Chapter 3 03

Chapter 03

Late in the afternoon, He Lin called Li Shang aside for a private conversation.

The previous case had confirmed that a child was a victim abducted three years prior. Officers from the Third Precinct had brought the child to the Municipal Police Bureau, tasked with reuniting him with his biological parents.

He Lin had already made arrangements with both families.

They picked up the child and drove off.

Li Shang’s role was to sit in the back seat with the child and look after him.

The child was a boy, just over six years old. Abducted at the tender age of three, he had no recollection of his home or parents. He didn’t even grasp the concept of "going home." In his young mind, he felt as though he was being taken away from his mom and dad.

Faced with two unfamiliar men, the child began to fuss and demand to get out of the car as soon as they set off, his small body squirming restlessly in the seat.

Soon after, He Lin realized he might have misjudged his new subordinate; even this seemingly perfect individual had his weaknesses.

For instance: handling children.

As soon as Li Shang got into the car, he positioned himself far from the child. His posture was rigid, exuding an air of "do not approach," and he coldly instructed the child, "Stop moving."

For the first minute or two, the child was indeed subdued by his presence. But children, being children, quickly resumed their antics. After a brief lull, he couldn't resist climbing all over the seat, even deliberately nudging Li Shang.

He seemed rather intrigued by this handsome, ice-cold "big brother."

Li Shang gently nudged the child away with his finger and warned him again, "Stop bothering me. Play by yourself."

This time, the quiet lasted even less. The child began to wriggle and babble incessantly.

"Brother, brother, where are we going?"

"Why did the other police officer say he was taking me home? But didn’t I just leave home?"

If this continued, it might distract He Lin from driving.

Li Shang finally moved again. He took out his phone and reasoned with the child: "If you keep making noise, you’ll distract the driver and create a traffic hazard. The entire trip is 16 minutes. We’ve already driven for three minutes and twenty seconds. You only need to be quiet for another twelve and a half minutes."

His attitude was undeniably serious, and his calculations precise. Unfortunately, this approach was lost on the child, who extended a small hand and pleaded, "But brother, I’m so bored. Play a game with me."

Seeing this, Li Shang sighed. He looked at the child and said earnestly, "Alright, but I’ll decide what we play."

The child exclaimed, "Okay!"

Li Shang asked him, "Do you know how to play the idiom chain game?"

"Yes! I’m really good at it. Mom and Dad say I know lots of idioms."

"Then I’ll give you a starting word." Li Shang pondered for a moment before saying, "Overjoyed (xīng gāo cǎi liè)."

"Liè…" The child suddenly froze, like a computer crashing or someone under a petrifying spell, completely motionless.

Li Shang savored the rare quiet, turning to gaze out the car window. "You can take your time to think."

He Lin, while driving, was also trying to come up with an answer.

He thought for a minute, reviewing familiar idioms in his mind, and then realized—this was practically impossible to follow up, wasn’t it?

Li Shang was clearly playing a trick on the child.

Sure enough, after two minutes, even the slow-witted child caught on. He frowned and said, "No, this one’s too hard. Brother, give me another one."

Li Shang turned to the child and offered a faint smile. "Okay." His thin lips parted, and he uttered another word: "Shattered (sì fēn wǔ liè)."

"Liè" again? The child, who had just managed to climb out of one pit, was promptly pushed back in by Li Shang.

After another minute of contemplation, he finally gave up and burst into tears.

Li Shang calmly pulled a tissue from the nearby box and comforted him, "Don’t cry. If you don’t know it, go home and memorize more idioms."

At that moment, a young heart quietly shattered.

Hearing Li Shang’s words, He Lin’s mind inexplicably conjured a slightly cold voice: "If you’re bad, practice more."

Listening to the child’s increasingly distressed sobs, he had to intervene.

As if by magic, He Lin produced two lollipops and tossed them to the back seat.

Li Shang unwrapped one for the child, and the sweet taste temporarily dried his tears, bringing a moment of calm.

After that, He Lin, with practiced ease, didn’t bother explaining why his previous home wasn’t with his biological parents. Instead, he directly told him, "We’re both police officers, and we’re good people. Where we’re taking you next is really fun—there are lots of new toys, yummy food, and new clothes. Be good and play there for a few days."

Finally, the child stopped fussing and asking questions, happily sucking on his lollipop in the back seat.

Li Shang held the other lollipop as a spare.

He Lin saw this in the rearview mirror and smiled faintly. He said, "That one’s for you. I have more here."

Li Shang was slightly taken aback. He lowered his gaze, staring at the pink wrapper, hesitating for a long time without opening it. He held the lollipop, bringing it under his nose and near his lips, gently inhaling, as if savoring the scent of a rose.

He Lin turned around during a red light and saw this. He asked, "You don’t like candy?"

"No…" Li Shang looked up, denying it at first, then explained, "I just always thought it was something kids eat. I don’t usually have it."

He Lin chuckled. "Then try it. The lollipops from this place are really good."

Li Shang replied, "Okay, I’ll have it later."

Even as he said this, his hand holding the candy remained still, showing no intention of unwrapping it.

The child, seeing this, his eyes sparkling, reached out to grab it: "If big brother isn’t going to eat it, give it to me…"

Li Shang, as if fearing his candy would be coveted, swiftly protected it with his hand, then slipped it into his pocket. "This is mine. You’re a child—children shouldn’t eat too much candy."

He Lin, sitting in the driver’s seat listening to their conversation, couldn’t help but smile to himself.

He thought, even though this newcomer wasn’t good with children, he was undeniably quite endearing.

.

The biological parents’ home wasn’t far from the Municipal Police Bureau—just a half-hour drive.

He Lin parked the car, and Li Shang helped the child out.

In the three years the child had been missing, the family had never given up searching for him.

They posted missing person flyers all over streets and alleys; posted the child’s photo online; registered information on various missing person websites; and later left the child’s DNA information in the police database.

It was through these clues that He Lin gradually tracked down the child.

Until the comparison results came out, and everything was finally settled.

This long journey of searching for family finally reached its dawn.

Having received the news in advance, the child's parents were already waiting at the door, along with a crowd of relatives. They craned their necks in anticipation, eagerly awaiting the child's return.

As they emerged from the car, the mother’s eyes instantly welled up. She rushed over without a second thought, sobbing as she clutched the child tightly in her arms, repeatedly calling his nickname, her voice trembling with emotion.

The child’s father quietly wiped away tears beside them, his shoulders shaking as he battled to hold back his emotions, trying not to cry too loudly.

While the adults were overwhelmed with emotion, the child remained bewildered.

His clear eyes were filled with confusion and unease. After a moment of hesitation, perhaps swayed by the intense familial love or awakened by faint memories, the child finally stretched out his small hands and timidly called out "Mom" amid his mother’s weeping.

The mother trembled and held the child even tighter, as if she never wanted to let go again.

The father was so overwhelmed he was speechless, only able to repeat his thanks to He Lin, those two simple words seemingly encompassing endless gratitude.

He Lin advised, "The child is still young. Give him time to adjust and buy him things he likes."

Li Shang stood to the side. As touching as the scene was, it couldn’t shake his determination to complete his work. He handed the documents to the father and said, "We need your signature here."

Once the formalities were done, he collected the materials, ready to file them later.

This case could now be marked with a red label.

He Lin chatted briefly with the parents, not wanting to intrude on their family reunion, then turned to head back.

He checked his phone—quitting time was near.

"I’ll take these back. You can go straight home and log them tomorrow," He Lin asked Li Shang, "Where are you living now?"

Li Shang named a residential area and added, "It’s a rented place, right next to the municipal bureau."

He Lin had heard of that neighborhood too: "That’s a good spot. It’s close, so you can sleep in until 8:30 before heading to work."

Li Shang sat in the passenger seat, head lowered as if mulling over the touching reunion he had just witnessed.

He Lin smiled and asked him, "Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?"

Li Shang gave a quiet "Mm," buckled up, and sat up straight.

He Lin continued, "Although I initially chose the Missing Persons Investigation Unit, it wasn’t until I solved a case and reunited a missing person that I truly fell in love with this work."

He added, "The cases we handle aren’t like ordinary criminal investigations where the outcome is predetermined and all we need to do is find the culprit. Investigating missing persons cases is like opening a blind box—you never know what result you’ll get."

Li Shang asked, "Are situations like today common?"

He Lin replied, "Fewer than one in five cases end with a successful recovery, but every time we bring someone home, it’s deeply moving. The people we search for might still be alive, or they might have passed away. The outcome could be good, or it could be tragic…"

As He Lin spoke, Li Shang turned to look at him. The man was handsome, with a tall nose bridge. While saying these words, his cold, resolute profile made him seem full of righteousness, yet his confident, spirited brows and eyes still carried a trace of youthful energy.

Li Shang couldn’t help but stare a little longer.

He Lin, noticing Li Shang’s gaze, felt a slight tingling in his head—that familiar prickling sensation had returned, though thankfully it wasn’t too severe.

He continued, the words blurted out almost unconsciously: "When we help someone find their way back to their life’s path, it feels like another completion. After all, we law enforcement officers undergo the strictest selection and the most rigorous training, all for the purpose of protecting those we are meant to protect."

His tone carried a hint of bragging, as if asking, "Aren't I cool?"

He Lin wasn’t usually the type to say such things, and he felt quite pleased with himself for coming up with that line. He took a moment to glance at Li Shang’s reaction.

But upon hearing this, Li Shang’s expression suddenly changed. He looked at He Lin with a hint of disbelief, his eyes holding an emotion He Lin couldn’t quite decipher.

He Lin felt a chill down his spine under that gaze, thinking Li Shang was surprised he could say something like that.

It was the first time he had spoken like this in front of someone, and under Li Shang’s intense stare, He Lin inexplicably felt a bit exposed and nervous. He rubbed his nose and tried to play it cool, explaining, "Actually, that wasn’t my line. It just popped into my head. Someone must have said it to me before."

Li Shang’s tone was casual, as if he were just making small talk: "For you to remember it for so long, it must have been someone important, right?"

But his gaze never left He Lin, as if he were specifically waiting for the answer to that question.

He Lin thought Li Shang was teasing him for his poor memory. Relieved that Li Shang didn’t press further about those words, he joked, "Must have been. Maybe an ex-girlfriend. I can’t really remember, haha."

Well done—taking the awkwardness to the extreme.

Li Shang was stung by that answer. The words he wanted to say stuck in his throat, unable to come out. He could only sigh and lower his eyelashes: The conclusion was roughly correct, but the process was completely wrong.

.

He Lin dropped Li Shang off at the entrance of the residential area.

Li Shang went home and unlocked the door with the passcode. Once he was alone, his expression instantly shifted, becoming more relaxed yet colder.

As he changed his shoes, Li Shang thought to himself that today’s renewed interaction with He Lin hadn’t triggered the previous headaches or bleeding. That was good news.

It seemed he could try staying by his side after all.

There was still much to do tonight.

He had rented this place online. Just last night, he completed the procedures at Tianning Base and rushed over early this morning. He arrived in such a hurry that he didn’t have time to tidy up before heading to the municipal bureau to report for duty.

The apartment had one bedroom and one living room, feeling somewhat empty—much like his own style: simple, clean, and quiet. It had only the most basic furniture, with no extra items.

Li Shang ordered takeout and had some essentials delivered by a courier, then began cleaning the room.

He worked quietly but swiftly, everything orderly and efficient.

After nine years, all he could bring back was one suitcase.

He had spent most of his past years in combat uniforms, so he didn’t own many casual clothes. Most of his wardrobe consisted of black, white, and gray. He took them out one by one and hung them neatly in the closet.

Aside from compressed bedding, pillows, and clothes, he had brought three other items.

The first was a rectangular alarm clock. Even though people mostly use phones these days, Li Shang still kept this clock. He had an extremely strong sense of time, planning his days down to the minute without any deviation.

Even after setting the alarm, he always turned it off five minutes before it rang, then got up precisely on time.

Unless he was severely injured or too ill to move, he never stayed in bed.

The second item was a small plastic first-aid kit containing over a dozen types of medicine, gauze, tape, disinfectant, and other essentials, all neatly arranged in the bedside drawer.

The last item was a heavy little box.

Li Shang opened it. The top layer was filled with colorful fridge magnets, like children’s toys.

At Tianning Base, only the captain’s apartment had a refrigerator. That place got plenty of sunlight, causing many of the magnets to fade.

Li Shang began organizing them expressionlessly, sticking each fridge magnet onto the refrigerator in the kitchen.

The sun-bleached magnets showed signs of age, making it possible to tell how long they had been purchased—the faded ones were older, while the brightly colored ones were from the last year or two.

Li Shang had an excellent memory and could clearly recall when and where each fridge magnet was bought.

He completed all other tasks quickly, but when facing the refrigerator, his expression turned serious, and he worked slowly, applying the magnets.

It took him over half an hour to finally finish placing them.

Li Shang took a step back, studied his work carefully, then stepped forward again to nudge one fridge magnet a few millimeters to the left. Only when he was certain everything was perfect did he consider the task complete.

The magnets on the upper part appeared randomly placed, but the ones below were lined up neatly.

Only those who had been to Rong Qing’s dorm would recognize that he had recreated the original layout exactly from the old refrigerator.

These were among the few remaining mementos from that era.

Just as he finished organizing, his online order arrived.

Li Shang ate a few bites of his meal but couldn’t finish. He put the leftovers back into the takeout box, tidied up, and set it by the door.

His routine hadn’t changed since his time at Tianning Base. He stayed busy until nine o’clock, then went out for his nightly run, right on time.

The night in Yuncheng was lit up. He ran at a fast pace, looping around the municipal bureau and the residential area.

When he returned from his run, he was breathing heavily, his face paler than before, his lips almost colorless.

Li Shang didn’t think much of it. He went straight to the bathroom, showered, dried his hair, changed into clean pajamas, and started his medication routine.

He expertly opened the various bottles and containers, taking three pills from some, two from others, downing a handful of multicolored pills without so much as a frown.

Since his most recent injury recovery, his weight had been steadily dropping, and his body was noticeably weakening. No amount of exercise or medication seemed to help.

But for someone who had faced life and death multiple times, staying alive and working, keeping things as they are, was already good enough.

After finishing everything, Li Shang retrieved the candy from earlier in the day out of the pocket of his clothes waiting to be washed.

The small lollipop felt light in his palm.

He gazed at it gravely for a moment, as if debating whether to eat it.

He hadn’t eaten candy often in the past. It seemed that this kind of sweetness was always associated with one person. He never appreciated it back then, only realizing later that life’s sweetness fades with each piece consumed.

If it were Rong Qing, he would have popped it open and eaten it as soon as he got it, maybe kept the wrapper at most.

But he couldn’t do that. Because that person had forgotten about him, all he could do was stare at the candy and remember that person.

Li Shang suddenly couldn’t bring himself to eat it.

He closed his eyes, pressed the candy to his chest, and let his heartbeat soak in the imagined sweetness.

He sat quietly like this for a while, imagining finishing the candy, before opening his eyes with reluctance. He took out an airtight sealed bag and carefully placed the lollipop inside, treating it like a priceless artifact.

There was still time, so Li Shang took out the small box again. With the fridge magnets removed, the box felt much lighter. At the bottom were some assorted photos and printouts.

Li Shang’s expression immediately grew stern.

He took these items to a storage room in the center of the house, a small dark room the landlord had renovated for storing miscellaneous items.

The room was small, about three square meters, and Li Shang had specifically asked the landlord to empty it beforehand.

The lighting inside was dim but enough to make out the documents.

Li Shang tacked the photos to the wall with nails and expertly linked them with red string to create a web of clues.

His fingers weaved skillfully between the photos and threads. By the time the red threads spread across the wall like a spider’s web, he had run out of all the evidence photos.

Li Shang pored over the clues and images carefully, his thoughts drifting back to two years ago.

Looking back on his life, he had seldom been defeated, but this one mission had been thwarted by fate.

The raid on the Lily Park was a cross-border law enforcement operation between two countries.

At the time, to rescue a key individual and scope out the park’s interior, he and several other officers had gone undercover for two weeks. Outwardly, the operation seemed smooth and successful, but Rong Qing knew that, for him, it was actually a loss.

Because he had to leave He Lin behind, and he himself had almost died as a result.

The Lily Park had four bosses. The first and second bosses were the Zhao brothers. The third and fourth bosses were Chinese illegal immigrants.

During the final tally, those arrested were missing the third and fourth key figures of the park: Xia Yan, the enforcer in charge of security, and Bai Zang, the financial manager handling the park’s finances.

These two had secretly fled before the police operation. Along with them, a large amount of dirty money from the park had disappeared. It seemed they had anticipated the police raid, prepared in advance, and escaped.

An international arrest warrant was issued for Xia Yan.

But almost nothing was known about Bai Zang.

Bai Zang was also known as Boss Bai in those circles, a particularly mysterious alias. The police only confirmed that he was Chinese, male, and had been part of the organization for three years, hiding within the Lily Park. Beyond that, nothing else was known.

Aside from the park’s bosses, none of the employees or informants had ever seen him.

He was like a ghost.

The undercover officers and informants had exhausted all efforts but gathered very little information about him.

Yet this person was real. Boss Bai was a legend in those circles, having risen from a low-level worker to become the fourth-in-command of the park, elevating Lily to the top park in the area.

While in the park, he issued orders online daily, managing team leaders, assigning tasks, and handling internal and external affairs.

From chat records later seized by the police, it was determined that this person had deep connections everywhere.

When the Zhao brothers were away, he and Xia Yan jointly managed the park.

Among the limited information about Boss Bai was one detail: he was a genuine sadist. Rumors said he spent most of his time in the park’s torture room, deriving pleasure from tormenting others. The police speculated that, aside from the bosses, everyone who had seen Bai Boss was dead, which was why no one knew his true identity.

After the Lily Park was dismantled, the police wanted to further investigate the whereabouts of Xia Yan and Bai Zang.

But just then, the Zhao brothers, held in M Country’s prison, died under mysterious circumstances before they could be interrogated.

That lead went cold.

Two years later, after Li Shang recovered from serious injuries and returned to duty, he learned from informants that Xia Yan had been spotted near Yuncheng.

If Xia Yan was here, it was highly likely Bai Zang was too.

Over the years, there was only one exception among those who had seen Bai Zang’s true face and were still alive.

That was He Lin.

Even though the amnesiac He Lin remembered nothing about Bai Zang or what he looked like, he could still become a target for those people.

When he received this news, Li Shang knew he had to come here. It was Rong Qing’s unfinished mission.

He had to protect that person.

And, if possible, catch those two who had slipped through the net.

.

At 11:30, Li Shang went to bed on time.

In an unfamiliar environment, alone at night, the mattress was softer than the one at the base, making it hard to get comfortable.

Hesitating for a moment, Li Shang got up and opened the wardrobe door. He took an old pillow into his arms and finally fell asleep.