." Yu Dazhang said honestly:

"What you've done should count as espionage. I haven't dealt with this before, so it's hard for me to judge."

Seeing Liu Hai staring at him with hollow eyes, Yu Dazhang added:

"But then again, judging from my experience as a police officer, no matter what the crime, the final sentence depends on the specific circumstances."

"If there are meritorious acts, the punishment can definitely be reduced."

He was still guiding Liu Hai to confess and accept leniency.

At times like this, a person's mind is often in disarray, and add alcohol on top of that, and thinking becomes sluggish too.

In Yu Dazhang's view, this was the perfect moment to strike while the iron was hot.

"We've known each other, after a fashion. With me, you still have room to turn back. But once the Ministry of State Security takes over…"

This time, before he could finish, Liu Hai cut in:

"I have one condition."

"Go ahead." Yu Dazhang agreed at once:

"As long as it's not excessive, I'll do my best to satisfy it."

(End of chapter)