After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

Chen Ping put his phone back in his pocket and bowed slightly to Chao Heyuan.

"Director He, I have an urgent matter to attend to and need to leave. Professor Gu Weizhen will represent the project team in the technical defense session. If needed, Lin Shaofeng can provide supplementary materials at any time."

He Yuanzheng glanced at him, didn't ask any further questions, and waved his hand.

Chen Ping squeezed out from the second row, and as he passed the media section, he caught a glimpse of Su Qingwan looking up at him. The red light on the recorder was still on.

He didn't stop.

After leaving the lecture hall, I went downstairs, got into my car, and dialed Lin Shaofeng's number.

Which hospital?

"The ambulance from Jizhou Central Hospital and the detention center arrived fifteen minutes ago."

How deep is the wound?

"The on-duty doctor at the detention center initially determined it was a superficial cut that did not damage the radial artery. However, the bleeding was significant, and the person was already unconscious when they were taken there."

Superficial incision. The radial artery was not damaged. Chen Ping weighed these two words carefully.

He knew exactly how strictly razor blades were controlled in the detention center. The best Zhou Zhixing could get his hands on was a plastic tip sharpened from a toothbrush handle. A plastic tip could cut skin, but severing the radial artery was like chopping wood with chopsticks.

The bleeding was significant.

coma.

It's impossible for a veteran bureaucrat who has worked in the state-owned assets system for over a decade to be so amateurish in committing suicide.

Unless he never intended to die in the first place.

Jizhou Central Hospital. Third floor of the emergency building.

When Chen Ping was released, there were four people standing on both sides of the corridor: two armed police officers from the detention center, a duty prosecutor from the Jizhou City Procuratorate, and a middle-aged doctor wearing a white coat with a name tag that read "Zhao Zheng, Emergency Surgery".

Zhao Zheng came forward and reported in a low voice.

"Two transverse incisions were made on the left wrist, one four centimeters long and 0.3 centimeters deep; the other two centimeters long and less than 0.2 centimeters deep. The radial and ulnar arteries were avoided. There was minor subcutaneous tissue contusion, which has been sutured. The blood loss was about 200 milliliters, far below the shock threshold."

"How did he fall into a coma?"

Zhao Zheng pushed up his glasses.

"The blood test results just came back. Phenobarbital was detected in his body, at a low concentration, roughly equivalent to two tablets of diazepam. Not enough to be fatal, but enough to induce deep drowsiness."

Phenobarbital. In a detention center where even toothbrushes are controlled, he managed to obtain tranquilizers.

Chen Ping took two steps toward the ward door, then stopped.

"Is he awake yet?"

"He's awake. He woke up twenty minutes ago. But he hasn't said anything, just kept his eyes closed and pretended to be asleep. When we put him on the cardiac monitor, his finger twitched a little—a truly unconscious person's fingers don't twitch."

Chen Ping glanced back at both ends of the corridor. The prosecutor was on the phone, with two armed police officers guarding the door on either side.

"Everyone, retreat to the end of the corridor and do not come over within ten minutes."

The prosecutor hung up the phone and hesitated for a moment.

"Deputy Secretary-General Chen, according to regulations..."

I'll say ten minutes.

The prosecutor put his phone in his pocket and gestured for the two armed police officers to retreat to the end of the corridor.

Chen Ping pushed open the ward door.

In the private hospital room, the curtains were half-drawn, and the afternoon sunlight cut across the window sill, drawing a white line on the floor. Zhou Zhixing lay on the bed, his left wrist wrapped in gauze, and an IV tube inserted into the back of his right hand, the liquid dripping down slowly.

His eyelids were closed, his breathing was even, and the rise and fall of his chest was just right.

Well done.

Chen Ping didn't sit down. Instead, he stood at the foot of the bed, pulled over the medical record folder, flipped to a page, and then tossed the folder back onto the hook at the foot of the bed. The clanging of metal echoed in the quiet ward.

Zhou Zhixing's right index finger curled slightly.

"Stop pretending. If you really wanted to die, two hundred milliliters of blood wouldn't even qualify you for a blood donation."

Zhou Zhixing's eyelids didn't move.

Chen Ping pulled over a chair from the bedside, sat down, turned the back of the chair to face forward, and put his arms on it.

"Where did the phenobarbital come from? Did you bribe the guards at the detention center, or did someone in your cell bring it in for you?"

Three seconds. Five seconds.

Zhou Zhixing's Adam's apple bobbed, his lips moved, and he squeezed out a hoarse word.

"water."

Chen Ping didn't move.

"I'm asking you a question."

Zhou Zhixing finally managed to pry his eyelids open a crack. His pupils were bloodshot, and the area under his eyes was bluish—not from injury, but the result of not sleeping well for several days.

"The guy in the same cell... surnamed Ma. His wife came to visit last week and brought it in hidden in a cookie box."

"What's the full name of the person surnamed Ma?"

"Ma Yingjie. Economic fraud, sentenced to seven years."

Chen Pingfang memorized the name.

"You take tranquilizers to make yourself pass out, cut yourself twice with shallow cuts, and force the detention center to send you to the hospital."

It paused for a moment.

"And then what? Hospital security is laxer than detention center security. How do you plan to escape? Through the window? Or the emergency exit?"

Zhou Zhixing clenched his left hand under the blanket, and a little bit of pale red seeped through the gauze.

"I didn't intend to run away."

"So what do you want to do?"

Zhou Zhixing turned his head toward the window, burying half his face in the pillow.

I want to see someone.

"Who?"

"My lawyer."

"Your lawyer was replaced three days ago. The new one is a duty lawyer from the Jizhou City Legal Aid Center. What's the point of seeing him?"

Zhou Zhixing slowly turned his head back, his bloodshot eyes fixed on Chen Pingfang.

"My original lawyer was arranged by them."

"who are they?"

Zhou Zhixing let out a short laugh, laced with phlegm.

"Deputy Secretary-General Chen, didn't you already find out? Why ask me?"

Chen Ping stood up from the chair, pushed the backrest forward two centimeters, and the chair legs scraped against the floor with a screeching sound.

"Zhou Zhixing, I went to a hearing before I came here. Do you know what happened in the auditorium today?"

Zhou Zhixing remained silent.

"Wang Limin used the whistleblower letter you wrote last year as a basis to piece together a framework for intellectual property plagiarism. Gu Weizhen dismantled his arguments on stage and conducted a 30-minute code audit on the spot. Wang Limin failed to break through the seventh layer of the sandbox."

Chen Ping bent down and took half a step closer.

"Your whistleblower report is now useless. M-Tek spent a fortune building this connection, and today it was cut off in front of over 160 people. Guess what they'll do with you next?"

Zhou Zhixing's IV drip tube wobbled slightly. The frequency of the IV drip remained the same, but his breathing rate changed—jumping from fourteen to eighteen breaths per minute. The waveform on the electrocardiogram monitor narrowed slightly.

"The handwriting analysis results of your whistleblower letter, the recording of your conversation with the middleman in M-Tek Asia Pacific, and the six suspicious fund flows you handled during your time at the Provincial State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission—these things are no longer in your possession, nor in M-Tek's possession."

Chen Ping straightened up.

"To them, you're just a tool they've used. Once they're done, getting rid of you is the easiest thing to do. So, when your replaced lawyer last came to see you, didn't he say, 'The higher-ups will protect you'?"

Zhou Zhixing pulled his right hand out from under the blanket. The IV needle tugged at his skin, but he ignored the pain and spread his five fingers open and then closed them again.

How did you know?

"Because that's standard rhetoric. Every piece that's considered a sacrifice will hear the same thing before it's discarded."

Fifteen seconds of silence filled the ward. The beeping of the electrocardiogram monitor became the only metronome.

Zhou Zhixing's lips moved a few times before he finally managed to squeeze out a complete sentence.

"There was a person... codenamed Old Musician."

Chen Pingfang straightened his spine inch by inch.

"The entire shadow banking network in the province, all its fund transfers go through his connections. I met him once, in the executive lounge of the Marriott Hotel in Nanzhou. He's not young anymore, and he's missing half of his left ring finger."

"Real name?"

"I don't know. But the bank account he used was opened at the Shuangqing branch of Jiangsu Provincial Rural Commercial Bank. The account name is a company called 'Yayun Cultural Communication'."

Chen Ping locked the four pieces of information—"old musician," "missing left ring finger," "Ya Yun Culture Communication," and "Shuangqing Branch"—into his memory, then turned and opened the ward door.

At the end of the corridor, the white light from the fluorescent tubes bathed the floor.

Twenty meters away, a figure in a dark gray suit stood next to the entrance of the fire escape, with his hands behind his back, looking in this direction.

Chen Ping stopped in his tracks.

Qin Daguan, Director of the General Affairs Division of the Provincial Government Office. His left hand came out from behind his back, with a stack of documents between his fingers, the covers stamped with a red seal across the seam.

The four large characters at the top of the document were still clearly visible even from twenty meters away.

"Medical parole".