[11/21, 16:27, Guibei Mountain, Nanyi City]
Today, the weather still doesn’t cooperate.
For nearly half a month, Nanyi City has been experiencing continuous rain, with each autumn rain feeling colder than the last. These past two days have been rare rain-free moments, with the air carrying a mixture of grass and soil scents, swept onto faces by the cold west wind, and piercing the nose with a refreshing coolness.
With the clear and crisp autumn weather, it’s a perfect time for an arrest. That’s what Ding Ju from the team said before the mission. By 4 PM, dark clouds were rolling in from the horizon, and the sky overhead seemed to have a hole poked in it, as the Milky Way poured out and rain cascaded down in a dense and spectacular curtain. The team was thoroughly soaked, and upon reaching their hiding spot, they took shelter from the rain in an abandoned farmhouse. Ding Ju started cursing again.
“What the hell is this weather? Wasn’t it supposed to rain after six?” He peeked out the makeshift curtain to look outside. “We can’t even go out, how are we supposed to act?”
Li Changsheng leaned against the mud wall, one foot on a broken wooden stool, wringing out his pants: “How can you trust the weather forecast? You’re too naive, Ding Dog.”
“Hey, hey, hey, watch your mouth! Call me ‘Dog Lord’!” Ding Ju feigned anger, playfully clenching his fists, “Watch out for Dog Lord’s wrath!”
“Oh, your moves have upgraded. Last time it was the Tibetan Mastiff Fist.” A veteran team member, Shao Shiqing, was fiddling with his gun.
“Dog Lord is amazing. I’ve seen his training manual, with ultimate evolution.”
The small shack echoed with light laughter. Teasing Ding Ju had become the team’s essential stress relief activity. This young guy loved to clown around and shared his nickname on his first day on the criminal investigation team. Within six months, even the janitors at the bureau knew of the “Wolfdog of Team One.”
In this brief moment of relaxation, only one person sat by the window, meticulously watching the tile-roofed house a few meters away. His expression was stern, his thin lips pressed into a straight line, and his sharp eyes focused on the faint, warm yellow light in the rain, ignoring the laughter inside the room.
“…Yi Shi, Yi Shi!”
A hand clapped on his shoulder, and Yi Shi seemed to snap out of it, his brows lifting slightly: “What’s up?”
“Can you change spots? You’re right under a crack.” Ding Ju’s gaze fell on the young man’s thin right shoulder, where raindrops were falling rapidly from a crack above, landing directly on his soaked blue uniform. The high-polyester fabric couldn’t absorb any more water, and round droplets kept rolling down his shoulder.
“No problem.” Yi Shi didn’t even look, his body seemingly rooted to the window frame, unmoving.
Ding Ju swallowed his remaining words, seeing he didn’t want to respond, he pursed his lips and backed off. Li Changsheng quietly beckoned the young wolfdog over, telling him not to take it to heart. Yi Shi was just like that, quiet to the point of being somewhat peculiar and solitary. He’d been at the city bureau for six years, always working alone, without a single “friend” around.
Yi Shi’s eyes remained glued to the small tile-roofed house ten meters away. It was an ordinary village house, but it was about to welcome a ruthless and violent criminal suspect—the main perpetrator of the “10.30 Major Explosion Case,” Pang Daozi. His real name was Pang Nengshui, 43 years old, a native of Nanyi.
He had been sentenced to eight years for armed robbery and was released last June. After reintegrating into society, he assembled a criminal gang within a year and planned a shocking major case. That large explosion caused several casualties, and Pang Daozi’s gang took hostages and fled, continuously killing innocent hostages and dumping their bodies in busy streets to intimidate. For a while, the serene and historically rich Jiangnan region was thrown into panic by these ruthless criminals.
The Nanyi police established a special task force, concentrating police forces for a thorough search, and laid a network across the area, especially around the homes of the suspects’ relatives, which were under constant surveillance by plainclothes officers. Two days ago, the police received a tip-off that Pang Daozi had returned to Nanyi to see his terminally ill mother one last time.
The tile-roofed house Yi Shi was watching was Pang Daozi’s home. Teams one and two were lying in wait on either side, ready to pounce as soon as he showed up.
“It’s this late and still raining so hard. Do you think he won’t come tonight?”
“His uncle said the old lady only has a couple of days left. If he doesn’t hurry, he won’t make it in time.”
“He probably won’t make it. The old lady isn’t even in the house.”
Upon receiving the tip, the investigation team captain, Yu Xue, had Pang Daozi’s uncle take the old lady away to avoid her getting hurt during the operation. To prevent arousing Pang Daozi’s suspicion, his uncle was asked to visit daily, bringing meals and genuinely appearing to care for the dying woman.
A flash of lightning split the dark sky, illuminating the vast land. Yi Shi suddenly looked up to see a burly figure emerging from the fields through the rain, a black hooded raincoat covering his face, heading towards the tile-roofed house.
He stopped at the door, glanced around, and banged on it forcefully: “Mom! Mom!”
“Action!”
Before Yi Shi could speak, Shao Shiqing had already jumped up, and Li Changsheng grabbed the walkie-talkie, notifying the second team: “Attention, attention! The snake is out of the hole!”
Everyone immediately tensed up and dashed into the pouring rain. The man was still calling for his mother to open the door when two teams suddenly rushed out from both sides of the field. Realizing the situation was dire, he turned and ran into the field, leaving deep footprints in the muddy ground with his rubber shoes.
Beams from flashlights danced and flickered with the running. The fastest runner in the team was the wolfdog Ding Ju, who led the charge, shouting for the suspect to surrender or risk being shot.
Yi Shi was at the back. As soon as he rushed out of the farmhouse, the pelting rain hit him hard, masking the surrounding sounds. Just as he stepped into the field, his keen hearing picked up a faint creaking sound. He immediately turned back and looked at the small, tile-roofed house.
The door was open.
Yi Shi turned back and headed towards it. Before reaching the door, he heard the clear sounds of a fight inside, with furniture clattering. He walked in to find a burly northern man being subdued, his hands twisted behind his back, a foot pressed against his knee, and his whole body pinned against a broken wooden table, unable to move.
The man who had subdued him had clean-cut black short hair, sharp and stern features, and intensely dark eyes that seemed to pierce through everything.
“Who the hell are you?! Sneaking around like a coward, let go of me!” The northern man cursed through gritted teeth.
The man ignored the coarse insults, his gaze fixed on Yi Shi, his tightly pressed lips slightly curving up.
“Long time no see.”
*
The torrential rain continued, and the roof of the tile-roofed house, long in disrepair, dripped water inside. The dripping sound echoed from the broken blue-rimmed bowl on the table.
Yi Shi scrutinized him, his gaze traveling from his sneakers up his casual clothes, finally stopping at his face. After searching his memory, he confirmed he had no recollection of him.
He had never seen him before.
Yi Shi took out handcuffs from his back waist, walked over, and grabbed the tangled hair of the northeastern man, frowning—this was not Pang Daozi, but Zhao Chenghu.
Zhao Chenghu was also a major suspect in the case, a sworn brother of Pang Daozi. Both had criminal records and had served time in the same prison, sharing a life-and-death bond. Why was Zhao Chenghu here? Even if they wanted to lure the police away, Zhao Chenghu should have been the bait, allowing Pang Daozi to see his mother one last time.
The walkie-talkie crackled with Ding Ju’s angry voice: “We’ve caught someone, but it’s not Pang Daozi! It’s a villager paid to do the job!”
“Got it,” Yi Shi replied calmly as he handcuffed Zhao Chenghu, “Bring him back. We have Zhao Chenghu here.”
After securing Zhao Chenghu’s hands, Yi Shi yanked him off the table. Zhao Chenghu, kneeling on the ground, ate a mouthful of mud and glared fiercely at Yi Shi with his triangular eyes: “I’ll skin you damn cops alive one day!”
Yi Shi’s gaze was icy as he kicked him, making Zhao Chenghu groan in pain and shut up.
The man witnessed all this and said slowly, “You haven’t changed.”
Yi Shi turned his head, locking eyes with the man and staring silently. He had naturally narrow, almond-shaped eyes with slightly upturned corners. His inherently gentle gaze was rendered cold and murderous by his dark pupils.
“Do we know each other?” Yi Shi asked.
The man smiled and said, “You will remember me.”
An inexplicable answer.
The sound of rapid footsteps followed, and two teams rushed into the small tile-roofed house, with Ding Ju leading, panting: “People, people…”
Yi Shi pointed to the corner where Zhao Chenghu was curled up.
“What a trick, having an innocent villager pretend to be Pang Daozi, but in the end, it wasn’t him. So, even sworn brothers can substitute as filial sons?”
“Exactly, what a heartless guy. But catching Zhao Chenghu for now is enough to report back.” Shao Shiqing teased Yi Shi, “Xiao Yi, you’ve done a great job this time. Zhao Chenghu has a lot of info.”
His gaze shifted to the side: “And this guy is…?”
Yi Shi shook his head, indicating he didn’t know him but suggesting taking him back to the station together since he caught him.
Li Changsheng walked over, taking a quick glance and concluding: “This guy is a good person; you can tell he’s full of righteousness!”
Colleagues arrived to gather evidence in the small tile-roofed house. Xiao Zhang called out, “Brother Yi,” and Yi Shi motioned for them to be thorough, not to miss any crucial clues, and to bring back everything they could collect.
The law enforcement recording device captured everything clearly, including how Zhao Chenghu was escorted down the mountain. They trudged up the mountain against the wind and down against the rain. The narrow, muddy path allowed only one person to pass at a time, making the journey careful and challenging—a true test of hardship.
Li Changsheng, escorting Zhao Chenghu in the front, occasionally looked back and asked, “Hey? Where’s that brave citizen who helped catch the thief? Did you see him?”
At his words, Yi Shi grabbed a tree trunk and climbed up the slope, discovering the man who should have been at the back of the group was gone.
“Hey, where did he go? Doesn’t he want the reward for catching a suspect?”
“Such high moral standards, doing good deeds without leaving a name, a modern-day Lei Feng.”
“Or maybe it’s internal strife, and they threw Zhao Chenghu out as a sacrifice?”
“Let’s interrogate Zhao Chenghu overnight, maybe we’ll get unexpected results.”
Yi Shi’s brow furrowed, and Shao Shiqing noticed: “Xiao Yi, what’s wrong?”
“They’re not together. Zhao Chenghu didn’t recognize that man when he was caught.”
But it seemed he knew me.
Yi Shi turned back. The tile-roofed house still glowed with a dim light, looking from afar like a bright eye on the dark mountain. After flickering a few times, it went out, as if the mountain god had closed its eyes in the wind and rain.
