Chapter 94
“Maybe the feeling I had when I saw Yan Xie for the first time was similar to how you felt when you saw me for the first time.”
Jiang Ting stood on the spot without saying a word, not knowing how long had passed, but to him, these short moments felt like a lifetime.
“You better put it away first, Yan Xie.” He finally said softly, his eyebrows lowered without showing the slightest emotion: “The things your parents left for you are very precious, don’t give them to others easily.”
Jiang Ting put the empty teacup on the coffee table, and turned around, wanting to leave, but Yan Xie suddenly got up and held his hand: “Why?”
“We’ve already agreed…”
“No, that’s what you think unilaterally. I’ve never felt that our relationship was just physical.”
“A commitment related to a life-long event is not something you can decide so easily, you didn’t even think about it clearly…”
“If I didn’t think carefully about it, after casually going out with so many small models and actors in the past few years, why am I chasing after you? Am I that desperate?!”
Jiang Ting frowned and said nothing.
“……” Yan Xie said stiffly, “I didn’t mean that.”
The atmosphere became abstruse and tense. Jiang Ting looked at Yan Xie for a moment, and suddenly asked, “Did you encounter any danger?”
Jiang Ting’s keenness in logical thinking was simply overwhelming. Yan Xie’s back muscles stiffened for a moment, and then he denied it: “No.”
But Jiang Ting’s frowning brows did not relax: “Listen, Yan Xie, this is not a joke. Today Chief Lu called you to the City Bureau because…”
“Did you refuse to agree because you were afraid of dragging me into the situation? Have you ever thought that we are actually now in a spousal relationship? Whether you are willing to accept it or not, in the eyes of outsiders, there is no difference?!”
Yan Xie’s suppressed roar echoed repeatedly in the living room, and even the air that had frozen into ice cubes shivered for a long time.
After a long while, Jiang Ting exhaled softly and shook his head: “No, it’s really different… I can’t explain it to you.”
If one listened carefully, he said every word reluctantly, as if the hidden meaning in those words made him feel a little unbearable deep in his heart, but Yan Xie ignored this point because of his anger: “What’s the difference? I’m telling you, don’t think that just because you’re Jiang Ting, things will be different once they happen to you. Do you think it is useful to deny it? After so many years as a policeman, you still don’t know that if you don’t wish anyone to know, don’t do it?!”
Jiang Ting’s self-restraint was like even if the situation was difficult and embarrassing, he could restrain his emotions very well on the surface. Only after Yan Xie’s wildfire-like rage vented, did he quietly say: “It’s my fault.”
“Jiang Ting, you!”
Jiang Ting’s expression was numb. His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t say a word as if his strength was drained. He smiled bitterly after a long time:
“It was my fault.”
He bypassed Yan Xie, who was standing upright, his footsteps were steady and even. Step by step, he walked into the guest bedroom and closed the door with his backhand.
It was the first time that they had slept in separate rooms in three weeks. Probably because it had become a habit to wake up in the middle of the night and touch Jiang Ting’s hand to make sure he was still there, Yan Xie didn’t fall asleep completely until the early morning. In a trance, he had a lot of bizarre dreams, most of which had no specific pictures or colors. But a certain negative emotion that was usually suppressed in the depths of his heart was infinitely magnified, which gave birth to cruel and fierce nightmares, causing him to immediately wake up sweating as soon as he fell into a deep sleep.
At five o’clock in the morning, Yan Xie almost used all his willpower to pull himself out of the dark nightmare. He suddenly sat up, gasped for a moment, and rolled over to get out of bed.
His handsome and rough face was reflected in the mirror. His hair was frantically messed up, and stubble was already appearing on his chin. Yan Xie looked at himself critically, not very satisfied. He took a deep breath and counted for ten seconds before he let it out. Finally, he felt that the burning anxiety was pushed back to the bottom of his heart.
“Jiang Ting?”
Yan Xie knocked on the door, but there was no movement in the guest bedroom. He suppressed his temper and said solemnly: “Jiang Ting? Open the door. Let’s have a good chat.”
Vice-Captain Yan’s mature and sophisticated temperament wasn’t cultivated since he was a child. Before he entered the police academy at the age of eighteen, he was a young master who would fall ill without seeing blood and fighting for three days. It was all thanks to the close cooperation between the people’s democratic dictatorship and the criminals for more than ten years since he graduated from the police academy and started working, which gave him a full range of severe blows and suppression. By the time he was in his thirties, Yan Xie had already cultivated himself into a new person, and no one but himself could remember how fierce and rude he was back then.
“Jiang Ting?” Yan Xie finally felt that something was wrong: “Are you in there?”
With a click, Yan Xie pushed the door open, and his temples jumped in an instant. The bedding on the guest bed was neat and empty, and Jiang Ting had already left at some unknown time last night.
Bang!
The door of the master bedroom bounced back from being hit against the wall. In an instant, Yan Xie rushed in, unplugged the charging mobile phone on the bedside table, and dialed a number directly.
After the third ring, the call was picked up, and Jiang Ting’s usually calm voice came from the opposite side: “Hello.”
“Where are you?!” Yan Xie hurriedly asked.
“……” The clicking sound of the car turn signal came from the other side of the phone, and after a short while, Jiang Ting said, “Yang Mei is next to me.”
As soon as the words landed, Yan Xie didn’t even reply to him, he directly turned around, changed clothes, put on his shoes, grabbed the car keys, and was about to go out to chase.
“Don’t come here, I won’t see you even if you come.” Jiang Ting gave a steady warning like a clairvoyant: “Calm down, Yan Xie, we are all adults. We should think carefully for a few days before making a major decision. You and I both need to give each other a little space to think about what happened during this time, otherwise, we will act in a hurry in the spur of the moment, and if we regret it later, there will be no room for turning back.”
Yan Xie clutched the door handle: “How many days do you need?”
“What?”
“How many days do you need to give me an answer?!”
“……” On the mobile phone, only the noise of the vehicle could be heard. After more than ten seconds, just when Yan Xie was about to be unable to restrain the evil fire, he suddenly heard Jiang Ting calmly and gently say: “Maybe we need to think about it for a week.”
There was no sarcasm or helplessness in his tone as if he had thought very carefully.
Yan Xie released his hand clutching the door handle, and after a long while he let out a cold hum: “Okay. I’ll wait for you for a week.”
Then he hung up the phone.
………
The vehicle was racing down the highway in the early morning, and Yang Mei was secretly squinting her eyes to the side. She looked at Jiang Ting’s expressionless face, while holding the steering wheel with one hand, and throwing the phone after ending the call into the glove box with the other, and she seemed to have seen his little finger trembling slightly at that moment.
——But that’s impossible. Did she see it wrong?
This thought had just come into Yang Mei’s heart, when suddenly Jiang Ting bit his back molar as if he couldn’t restrain himself any longer, and slammed on the brakes!
Squeak — the rubber tires violently rubbed against the asphalt ground, the noise almost piercing the eardrums. Yang Mei was caught off guard and leaned forward and was slammed against the passenger seat because of inertia, losing her voice: “Brother Jiang!”
Jiang Ting was looking forward, his shoulders and lumbar spine under his shirt tensed like a rock, and after a while, only a few words came out of his bloodless lips: “I’m sorry.”
It was too early in the morning, so there weren’t many cars on the inter-provincial highway. Yang Mei looked back and forth and asked in horror, “Brother Jiang… Did you not sleep all night last night? Do you want me to drive…”
Jiang Ting raised his hand and wiped his face forcefully, and said, “Come and drive.” Then he pushed open the door and got out of the car.
After a while, the vehicle broke through the foggy mist in the early morning, and Yang Mei, who had changed into flat shoes, couldn’t help but kept looking at the passenger seat while driving: “Why don’t you take a break, Brother Jiang? Look at your face, did you not sleep all night?”
When she said this, her tone was a bit sour. Jiang Ting was leaning deeply in the passenger seat, his complexion was indeed pale and tired, but he shook his head unexpectedly: “I’m just in a bad mood.”
For someone like Jiang Ting who was introverted, outsiders might never be able to hear him confess that he was in a bad mood. Yang Mei couldn’t restrain the sour taste on her tongue even by gritting her teeth: “Is it because of that surname Yan?”
Jiang Ting did not answer this question directly, but instead asked, “What kind of person do you think I am?”
Yang Mei didn’t expect him to ask such a question. She was stunned, almost missing a turn, and hurriedly turned on the indicator to change lanes: “Brother Jiang, what you said… Of course, you are omniscient and omnipotent in my eyes. That surname Yan is grumpy all day long and was full of evil ideas, and he glared at others with his eyes like a demon, how can he compare with you?”
Jiang Ting smiled.
“Really,” Yang Mei said in a very serious tone, afraid that he would not believe her: “Do you remember the first time we met? You might not remember it, but I have always kept it in my heart and have never forgotten it all these years. It was the eighth day that I was arrested and detained in the sub-bureau. Everyone testified that I smashed the head of that person surnamed Zhao with a wine bottle, and the box monitoring was also “coincidently” broken. I cried and told all the policemen that I really didn’t know anything, but they either put on the face of an official and told me to be frank and lenient, telling me to be honest and not fight with the rich, or give me weird looks… It wasn’t until I couldn’t hold it anymore that I suddenly heard rumors that a Unit leader had returned from a business trip and gone directly to my crime scene. I couldn’t believe it at the time. I just thought it was the new trick they came up with — how can there be a Unit leader-level person who ran to the scene, especially for me?”
Jiang Ting was impatient to hear her always mentioning this: “When I was in the Unit, I went to two hundred sites a year, what you regard as…”
“For you, it may be the most inconspicuous and insignificant thing to mention, but for me, it was something that I will never forget all these years. Just like, I still remember you carrying that evidence bag, which contained a fragment of a wine bottle that was not much bigger than a mung bean, and saying to the person surnamed Zhao: ‘As long as things in this world have happened, they will inevitably leave traces and clues. No matter how much money you spend, you can’t turn a lie into evidence, because I am the evidence’.”
Jiang Ting didn’t know what to think, and his expression was a little stunned.
“That was the first time I saw you. Maybe I was influenced by your oppressive confidence in facing any difficulties and dilemmas.” Yang Mei turned her head to look back at him and smiled with emotion: “I still remembered your tone and demeanor when you said all this to this day, maybe that’s when I started liking you.”
The trees on both sides of the road swept back rapidly. Jiang Ting closed his eyes, and suddenly asked after a while:
“Then do you know what it was like when I first met that fierce Yan Xie, who looks like a demon?”
A little confusion appeared on Yang Mei’s face.
“Five years ago, Gongzhou and Jianning jointly handled a major anti-drug case, and I was the commander. The preliminary investigation and preparation work lasted for two months. On the day of the official arrest, I sat in the command car and connected to three communication channels, racing against time to listen to the real-time situation. Then suddenly I heard an emergency report from the scene of the operation, saying that a target drug dealer got wind of the news, and was now carrying a weapon, and quickly went to the trading place to prepare to tell the information.”
“The police had a hard time getting to the trading location, and If the drug dealer gang got the news, the whole siege would be in vain. At that time, there was no other way, so I was prepared to risk failure and forcibly order an early attack, but suddenly I heard someone say that there was a small criminal policeman from the Jianning Municipal Bureau who acted without authorization. He got after the drug dealer who got the news and rushed out of the ambush point, and now he has already lost contact.”
“I broke out in a cold sweat and couldn’t figure out what this small criminal policeman was trying to do. Should I send someone to stop him immediately? But then the police would definitely be exposed. But if I didn’t do anything, what if he died? He was a single-handed person who couldn’t shoot in order to prevent exposure. How could he possibly outsmart a desperado with a homemade grenade strapped all over his body?”
Yang Mei couldn’t help but temporarily forgot her dislike of Yan Xie, and said without thinking, “Based on what I know about you, Brother Jiang, you should have sent someone to stop him immediately.”
“If it were now, I would.” Jiang Ting said indifferently, “But five years ago, I was still relatively young. I said to myself that I’ll give him a minute to make honorable contributions…or a chance to sacrifice honorably.”
Yang Mei raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“That was probably the most intense and torturous 60 seconds of psychological struggle in my life. In the 61st second, a report from the sniper at the scene suddenly came from the channel that the small policeman who rushed out after the drug dealer ran back. His face was covered in blood, and while running wildly, he made a frantic gesture of success to the observation point. He used an empty wine bottle, he picked up by the roadside to hit the drug dealer on the back of his occipital bone, and he died of a brain hemorrhage on the spot.”
Jiang Ting had no talent for storytelling, and his tone of narration was always calm and indifferent. However, from those few words, Yan Xie, who was brave and did things completely recklessly, appeared in front of Yang Mie’s eyes.
“Because the drug dealer failed to report the information successfully, the siege was finally carried out as planned and we won a clean and beautiful victory. After the operation, I went outside of the command car to talk to my superiors on the phone. Suddenly, I felt something and turned around to look. The two police officers were helping a staggering young criminal policeman out of the scene. The surroundings were messy, and there were people holding law enforcement recorders in front of him. The young officer was covered in dirt and blood, no one could tell whether it was the drug dealer’s or his own. Strong irritability and rebelliousness emerged from every pore on his body, so sharp and insolent that it was impossible to look directly at him. But when he passed the command car, he deliberately glanced inside.”
“I hung up the phone and asked the people next to him who he was, and they told me his name was Yan Xie.”
The sky gradually brightened, and the endless wilderness swept backward.
“Later, I pondered many times for some reason. Why did the policeman name Yan Xie look in the command car that day? Did he want to find me? Did he want to show off recklessly and in a high-profile manner like young people, or was he eagerly expecting verbal praise from his superior?”
Jiang Ting smiled lazily, a little self-deprecatingly: “I’m not good at praising others. If I hadn’t left the command car that day, I might have given him just silence. But I don’t know why, the scene of seeing Yan Xie for the first time was so clearly imprinted in my mind, including the blood dripping from his forehead, his provocative expression, and even his eyes that were full of aggression all the time. Maybe the feeling I had when I saw Yan Xie for the first time was similar to how you felt when you saw me for the first time.”
“…Brother Jiang…” Yang Mei’s nose felt a little sour.
“So you ask me if it’s because of Yan Xie that I’m in a bad mood.” Jiang Ting looked away, his sad smile dimly reflected in the car window, “No, it’s because of myself.”
The white Lexus was speeding across the highway, and in the depths of the haze ahead, “Gongzhou 24 KM” hung high in the air, outlining a vague green shadow.
Chapter 94
“Maybe the feeling I had when I saw Yan Xie for the first time was similar to how you felt when you saw me for the first time.”
Jiang Ting stood on the spot without saying a word, not knowing how long had passed, but to him, these short moments felt like a lifetime.
“You better put it away first, Yan Xie.” He finally said softly, his eyebrows lowered without showing the slightest emotion: “The things your parents left for you are very precious, don’t give them to others easily.”
Jiang Ting put the empty teacup on the coffee table, and turned around, wanting to leave, but Yan Xie suddenly got up and held his hand: “Why?”
“We’ve already agreed…”
“No, that’s what you think unilaterally. I’ve never felt that our relationship was just physical.”
“A commitment related to a life-long event is not something you can decide so easily, you didn’t even think about it clearly…”
“If I didn’t think carefully about it, after casually going out with so many small models and actors in the past few years, why am I chasing after you? Am I that desperate?!”
Jiang Ting frowned and said nothing.
“……” Yan Xie said stiffly, “I didn’t mean that.”
The atmosphere became abstruse and tense. Jiang Ting looked at Yan Xie for a moment, and suddenly asked, “Did you encounter any danger?”
Jiang Ting’s keenness in logical thinking was simply overwhelming. Yan Xie’s back muscles stiffened for a moment, and then he denied it: “No.”
But Jiang Ting’s frowning brows did not relax: “Listen, Yan Xie, this is not a joke. Today Chief Lu called you to the City Bureau because…”
“Did you refuse to agree because you were afraid of dragging me into the situation? Have you ever thought that we are actually now in a spousal relationship? Whether you are willing to accept it or not, in the eyes of outsiders, there is no difference?!”
Yan Xie’s suppressed roar echoed repeatedly in the living room, and even the air that had frozen into ice cubes shivered for a long time.
After a long while, Jiang Ting exhaled softly and shook his head: “No, it’s really different… I can’t explain it to you.”
If one listened carefully, he said every word reluctantly, as if the hidden meaning in those words made him feel a little unbearable deep in his heart, but Yan Xie ignored this point because of his anger: “What’s the difference? I’m telling you, don’t think that just because you’re Jiang Ting, things will be different once they happen to you. Do you think it is useful to deny it? After so many years as a policeman, you still don’t know that if you don’t wish anyone to know, don’t do it?!”
Jiang Ting’s self-restraint was like even if the situation was difficult and embarrassing, he could restrain his emotions very well on the surface. Only after Yan Xie’s wildfire-like rage vented, did he quietly say: “It’s my fault.”
“Jiang Ting, you!”
Jiang Ting’s expression was numb. His lips moved, as if he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t say a word as if his strength was drained. He smiled bitterly after a long time:
“It was my fault.”
He bypassed Yan Xie, who was standing upright, his footsteps were steady and even. Step by step, he walked into the guest bedroom and closed the door with his backhand.
It was the first time that they had slept in separate rooms in three weeks. Probably because it had become a habit to wake up in the middle of the night and touch Jiang Ting’s hand to make sure he was still there, Yan Xie didn’t fall asleep completely until the early morning. In a trance, he had a lot of bizarre dreams, most of which had no specific pictures or colors. But a certain negative emotion that was usually suppressed in the depths of his heart was infinitely magnified, which gave birth to cruel and fierce nightmares, causing him to immediately wake up sweating as soon as he fell into a deep sleep.
At five o’clock in the morning, Yan Xie almost used all his willpower to pull himself out of the dark nightmare. He suddenly sat up, gasped for a moment, and rolled over to get out of bed.
His handsome and rough face was reflected in the mirror. His hair was frantically messed up, and stubble was already appearing on his chin. Yan Xie looked at himself critically, not very satisfied. He took a deep breath and counted for ten seconds before he let it out. Finally, he felt that the burning anxiety was pushed back to the bottom of his heart.
“Jiang Ting?”
Yan Xie knocked on the door, but there was no movement in the guest bedroom. He suppressed his temper and said solemnly: “Jiang Ting? Open the door. Let’s have a good chat.”
Vice-Captain Yan’s mature and sophisticated temperament wasn’t cultivated since he was a child. Before he entered the police academy at the age of eighteen, he was a young master who would fall ill without seeing blood and fighting for three days. It was all thanks to the close cooperation between the people’s democratic dictatorship and the criminals for more than ten years since he graduated from the police academy and started working, which gave him a full range of severe blows and suppression. By the time he was in his thirties, Yan Xie had already cultivated himself into a new person, and no one but himself could remember how fierce and rude he was back then.
“Jiang Ting?” Yan Xie finally felt that something was wrong: “Are you in there?”
With a click, Yan Xie pushed the door open, and his temples jumped in an instant. The bedding on the guest bed was neat and empty, and Jiang Ting had already left at some unknown time last night.
Bang!
The door of the master bedroom bounced back from being hit against the wall. In an instant, Yan Xie rushed in, unplugged the charging mobile phone on the bedside table, and dialed a number directly.
After the third ring, the call was picked up, and Jiang Ting’s usually calm voice came from the opposite side: “Hello.”
“Where are you?!” Yan Xie hurriedly asked.
“……” The clicking sound of the car turn signal came from the other side of the phone, and after a short while, Jiang Ting said, “Yang Mei is next to me.”
As soon as the words landed, Yan Xie didn’t even reply to him, he directly turned around, changed clothes, put on his shoes, grabbed the car keys, and was about to go out to chase.
“Don’t come here, I won’t see you even if you come.” Jiang Ting gave a steady warning like a clairvoyant: “Calm down, Yan Xie, we are all adults. We should think carefully for a few days before making a major decision. You and I both need to give each other a little space to think about what happened during this time, otherwise, we will act in a hurry in the spur of the moment, and if we regret it later, there will be no room for turning back.”
Yan Xie clutched the door handle: “How many days do you need?”
“What?”
“How many days do you need to give me an answer?!”
“……” On the mobile phone, only the noise of the vehicle could be heard. After more than ten seconds, just when Yan Xie was about to be unable to restrain the evil fire, he suddenly heard Jiang Ting calmly and gently say: “Maybe we need to think about it for a week.”
There was no sarcasm or helplessness in his tone as if he had thought very carefully.
Yan Xie released his hand clutching the door handle, and after a long while he let out a cold hum: “Okay. I’ll wait for you for a week.”
Then he hung up the phone.
………
The vehicle was racing down the highway in the early morning, and Yang Mei was secretly squinting her eyes to the side. She looked at Jiang Ting’s expressionless face, while holding the steering wheel with one hand, and throwing the phone after ending the call into the glove box with the other, and she seemed to have seen his little finger trembling slightly at that moment.
——But that’s impossible. Did she see it wrong?
This thought had just come into Yang Mei’s heart, when suddenly Jiang Ting bit his back molar as if he couldn’t restrain himself any longer, and slammed on the brakes!
Squeak — the rubber tires violently rubbed against the asphalt ground, the noise almost piercing the eardrums. Yang Mei was caught off guard and leaned forward and was slammed against the passenger seat because of inertia, losing her voice: “Brother Jiang!”
Jiang Ting was looking forward, his shoulders and lumbar spine under his shirt tensed like a rock, and after a while, only a few words came out of his bloodless lips: “I’m sorry.”
It was too early in the morning, so there weren’t many cars on the inter-provincial highway. Yang Mei looked back and forth and asked in horror, “Brother Jiang… Did you not sleep all night last night? Do you want me to drive…”
Jiang Ting raised his hand and wiped his face forcefully, and said, “Come and drive.” Then he pushed open the door and got out of the car.
After a while, the vehicle broke through the foggy mist in the early morning, and Yang Mei, who had changed into flat shoes, couldn’t help but kept looking at the passenger seat while driving: “Why don’t you take a break, Brother Jiang? Look at your face, did you not sleep all night?”
When she said this, her tone was a bit sour. Jiang Ting was leaning deeply in the passenger seat, his complexion was indeed pale and tired, but he shook his head unexpectedly: “I’m just in a bad mood.”
For someone like Jiang Ting who was introverted, outsiders might never be able to hear him confess that he was in a bad mood. Yang Mei couldn’t restrain the sour taste on her tongue even by gritting her teeth: “Is it because of that surname Yan?”
Jiang Ting did not answer this question directly, but instead asked, “What kind of person do you think I am?”
Yang Mei didn’t expect him to ask such a question. She was stunned, almost missing a turn, and hurriedly turned on the indicator to change lanes: “Brother Jiang, what you said… Of course, you are omniscient and omnipotent in my eyes. That surname Yan is grumpy all day long and was full of evil ideas, and he glared at others with his eyes like a demon, how can he compare with you?”
Jiang Ting smiled.
“Really,” Yang Mei said in a very serious tone, afraid that he would not believe her: “Do you remember the first time we met? You might not remember it, but I have always kept it in my heart and have never forgotten it all these years. It was the eighth day that I was arrested and detained in the sub-bureau. Everyone testified that I smashed the head of that person surnamed Zhao with a wine bottle, and the box monitoring was also “coincidently” broken. I cried and told all the policemen that I really didn’t know anything, but they either put on the face of an official and told me to be frank and lenient, telling me to be honest and not fight with the rich, or give me weird looks… It wasn’t until I couldn’t hold it anymore that I suddenly heard rumors that a Unit leader had returned from a business trip and gone directly to my crime scene. I couldn’t believe it at the time. I just thought it was the new trick they came up with — how can there be a Unit leader-level person who ran to the scene, especially for me?”
Jiang Ting was impatient to hear her always mentioning this: “When I was in the Unit, I went to two hundred sites a year, what you regard as…”
“For you, it may be the most inconspicuous and insignificant thing to mention, but for me, it was something that I will never forget all these years. Just like, I still remember you carrying that evidence bag, which contained a fragment of a wine bottle that was not much bigger than a mung bean, and saying to the person surnamed Zhao: ‘As long as things in this world have happened, they will inevitably leave traces and clues. No matter how much money you spend, you can’t turn a lie into evidence, because I am the evidence’.”
Jiang Ting didn’t know what to think, and his expression was a little stunned.
“That was the first time I saw you. Maybe I was influenced by your oppressive confidence in facing any difficulties and dilemmas.” Yang Mei turned her head to look back at him and smiled with emotion: “I still remembered your tone and demeanor when you said all this to this day, maybe that’s when I started liking you.”
The trees on both sides of the road swept back rapidly. Jiang Ting closed his eyes, and suddenly asked after a while:
“Then do you know what it was like when I first met that fierce Yan Xie, who looks like a demon?”
A little confusion appeared on Yang Mei’s face.
“Five years ago, Gongzhou and Jianning jointly handled a major anti-drug case, and I was the commander. The preliminary investigation and preparation work lasted for two months. On the day of the official arrest, I sat in the command car and connected to three communication channels, racing against time to listen to the real-time situation. Then suddenly I heard an emergency report from the scene of the operation, saying that a target drug dealer got wind of the news, and was now carrying a weapon, and quickly went to the trading place to prepare to tell the information.”
“The police had a hard time getting to the trading location, and If the drug dealer gang got the news, the whole siege would be in vain. At that time, there was no other way, so I was prepared to risk failure and forcibly order an early attack, but suddenly I heard someone say that there was a small criminal policeman from the Jianning Municipal Bureau who acted without authorization. He got after the drug dealer who got the news and rushed out of the ambush point, and now he has already lost contact.”
“I broke out in a cold sweat and couldn’t figure out what this small criminal policeman was trying to do. Should I send someone to stop him immediately? But then the police would definitely be exposed. But if I didn’t do anything, what if he died? He was a single-handed person who couldn’t shoot in order to prevent exposure. How could he possibly outsmart a desperado with a homemade grenade strapped all over his body?”
Yang Mei couldn’t help but temporarily forgot her dislike of Yan Xie, and said without thinking, “Based on what I know about you, Brother Jiang, you should have sent someone to stop him immediately.”
“If it were now, I would.” Jiang Ting said indifferently, “But five years ago, I was still relatively young. I said to myself that I’ll give him a minute to make honorable contributions…or a chance to sacrifice honorably.”
Yang Mei raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“That was probably the most intense and torturous 60 seconds of psychological struggle in my life. In the 61st second, a report from the sniper at the scene suddenly came from the channel that the small policeman who rushed out after the drug dealer ran back. His face was covered in blood, and while running wildly, he made a frantic gesture of success to the observation point. He used an empty wine bottle, he picked up by the roadside to hit the drug dealer on the back of his occipital bone, and he died of a brain hemorrhage on the spot.”
Jiang Ting had no talent for storytelling, and his tone of narration was always calm and indifferent. However, from those few words, Yan Xie, who was brave and did things completely recklessly, appeared in front of Yang Mie’s eyes.
“Because the drug dealer failed to report the information successfully, the siege was finally carried out as planned and we won a clean and beautiful victory. After the operation, I went outside of the command car to talk to my superiors on the phone. Suddenly, I felt something and turned around to look. The two police officers were helping a staggering young criminal policeman out of the scene. The surroundings were messy, and there were people holding law enforcement recorders in front of him. The young officer was covered in dirt and blood, no one could tell whether it was the drug dealer’s or his own. Strong irritability and rebelliousness emerged from every pore on his body, so sharp and insolent that it was impossible to look directly at him. But when he passed the command car, he deliberately glanced inside.”
“I hung up the phone and asked the people next to him who he was, and they told me his name was Yan Xie.”
The sky gradually brightened, and the endless wilderness swept backward.
“Later, I pondered many times for some reason. Why did the policeman name Yan Xie look in the command car that day? Did he want to find me? Did he want to show off recklessly and in a high-profile manner like young people, or was he eagerly expecting verbal praise from his superior?”
Jiang Ting smiled lazily, a little self-deprecatingly: “I’m not good at praising others. If I hadn’t left the command car that day, I might have given him just silence. But I don’t know why, the scene of seeing Yan Xie for the first time was so clearly imprinted in my mind, including the blood dripping from his forehead, his provocative expression, and even his eyes that were full of aggression all the time. Maybe the feeling I had when I saw Yan Xie for the first time was similar to how you felt when you saw me for the first time.”
“…Brother Jiang…” Yang Mei’s nose felt a little sour.
“So you ask me if it’s because of Yan Xie that I’m in a bad mood.” Jiang Ting looked away, his sad smile dimly reflected in the car window, “No, it’s because of myself.”
The white Lexus was speeding across the highway, and in the depths of the haze ahead, “Gongzhou 24 KM” hung high in the air, outlining a vague green shadow.
