Associate Professor Xue invited the two into the house and began making tea.
In this era, instant tea powder that dissolves in three seconds dominated the mainstream market.
Real tea leaves had become a rare luxury, a refined indulgence with value but little market.
The junior officer accompanying Lin Qin had been temporarily assigned to “White Shield” headquarters from the local precinct. He had never seen real tea leaves in his life and was watching Associate Professor Xue’s graceful, deliberate tea-making process with wide-eyed fascination.
By contrast, Lin Qin appeared composed and worldly.
He accepted the tea and took a hot sip.
Soon after, a subtle sweetness returned to his tongue.
Lin Qin knew that the way a person made tea reflected their mindset.
From the moment Associate Professor Xue took the tea cake off the shelf, Lin Qin had been observing this middle-aged man.
His movements were unhurried, and the tea was of excellent quality—clear signs of a calm and steady heart.
Their arrival hadn’t caused Associate Professor Xue any visible panic or nervousness.
Of course, it could also be that he simply had an exceptionally strong psyche.
After making a quick assessment of the situation, Lin Qin remarked, “Very good tea.”
His young assistant, who had gulped down half a cup like chewing cow cud, hadn’t tasted anything special but followed Lin Qin’s lead and nodded with restraint.
Associate Professor Xue sat down on the sofa, his hands clasped before him. “Officer Lin, you know tea?”
Lin Qin replied, “A little.”
He looked down at his bandaged knee. “My father liked Oriental Beauty tea. He once wrote articles for a publishing house for six months without pay, just to receive ten taels of Oriental Beauty in return.”
“…He told me that just one sip could wash away the loneliness and fatigue of countless late nights.”
The assistant stole a glance at Lin Qin.
This temporary superior of his had, in just a few days, won over the hearts of these young officers—including his own.
Lin Qin wasn’t intimidated by authority or pressure. He dared to investigate what others wouldn’t. He assigned the slackers who wanted to avoid trouble to relaxed desk jobs, and put the eager young officers on the front lines.
His personnel decisions had left both sides satisfied.
And when higher-ups subtly hinted that he should stop focusing so much on Charlemagne, Lin Qin obediently shifted course, focusing solely on investigating the poisoning case, never directly involving Charlemagne.
Yet over the past few days, the young officer had gradually realized that while Lin Qin’s investigations appeared unrelated to Charlemagne, they were in fact closely connected.
…For example, they had found this elegant Associate Professor Xue.
The young officer admired Lin Qin and had imagined that he came from a disciplined, perhaps police or engineering family.
He hadn’t expected Lin Qin’s father to be a romantic literary figure.
Lin Qin and Associate Professor Xue struck up a conversation over tea.
Just as the atmosphere reached a pleasant harmony, Lin Qin gently, without warning, asked, “Do you remember what you were doing on September 30?”
Associate Professor Xue, still caught in the last harmless topic, was momentarily stunned.
Lin Qin’s eyes were covered with bandages. He could see others, but no one could read him in return. That kind of uncertainty made people uneasy.
…Uncertainty breeds fear.
Under that ambiguous gaze, Associate Professor Xue lowered his head and rubbed the warm tea cup in his hands. He didn’t look flustered.
But he didn’t answer right away either.
Just as he was about to speak, Lin Qin spoke again, right on cue: “It’s less than two weeks ago. Is that a difficult question to answer?”
His tone remained gentle, free from harshness. Even his probing sounded pleasant.
Still, despite holding a warm teacup, Associate Professor Xue felt a faint sweat on his back.
—Ning Zhuo’s warning was proving to be quite valid.
When Associate Professor Xue had undergone facial reconstruction at “Haina” and was about to sever ties with Ning Zhuo, Ning Zhuo had told him, “Sooner or later, someone from White Shield might come looking for you.”
Associate Professor Xue had replied politely, “Don’t worry. No matter what they do to me, I won’t talk.”
But Ning Zhuo had only shaken his head.
He said, “If someone from White Shield comes looking for you, it’ll be a half-blind man.”
“…He doesn’t show his hand, but every word is a blade. One sentence can peel three layers off you. Be extremely careful.”
Now, Associate Professor Xue was experiencing the sharpness of that gentle knife firsthand.
It truly lived up to the reputation.
With an apologetic smile, he said, “September 30… that’s the end of the month, right? Around the end of September and the beginning of October, I wasn’t home.”
“Where were you?”
“Getting surgery,” said Associate Professor Xue, taking another warm sip of tea. “I had facial injuries.”
According to the investigative material Lin Qin had gathered, there was indeed a report of Associate Professor Xue sustaining facial burns in a lab accident.
Raskin had undergone facial reconstruction surgery.
And so had Associate Professor Xue.
Raskin died from poisoning.
Associate Professor Xue was one of the few in Silver Hammer City with the expertise to make poisons independently.
There were a few too many coincidences—it was certainly worth looking into.
Lin Qin continued, “Which hospital did you have the surgery at?”
Associate Professor Xue seemed like a methodical person. He put on a thoughtful expression, then pressed his lips together.
Lin Qin asked, “Is it inconvenient to disclose?”
Unexpectedly, Associate Professor Xue replied, “Yes. For specific reasons, I really can’t say.”
The young officer perked up, ready to press on this anomaly and sternly question the professor, but Lin Qin asked calmly, “Was it done at an unlicensed clinic?”
Associate Professor Xue smiled slightly. “Yes. You call it a ‘black clinic’, but they’re very skilled. Sorry, I can’t give their information to the police. That would be wrong.”
Hearing this, the young officer suddenly had a headache.
The “black market” was a catch-all term—fluid, alive, and teeming with all sorts of people.
Entering the black market was like a maple leaf falling into a forest of maples—impossible to track.
Yet even in this situation, Lin Qin remained calm and continued asking precise questions: “Your tea is excellent, and you don’t seem short on money. Why not use health insurance?”
Associate Professor Xue replied, “Well, I suffer from severe insomnia, but health insurance…”
He trailed off.
And the young officer had already understood what he meant.
Sedatives and sleep medications were strictly controlled by hospitals, which would instead recommend patients use “Dionysus World” for psychological therapy—interest Inc. had made massive investments in the pharmaceutical sector as well.
There was no way Associate Professor Xue couldn’t recognize what kind of thing “Dionysus World” was.
So, he could only resort to the black market for medication, just to get a night of peaceful sleep.
But why was he suffering from insomnia?
Lin Qin naturally turned his gaze to a corner of the living room.
In the most prominent spot sat a photo of a rosy-cheeked girl in a red dress, smiling brightly with her arms around Associate Professor Xue’s neck.
The girl’s eyes curved with her cheerful smile, clearly affectionate as she clung to him without reserve.
Noticing where Lin Qin’s eyes had landed, Associate Professor Xue followed his gaze, and his expression instantly softened into a spring-like tenderness.
With utmost sincerity, Lin Qin looked straight ahead and said from the heart, “You and your daughter must have a really close bond.”
Associate Professor Xue smiled instinctively. “Mm.”
The moment he smiled, however, a chill abruptly ran through his heart.
…He realized he had made a mistake in smiling.
That fleeting ease came from knowing the one responsible for his daughter’s death had already died in agony, screaming in front of the public. It came from knowing where her body was. It also came from believing that his daughter’s tormented soul had perhaps found some peace with the death of Jin Charlemagne.
Also, Lin Qin was looking at the photo—he wasn’t looking at him.
But then Associate Professor Xue suddenly realized, given the angle at which Lin Qin had turned his body, he wasn’t actually looking at the photo.
—He was looking at the floor-length mirror behind the photo.
The mirror reflected every nuance of Professor Xue’s expression.
Sure enough, in the next second, Lin Qin turned his head, his refined eyes still hidden beneath bandages.
He softly asked in return, “I heard your daughter has been missing for nearly five years.”
The implication was clear.
…So, how could you smile at that photo?
Unless… you know something we don’t.
…
While undercurrents surged through Associate Professor Xue’s home, a full-blown storm was breaking out in the high-security wing of Atber District Prison.
Honbu Takeshi had just received a mild but unpleasant jolt of electric punishment. The skin on his thumb was burned, and a group of mercenaries—too afraid to get close—had poked his waist with a mop handle to separate him from the faulty power source. He fell face-down onto the pristine floor, and his newly reconstructed face was ruined again.
It looked like another accident.
The light switch had become faulty, and it just so happened that there was water on it—thanks to a minor issue with the central air conditioner above it, which had been leaking down the wall all night.
But this minor electric leak was far from fatal.
And if Jin Hu and the others hadn’t been slacking off, gossiping about Ning Zhuo behind his back, one of them would’ve gotten electrocuted instead. It shouldn’t have been Honbu Takeshi at all.
So, on the surface, it looked like an unfortunate accident that hadn’t targeted Mr. Honbu.
Except the last “accident” involving him had occurred less than thirty minutes ago!
Honbu Takeshi’s face was stone cold as he listened to the prison guard’s cautious report. He said nothing. He stood up and delivered a loud, open-handed slap across Jin Hu’s face.
Jin Hu took the blow without even lifting a hand to cover it, lowering his head in a silent show of guilt.
After the slap, Honbu Takeshi turned and stormed off. Jin Hu, blood in his mouth, silently followed.
This was the price of doing this job.
This time, the failure really had been his. So the blame was his alone.
If you get hit, you stand at attention. No complaints.
When Honbu Takeshi slammed the door in Jin Hu’s face upon returning to his room, only then did Jin Hu’s tense shoulders finally ease a little.
Jin Hu usually treated his men well.
So his subordinates were all quite upset by the slap.
But they also knew whose hand fed them, so they swallowed their anger.
Since they couldn’t take it out on Honbu Takeshi, they unanimously turned their eyes to someone else.
—It had to be Ning Zhuo!
Turnover in the high-security wing was extremely low. Before Ning Zhuo came, they lived the good life with no trouble at all. Since he arrived, Honbu Takeshi had been plagued with accidents.
The cleverest of them, their “golden idea guy,” made another logical guess: “That rabbit Ning isn’t targeting Mr. Honbu—he’s targeting us!”
Everyone quickly agreed.
Exactly—they were the ones protecting Honbu Takeshi.
So the moment Ben suffered any setback, and couldn’t identify the real culprit, he naturally took it out on his “ineffective” bodyguards.
—That rabbit Ning is a real piece of work!
Now, they were all fired up with a shared hatred.
With Honbu Takeshi still fuming, if they dared report this now, it’d only seem like they were deflecting blame and pour fuel on the fire.
So they clenched their fists and waited for a chance—to “talk” to Ning Zhuo privately.
That chance came sooner than expected.
At dinner, Shan Feibai’s picky-eating tantrum flared up again.
The culprit this time? Stir-fried cauliflower.
Ning Zhuo couldn’t stand his spoiled young master behavior—especially since back when Shan Feibai was still “Xiao Bai,” he obediently ate whatever he was given.
Just thinking about how convincingly he’d faked being a good boy back then made Ning Zhuo’s stomach burn with irritation. He felt the urge to beat him up.
But he’d never admit he missed that docile, adorable “Xiao Bai.”
So instead, he just fumed vaguely and didn’t want to stay near Shan Feibai any longer.
But the moment he stepped out for some air in the garden, he was surrounded.
The lights here were dim and patchy. Shadows stretched and shifted—what was a pleasant scene by day now looked like the perfect place for murder and burial.
As Ning Zhuo stopped in his tracks, Jin Hu stepped out from behind him, his fierce tiger-like eyes glaring coldly.
Ning Zhuo simply turned halfway and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye—icy and sharp.
That glance sent a chill down Jin Hu’s spine, like an icicle stabbing into his joints.
…Damn it. Muscle memory.
Ning Zhuo didn’t bother asking why they were there. That would’ve been pointless.
Did they all come out here at night to hold hands and go on a picnic?
He rolled up his prison sleeves to reveal his sharp elbow bones and cut straight to the point: “One by one, or all at once?”
But Jin Hu refused to let him control the tempo. “The flowerpot and the electrocution today—was that you?”
Ning Zhuo didn’t even blink. “If it was me, I’ll give you my left hand. If it wasn’t, I’ll break your left hand myself. How’s that?”
He made that vow without guilt.
Because neither of those vile tricks had been his doing.
Seeing how firm he was, Jin Hu actually began to hesitate.
He knew Ning Zhuo well—when he said one, it meant one. When he said two, it meant two.
Could it have been… Shan Feibai?
But why would Shan Feibai listen to Ning Zhuo?
Everyone in Silver Hammer City knew about the feud between those two.
Could it be that Shan Feibai did it on purpose?
He wanted to use the past enmity between Ning Zhuo and himself to provoke a fight, while he sat back and reaped the rewards?
Come to think of it, how could Shan Feibai possibly be content with being under Ning Zhuo’s thumb?!
Just as Qin Hu was spiraling into a mental brainstorm, one of his veteran underlings finally couldn’t hold back.
This veteran wasn’t particularly bright, but his loyalty to Jin Hu was burning and pure.
He had personally witnessed Ning Zhuo beating up their boss time and again, humiliating Jin Hu to the point where even a robotic vacuum cleaner couldn’t sweep up that much dignity.
And now that their boss was finally on the rise, Ning Zhuo had come to stir up trouble again!
With both old and new grudges flooding his heart, the underling still managed to keep a clear head.
He decisively skipped over the option of one-on-one fighting and shouted, “Ning, even if we come at you together, we might not lose!”
Jin Hu’s mouth twitched at that.
This guy was loyal, sure—but thanks to Ning Zhuo’s lingering reputation, and after taking a few beatings himself in the past, he was still clearly traumatized. Even when he talked tough, he instinctively backpedaled.
They hadn’t even started the fight, and they were already embarrassing themselves.
But since the threat had been made, Jin Hu hardened his heart and gave Xin a look.
Xin stepped forward, crossing the distance between him and Ning Zhuo in a few strides, locking eyes with him coldly. Meanwhile, he was subtly adjusting his muscles to their best state.
Ning Zhuo looked at the young, eager former Muay Thai champion from the black-market ring. After squinting for a moment to recognize his face, he gave a light chuckle.
“Oh, it’s you.”
Xin had never met Ning Zhuo before, though he’d long wanted to test himself against this legendary second-in-command of the Haina Syndicate.
But Ning Zhuo recognized him?
Xin couldn’t help but freeze, halting even his warm-up.
Ning Zhuo reminded him, “Three years ago.”
Three years ago?
Xin remembered—back then, he’d been unstoppable on the underground fight scene. It was the peak of his career.
If a cyborg hadn’t kicked in his leg and left his right leg never quite the same, he wouldn’t have lost form and been forced to retire in frustration.
Even so, Xin had never accepted defeat to that cyborg.
After all, the guy was all machine—nobody could’ve won against that.
But if there was one man in Xin’s glorious fighting career who had earned his respect, it was the referee of those matches.
That referee always wore a mask like the god of death, and was cold as a machine. He never spoke, only worked for two hours a night, scoring their fights.
There was one time Xin faced a brutal opponent.
After a long, fierce battle, he finally broke through the opponent’s defense, snapping a row of ribs and sending him spitting blood.
The crowd’s cheers vibrated through Xin’s chest, and the primitive bloodlust roaring through his body had long overridden his rational mind.
In underground fights, there were no rules—the winner could kill if he wanted.
But some “star” fighters had backers and were unofficially off-limits for lethal blows.
Xin knew his opponent was one of them.
But so was he.
His fists landed blow after blow on his opponent’s body. The solid, iron-hard knuckles pounded flesh and bone until they groaned and snapped.
The sound drove his adrenaline into a frenzy.
He couldn’t think of anything else.
His opponent had already surrendered, but Xin was too far gone, lost in twisted ecstasy, his punches flying fast and furious as he went for the kill.
Then, just as his barrage slightly slowed, a fist came out of nowhere.
It was so fast, he didn’t even see it.
He only remembered that the skin was pale—so the strike looked like a beautiful white meteor streaking through daylight.
That one punch, exploiting a tiny opening, sent Xin flying. His head smashed into the iron cage, blood gushing from his nose as he collapsed, unable to get up—like his brain was about to pour out through his nostrils.
In a haze of red, that cold, stoic referee shook his left hand, then signaled to the stunned judges below: Ring the bell. Match over.
That memory overlapped strangely with the present.
Ning Zhuo casually shook his left hand and looked at the stunned Xin. He said:
“…Let’s see if you’ve improved these past few years.”
