Urban Martial Saint

”Answer, or not?” Ye Qing’s voice was cold, ”If you’re not willing to answer, then I’ll just hang up. There’s no need for us to talk anymore!”

As Ye Qing spoke, he tapped his cellphone, making a motion as if he were about to hang up.

”Wait a minute!” Lu Jiangong shouted loudly, gasping for breath, apparently enraged.

”Speak!” Ye Qing’s voice was stern, ”I don’t want to hear any nonsense, either answer me, or I hang up now!”

Lu Jiangong gasped a few times, and with great effort, suppressed the fury in his heart, and said in a deep voice, ”I know about that incident, what exactly do you want to ask?”

”I heard that some people in Erhe Village survived the incident. However, to deceive those above, when the provincial authorities sent people to inspect, you locked up those survivors in a village, and you were the leading guard responsible for watching over those people!” Ye Qing’s voice was heavy, ”Is there such a thing?”

Hearing Ye Qing’s words, Lu Jiangong knew he could no longer hide anything and could only say in a deep voice, ”Yes!”

”Good!” Ye Qing nodded and said, ”Among those who were detained, there was a girl named Chen Xueru, you should still remember her, right? I heard that you assaulted her many times and in the end, you even caused her death!”

”You… who exactly are you?” Lu Jiangong’s voice trembled a bit.

”I’m asking you, do you remember her?” Ye Qing’s voice was stern, ”Don’t give me any more nonsense!”

Lu Jiangong was silent for quite a while, then said through clenched teeth, ”I remember, but she wasn’t killed by me, she died of illness!”

”Does it make a difference?” Ye Qing’s voice was cold, ”If you hadn’t harmed her, would she have fallen ill? After she got sick, why didn’t you find a doctor to treat her instead of just watching her die?”

Lu Jiangong protested, ”This… I couldn’t help it, at that time we were just watching over them inside, and actually, no one was allowed to leave, no one was allowed to come in. The situation was very complicated then, I couldn’t just help her find a doctor!”

”I don’t care about that, this debt is going to be on your head anyway!” Ye Qing’s voice was cold, ”Do you still remember, Chen Xueru had a daughter not long after giving birth, and later you took her away, where did you send her daughter?”

”What?” Lu Jiangong was even more astounded; he did not expect, that after all Ye Qing’s tracing and inquiry, it was just to find out the whereabouts of an infant girl.

”Where did you send her daughter? Speak!” Ye Qing’s voice was commanding.

Lu Jiangong hesitated for a moment, then said in a low voice, ”At the time, the situation was a bit complicated; people were very poor and couldn’t even sustain themselves, no one wanted to adopt a child. I had no choice but to throw her into the sea.”

”What!?” Ye Qing roared out, he hadn’t expected, that after all his questioning, the answer would be such a result. Chen Xueru’s daughter was thrown into the sea by Lu Jiangong; was there any hope for her to survive?

Lu Jiangong quickly tried to justify, ”This isn’t my fault; I had no other choice. I wasn’t married at the time, how was I to manage with a child? I didn’t want to throw her into the sea, but I couldn’t take care of her, so I had to go for the lesser of two sorrows!”

Ye Qing knew that Lu Jiangong’s so-called explanations were all lies. With his character, he had simply wanted the infant girl dead, and once outside, he threw her straight into the sea. Such a man, utterly inhuman!

Ye Qing gritted his teeth and said word by word, ”Lu Jiangong, you must pay for this!”

Having said that, Ye Qing hung up the phone. On the other side, Lu Jiangong had a ferocious look, putting down the phone, he glanced at several people beside him and said in a deep voice, ”Have you located the signal source?”

One of them nodded and said, ”It has been pinpointed, near the machinery factory!”

Lu Jiangong waved his hand and bellowed, ”Send people to surround the machinery factory immediately, no matter what, bring him back to me. If we can’t catch him, then kill him on the spot; we absolutely cannot let him leave alive!”

A bunch of policemen immediately stood up and rushed out to handle the situation. These people were all Lu Jiangong’s trusted followers; he had no worries about them carrying out the task.

Holding a photo on the table, Lu Jiangong ground his teeth and said, ”Dare to threaten me, no matter who you are, I’ll make sure you die without a whole body!”

”Old Lu, how could you become so careless with your work these days?” Lu Jiangong’s wife said beside him, dissatisfied, ”To do such a thing and still get photographed, how could you be so careless? I’m telling you, you need to carefully consider the people around you; it must have been someone close to you who took this photo. You need to be careful yourself!”

Upon hearing this, Lu Jiangong’s brow furrowed. He had been too busy being angry and hadn’t thought about this yet; her words immediately made him feel that something was wrong.

His wife said suspiciously, ”Also, where exactly was this photo taken? It looks to me like it was inside a villa. Did you buy a house outside?”

Her words made Lu Jiangong’s heart skip a beat, and after taking a careful look at the photo, he instantly recognized the location where the photo was taken. Without explaining to his wife, he turned and hurriedly ran out of the room.

Running downstairs, he saw the driver still lying in the car. Seeing Lu Jiangong running into the car in a panic, the driver couldn’t help but be surprised, ”Boss, where are we going?”

”To the station first!” After saying this, Lu Jiangong immediately took out his phone and called one of his trusted aides, ”Send someone to my villa right now to see if that little bitch is still there. Also, check who she’s been meeting with recently, especially pay attention to any strangers, and gather all the information for me!”

After giving the instructions, Lu Jiangong hung up the phone and dialed another number. After a few rings, a man’s voice came from the other end, ”Old Lu, what’s up? We’re at Xibei Lake, do you want to come over and play?”

”Old Tang, there’s... there’s been an incident...” Lu Jiangong’s voice was anxious as he said, ”Someone just called me, pressing me about that incident from twenty years ago in Erhe Village.”

”What?” Old Tang’s voice suddenly rose, and he asked urgently, ”What happened? Who’s asking about that? What does he want? Is it someone from the provincial government?”

”I don’t know, he just asked about that incident, and I don’t even know who he is. But don’t worry, I’ve already sent people to investigate; he won’t be able to get away!” Lu Jiangong said gravely, ”Old Tang, this might not be a small issue. You need to be mentally prepared. If something happens, you have to help me out!”

Old Tang was silent for a while before he gritted his teeth and said, ”No matter what, you need to take care of this situation. I’ll hold the fort here in the city, but you must ensure that the news from back then doesn’t leak out, understand?”

”As long as you can take care of the pressure from the city’s end, leave things here to me!” Lu Jiangong breathed a sigh of relief and said, ”Don’t worry, as long as he’s in Xishan City, he won’t be leaving alive!”

After hanging up the phone, Lu Jiangong’s brows were still deeply furrowed. Although he could control what happened in Xishan City, for some reason, he felt uneasy tonight, and this restlessness was relentless!

Over at the mechanical factory, after finishing the call with Lu Jiangong, Ye Qing felt thoroughly dejected. He had thought he was on the brink of discovering the lead, but instead, he had received such news from Lu Jiangong. Chen Xueru’s daughter was dead? By that account, Zhou Guiting wasn’t the child, wasn’t Liu Changping’s daughter?

Standing there silently for a moment, the news obtained from Lu Jiangong made Ye Qing lose interest in looking for Zhou Guiting’s family. However, after thinking it over for a long time, Ye Qing eventually decided to make one more visit. No matter what, since he had come all this way, even if Zhou Guiting wasn’t Liu Changping’s daughter, he still wanted to find out why the Zhou family could be so heartless to their own child.

Zhou Binglin was an old employee of the mechanical factory, and this area was the residential district for the factory’s workers. It was easy to inquire about the location of Zhou Binglin’s home.

Ye Qing walked into a nearby convenience store, casually bought some things, and casually inquired about Zhou Binglin. The store owner had been here for a relatively long time, also knew Zhou Binglin, and, upon hearing Ye Qing ask about his home, the owner immediately pointed out the way enthusiastically.

”Are you a relative of Old Zhou’s family?” It was obvious the store owner was quite nosy. Right after pointing out the direction, he immediately asked about Ye Qing’s relationship with Zhou Binglin.

”Not exactly relatives; it’s just that a friend asked me to meet them,” Ye Qing also just happened to want to get some information out of the store owner, and he said with a smile, ”It’s about their daughter, Zhou Guiting. She asked me to find Zhou Binglin.”

”Zhou Guiting?” The owner was taken aback for a moment, obviously not recognizing the name right away. After a good while, he finally came to a realization and said, ”Oh, you mean Tingting, right?”

”Yes, their daughter.” Ye Qing said, ”You’ve been here all this time, you must have seen her, right?”

”To tell you the truth, I’ve really not seen her much!” The store owner waved his hand and said, ”That child, she’s been living with Old Zhou’s mother since she was small, only when she turned eighteen or nineteen and Old Zhou’s mother passed away did they bring her over. But not long after they brought her here, they immediately got her married off. She didn’t even live here for a year. Most of the neighbors around here don’t even know they have a daughter!”

”Oh?” Ye Qing furrowed his brows slightly; the further he delved into this case, the more peculiar it became. If it really was their own child, why didn’t they raise her themselves, and why didn’t the neighbors even know they had such a daughter? Could this be a case of favoring males over females?

”Is their family particularly biased towards sons over daughters?” Ye Qing continued to probe the store owner.

”Nonsense, what bias towards sons over daughters. I reckon, this daughter might not even be their own!” The store owner was the type who couldn’t hold back when it came to gossiping, and once he got started, there seemed to be no end as he said, ”They have three children, one son and two daughters, and each one is treasured like a precious jewel. Honestly, those two daughters of his are known for being spoilt in the area around the mechanical factory; there’s definitely no talk of favoring sons. But Zhou Guiting, even though she lived there for a year, she worked every day to make money; she wasn’t raised on their money. Moreover, after they married her off, they still demanded a hefty bride price from the groom’s family; it was practically like selling their daughter. Real parents, who would do that?”