Chapter 367: The Price of Seeking Justice

Three days later.

Zhou Weiguo said only five words on the phone: "Someone is willing to talk."

When Xiao Zhang sprang up from his chair, he knocked over the instant coffee on the table; the black liquid spilled over half of the laptop. He didn't have time to wipe it, grabbed his coat, and rushed out.

The meeting place was roughly at the village entrance of Fifth Village in the eastern suburbs, at a small shop.

The person was bundled up tightly, mask covering most of his face, cap brim pressed down to his brow. When he entered, his leg trembled; after sitting, he clasped his hands together, his nails digging white marks into the back of his hand.

Xiao Zhang held out a cup of hot water.

He didn't take it.

"I handle wastewater treatment at the factory." His voice muffled behind the mask, indistinct: "When discharging... I know exactly what was mixed in."

Xiao Zhang's spine straightened.

"What about the evidence?" Zhou Weiguo asked.

He fumbled inside his down jacket for a while, then pulled out a thumb-sized USB drive. Black plastic casing, worn shiny, warmed by body heat.

"I've copied three years of data. The true ratios for each batch and each discharge, photos of the original log sheets, and... several segments of warehouse surveillance."

He placed the USB drive on the table; at the instant he released his grip, his fingers trembled violently.

"Is it enough?"

Zhou Weiguo picked up the USB drive, turned it over in his hands, then slipped it into his inner shirt pocket.

"Enough."

The person finally took the cup of hot water. He choked on a sip, coughed for a long while, and his eye sockets turned red.

"Officer Zhou, my wife also tested positive. Thyroid, the doctor says it's still early stage... but my daughter is only three, I'm afraid she might also..."

He didn't finish.

Zhou Weiguo patted his shoulder. As that hand, thick with old calluses, pressed down, the man in his thirties finally couldn't hold back, lowered his head, and his shoulders shuddered.

As they walked out of the small shop, the sky was overcast, and the wind carried the chemical zone's distinctive pungent smell into their nostrils.

Xiao Zhang followed behind Zhou Weiguo, his steps so fast he was almost jogging.

"Captain Zhou, we've got this locked down, right? With the raw data plus the surveillance footage, they can't possibly claim the evidence chain is incomplete—"

"Don't get too excited yet." Zhou Weiguo opened the car door, slid into the driver's seat. The thermal cup was lodged in the console, goji berries and red dates floating on the water surface, bobbing twice.

"First return to the bureau, transfer via the secure channel."

The car started.

Xiao Zhang sat in the passenger seat, his grip on the seatbelt slick with sweat. His mind began running through the procedure: the raw data would be verified by the appraisal center, the surveillance footage would have key frames extracted for timestamp comparison, adding to the previously accumulated 123 medical records and 47 death certificates......

This time, it was enough.

They had waited for this day for almost two months.

The car drove out of the village onto the suburban expressway.

Zhou Weiguo drove slowly, at 60 yards, left hand on the steering wheel, right hand resting on the gear shift. The car radio played the traffic station's real-time road condition report; the female announcer's voice was clear and bright, reporting which intersection ahead was congested.

Everything was quite normal.

It couldn't be more normal.

Fourteen minutes later, the car exited the expressway and turned into the urban area.

A traffic light.

An intersection.

Westbound straight, green light, countdown showing twenty-two seconds left.

Zhou Weiguo's car smoothly entered the center of the intersection.

Xiao Zhang's gaze fell on his phone screen; he was composing a message to Qin Zhixia, wanting to tell her the good news. He typed a few characters, then deleted them, feeling the wording wasn't cautious enough, and rephrased.

It was just as he deleted the text for the third time and began retyping that a black shadow flashed in his peripheral vision.

That black shadow came from the right, moving so fast it didn't seem like it was on a city road.

At the moment Xiao Zhang looked up, he saw it clearly: a heavy dump truck, no license plate, its front fender splattered with dried mud.

A red light.

It ran the red light.

100 yards.

Xiao Zhang later recalled this scene countless times, each memory freezing at the same point—he didn't even have time to shout "Captain Zhou."

The sound vanished. The world vanished.

All that remained was the deafening roar of metal being crushed and torn, glass shards flying everywhere, the scorching heat of the airbag exploding against his face, and the sensation of his body being squeezed and folded within the deforming cabin.

He could grasp onto nothing.

Xiao Zhang was dragged out of the passenger seat by passersby.

The deformed door wouldn't open; three men pried with a crowbar for over ten minutes before creating a gap. He lay curled in the crushed cabin, his left arm hanging at an unnatural angle, his face covered in blood and glass shards, impossible to tell which were wounds and which were burns from the airbag.

He felt no pain.

His head roared, as if a thousand bees were hammering inside his skull.

After being dragged out, he lay on the ground, knees and palms pressing on shattered glass, crawling toward the driver's seat.

The driver's seat no longer existed.

To be precise, the entire left half of the front end was gone. The dump truck's bumper cut in at a forty-five-degree angle from the front left, shearing off the A-pillar, steering wheel, instrument panel, and driver's seat together with the person sitting there, grinding them into the engine bay.

On the ground lay engine oil, coolant, and gasoline.

And blood.

These fluids mixed together, pooling on the asphalt into a dark brown, viscous sheet that gleamed in the midday sun.

Xiao Zhang crawled to the edge of that pool and knelt in it.

He saw Zhou Weiguo's right hand.

Only the right hand.

On the wrist was that old mechanical watch, the dial shattered, the hands stopped at 11:47. The fingers still held the posture of gripping something, with shards of glass embedded in the gaps.

Two feet away from that hand on the ground lay a thermal cup.

The lid flew off, and goji berries and red dates were scattered along the way.

Xiao Zhang picked up the thermal cup.

The cup wall still retained warmth.

The ambulance arrived.

The fire truck arrived.

Traffic police, patrol officers, onlookers, and passersby holding up their phones to film—more and more people surged forward, surrounding the scene three layers deep inside and three layers outside.

Some were crying, some were cursing, some were on the phone, and some were describing to the camera how horrific the accident was, their voices tinged with excitement.

The dump truck driver fled. The vehicle also had false plates. Only after retrieving the intersection surveillance did they discover that the truck had begun accelerating from outside the Third Ring Road, running every red light all the way, its direction locked onto the same lane.

It wasn't an accident.

Xiao Zhang clung to the thermal cup, kneeling in a pool of blood mixed with oil, from noon until the sun slanted westward.

A colleague came to pull him away, but he shook them off.

Someone else came to pull him, and he shook them off again.

The third time it was the forensic doctor, who crouched down and said softly, "Xiao Zhang, the body... needs to be taken away for autopsy."

Only then did Xiao Zhang realize he had been trembling all along. It wasn't from cold; it was as if a tightly wound string had snapped, and his whole body shuddered uncontrollably.

He opened his mouth; his lips were covered in blood scabs, stuck together and painful to pull apart.

"USB flash drive."

His throat emitted a hoarse, almost inhuman sound.

"In Captain Zhou's shirt pocket... there's a USB flash drive..."

The forensic doctor stared for two seconds, then turned to search.

He searched for a long time.

Finally the forensic doctor stood up, his expression worse than Xiao Zhang's.

"The shirt pocket was crushed. Its contents... have fused with the vehicle's structure and can't be separated. Or perhaps someone took it."

Xiao Zhang lowered his head to look at his knees kneeling in the blood pool, and let out a faint laugh.

That laugh sounded worse than crying.

The next morning he appeared at the City Bureau. His left arm was in a cast, his face bore three pieces of gauze, his eyeballs were filled with burst blood vessels, and he exuded the smell of disinfectant.

He went to find the leader.

He was stopped.

He wanted to submit materials by bypassing the chain of command.

He was stopped again.

He tried to contact the Provincial Department and the Central authorities, requesting to file a case on the grounds of "intentional homicide of public security officers."

In the internal corridor awaited him two inspectors, their expressions businesslike, even tinged with a subtle sympathy.

"Comrade Xiao Zhang, after preliminary verification by the investigation team, you and Zhou Weiguo, during the investigation of the East Suburb Chemical Plant case, have committed multiple violations of investigative procedures, including but not limited to——"

The inspector unfolded a document.

Xiao Zhang stared at the red seal on the document, a buzzing in his ears.

"... According to the relevant regulations, you are hereby suspended and prohibited from leaving the province......"

The opposite side continued reading. Every word was standard official phrasing, enunciated clearly, at a moderate pace.

Xiao Zhang didn't listen.

He was looking at the inspector's shoulder rank insignia. The uniform, shoulder boards, and chest number badge were the same as Zhou Weiguo's.

Except that Zhou Weiguo's uniform is now soaking in an evidence bag in the forensic lab, the cut fabric clotted with blackened blood.

"Please cooperate and hand over your police ID and work credentials."

The inspector extended his hand.

Xiao Zhang slowly pulled out his credentials from his pocket. His thumb rubbed the cover twice.

Then he handed them over.

After years on the force, the last semblance of dignity was taken away by a hand wearing white gloves.

Going home.

This was the only thing Xiao Zhang could think of.

On the bus, by the window seat, Xiao Zhang pressed his forehead against the glass as the bus swayed.

As the bus slowed over an intersection, it jolted; his head knocked against the window frame, making a dull thud. The older woman beside him glanced at him sideways, not daring to speak.

He needed to go back to see his parents and sister. Even just sharing a meal with them would be nice.

His phone rang seven or eight times—calls from former colleagues and reporters. He rejected them all.

The last call came from an unknown number with a local area code.

He hesitated three seconds, then answered.

"Officer Xiao—ah, no, Mr. Xiao." The voice on the other end was unfamiliar yet overly familiar, familiar to the point of being nauseating.

"I heard you've been wronged lately? How big a deal is it? People ought to look forward, don't you agree? Don't keep stirring up the chemical plant affair—you're just one person, you can't make anything happen."

Xiao Zhang said nothing.

"Our boss said he greatly admires your courage. But courage, if misplaced, becomes recklessness."

He smiled.

The phone was hung up.

But those words, like the echo of a nightmare, repeatedly rolled over his eardrums.

When he arrived home, it was already dark.

The old family building, six stories, no elevator. The motion‑sensor lights in the hallway had been broken for two years without repair, so one had to feel the handrail to go upstairs. The smell of peeling wall paint, the aroma of braised pork drifting from a neighbor's house, the scent of the old cat at Uncle Wang's fourth‑floor home that always yowled at midnight—these were all smells he had known since childhood.

Mom was stir‑frying in the kitchen; when she heard the door chime, she stuck her head out, saw the gauze on his face and the plaster on his arm, and the wok spatula clanged to the floor.

Dad stood up from the sofa, and his reading glasses slipped down to his nose tip.

Sister Xiao Xue burst out of the room, eighteen, having just received a university acceptance letter, her ponytail swinging exactly as it had when she was a child.

"Brother, what's wrong?! Brother, your face—"

"It's nothing." He tugged at the corner of his mouth, pulling at the wound beneath the gauze, wincing in pain. "I fell."

Mom's tears fell on the spot. She asked nothing, turned and went back to the kitchen to add two more dishes.

Dad asked nothing either. Holding a teacup, he sat back on the sofa, secretly took off his reading glasses to wipe them. The lenses weren't dirty; he was wiping his eye sockets.

Xiao Xue clutched his right hand, chattering about how the university dorms were assigned, where the roommates were from, and whether they needed to cut their hair for military training.

At 2:17 a. m., the phone rang.

The caller ID showed an unsaved number.

"Hello?"

On the other end, a woman's sobbing and shouting, intermittent, interspersed with violent coughing.

"Xiao... Xiao Zhang, hurry... your building is on fire! Your mom and dad are still inside!!"

He sprang up barefoot, kicking the nightstand over. The phone flew, smashed against the wall, cracking a fissure in the screen; the call stayed connected, and the scream on the other end pierced out through the crack.

He rushed to the window—

Red.

His eyes were filled with red.

His family lived on the fourth floor; he now stood in his rented apartment—two streets away, he could see the towering flames shooting up from the direction of the family building.

Thick smoke wrapped the sparks and rose into the night sky, swallowing all the stars overhead.

How he had run there, he later could not recall at all. Barefoot on the asphalt, the road soaked with the night's chill, icy enough to ache his bones. He didn't remember whether he wore a shirt, whether he ran a red light, or if any car had nearly hit him.

He only remembered the fire.

When he arrived, he finally saw the whole scene.

The entire building, six stories, was burning starting from the unit door on the First Floor.

The fire surged upward through the hallway. The fire escape—a passage the developer had cut corners on—was completely blocked due to shoddy construction, leaving no way out.

The fire engine hadn't arrived yet.

Xiao Zhang lunged to the unit door, both hands gripping the iron door and pulling outward. The door wouldn't budge. The iron door was scorching hot. The instant his palm touched it, his skin fused with the metal, and when he tore it away, a layer of flesh came off, revealing bright red tender meat underneath.

He didn't stop.

He shifted position and kept prying. All ten fingertips' pads were burnt to a ruin, the Nail caps lifted, blood and bodily fluid mixing and dripping down, the heat conducted through the door turning them into white vapor.

The leftmost window on the fourth floor was still lit. Not by light, but by fire.

The window glass was shattered.

He heard a sound.

His mother's voice.

It was shrill, so shrill it warped, unrecognizable from its original timbre. She cried out twice before the thick smoke choked her back, turning into a wrenching cough.

Xiao Xue's voice.

"Bro—bro—bro, are you there—"

Eighteen, just having received her university acceptance, Xiao Xue's ponytail swung exactly as it had when she was a child.

Her voice came down from the fourth floor, clearly so close, yet a whole burning building stood between.

A nonhuman roar erupted from Xiao Zhang's throat.

He swung the fire extinguisher—left by some unknown person on the roadside—at the iron door. One strike, two, ten, twenty. The extinguisher's base dented, and the iron door acquired ring after ring of pits, but the lock remained intact.

The sound from the fourth floor grew fainter.

First, Mom stopped calling.

Then Dad.

Finally Xiao Xue.

The last syllable Xiao Xue shouted was choked off by the thick smoke, only half a sound emerging.

"Bro—"

And then nothing.

When the fire engine arrived, the fourth‑floor window was already flinging out orange‑red tongues of flame.

Xiao Zhang knelt before the unit door.

All ten fingers were a mush of bloodied flesh, the finger bones exposed, whitened by the firelight.

There were no tears on his face. They had dried. The fire had sucked all the moisture from his body.

Later he learned the blaze had been arson.

The purpose—yes, to give him a warning.

He hadn't expected the building's shoddy quality to actually trap and kill people inside.

Three days later.

Morgue.

Xiao Zhang alone pushed open the stainless-steel door.

Inside, the temperature was a dozen degrees lower than outside, and the air conditioning poured in through the vent, flooding the unbandaged wounds on his fingers. Ten cheap gauze strips bought at a convenience store were wrapped around his fingers, and the blood and tissue fluid that seeped out dyed the gauze deep brown, emitting a sweet, metallic odor.

Three stainless-steel dissection tables.

Three corpses.

They were covered with white cloth. The forensic doctor had warned him in advance to brace himself mentally for identification, saying the burns covered over ninety percent of the body surface at fourth-degree severity.

In plain language, that means—burned to charcoal.

Xiao Zhang lifted the white cloth.

One, two, three.

He didn't vomit.

He stood there and stared for a long time.

The three things before him had nothing to do with the parents and Xiaoxue he remembered. They were black, curled together, mouths open, fingers clenched, skin and muscle tissue contracted by the heat into a fixed posture known as the "boxer's stance."

The forensic doctor said this was muscle contraction caused by heat coagulation and did not reflect the victims' condition in life.

Xiao Zhang knew he was lying.

He had been a homicide detective and had seen fire‑death scenes. This posture is left by a person's final struggle in a blaze: the arms are raised to shield against the fire, and the mouth is open because they are shouting.

He knew exactly who they were shouting at.

On the evidence table beside them lay Zhou Weiguo's relics.

A shattered mechanical watch.

An old police badge stained with blood.

A dented Thermal Cup, still containing dried, hardened goji berry residue.

Xiao Zhang picked up the old badge.

His thumb rubbed the national emblem pattern on it, back and forth, again and again.

The morgue's fluorescent tubes hissed overhead, and the white light poured down, making the stainless-steel tabletop gleam like snow.

Under that lighting, he thought of many things.

He recalled fourteen days, six villages, over two hundred doors, and one hundred twenty‑three numbers.

He pictured Zhou Weiguo sitting on a plastic stool at a roadside stall, soaking goji berries.

He remembered the trembling voice of the chemical‑plant employee during the handoff, whose little girl was only three.

He thought of the person who, when the investigation was shelved, shuffled the case files with a motion like flipping Poker Cards.

He recalled the laugh on the phone that he would never forget—a laugh that was not mocking or sardonic, but genuinely amusing.

"What do you think you are?"

A police officer.

He had once believed he was a police officer.

After being infected by Qin Zhixia, he even felt the word 'police' carried a certain weight—like a shield, a bottom line, the final layer standing before ordinary people.

But a shield can't stop a dump truck.

It also can't stop a few barrels of gasoline.

The case files bought with forty‑seven lives could be shoved into a metal cabinet and locked. The evidence fought for with one's life could be crushed together with a chassis and written off. The fourteen‑day investigation could be erased with the two characters "suspended" on a single sheet of official paper.

Zhou Weiguo said, "We are police, the last shield."

"Zhou, you're gone, the shield is shattered."

"After the shield shatters, what about the people behind it?"

"No one will take care of them."

"No one ever has."

The system can't control it. The law can't control it. Procedure can't control it. You, me, him, her—anyone in uniform standing inside the system—cannot control it.

Because those who are supposed to oversee you are the murderers.

Xiao Zhang slipped the old badge into his pocket, moving lightly and carefully, afraid of bruising or damaging it.

He re‑covered the three corpses with the white cloth, one by one, tucking the corners neatly.

Then he walked out of the morgue.

The Corridor was long, two of the fluorescent tubes were broken, leaving a dark gap in the middle. He stepped into that darkness and emerged from the other end.

When he emerged, his eyes had changed.

Not the swollen red of crying, nor the angry blood vessels.

They were empty.

There was nothing left.

All the things he had accumulated from childhood to adulthood—kindness, passion, belief in justice, hope in the system, admiration and loyalty to Qin Team—were all burned clean by that fire.

Not even ash remained.

Justice in this world cannot be obtained by simply being a police officer.

He couldn't even protect his own family—wearing that uniform instead became a rope that bound his hands to the procedure.

The rope burned through.

Now he is nothing. Not a police officer, not a son, not a brother.

Nothing at all.

But he is crystal clear.

Clearer than ever before.

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

But what if power doesn't want justice?

Then only a force as absolute as power, an absolute terror, can bring justice.

He stood at the mortuary doorway for a while and glanced up at the sky.

The moon was, surprisingly, red.

The scarlet moon hanging in the night sky shone brighter than any full moon in his memory. The red light poured down, covering his blood‑stained gauze bandages, just like the color of the flames that surged from the window of the relatives' building that night.

In his pocket, the old police badge pressed against his thigh still carried the chill of the mortuary's cold storage.

He did not cry. He also did not smile.

He simply walked forward.

He stepped into the street shrouded in red moonlight, walking deeper and deeper until his silhouette was utterly devoured by the dense night.