Chapter 50: Heroes Who Cannot Stand in the Light

The farcical dinner at Cloudtop Restaurant finally concluded with Li Cheng in a pitiful, disheveled state.

After Chu Che and Qin Zhixia left, they promptly found a tastefully elegant café nearby.

Soothing jazz floated through the air, tempering the night's chill.

They sat opposite each other, the warm yellow light casting a soft shadow on Qin Zhixia's sharply defined profile, adding a layer of nocturnal tranquility to the striking cool beauty she displayed after shedding her uniform.

She removed the black long coat, wearing only the simple shirt underneath, casually rolling the cuffs to her elbows, revealing a stretch of fair, firm forearm.

She didn't glance at the menu, merely lifted the warm water the server brought and fell silent for a moment.

Then she lifted her head, those ever‑sharp Crimson Phoenix Eyes now fixed on Chu Che with utmost seriousness.

"I'm sorry."

Her voice was crisp and decisive, without any lingering hesitation.

Chu Che's hand, holding the coffee cup, paused mid‑air, a perfectly timed surprise flickering behind his lenses. "Why?"

"For my prior doubts and probes," Qin Zhixia's gaze gave no hint of evasion. "You should have sensed... I once treated you as a suspect; that was unprofessional and... unfair."

Chu Che set the coffee cup down, a gentle curve lifting the corner of his mouth.

The smile was clean and distant, as if it could disperse every cloud hanging over a heart.

"As a police officer, suspicion is your duty," he said softly. "If, faced with such a bizarre case, you made no basic doubt of anyone, I'd be the one worrying about Jiang Hai City's public safety."

He added with a hint of teasing, "But I'm curious, Team Leader Qin, do I count as a hard‑to‑handle suspect?"

The phrase "Team Leader Qin" finally loosened the tight line of Qin Zhixia's mouth.

She shook her head.

"You're too perfect—so perfect that you don't even seem like a criminal."

After those words, they sat in silence for a moment, then looked at each other and smiled.

"Anyway, from now on, don't call me Officer Qin," Qin Zhixia said, looking at him, "Just call me Zhixia."

Chu Che's smile deepened; he faced her, speaking slowly and clearly, "Then you shouldn't call me Dr. Chu either—just use my name."

The two simple names felt like a silent pact, gently lifting the barrier that their roles had erected between them.

The atmosphere relaxed.

Qin Zhixia unconsciously stirred her lemon water with a small spoon, ripples spreading across the surface like the turmoil within her.

"Chu Che," she suddenly began, her voice tinged with a bewilderment she hadn't even noticed herself. "Lately... I've encountered people and events that make me feel everything I once firmly believed in is... starting to wobble."

She didn't mention Ninth Division, nor the death row inmates used as "anchors" and "bait."

Yet that inner struggle and nausea could not be concealed.

"I've always thought that procedure equals justice, and rules are the bottom line. But now someone tells me that for a so‑called 'more important' outcome, any means are permissible, even sacrificing some 'necessary' costs."

Her voice tightened: "I can't accept it, but I... am powerless to resist."

She lifted her head, her gaze landing on Chu Che's calm face.

"Your mother, and everything that happened in the hospital... You've endured so much injustice and darkness, why... can you still be like this now?"

"I mean, how did you keep going? How did you avoid being completely devoured by those filthy things...?"

That was the question she most wanted to ask tonight.

She hoped to find an answer from this man who had faced the Abyss yet still retained a gentle composure.

An answer that could inspire her and sustain her onward journey.

Chu Che didn't answer immediately.

He turned his head toward the window, the city's neon flowing before his eyes like a brilliant river of light.

His profile, bathed in light and shadow, appeared slightly blurred, exuding an indescribable loneliness.

"Persistence?" he repeated softly, a hint of self‑mockery in his tone. "No, I haven't persisted."

"I've also been lost, in pain, and in despair."

His voice was steady, as if recounting a story that didn't involve him.

"When I realized that the medical knowledge I'd spent my life mastering couldn't heal this terminally sick world, and that I was forced to save the scum who deserved damnation; when my exposés brought not justice but suppression and threats; when my mother... died before my eyes because the greed of the powerful..."

"I thought about giving up."

He said it with a light, breezy tone.

Qin Zhixia's heart suddenly tightened.

"At that moment I thought, since this world is so rotten, let it be utterly destroyed." Chu Che turned his head back to Qin Zhixia, his gaze calm yet as deep as a bottomless cold pool.

"But I soon realized that when I abandoned my original convictions, I truly had nothing left."

"At that time, my father regarded me as a murderer of his wife, my colleagues shunned me, and the world I once tried to save abandoned me. Standing on the ruins of having nothing, I instead saw one thing clearly."

"—Because having nothing, I can pour everything in."

"Because I'm expected none, I can become whatever I wish to be."

His voice was soft yet each word rang clear, bearing a penetrating power.

"I've decided I'm no longer that patch‑up 'doctor'."

"I will become a 'shepherd'."

Again, it's that 'shepherd' theory.

But this time, spoken from his mouth, it carried a heartbreaking grandeur and resolve that made the heart race.

The flock is sick, the pasture is rotted. Rather than laboriously distinguishing good sheep from bad, let me set new rules.

I will stand on a higher place, high enough to overlook the whole flock, and then, with my own hands, turn this imperfect world into the shape I envision.

His words hung in the air, and the café still played soothing music.

Qin Zhixia felt her breath freeze.

She looked at the man before her, the doctor who was always gentle and smiling.

At this moment, she finally caught sight of, beneath his perfect exterior, the soul that was scorched by blazing fire, wrapped in ice, lonely and searing.

She understood.

She understood his implication.

He didn't give up; he is pursuing his "justice" in an even more extreme, more fanatical, more thorough way.

Even if it means opposing the world.

Even if he must bear all misunderstanding.

Even if he is shattered to pieces, never to be reborn.

A strong emotion, mingled with sympathy and admiration, instantly seized her heart.

This man, bearing a heavy past beyond her imagination, walks alone on the thorny road to hell, solely to achieve an unattainable ideal.

A hero who cannot stand in the light.

"I…" Qin Zhixia opened her mouth, suddenly feeling that her own confusion and struggle seemed so trivial and pretentious before this man's grand and tragic Awakening.

She recalled the words of Romain Rolland.

— "There is only one kind of heroism in the world: to love life even after seeing its true nature."

She looked at Chu Che, her gaze filled with unprecedented admiration.

"Thank you." she inhaled deeply, "I think I've found the answer."

"I… also want to be like you."

However, Chu Che smiled.

In that smile there was no comfort, but a faint, almost cruel pity.

"No."

"You are not like me."

Qin Zhixia was stunned.

"We can never be the same, Zhixia," Chu Che's address became affectionate, yet his words were like a sharp scalpel, precisely cutting open her most vulnerable spot.

"Have you ever wondered why you can, as you are now, maintain your 'original intention' and 'clarity', and what is the cause?"

He didn't wait for her answer, and gave the answer.

"Because, your father."

Qin Zhixia's pupils suddenly contracted.

"Your sense of justice has always been confident. Your ideals have always had an escape route. The reason you can act decisively without compromising anyone is that in Jiang Hai City, almost no one dares to truly trouble you."

"You despise those who struggle and compromise in the mire of reality, deeming them weak and unprincipled. Yet you never consider that it's not that they don't want to, but that they cannot."

"Your integrity, your purity, rather than being your character, are more like a privilege granted by your family background."

"You enjoy the convenience this privilege gives you to enact your sense of justice, even developing a superiority that 'I can do it, why can't others', and you take it for granted, even… completely unaware."

"How could you and I ever be the same?"

Chu Che's voice remained gentle, yet each word was like a hammer, striking Qin Zhixia's heart hard.

All that she took pride in—her perseverance, her faith, her character…

In this moment, Chu Che mercilessly tore it open, revealing the inner core she had never faced, named "superiority" and "arrogance".

She was stunned.

Her complexion turned slightly pale.

Buzz—buzz—

Just as her mind went blank and her spirit was violently shaken.

The phone she had on the table suddenly began vibrating wildly at an extremely sharp frequency.

It was Xiao Zhang's emergency contact!

Qin Zhixia, dazed, came to herself and mechanically answered the call.

On the other end, Xiao Zhang let out a scream of extreme panic unlike any before.

"Qin Team! Something's wrong! A big incident!"

"Bureau Qin… Bureau Qin, he… he sheltered Qin Yu's murder, and now he has been taken away for investigation!"

"The bureau is now completely blown up!!"

Clack.

The phone slipped from Qin Zhixia's weak hand and fell heavily onto the floor.