Chapter 62

Jiang Ting's head was slammed on the door, and his black hair rubbed against it. His eyes were full of surprise that couldn't be concealed, but Yan Xie's lips and tongue with a smell of tobacco had already filled his mouth and swept the upper jaw and the bottom of his tongue.

This was indeed too sudden, completely contrary to what Jiang Ting had originally imagined, so much so that his mind went blank. He subconsciously stretched out his hand to push, but Yan Xie grabbed his arm and pressed it against the door. During the hasty struggle, the door panel banged a few times and was rubbed against the back of his clothes, which was especially obvious in the blood-filled eardrums.

…will be heard by people in the corridor, this was only one thought left in his mind.

Then he vaguely felt the strangeness, as if it should have been tit-for-tat, but the kiss was soft, heavy, and hot, and the touch caused a slight tingling in his brain and spine.

So unreal.

The dizziness was a little ridiculous.

Jiang Ting dug his nails into his palm, but he didn't feel it at first. The stinging pain was submerged in the overwhelming enthusiasm of being kissed. After a few seconds or more, he shakily pulled out his hand and pushed Yan Xie half a step back.

The surroundings were quiet as if freezing and the nurses walking and talking in the distant corridor were faintly heard, which contrasted with the two people's gasping and breathing.

"..." Yan Xie stopped the rising and falling of his chest, stood up slowly according to the position of the abdominal incision, and asked, "How was it?"

Jiang Ting squeezed the inner knuckle of his middle finger tightly with his thumb so that he could make a more normal tone: "What how, do you want me to praise you?!"

Although he tried his best to flatten his voice, the last word was raised a little too much, and even Yan Xie could hear it.

But Yan Xie did not laugh, nor did he have any smugness, dissatisfaction, or other emotional fluctuations.

"I don't deserve your affirmation?" he asked rhetorically.

—All the trust mixed with temptation, the cooperation with hidden contradictions, the unreserved help in times of crisis, and the protection of life in times of distress—were these not worthy of affirmation?

"…What I said to Li Yuxin was really a lie." Jiang Ting said coldly, after a long time, "The King of Spades is a drug lord, and I am a policeman. No matter what I do, there can't be any betrayal. If your thinking is carried away by a psychopathic lunatic, it will quickly become apparent that everyone around you can be a traitor."

He reached out and grabbed the doorknob and raised his chin slightly toward Yan Xie: "You are in your thirties, calm down and think clearly, don't play with your own life."

Bang!

The door opened and closed, and Jiang Ting's footsteps gradually disappeared on the far side of the corridor.

Yan Xie slowly stepped back, sat on the edge of the hospital bed, inserted his ten fingers into his hair, and rubbed them hard. Then he suddenly took a deep breath as if he had made up his mind, picked up the new phone, and made a call.

"Hey, Dad." Yan Xie paused and said, "I had an accident in Jiangyang County. Help me call a car to pick me up and take me back to Jianning immediately."

...….

Jiang Ting opened the passenger door, got in, and buckled his seat belt.

"Let's go."

Yang Mei was sitting in the driver's seat. She was probably really anxious along the way, and didn't even have time to put on the makeup which she thought of as her life: "Brother Jiang…"

"It's okay," Jiang Ting said, "The idiot who was shot into the operating room is not me."

However, the anxiety in Yang Mei's eyes did not ease; on the contrary, it became more intense: "Brother Jiang, if it really doesn't work, don't follow this case. China is so big, where can't we hide? First the hospital, then this time. He dared to do it even when you were sitting in the police car, that person is simply, simply…"

"Are you talking about the King of Spades?"

Hearing this name suddenly in broad daylight, Yang Mei was stunned for a moment, and then a chill jumped up from her spine, causing her to shiver involuntarily.

"It wasn't him who did it." Jiang Ting turned a blind eye to Yang Mei's silence, and said, "But what's rare is that he left a flaw in this case, so he must be chased down."

"…what…what flaw?"

Jiang Ting didn't answer her immediately, but took out the sunglasses and mask from the glove box and put them on. Then, he tilted the seat back and adjusted it to an angle where his face would not be photographed by the surveillance cameras when the car was driving at high speed.

"Drive," he said. "I'll sleep first. Call me when you want to change hands."

Yang Mei knew that persuasion was useless. She glanced at him worriedly but saw Jiang Ting suddenly rub the mask on his face with his knuckles for some reason, and then put his hands back to his side.

Yang Mei couldn't help but glance strangely.

—That subtle movement looked as if he subconsciously touched his lips.

...…..

Sleepless Palace KTV.

The last time the car was parked at the back door was when he was just discharged from the hospital. When Jiang Ting got out of the car, he glanced at the alley in the distance, but there was no young boy under the streetlamp who was carrying a schoolbag and wearing a blue jacket, whose heart was filled with panic, and who hastily avoided him when their eyes met.

He looked back.

"You don't need to call the kitchen to make food," Jiang Ting said before Yang Mei could speak: "I have to do something, so I'll go up first."

Yang Mei's pink and tender girl's heart was immediately poured down by a ladle of cold water.

Jiang Ting closed the door and turned on the lamp.

The suite on the upper floor of KTV was different from the last time he left in a hurry. The bedding and bedspreads had been replaced with clean and fresh ones. Half of the water he drank was poured out to water the potted plants. The glasses were washed transparently and were neatly stacked on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

Uh-huh——

Jiang Ting closed the curtains, unbuttoned his clothes one by one, threw his shirt on the bed with his backhand, and walked into the bathroom.

The shower sprayed out warm water; the heat quickly evaporated, and Jiang Ting closed his eyes.

There was a time when he felt that the most comfortable way to say goodbye to the world was to drown in warm water, ignorant and quiet, as if returning to the womb of his mother, whose face he had long forgotten. But when he was tied to the seat belt and sank into the river, all he thought was, How can I die?

What he would never tell Yan Xie was that he was actually awake in those few seconds when the door of the car was opened for the first time.

He could feel Yan Xie being dragged out, and the little girl beside him was also rescued. The car slowly swirled and sank to the bottom of the river. Unsurprisingly, he was the only one who was tied to the back seat all alone, thrown toward the bottom of the river into the cold embrace of death.

This is the end, he thought at the time.

But he didn't expect that the car door would be opened again under the huge water pressure, and the hand that had appeared in the dream reached out to reality, pulling him tightly, and dragging him to the other side of life.

Jiang Ting took a long breath, and when he opened his eyes again, he saw the blurry mirror opposite him, so he casually wiped the water vapor away.

The person in the mirror looked younger than his actual age, but not too young. At least the corners of his eyes have subtle traces left by the years. But because he rarely smiles, the sides of his lips were unusually flat, and there were no nasolabial folds that people of his age usually have.

Since he was a child, he had a whiter complexion than other children, and after lying on the hospital bed for three years, his complexion had become paler and less life-like, reflecting the slightly sharp blackness of his eyes. In the few years after graduating from the police academy, his physique was relatively healthy and strong, but now it was ruined. If he didn't try his best to straighten his back and raise his head, he would look a little weak.

——That was not a lovable weakness but a feeling of alienation and indifference while being covered with old scars, which made people want to stay away from it.

Jiang Ting frowned and stared at the mirror, not even thinking he looked good, not to mention comparing it with a beautiful girl; even standing with a young and energetic boy was particularly unlovable.

Therefore, the rich second-generation Criminal Investigation Division Vice-Captain, surnamed Yan, was probably not only stupid but also a little blind.

Jiang Ting laughed self-deprecatingly and splashed water on the mirror surface, and the unlovable figure was suddenly twisted in the water traces.

After a while, he walked into the bedroom in a bathrobe while wiping his dripping hair. Then he took out the whiteboard from behind the door, opened a safe welded to the wall under the desk beside the bed, and took out a few rope-tied brown paper bags.

The paper bags were filled with countless notes, old newspapers, dozens of photos, etc., scattered all over the table.

Jiang Ting pulled out a yellow King of Spades poker card, pinned it to the center of the whiteboard with a magnet, and then used a marker pen to draw left and right arrows around it. The arrow on the left points to the Gongzhou Anti-drug Corps, and then another arrow was divided and written: Hu Weisheng.

The arrow on the right points to a question mark, and it was divided into left and right, then Fan Zhengyuan and Jiangyang County were written respectively.

He filled in bits and pieces of key information beside each arrow, then stepped back half a step to examine the whiteboard. After a while, he picked up the pen again and wrote two side-by-side phrases in the blank space:

Kidnapping and execution

He pointed the "Execution" to the King of Spades, while for the "Kidnapping", he hesitated for a few seconds and pointed it to the question mark.

There was only one lamp lit in the suite, and most of the space such as the bed and wardrobe was hidden in the shadows; only the square inch in front of him was covered with a warm orange halo. Jiang Ting's hand holding the pen rested on his lips, biting his thumbnail subconsciously. His eyes swept over the densely written notes and pictures of familiar police officers on the table.

Countless fragmentary clues flashed in the flickering light in his eyes and finally settled on a distant and unclear detail.

—An empty mineral water bottle.

Ma Xiang said: "The fingerprints on the bottle body and the DNA on the bottle mouth are the same, and only Shen Xiaoqi has touched it…"

The reason why this water bottle appeared at the scene was that it might not be taken away by mistake or was deliberately dropped, which was still unknown for the time being. But the water bottle itself revealed a sensitive and subtle hint, enough for Jiang Ting to grasp a crucial doubt — why was it so important for "that person" to repeat the past?

A person who repeatedly went to the theatre to watch a certain performance might be because he liked the content of the performance and had a psychological touch or resonance.

But if he walked backstage from the auditorium, wrote the script himself, repeatedly induced, and even forced the actors to re-interpret his own script over and over again, it could only show that he was dissatisfied with the original script.

He was dissatisfied, but he couldn't go back to the past to correct the plot that had ended. The regret and unwillingness gradually fermented into paranoia over time and finally developed into today's cruel and treacherous serial kidnappings.

Jiang Ting narrowed his eyes.

The most terrifying criminals were not natural sociopaths, vengeful murderers, or high-IQ professionals, but people who knew that they were extremely mentally distorted and could control and enjoy it well, thus exerting a high criminal talent. This kind of person was usually somewhat similar to the description of psychopaths in psychology. While lacking the ability to feel normal emotions, they were extremely good at "imitating" emotions and exploiting the emotions of others. Therefore, although most of their emotional expressions were not from the heart, it was often difficult to see through their hypocrisy. At the same time, they also avoided the various psychological weaknesses of normal people because of their feelings.

The King of Spades was a typical example of this, and even more ruthless and difficult to deal with because of his unique growth environment.

Jiang Ting's lips suddenly showed a slight icy arc.

When he just woke up from his coma, because of his extremely poor physical and mental states, his psychology was difficult to regulate, and he thought that he would never be able to deal with the King of Spades in his entire life. But the appearance of this empty mineral water bottle seemed to give him a glimpse of an opportunity from the desperate situation.

—That person's pursuit of bloody punishment revealed a strong and paranoid feeling, and this kind of feeling will inevitably lead to psychological weakness.

That said, the opponent was not invulnerable.

But how to start?

The room was quiet, Jiang Ting pulled off the cap of the pen and was about to write something on the whiteboard when suddenly he heard a sound from outside the glass window:

Bang Bang Bang.

He turned back sharply.

Bang Bang!

Is someone knocking on the window?

Jiang Ting was stunned for a moment, and then quickly put the documents, photos, etc. on the desk into the safe and locked it. He wiped off the words on the whiteboard a few times. When he almost cleaned up everything, he walked to the window and opened the curtain slightly with two fingers, and was stunned:

"You…"

It was Yan Xie who was holding the drainage pipe outside the window!

For a moment, Jiang Ting thought there was something wrong with his eyes, but then Yan Xie knocked on the window for the third time with a pained expression, meaning to let me in quickly, he couldn't hold it anymore!

Jiang Ting: "..."

Jiang Ting opened the window and grabbed his hand. Yan Xie climbed up on the window sill and jumped into the room with a "hey". The momentum caused both of them to stumble back a few steps and fall onto the bed at the same time.

"This is the third floor!" Jiang Ting got up and was furious.

Yan Xie hissed and covered the incision on his abdomen: "I drove the car for four or five hours…"

Who are you lying to? How far will your family have to go bankrupt to be unable to afford a few hundred dollars for a chartered car?!

But then Yan Xie's next sentence suppressed Jiang Ting's anger. He said, "I just came over to say sorry to you. I shouldn't have tested you like that today. It was my fault."

"..."

"And I've figured it out." Yan Xie looked at him and whispered, "After thinking about it clearly, I couldn't wait, I couldn't wait for a moment. I really wanted to come and see you."