SDT 67

Chapter 67 Crucial Evidence

Yu Xiaowen ran all the way. He entered through the entrance of the dilapidated small building and ran up to the second floor in a few strides.

The room was littered with corpses and pools of blood. Amid the stench of blood lingered a strange odor, though it had mostly dissipated. He rushed to the window and joined Lu Kongyun in hauling the rope upward. With his assistance, Ye Yisan quickly flipped himself onto the windowsill, then collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath.

His gut told him Ye Yisan had endured immense suffering. The moment Ye flipped inside, he blurted out, “Ye Yisan! Are you okay?!”

He tried to pull the man up, but Ye Yisan was limp and weak, wanting only to lie still. “You… you’re a pretty good shot. So the Manjing police can use sniper rifles too.”

“Just shooting blindly,” Yu Xiaowen said. “But we couldn’t just stand by and watch.”

“I’m fine, just poisoned,” Ye Yisan said. “I’ll be okay after resting a bit.”

He glanced over at Lu Kongyun, who was leaning against the corner, silently and gloomily staring this way. Turning to Yu Xiaowen, he said, “It’s that guy who’s hurt.”

Yu Xiaowen startled, immediately turning to see the bloodstain on Lu Kongyun’s front. He had just assumed it was from something in the room, but now realized it belonged to Lu Kongyun himself. He hurried over and knelt down softly.

He held his breath as he examined the body. He found a gunshot wound, a clean through-and-through shot in the shoulder. The blood on the chest had flowed down from there. Then he raised his hands, wanting to feel the injury but hesitating to touch it.

Yu Xiaowen moved closer, wrapped his arms around him, and reached into his coat pocket.

Lu Kongyun: “What are you doing?”

Yu Xiaowen pulled out his phone before speaking. His voice was rough: “Call… call an ambulance. You have to go. You have to go to the hospital.”

“Call an ambulance?” Lu Kongyun stared at him. “You want to take Ye Yisan away and leave me here alone to wait for an ambulance, is that it?”

“No way!” Yu Xiaowen wiped his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Of course I’m going to the hospital with you!”

Lu Kongyun stared intently at his face, studying his expression. Then he said, “No need for the hospital. It’s just my shoulder. Stop by a pharmacy on the way and buy the medicine I told you about. I’ll handle it myself.”

“That’s not acceptable! You’re bleeding heavily!” Yu Xiaowen turned away and dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve.

“It’s not serious,” Lu Kongyun said. “Let’s go back to the country first and talk about it.”

After breathing in some fresh air by the window, Lu Kongyun felt much better. He stood up, walked over to Ye Yisan, and pulled out a plastic zip tie.

Ye Yisan had been inhaling the fumes for a longer period and recovered more slowly; he still hadn’t regained his composure.

He glanced at Yu Xiaowen, then asked Lu Kongyun, “Are you going to hand me over to your brother?”

Lu Kongyun shook his head. “Both of you are coming with me to Shijia. Once we’ve handled the business, where you go afterward is none of my concern.”

Ye Yisan: “What exactly do you want?”

Lu Kongyun: “The truth behind that case from years ago.”

Ye Yisan remained silent for a long while before saying, “I can give you something rather important that should help you. But in exchange, you must do me a favor.”

Lu Kongyun: “Go ahead.”

Ye Yisan: “Use this incident to make me disappear completely. You must testify on my behalf using your status, that Ye Yisan no longer exists in this world.”

Lu Kongyun considered it for a moment before replying, “If what you offer is truly significant enough, I can agree to your request.”

“You can go see it first,” Ye Yisan said. “Before that, could you step out for a moment? I need to speak with Yu Xiaowen privately.”

“Alright. Hurry up.” Lu Kongyun tucked the gun into his waistband, ignoring the look Yu Xiaowen gave him, and turned to leave the room.

Hearing Lu Kongyun’s footsteps descending the stairs, Ye Yisan said to Yu Xiaowen, “You heard what I said.”

Yu Xiaowen shook her head and replied, “Mhm.”

Considering Ye Yisan’s earlier implication, Yu Xiaowen understood he was referring to possessing “rather significant” evidence from that incident to hand over to Lu Kongyun. Back then, Yu Xiaowen had lost consciousness after falling off the cliff, so it made perfect sense that Ye Yisan, having rescued him from there, might have uncovered crucial details unknown to him.

Ye Yisan said, “Back then, I figured if I gave you the evidence, your emotions would get the better of you, and you’d be determined to prove your innocence. If the police in M Country insisted on finding the box and me, I’d either be arrested by your people or have my mission exposed, facing disciplinary action from the organization. And you wouldn’t be able to receive treatment. Even if you were proven innocent, you’d just be waiting to die. That’s why I didn’t tell you. You should understand, right?”

Yu Xiaowen said, “San’er, if not for you, I’d have been lying in a coffin for nearly two years now. Things turned out this way, and I only feel ashamed that I dragged you into this mess. How could I possibly blame you? Everything you did made perfect sense.”

Ye Yisan said, “Things have come to this point, and it really is your fault. You were love-struck, unable to let go of Lu Kongyun. The discovery of the wristband was just a trigger, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

Yu Xiaowen: “…I’m sorry.”

Ye Yisan: “Or maybe you were just planning to return home once you recovered. Who knows?”

Yu Xiaowen: “…I didn’t! That would be deliberately harming you! How could I do that? San’er, you saved my life. I was determined to keep this secret no matter what, even if caught, I’d deny any connection to you. If anything happened to you, I’d fight to the death to protect you. But then…”

Ye Yisan: “I know what kind of person you are. It’s just that you can’t control yourself.”

Yu Xiaowen: “I…”

Ye Yisan: “Yu Xiaowen, the truth is, even though I knew you were a liability back then, I still brought you along because Mr. Ye placed great importance on that project, and the data you provided was genuinely valuable. So you don’t need to be so tearfully grateful about it.”

“Let’s just forget about it,” Ye Yisan waved his hand dismissively. “Things are what they are now. You can go get your evidence. But I have no idea how your case will turn out. After all, Ding Qi is dead. Whether the military wants the real truth or just a scapegoat with ironclad evidence, I can’t say. All I know is that there aren’t any good people in your country’s intelligence department.”

After a moment, Yu Xiaowen said firmly, “But Lu Kongyun is good. He’s genuine.”

Ye Yisan thought for a moment. For the first time, he didn’t argue with his view of the Lu family. Instead, he said, “Maybe.”

“If you’re going back anyway, good luck to you,” Ye Yisan said. “Getting charged with treason is pretty serious, right?”

Yu Xiaowen thought for a moment before replying, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. As long as you’re safe, I won’t leave S Country again. Even if it means serving time in prison.”

“Because of second young master Lu?”

Yu Xiaowen remained silent.

Ye Yisan lifted his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “How did I end up bringing such a love-struck fool back to M Country? I was completely fooled by your heroic and clever detective act back then. At the end of the day, it’s all my own fault for being blind.”

Outside, daylight had fully broken. Sunlight bathed the abandoned, unfinished building, a pile of neglected rubble and gravel, in a settled stillness.

Lu Kongyun drove the car over, and the sniper rifle was retrieved.

With the rifle slung across his back, he leaned against the vehicle, his intense gaze fixed on the entrance of the small building ahead. Lost in thought, he seemed deep in contemplation.

……

In a small building within Wuxiang City, the towering flames had just been brought under control. Orange embers still drifted from the charred, gray-black ashes, filling the air with a pungent, burnt odor. The lingering heat stung the skin, causing a faint, stinging pain.

Lu Qifeng stood in the puddle beside the building, kicking aside a wet, charred piece of wood. Several charred corpses had already been carried out and placed at his feet.

He lowered his head and stared intently at the bodies, barely recognizable as human.

He turned his head again, looking toward the other side of the ruins.

As the head of the forensic team brought over from S Country walked past, Lu Qifeng asked, “Can we collect DNA from the body?”

The head of the forensic division glanced at the body and replied hesitantly, “Director Lu… it’s all charred beyond recognition.”

“Have you examined every inch of tissue? You haven’t. How can you speak so casually?” Lu Qifeng retorted. “What else do you want? Why not burn down your entire Forensic Division too?”

Blood rushed to Lu Qifeng’s head. He paused, then walked toward the surviving henchmen. They’d been found in a sealed room on the first floor, untouched by the fire above until their frantic escape attempts led to smoke inhalation and burns.

Lu Qifeng crouched down, examining them. Their hands and feet were bound with plastic zip ties. There were traces of tape over their mouths, now torn away.

“Who tied you up?”

They all shook their heads.

One of them said, “Foreign official, this is our country’s business. Surely it’s none of your concern?”

Lu Qifeng chuckled. He stood up and kicked each of them once with his military boots. If they didn’t cry out, he kicked them again until they did.

One rolled on the ground, shouting, “Reporting, sir! He came from behind, too fast, I didn’t see him. By the time I reacted, I was already lying in the room…”

This was no surprise. Given the intelligence and his method of entry, it was obvious who was responsible. It only confirmed he hadn’t come to the wrong place.

Lu Qifeng didn’t dwell on this point. He asked, “You say he’s from M Country. Do you know who Ye Yisan is?”

The group exchanged glances and nodded.

“Where did he go?” Lu Qifeng asked.

A soot-blackened henchman answered him, “Ye Yisan is dead, of course.”

Lu Qifeng yanked him up by the hair, pulling him off the ground. He let out a wail.

“How did you know? Answering so quickly, you’ve already coordinated your story, right?”

He dragged the man by his hair, and the man struggled to keep pace with his strides. Lu Qifeng tossed him beside the charred corpses: “So sure? Point him out. Which one is it?”

Tears and snot streaming down his face, the man sniffled out a reply: “How… how can you tell who’s who? But our boss never leaves survivors. One of those with their throats ripped open must be him.”

Lu Qifeng froze.

After a moment.

He asked urgently, “Did you see it with your own eyes? Is that right?”

“…No. The boss likes to work alone. He doesn’t let us watch. We all stay on the first floor.”

“Then what the hell was all that ‘dead, dead’ bullshit you swore up and down about? How many people did your boss tie up in total?”

“I don’t know.”

Lu Qifeng pressed his foot down on the man’s face, forcing him to look at the charred corpse. The soot-blackened henchman let out a piercing scream.

“Recognize them one by one. Recall them.”

The henchman clenched his eyes shut. “I really don’t know! Some of the people involved weren’t on the wanted list, but the boss wanted them arrested too… Counting the later ones, how many were there… I really don’t know!”

Lu Qifeng spoke slowly: “Knowing my capabilities, what needs to be remembered will naturally come to mind.”

He glanced at the charred corpses, their features unrecognizable, then ran a hand through his hair, revealing bloodshot eyes. “Take these prisoners away. Interrogate them thoroughly.”

……

Lu Kongyun and the others had no time to waste; they had to leave immediately. Driving to a pharmacy, Lu Kongyun bought only anti-inflammatory medication and gauze before rushing back on the road.

The group returned to their temporary shelter. They found Dai Lanshan asleep on a stool, one hand shackled to the leg of the table in front of him with the handcuffs that had originally been on Yu Xiaowen’s wrist.

Yu Xiaowen quickly walked over and unlocked it for him.

“Back already…” Dai Lanshan glanced at Lu Kongyun’s wound and yawned. “Hey, you okay?”

Lu Kongyun stared at Dai Lanshan without speaking, but the contempt in his eyes was plain for all to see.

Dai Lanshan rubbed his eyes, then his wrists. “Lu Kongyun, don’t pretend. Haven’t you been played like a puppet by Hao Dali before?”

After applying a simple bandage with purchased medicine, the group drove to the landing site. Another group happened to be there, preparing to leave the country. Lu Kongyun offered them some money, but they were wary. He added more, and they agreed to take Ye Yisan off Azalea Island. They would head to their destination first and figure things out later.

Meanwhile, Lu Kongyun intended to take Yu Xiaowen back to S Country to retrieve that “important evidence” from Shijia Valley.

“Ye Yisan,” Lu Kongyun said to him just before parting, “I’ll decide on the promise I made to you after I’ve seen the evidence. Don’t disappoint me.”

Ye Yisan was confident. “You won’t be disappointed.”

He turned and took two steps before spinning back to face Yu Xiaowen. “Yu Xiaowen, may your dreams come true.”

“…” Yu Xiaowen immediately looked at Lu Kongyun, who merely narrowed his eyes before abruptly turning and walking toward Dai Lanshan’s helicopter.

Yu Xiaowen beckoned to Ye Yisan with a smile. “San’er, have a safe journey. Once you’re settled, be sure to come find me!”

Ye Yisan made no promise. He merely waved and turned toward the helicopter.