Chapter 64: What Are You Hiding

An hour later, Yu Dazhang walked out of the doctor's office in a daze, holding various test slips in his hand.

Steroid-induced obesity.

That was the diagnosis he had just heard from the doctor.

Endocrine disruption caused by excessive steroid use, leading to hormonal imbalance.

Yu Dazhang didn't understand the specifics, but he got the general idea.

In short, his rolls of fat were the result of overusing steroid medication.

Walking out of the hospital, Yu Dazhang's mind was filled with the doctor's words.

There were two pieces of good news.

One: since he'd been off the medication for some time, his endocrine disorder would clear up soon.

Two: with this kind of obesity, after some conditioning and careful diet, it would be easy to return to his former proportions.

In other words, easy to gain, easy to lose.

The bad news: money spent, and not a single useful piece of information gained.

All he'd picked up was one more medical term; everything else was still a blank.

Why had he been taking steroids in the first place?

With a perfectly healthy body, who in their right mind would take that stuff for no reason?

Yu Dazhang had originally planned to get his amnesia checked while he was at it, but the moment the nurse at the triage desk said he'd need to register with the psychiatric department, he dropped the idea on the spot.

Forget it—amnesia isn't something pills can fix.

If people found out he'd gone to the psychiatric department, it would inevitably cause misunderstandings.

A guy this fat becoming a criminal investigator is already absurd enough; add a mental illness on top and it would be even more…

Wait!!

Yu Dazhang suddenly realized something.

He stood by the roadside, watching the passing traffic, a thought flashing through his mind.

Right—him becoming a criminal investigator was unreasonable in itself!

Also, he'd gone missing at the end of April last year, before he'd even graduated, so how come after his rebirth he already had a diploma?

I see… A bitter, incredulous smile spread across Yu Dazhang's face.

So his own parents had been kept in the dark too.

Earlier he'd been so focused on the idea that his mother was hiding something from him that when he went to the school, he only verified what Zhou Zizhe had said.

But now it seemed…

The real problem was the police academy!

A student goes missing while enrolled—and a school wouldn't even bother to look into something that big?

And he'd clearly gone missing before graduation, yet the school still issued him a diploma. Does that make sense?

What really struck Yu Dazhang as suspicious was that the school had actually let a three-hundred-pound guy like him into the police force.

No need to think twice—his parents were ordinary people, they didn't have that kind of pull.

The only ones capable of pulling this off were the police academy.

If that's the case…

Yu Dazhang's eyes went wider and wider.

He suddenly reached out and stopped a man walking past him, snatched the half-smoked cigarette from the man's hand, and took a hard drag.

After a fit of coughing, he stuck the cigarette back into the man's hand.

Under the man's murderous glare, Yu Dazhang strode off.

"What a lunatic," the man cursed behind him.

Ignoring the cursing behind him, Yu Dazhang walked to the roadside and hailed a car.

While there was still time, he had to get to the police academy as fast as possible.

Once in the taxi, he quickly rattled off the academy's address.

Watching the streetscape flash past the window, Yu Dazhang kept replaying the scene of questioning the teachers at school that day.

He could now be certain that his disappearance was definitely connected to the police academy.

Or rather, the academy bore unavoidable responsibility for his disappearance—otherwise it wouldn't have issued him a diploma afterward and arranged a job for him.

That looked more like damage control.

Put another way… hush money.

To find out the specifics, the teachers were the only lead.

That day he'd met with three teachers in total… Yu Dazhang went through them one by one in his memory.

The moment they saw him, all three wore the same expression: disbelief. Yes, disbelief.

At the time he'd assumed it was because his body had changed so dramatically that they were caught off guard.

But now it seemed there was another possibility…

They hadn't expected him to show up again!

Twenty minutes later, Yu Dazhang was standing at the gates of the police academy.

Think it through, think it through…

What if the teachers refuse to talk?

Since they didn't say anything last time, they certainly wouldn't bring it up on their own this time.

Ask them straight out?

He couldn't bring himself to open his mouth.

Teacher, may I ask if my disappearance has something to do with our school... The thought only circled once in Yu Dazhang's mind before he dismissed it.

Asking that would be pointless — if they were guarding against him, how could they possibly answer such a question?

Besides, asking that would be the same as directly revealing the purpose of his visit.

Please... col... lect... this... book...!

He couldn't do something that stupid.

Then he'd go find a teacher who might tell him the truth.

Of all the teachers at the police academy, the only one who had the best relationship with him was his homeroom teacher, Wei Chuang.

Last time he came, he hadn't seen him, because he was in a rush to gather information and had casually asked three other teachers.

So this time he'd go straight to him.

With a target in mind, Yu Dazhang strode into the campus and headed straight for the teaching building.

After all, he had spent three years at the school in his previous life, so he was quite familiar with the teachers' offices. He quickly arrived at the faculty office where Wei Chuang was.

After knocking and entering, he scanned the room. Wei Chuang wasn't there, but he saw a new face at his desk.

Yu Dazhang was taken aback.

In his memory, he had never seen this teacher before.

Could it be that this person had been transferred in after he graduated?

"Excuse me, where did Teacher Wei Chuang go? I'm his student." Yu Dazhang asked politely.

That teacher seemed to have never seen such a fat person. He first looked Yu Dazhang up and down before saying:

"I've heard of him. He's not here anymore. I heard he was transferred away last year."

Transferred away?

Impossible. In his previous life, he had returned to the police academy many times after graduating, and in his memory Wei Chuang had always been teaching at the school and had never left.

"What was he transferred for?" Yu Dazhang continued to ask.

That teacher thought for a moment, then looked left and right. From his manner, it seemed he wasn't at liberty to say.

It was now close to the end of school day, and the teachers were all in their own classrooms. At this moment, only the two of them were in the room.

Finally, after confirming no one else was around, that teacher began to speak:

"It's said he committed a very serious mistake. He almost got stripped of his police uniform, but in the end the leadership strongly protected him and transferred him elsewhere."

This left Yu Dazhang dumbfounded.

There was nothing like this in his previous life.

"Do you know what mistake he made?" Yu Dazhang even used honorifics now.

The more he looked at this teacher, the more he liked him. To gather information, you had to find someone who liked to gossip.

Just now, as soon as the matter of Wei Chuang came up, he noticed this teacher's eyes had become more spirited than before.

Did he think police officers didn't gossip?

Then he'd be very wrong.

Wherever there are people, there is the jianghu, and wherever there is jianghu, there will definitely be rumors.

That's human nature, and has nothing to do with what profession you're in.

"That I don't know."

A look of disappointment flashed in that teacher's eyes. From the look of it, he had probably tried to find out, but hadn't gotten an answer.

Those teachers' mouths are pretty tight... Yu Dazhang figured the school had issued a gag order to the teachers.

Don't let them talk about this privately, or else such-and-such would happen...

Threatening-style gag orders work best on teachers.

The fact that Wei Chuang was transferred was no longer a secret at the school, and making mistakes was normal — as long as the specific details of the mistake weren't leaked, it was fine.

Just as Yu Dazhang was thinking of switching to another teacher to ask, that teacher spoke again:

"But I did hear one version. It's said his mistake was because of a student."

(End of this chapter)