Chapter 366: The Premise of Justice

The iron door of the Air-raid Shelter slammed shut behind me, cutting off the smell of blood and gunpowder.

Xiao Zhang did not look back.

He walked along the passage deeper, his steps neither fast nor slow, the hem of his black robe dragging on the floor, producing a rustling sound.

The believers behind him were still kneeling, their foreheads pressed against the cold concrete, no one daring to rise.

At the end of the passage was a pitifully small guardroom: cement walls, an iron‑framed bed, a pull‑cord incandescent bulb. The bulb was broken, leaving only a moldy emergency tube in a corner of the ceiling that emitted a dim green glow.

Xiao Zhang pushed the door open, stepped inside, and pulled it shut with his hand.

He did not sit down, but reached into the depths of his black robe and produced something.

It was small, palm‑sized, made of metal.

The edges were already blackened, the surface stained with dried dark brown—blood, which turns this color after drying; having worked in forensic investigation, he recognized it.

An old police badge.

The national emblem on it was worn smooth, its outline still discernible. Most of the gold paint had peeled away, revealing a dull gray copper base.

Xiao Zhang rubbed the emblem with his thumb.

His fingertip traced back and forth along the raised pattern, over and over.

His eyes changed.

It wasn't a return to the cowardly eyes he once had—those could not come back. Instead, the calm he had felt atop the platform, looking down from above, slipped into a completely different state.

Emptiness.

Utter, bottomless emptiness.

The light in his pupils vanished, like an old well that had been pumped for decades, its water long dried, leaving only the dark, hollow stone walls beneath.

Xiao Zhang's thumb halted.

It stopped on the star at the very center of the emblem.

An unseen hand seized the back of his mind and yanked it sharply backward—dragging him through the Gospel Church gathering, through the night at the Seed entrance, through the morning of his last time donning a police uniform, all the way back to several months ago.

Back then, the sky had not yet collapsed.

Back then, he still feared ghosts.

Several months ago.

East Suburb Chemical Plant.

It was the worst‑air‑quality district in all of Jiang Hai City, without exception.

Just three hundred meters beyond the plant's fence, the smell could be detected—not foul, but an indescribable acrid sting. It burned the throat and eyes; staying too long made the temples throb and the brain ache.

The first time Xiao Zhang accompanied Zhou Weiguo to the site, he crouched beside the discharge outlet and dry‑vomited three times.

Zhou Weiguo handed him a mask.

"Put it on tightly."

Zhou Weiguo's voice matched his chiseled, square‑jawed face—hard, with no nonsense.

Xiao Zhang took the mask, his face smeared with snot and tears, and said, "Team Leader Zhou… this smell is overwhelming; the snail noodles I ate last night are about to come up—"

"Cut the chatter, go in."

The discharge opening was less than a meter in diameter; two grown men had to bend and hunch to barely squeeze in.

Xiao Zhang's cropped hair was coated with yellow‑green crystals precipitated from the pipe wall, and within an hour his police uniform on the back was soaked through by the seeped unknown fluid, clinging to his spine, cold and slick.

They crawled through that discharge pipe for forty minutes.

They brought out seven water samples, three sediment samples, and a piece of plastic hose whose bend was unknown—its label bore a raw‑material batch number that didn't match the plant's reported environmental assessment data.

This was the first day.

There were thirteen more days.

During those fourteen days, Xiao Zhang followed Zhou Weiguo around the chemical plant's six surrounding villages, knocking on more than two hundred doors house to house. The questions were always the same: Has anyone in the family ever had health problems? When did it start? Which hospital was visited? Is the diagnostic report still available?

Most people were unwilling to speak.

Some were afraid—the plant's owner had entrenched himself locally for over a decade, his roots deeper than banyan trees. Others had resigned, having received a compensation payment, signed a confidentiality agreement, and not wanting to stir trouble.

But there were always some who could not be silenced.

Aunt Liu of East Suburb's Third Village had a son diagnosed with leukemia last year. When she fished the diagnosis report out from under her pillow, her hands trembled like a sieve.

"Comrade, my son… my son is only nineteen…"

Xiao Zhang took the crumpled report, flipped it open, and his lips involuntarily pressed together.

Acute myeloid leukemia, M2 type. Diagnosis date: November last year.

The plant's illegal discharge records could be traced back to March of the year before last.

He photographed the report meticulously, saved it into an encrypted file folder, labeled 0078.

The same number, over those fourteen days, he accumulated one hundred twenty‑three of them.

One hundred twenty‑three medical records, forty‑seven death certificates, sixteen autopsy reports.

The over‑limit discharge involved seven carcinogens—including benzene, formaldehyde, dichloromethane—with the highest excess factor reaching three hundred twelve times the limit.

"That boss is truly black‑hearted; what he discharges could poison rats three times over."

Xiao Zhang, cradling his laptop, sat at a folding table of the temporary command post, entering data while muttering. The screen's blue light illuminated his face, the dark circles under his eyes as heavy as if he'd been punched twice.

Zhou Weiguo sat opposite, a thermal cup steeping goji berries, red dates bobbing on the surface.

He said nothing. One hand held the cup, the other flipped through a stack of ledgers—procured from the plant's purchasing department—six volumes, each as thick as half a brick.

Three days later, Zhou Weiguo extracted a complete money‑flow chain from that pile of numbers that resembled celestial scripts.

The gap between raw‑material purchase price and actual procurement cost, after passing through four layers of middlemen and two offshore accounts, ultimately cycled back into a Hong Kong card registered under the chemical plant owner's personal name.

The total discrepancy: twenty‑seven million.

Twenty‑seven million.

Forty-seven lives.

Xiao Zhang calculated that, on average, each life was worth over 574,000 yuan.

It was cheaper than a school‑district house in Jiang Hai City.

He slammed the calculator onto the table, stood up and paced the room three times, then kicked the trash can at the doorway over with his last foot.

"Damn."

Zhou Weiguo didn't even lift his head: "Done kicking? After you kick it, pick the trash back up; we need it tomorrow."

Xiao Zhang crouched on the floor to pick up the trash can, muttering curses.

That night he didn't sleep; at the temporary command post he reviewed the entire evidence chain from start to finish four times, repeatedly verifying each node, and made triple backups of every original document.

He feared missing something.

He feared it wouldn't be solid enough.

Day fifteen.

He and Zhou Weiguo walked together into the City Bureau Senior Executive's office.

The case files filled two file boxes, stacked up to Xiao Zhang's chest. He lifted them himself; they were so heavy his two arms trembled.

The person seated behind the desk, Xiao Zhang couldn't recall the exact title, only that the police badge on his shoulder shone dazzlingly.

That person flipped through the files very quickly.

Too fast.

The first few pages he glanced at symbolically; later he basically pinched the corners with thumb and forefinger and flipped them, a swish‑swish‑swish, no different from fanning Poker Cards.

Xiao Zhang's stomach began to cramp.

A bad premonition leapt from the soles of his feet upward; when it reached his knees he wanted to speak, but Zhou Weiguo pressed his wrist beside him, weakly but clearly signaling: wait.

That person finished flipping.

He closed the files, set them on the desk, and crossed both hands' ten fingers above the files.

"Lao Zhou, thank you for your hard work."

The opening greeting was impeccably courteous, but the words that followed turned as if his face had flipped.

"The evidence chain is incomplete, lacking direct eyewitness testimony. The sampling process for emission data does not meet forensic standards, and the legality of the accounting materials' source is doubtful—"

"Source legality?" Zhou Weiguo's voice was pressed down to a dangerously low pitch, "I reported the search warrant number to you; we followed the proper procedure."

"Procedurally there's no issue, but whether there are flaws in actual execution, we still need an internal assessment."

Assessment.

Xiao Zhang had heard that word many times.

Each time he heard it, the same meaning followed—delay.

Delay until the heat passes, delay until the witness recants, delay until it ends inconclusively.

But he didn't expect that today even the "delay" was omitted.

That person stood up, walked to the metal filing cabinet against the wall, opened the third drawer, and shoved the two boxes of files in untouched.

Clang.

The sound of the drawer closing echoed briefly in the office.

"For this case, the bureau's opinion is to temporarily set it aside. If further action is needed, we will inform you."

Set aside.

Xiao Zhang stared at the tightly closed drawer, a buzzing ringing in his ears.

He and Zhou Weiguo crawled in the sewage pipe for forty minutes. Fourteen days, six villages, over two hundred doors, one hundred twenty‑three numbers.

Set aside.

Zhou Weiguo remained silent.

His hands were in his pockets, unseen whether he clenched a fist, but the muscles at his temples twitched.

The two walked out of the office, passed the Corridor, and entered the elevator. The moment the elevator doors closed, Xiao Zhang spoke: "Team Zhou, I'm going up to report—"

"Report what? Report to whom?"

Zhou Weiguo pressed the button for the -1 level; his voice was low, but each word was clipped precisely.

Xiao Zhang, biting his molars, did not reply.

The elevator arrived.

He still went.

He bypassed levels, drafted documents, leveraged connections to submit them. When Qin Zhixia was around, he didn't have to worry about this; Qin Team had contacts in the system, and under Yu Yin of the Qin Bureau such matters were invariably successful.

Now the Qin Bureau has collapsed, Qin Team has left, and it feels as if the entire public security system's fairness has been withdrawn along with it.

Justice is built on the premise that those in power desire justice.

On the third day after the documents were submitted, a response came.

It wasn't a written reply, but a phone call.

The caller's rank wasn't high, yet his tone was so lofty it could pierce the ceiling.

"Xiao, I heard you've been quite busy lately?"

Xiao Zhang held the phone without speaking.

"It's good for a young person to have drive, but the direction must be right. Some matters aren't for someone at your level to touch; touching them would be bad for you."

"Those people are dead," Xiao Zhang said, "Forty-seven."

The voice on the other end laughed.

That kind of laugh Xiao Zhang would never forget—a laugh that wasn't mocking, not even a sneer, but a genuinely hearty chuckle, as if Xiao Zhang had said something naïvely charming that amused a world‑wise adult.

"Xiao, look at where you stand now, and see how thick the wall before you is. Without the Qin family as before, without the Miss Qin backing you—"

The person paused, his tone carrying a lazy certainty.

"What do you think you are?"

Doo—

The call ended.

Xiao Zhang held his phone, standing in front of the Corridor window; the call‑ended screen stayed lit for five seconds before fading automatically.

Outside the glass window was the nightscape of Jiang Hai City, ten thousand households lit, traffic flowing like a river of cars.

He suddenly thought those lights were terribly dirty.

That night, Zhou Weiguo dragged him to the street stall at the corner of the bureau entrance that sold fried noodles.

The old man ordered two bowls of beef noodles and a bottle of locally produced Erguotou—a five‑yuan‑a‑bottle brew that can set your throat on fire after drinking.

Xiao Zhang's bowl and chopsticks were placed before him, neat as if never used. The noodles were already clumped, yet he didn't take a single bite.

Zhou Weiguo unscrewed the Thermal Cup, pulled a small packet of goji berries from his pocket, carefully poured a handful into it, and stirred with his chopsticks.

Xiao Zhang watched his actions, and his nose suddenly went sour.

It wasn't because of grievance.

It was because the gesture was too ordinary. In a world where everything is abnormal, a fifty‑something veteran cop sitting on a plastic stool at a street stall soaking goji berries is enough to choke one's throat with a lump of hair.

"Have a sip."

Zhou Weiguo unscrewed the bottle of cheap baijiu and poured half a cup for Xiao Zhang. It was a plastic cup, its wall printed with a faded advertisement slogan.

Xiao Zhang lifted it and gulped a big mouthful, coughing hard, tears mixing with snot spilling out together.

Zhou Weiguo waited until he finished coughing, then extended his hand, thick with old calluses, and pressed it onto Xiao Zhang's shoulder.

The pressure was neither light nor heavy.

It wasn't a comforting force, but a pressure that held a person up, preventing them from collapsing.

"Xiao Zhang."

The old man's voice came through the steam of the fried noodles and the spiciness of the baijiu, heavy enough to smash a pit.

"We are police. We are the last shield standing before ordinary people."

Xiao Zhang lowered his head, tears dropping onto the plastic tabletop one by one, quickly evaporated by the steam of the noodle broth.

Zhou Weiguo's hand did not loosen.

"This case, even if we have to peel back a layer—"

The Thermal Cup tipped slightly on the table, a splash of goji‑berry water spilling out, dampening the table edge.

"We also have to investigate to the end."

The stall's light bulb swayed in the wind, the two people's Shadows on the ground flickering, lengthening and shortening.

Xiao Zhang wiped his face with his sleeve, inhaled sharply, and forced the blockage in his throat down hard.