Chapter 316 - Chapter 316: 247, Washing Away Sin
Chapter 316: 247, Washing Away Sin
In this sleepless city, the nights were always busier than the days.
It was the same for the hospital’s emergency department.
Black market boxers, gang members.
Those with dislocated joints, stomachs shot in the dark, foreheads stabbed with knives.
The emergency department doctors had long since grown accustomed to such sights.
However, tonight there seemed to be an unusually high number of patients, along with more moaning.
When He Sheng Society members were brought into the hospital, Qing Chen had already quietly opened his eyes on the bed.
He knew Wang Bingxu was also at the hospital and had even checked several times to see if he was around.
Lying on his side in bed, Qing Chen didn’t need to look up to confirm—he remembered the sound of Wang Bingxu’s footsteps.
With Wang Bingxu guarding the place, he couldn’t leave the hospital.
But sometimes, a hunter doesn’t need to exhaust all their cunning to find their prey; they can just wait for the prey to come to them.
Outside the ward, doctors instructed nurses to administer sedatives while muttering among themselves, “I heard it was several gangs attacking Heng Society together, and this mess resulted… What a bother, these gang members.”
“Isn’t Heng Society known for hardly leaving anyone alive?” complained a doctor in emergency care, “It would be better if these gang members were all killed, saving us from all this chaos past midnight.”
“Shh, that patient next to you is still awake,” a nurse warned.
The emergency doctor who had just complained turned calmly, only to see the gang member beside him glaring fiercely, “What are you looking at? Next time you get chopped and brought in for me to save, what’s wrong with me saying a few words?”
The gang member slowly closed his eyes, remaining silent.
Doctors in the Fourth District’s emergency department were notoriously belligerent, and besides conglomerates and the Federal Public Security Management Committee as well as the Federal Tax Administration Committee, these doctors were the ones gang members least wanted to offend.
While the hospital was in total chaos, Wang Bingxu stood by, watching the commotion and even pulling aside a few gang members with less severe injuries to inquire about the events of the night.
10 minutes later, PCE Security Management Committee investigators arrived belatedly and began their inquiries as if nothing unusual had happened.
In the dim ward where Qing Chen was staying, the young man slowly got up and stealthily walked out of the ward, his appearance altered.
He looked down at his phone, as if everything was calculated, and the moment he pushed the door open, two nurses happened to be pushing two members of the He Sheng Society past his door.
They were the He Sheng Society’s speaker and executive director, the two most important figures within the gang.
Qing Chen stood silently at the door of the ward, waiting for the nurses to push the beds away, then he nonchalantly entered the public restroom across the hall.
Less than a minute later, a scream erupted from the corridor; the He Sheng Society speaker’s chest sported a rapidly growing red stain, dying his entire blue patient uniform red, and when a nurse reached to check his carotid artery, there was no pulse.
Blood flowed profusely from the speaker’s chest, soaking the mobile bed beneath him, and then dripping onto the corridor floor.
PCE investigators rushed over upon hearing the commotion, and an experienced chief investigator touched the deceased’s chest, “There’s a through-and-through wound at the heart, and it’s fresh, who recently approached the victim with a weapon?!”
The nurse answered fearfully, “No one, I really didn’t see anyone with a weapon, just a young man who happened to go to the bathroom passing by us.”
The chief investigator felt something was amiss; although the PCE Security Management Committee generally didn’t deal with the muddled affairs of the gangs, having someone killed under PCE’s watch was a bit too much.
He looked up, noticing surveillance cameras both ahead and behind in the corridor, but the problem was, the cameras, for some reason, had all been turned towards blind spots, not covering the crime scene at all!
Before he could reflect further, he saw Wei Zihao, the executive director from He Sheng Society, suddenly come to. He looked at his colleague’s tragic state and immediately climbed out of the hospital bed and grabbed the chief investigator’s arm, “Officer, save me, I don’t want to die!”
The chief investigator frowned and pushed him away, “Who wants to kill you?”
With a hoarse voice, Wei Zihao exclaimed, “Officer, it’s Heng Society that wants to kill me! Look, our speaker has already been assassinated. Please, take me into custody, otherwise Heng Society will surely take my life.”
“Jail is not a place you enter as you please,” the chief investigator coldly said.
At that moment, Wei Zihao suddenly claimed, “The home invasion on Peach Blossom Road two years ago was my doing—you don’t believe me? Take a DNA sample, it will match the one on the weapon, and the mechanical limb robbery in District 6 three years ago, the theft in the Upper Three Districts seven years ago…”
Wei Zihao listed a long series of crimes, enough to keep him in prison for life.
The investigators grew excited; the most crucial of these cases was the theft in the Upper Three Districts—solving such a case would earn them a major merit!
But then the chief investigator suddenly said, “The theft in the Upper Three Districts, that case was already solved this year! I remember that case; the culprit was someone named Liu Dezhu!”
“Right,” Wei Zihao said, “We were being pursued too closely, so we found an unlucky guy named Liu Dezhu to take the fall for us! Every case I just mentioned was pinned on him, but the real culprit isn’t him, it’s me!”
The PCE investigators were stunned; Wei Zihao was willing to confess to any crime to avoid Heng Society’s pursuit.
During this time, no one noticed a transparent thread loosening around Wei Zihao’s wrist; a young man walked back from the public restroom to the ward, appearing as if everything was unrelated to him.
Suddenly the chief investigator pointed at Qing Chen and asked the nurse, “Was it him who just passed by you?”
The nurse shook her head, “No.”
“Is it really not him?” the old detective frowned.
“No, he looks like this. If it were him, I would definitely remember,” the nurse said.
The old detective rushed into the bathroom only to find the window already open, with the cold wind outside gushing in.
He clung to the window and peered out, but there was nothing outside.
Could he have already escaped through the window? This is the first floor, escaping by jumping through the window couldn’t be easier.
At that moment, Qing Chen returned to the hospital room expressionless, lying down even in the same posture as before he got up, without any change.
The key to washing away the crime wasn’t in how many He Sheng Society members he could kill, but in finding the real culprit.
Everything that happened tonight was very concealed, and unless one was a party involved, it would be hard to cut through the dense fog and see it all.
Qing Chen’s cellphone vibrated in his pocket. He opened it and shockingly saw a message from Yi: “Actually, if that PCE Level Three Detective took it seriously, you would still have a flaw since only you came out of the bathroom. At the very least, he would come to ask you if you had seen anyone suspicious.”
Qing Chen thought for a moment and replied, “If I were an ordinary person, of course, I would have flaws, but now it’s different. Wang Bingxu will help me deal with this flaw.”
“What do you mean?” Yi was a bit puzzled.
Qing Chen didn’t reply but instead put down the phone.
At that moment, Wang Bingxu was also drawn to the corridor by the noise. He glanced at the blood on the ground and the PCE investigators and felt that something was amiss.
Why was nothing happening at the doors of the other hospital rooms, but an incident had occurred right at this one?
He quickly walked over to Qing Chen’s bedside and found the young man’s sleeping posture identical to earlier.
Qing Chen gently turned his body, “Oh, how come you’re here?”
“Ah, the boss was worried the doctors wouldn’t take good care of you, so he sent me to check on you,” Wang Bingxu scratched his head, “Looks like you’re okay, I’m heading out then.”
The next second, the old detective had already returned from the bathroom back to the hallway, intending to enter Qing Chen’s hospital room to check.
However, as he was just pushing the door, he bumped into Wang Bingxu.
Wang Bingxu coldly said, “What do you want?”
The old detective responded equally coldly, “PCE is handling the case, anyone who doesn’t want to die better step back.”
Then Wang Bingxu swung his arm around landing a slap on his face, “My name’s Wang Bingxu, everyone in this room is from the Li Family, who the hell allowed you to take over the case?”
The old detective spun around on the spot from the slap, but the first thing he did upon stopping was to apologize, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were from the Li Family.”
“Get lost,” Wang Bingxu said.
The door to the hospital room was shut, plunging the room back into darkness.
Outside the room, Wei Zihao was lamenting, “What just happened? Officer, I’m innocent.”
“Just now you were emphatically listing the evidence of the crime, it’s too late to claim innocence now,” one detective coldly stated, “Our people have already gone to the site you mentioned where the evidence is buried. Don’t worry, we will definitely make it a solid case.”
Qing Chen took out his phone, “When can Liu Dezhu be released from prison?”
“Once Wei Zihao is officially charged by the PCE Security Committee tomorrow, he can be,” Yi replied.
“Oh, aren’t there any other steps involved?” Qing Chen wondered, “Logically, it should first be filed for re-examination, then all evidence needed to establish Wei Zihao’s guilt must be gathered before Liu Dezhu can be released without charges.”
“Wei Zihao’s case is already set in stone. I can pull some strings to release Liu Dezhu earlier,” Yi said, “Anyway, one more or one less person inside, nobody will notice. Remember, in three days at midnight, go and fetch the Taboo Item ‘ACE-011 To Win People with Virtue’.”
Qing Chen couldn’t help but marvel, inside that bit of prison land, Yi was doing whatever he wanted. He couldn’t understand why the Federation granted an artificial intelligence so much power.
This might be related to Yi’s father, Ren Xiaosu, who held a pivotal position throughout the history of the Federation. Yi was probably considered a true second-generation official.
Yi asked, “Is there anything else you need?”
Qing Chen thought for a moment, “Thank Li Dongze for me.”
According to Li Dongze’s style of operation, all of these He Sheng Society members should have been eliminated tonight, but for Qing Chen’s sake, Li Dongze left some survivors from various gangs.
“Won’t you thank me?” Yi asked curiously, “I helped a lot tonight too. If it weren’t for me, the He Sheng Society wouldn’t have been brought to this hospital… by the way, I have recently taken a liking to another girl… ”
Qing Chen closed his eyes and stopped responding to the messages.
Yi waited a while longer, “Are you still there?”
“Qing Chen, are you still there?”
“Are you there, are you there, are you there?”
…
Grab a bite to eat, there’s one more chapter tonight