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The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 3
Because of the wound on his leg, Wei Zhao did not take a shower. He wiped himself down with a wet towel instead, and then got into bed. He had not expected to get hurt here; some of the medicinal herbs from his hometown had not been brought along, and there was no way for him to make the wound on his leg heal any faster.
Closing his eyes, Wei Zhao began to practice the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. Though every day he hoped for some breakthrough, still there was not the slightest progress.
Warm sunshine came spilling into the room and fell across Wei Zhao. He stretched himself lazily, opened the window, and let the fresh air wash through.
Another beautiful day. Wei Zhao felt a great anticipation for life; this kind of student life was something he had once dreamed of wanting, and now at last it had come true, and he would treasure it well — who knew, one of these days the young lady might just toss him out and send him packing.
...
In the interrogation room of the Songshan City Police Bureau's criminal investigation division, Qiu Lingshan gazed at the motley crowd of people before her with a look of helplessness, feeling a distinct and thorough sense of futility.
A whole night had passed, and the case had not advanced a single step. Everything they had managed to extract was useless.
The drivers of those black Hyundai business vans bearing the counterfeit plates "Song A74110" had all been picked up, one after another, but every last one of them knew nothing about anything.
At first Qiu Lingshan refused to believe it, but the subsequent investigation into their backgrounds left her bitterly disappointed. They were either laid-off drivers or bus drivers on their days off.
Driving a car with "Song A74110" plates had been purely a job they took from someone else; each had been handed five hundred yuan and told to drive the vehicle to a designated place at a designated time.
None of them had even reached the designated spot before the police caught them. At first they had assumed it was the traffic police, since none of the vehicles had legal paperwork — though it was the high price of five hundred yuan that had made them take the job in the first place.
Only when they learned it was connected to a bank robbery did they realize they had been duped, strung along by criminals. The only thing to be done with these men was to send them to the traffic division and deal with them as ordinary traffic violations; Qiu Lingshan could hardly take her temper out on them.
The night's exhaustion had been wasted effort, and Qiu Lingshan was thoroughly depressed. After all, this was the first time she had been given sole charge of a case and told to solve it on her own; the pressure was only too easy to imagine.
"Captain Song, should we step up the search?" asked Liu Wangli, squadron leader of the first squad under her command.
They had been searching all night without finding any trace of the robbers, and if they kept up this kind of manhunt after daybreak it would certainly interfere with normal public activity, so Qiu Lingshan was very hesitant.
Increasing the search would in practice mean setting up checkpoints on the main roads, stopping passing vehicles and examining the people inside.
"Let me ask Captain Yang." In the end, helpless, Qiu Lingshan put through a call to Yang Huaijun and asked him what should be done in a situation like this.
Sometimes Qiu Lingshan felt she truly was a poor specimen. Yang Huaijun, a captain who had likewise been a soldier transferred to civilian work, possessed an insight a hundred times sharper than hers; whatever case landed in his hands could not escape his meticulous analysis and reasoning, and the truth would soon come to light.
But she... Qiu Lingshan felt there was far, far too much she still had to learn. This post of deputy captain... well, Wei Zhao had been right: it really did look like something she had gotten through backdoor connections.