Urban Martial Saint

Hearing this, Da Fei said angrily, ”Damn it, even after becoming a director, he still doesn’t want to take any responsibility. What’s the use of him?”

Ye Qing glanced at Da Fei and said, ”Alright, stop running him down. Hurry, back to Jiuchuan County.”

”Huh?” Da Fei was stunned for a moment and asked, ”Go back? Aren’t we going after that Li Qiang?”

Ye Qing said, ”If I’m not mistaken, he should still be in Jiuchuan County right now!”

”Still in Jiuchuan County? Impossible, right?” Da Fei was surprised and said, ”Didn’t they come by car? The police chased them the whole way, and the surveillance showed it too.”

”None of that matters!” Ye Qing shook his head and said, ”What matters is that Lin Peng is still in his hands, and this Li Qiang is no ordinary pickpocket.”

Da Fei asked curiously, ”So what?”

Ye Qing looked at Da Fei and asked, ”If you were a master thief and wanted to run away, would you bring a policeman with you?”

Da Fei immediately said, ”Of course not, it would be such a hassle to bring a policeman. Having to guard against him and figuring out how to escape, it’s much more comfortable to run alone.”

Ye Qing said, ”That’s right, if you are unwilling, then why would Li Qiang be willing?”

Da Fei said, ”This is different. Li Qiang has taken Lin Peng hostage to use him as leverage. I guess he was planning to use Lin Peng to threaten the police when getting off the highway.”

”Hmph, if he really wanted to escape, he wouldn’t have taken the highway in the first place,” Ye Qing shook his head and didn’t explain further to Da Fei. Instead, he picked up his phone and asked Old Fifth Yang, ”Can you find out the times each surveillance caught that car and the distances between each pair of surveillance cameras for me?”

”What do you need that for?” Old Fifth Yang’s subordinate asked curiously.

Ye Qing said, ”Never mind that, just send it over quickly, it’s urgent.”

”Alright.” Old Fifth Yang’s subordinate agreed and in less than five minutes, had gathered the information and sent it to Ye Qing.

Ye Qing wrote down these times and distances on paper, looked it over from top to bottom twice, then said in a deep voice, ”Go to the Huanzhuang area.”

Da Fei looked at the paper in Ye Qing’s hand and asked, ”What are we going there for?”

Ye Qing said nothing, just stared intently at the surrounding roads. The Huanzhuang area wasn’t far from where they were, and after driving for roughly ten miles, they arrived nearby.

Huanzhuang was a small village in Jiuchuan County, surrounded by dense forests. At night, you couldn’t see anything inside the forest from the outside.

Once they reached the place, Ye Qing had Da Fei slow down to look more carefully. They drove back and forth along this stretch twice, and at the edge of a small forest, Ye Qing suddenly asked Da Fei to stop the car, then got out and ran to the edge of the forest.

”What’s happened?” Da Fei followed curiously and saw Ye Qing crouched down on the ground. There were some faint tire tracks on the ground, hard to see clearly unless one got out and looked closely.

Ye Qing followed these tire tracks into the forest, and they stopped near a clearing deep inside. The ground was covered in tire tracks, pretty chaotic, but amidst them, one could vaguely see signs of people having passed by.

”This is the place!” Ye Qing clapped his hands, turned around, and said, ”Come on, back to the county town!”

”Huh?” Da Fei looked around, puzzled, and asked, ”Big Brother, what did you find? Has that Li Qiang really returned to Jiuchuan County? What was in that little forest just now?”

Ye Qing ignored him, picked up the phone, and ordered Old Fifth Yang’s men, ”Check how many cars came out of Huanzhuang and entered Jiuchuan County an hour ago, and try to find the current location of each car.”

Old Fifth Yang’s subordinate found Ye Qing’s sudden order quite strange, but he asked no questions. Whatever Ye Qing instructed, he executed.

As Da Fei drove Ye Qing back towards Jiuchuan County, he kept asking in puzzlement, ”Big Brother, what exactly did you find? Did that Li Qiang really go back to Jiuchuan County? What was in that little forest earlier?”

”This Da Fei really is the kind of person who won’t stop until he gets to the bottom of things,” Ye Qing said helplessly. In the end, he had no choice but to pick up the sheet of paper on which he’d recorded the times and distances, writing a few numbers on the back of each sheet, and said, ”Take a look at this.”

Da Fei glanced at it and said, ”Big brother, don’t make me solve these math problems. I bought my elementary school diploma, and I can’t understand this stuff.”

”If you can’t understand, then you should at least know what ’average speed’ means,” Ye Qing pointed at the paper and said, ”I took the distance between every two surveillance points and divided it by the time it took him to cover that distance, thus obtaining the average speed of his vehicle. Their car’s speed didn’t change much, except near Huanzhuang, where the speed dropped significantly. What does that tell you?”

”What?” Da Fei looked utterly baffled.

Ye Qing glanced at him and said, ”It means they definitely stopped their car near Huanzhuang. Going by their average speed, they should have taken only five minutes to pass through Huanzhuang. But in reality, it took them eight minutes to get through, and those extra three minutes were the time they stopped!”

”Oh, that makes sense,” Da Fei said, suddenly enlightened, and exclaimed excitedly, ”So by that logic, there’s a very high chance that Li Qiang and his group got off the car here?”

Ye Qing shook his head and said, ”Getting off the car wouldn’t take three minutes. They switched cars here. As you saw earlier, the wheel tracks in the forest were chaotic, indicating that more than one car had stopped there. Li Qiang and his team may have split into two groups, or even three, and switched to different vehicles to scatter.”

”I see,” Da Fei said. ”Big brother, you got out of the car just to look at the wheel tracks, huh? Gosh, why didn’t I think of that!”

”Stop wasting time and quickly get back to Jiuchuan County!” Ye Qing said in a stern voice. He was now quite concerned about Lin Peng. Li Qiang was ruthless in action, and he was afraid that Lin Peng might be in danger.

At the same time, Wang Yuanbo was arranging his men to guard the highway exit when a policeman hurried over and said, ”Director, we just got word that Ye Qing has pulled nearly all of our county’s traffic police squad’s surveillance footage, constantly tracing that car’s whereabouts. Moreover, they’ve driven back to the county. Could it be that they’ve found some clues?”

”Clues, my ass!” Wang Yuanbo swore in irritation and said, ”He’s just an ex-soldier. He may have some skill in fighting and toughness, but what the hell does he know about investigating a case? I have criminal investigation experts here brought from the city by Director Huang. Each one of them is battle-worn. Could they be worse than an ex-soldier? Instead of worrying about what Ye Qing is up to, you should be quickly taking people to block the highway exit. And here you are, bothering about Ye Qing’s business. Let him twist and turn all he wants; once he’s worn out, he’ll stop.”

”Yes, sir!” The policeman hurried off, while Wang Yuanbo spat and muttered under his breath, ”Damn it, does he really think he’s accomplished a great feat just because he saved Xu Changzhi once? Daring to boss me around... I want to see what kind of result he can possibly muster this time. Bastard, if he can’t come up with anything, watch how I curse him out!”

Although Wang Yuanbo appeared quite friendly with Ye Qing on the surface, that was only on the surface. In fact, he was very dissatisfied with Ye Qing. Therefore, when he heard Ye Qing’s opinion, he immediately rejected it, not adopting Ye Qing’s suggestions at all. In his view, catching thieves and criminal investigation were the police’s strong suit, and it was sheer arrogance for anyone else to want to meddle. He didn’t dare to speak his mind in front of Ye Qing, but he was far less respectful behind his back.

Ye Qing hadn’t returned to Jiuchuan County yet when Old Fifth Yang’s men already obtained the information Ye Qing wanted. A total of five cars had come out from Huanzhuang heading towards the county town, three of which belonged to locals from Huanzhuang, and the remaining two, one with Dengyang City plates and the other with Jiuchuan County plates.

”Why are all the plates from Dengyang City’s side?” Da Fei wondered aloud.

”If they switched to plates from other areas, wouldn’t that be too conspicuous?” Ye Qing replied, and he carefully questioned Old Fifth Yang’s men about the current whereabouts of these cars in the county town.

The car with Dengyang City plates didn’t enter the county town but took a detour around the suburbs, and its current whereabouts were unknown. The other four cars entered the county town, but three of them went to hotels or residents’ homes in the town, while one of them went to the riverside after entering the town and didn’t go anywhere else.

”It must be this one!” Ye Qing perked up and instructed Da Fei to drive to the riverside. As they were about to enter the river beach, he told Da Fei to stop, and he got out of the car and walked onto the river beach under the cover of night.

The riverside at night was very quiet, filled with the sounds of insects. Ye Qing walked along the river beach for about ten minutes, finally spotting a black off-road vehicle at a bend. It was the car that had entered the river beach.

Ye Qing bent down and, taking advantage of the cover of darkness, moved towards the rear of the off-road vehicle. He made it all the way to the side of the car without the people inside noticing.

Ye Qing slowly stood up at the back, peered through the window into the car, and saw two people lying on the seats asleep. Besides them, there was no third person. However, there were faint sounds coming from the trunk area, indicating that someone inside was struggling slightly.

Hearing this noise, Ye Qing was almost certain that Lin Peng must be inside this car. He walked over to the front door, pulled it open directly, and dragged the person from the driver’s seat down.

The other person woke up with a start, sat up, and said, ”What are you doing?”

Ye Qing paid him no mind, and with a punch, the man immediately shut his mouth and was also dragged out by Ye Qing.

The first driver had gotten up by now, pulled out a dagger, and charged at Ye Qing, aiming for his chest. Ye Qing dodged the dagger, grabbed the man’s wrist, and twisted it forcefully downwards. But the man was fierce; with his other hand, he clamped down on Ye Qing’s arm, clutching the dagger and stabbing fiercely toward Ye Qing’s leg.

Just then, the other man also got up and drew a dagger, aiming for Ye Qing’s waist from behind. Ye Qing tried to dodge, but the man in front had tightly grabbed him and hooked his legs with his own, desperately preventing him from evading and managing to impede Ye Qing’s movement somewhat.