Nominal: Hou Liangping blocking the door? He was slapped away!

The seventh floor of the Provincial Party Committee building.

Sha Ruijin's phone vibrated three times on the table before he answered. The number had no registered address, and the voice message was altered, but the wording was crisp and clear, like a lawyer reading out contract terms.

"Half of the funds for the financial deficit in the three cities of Handong have been allocated. Secretary Sha only needs to do one thing."

Sha Ruijin remained silent, his fingers gripping the pen, his knuckles turning white.

"Using the pretext of unifying evidence transfer and standardizing military-civilian cooperation, the unilateral arrest by the Provincial Public Security Department was halted. This is procedurally sound."

"You call me about something like this?" Sha Ruijin's voice was very low. "Do you think I'll answer?"

There was a two-second silence on the other end, followed by a laugh. It wasn't mockery, but the kind of laugh one has after confirming the other party's offer at an acquisition negotiation table.

"The afternoon Chu Pingshan was suspended, the person who entered your office still had their photo on the turnstile. The temporary card registration field was blank, but the surveillance footage wasn't blank."

Sha Ruijin's penholder broke.

A crisp snapping sound echoed in the office. He stared at the two pieces of broken plastic on the desk, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"It's not that you don't want to answer, it's that you dare not refuse." The voice on the other end finished speaking. "The instructions will be issued within three days, and the funds will be replenished within a week. Each gets what they need."

The phone was disconnected.

Sha Ruijin sat motionless in his chair, his face drained of all color. He reached out for a new pen, then withdrew his hand.

The sky outside the window was overcast, with low-hanging clouds.

Forty minutes later, the fax machine in the Provincial Party Committee Office produced another sheet of paper.

"Emergency Notice Regarding the Unified Reporting of Cases Involving Haizhou." All actions related to these cases must be approved by the Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Leading Group before execution. Issued by Sha Ruijin.

The name is the standard.

It is essentially a brake.

……

Provincial Department, Qi Tongwei's office.

The official document lay on the table, the ink still fresh. Lu Yike stood opposite, her face grim.

"This is the third step." She turned to the signature page of the document. "The first step was to arrest the person, the second step was to transfer them, and this step directly locks up law enforcement power."

Qi Tongwei didn't reply. He closed the file and pushed it to the corner of the table.

"Is the tracking of the tea plantation still ongoing?"

Lu Yike shook her head. "I just received news that the Qingfeng Pavilion branch closed this morning. The doors were locked, and the place was completely cleared out."

Qi Tongwei tapped the table twice with his right hand and then stopped.

What about the three accounts associated with the QC-2 approval slip?

"The entire operation was emptied last night and the assets were transferred to unidentified shell companies overseas." Lu Yike's voice was tense. "Haizhou is racing against time. Sha Ruijin's order objectively gave them a window of opportunity to relocate."

Five lines of evidence are complete. The stronghold has vanished. The person the evidence points to is now burrowing deeper into the soil of Handong.

Qi Tongwei stood up and walked to the window.

A row of lights were on in the parking lot downstairs, and the sky was unusually dark, as if it were about to rain.

……

The Provincial Party Committee Building, Sha Ruijin's office.

There was no knocking when the door was pushed open.

Li Dakang strode in, carrying nothing. His secretary followed a couple of steps behind, but was stopped at the doorway by a single glance from him.

"Secretary Sha."

Sha Ruijin looked up, a polite smile on his face, but the muscles around his eyes were stiff. "Dakang, if there's anything, have your secretary speak first—"

"On the afternoon of the day Chu Pingshan was suspended, a car with a Haizhou license plate passed by your door."

The laughter disappeared.

The only sound in the office was the hum of the air conditioner vents. Li Dakang stood two meters in front of the desk, neither sitting nor moving.

"You're applying the brakes according to procedure, protecting Haizhou. I'm not turning."

Sha Ruijin's fingers twitched on the edge of the table, his voice dropping a half-degree cadence. "An unregistered visitor doesn't necessarily mean a violation, Dakang, your logic—"

"What about the surveillance footage?" Li Dakang interrupted him. "I haven't seen the photos of the turnstiles, but Qi Tongwei has them. The military's communications monitoring system has them. Do you think they saw them when the core leadership made that phone call to you?"

Sha Ruijin pursed his lips into a thin line.

"The self-inspection report has been revised three times and still hasn't been approved." Li Dakang took a step forward. "The team's oversight is a minor issue. If we investigate further, that car, that person, and that conversation from that day will be more than just oversight."

Sha Ruijin suddenly stood up. The chair bumped into the bookshelf behind him with a dull thud.

"Li Dakang, are you threatening me?"

"I'm reminding you," Li Dakang's voice didn't rise an inch, "You know better than I where a provincial party secretary who's been given leverage by capital has gone."

He turned and left.

The moment the door closed, the landline on the table rang. The internal display read: Core Organization Portal.

Sha Ruijin watched the number flash three times before reaching out to answer it.

The voice on the receiver was flat, but every word was like a nail. "The third draft of the self-inspection report is still unsatisfactory. Comrade Sha Ruijin, the organization hopes you will take this seriously."

He held the receiver, unable to say anything.

It started raining outside the window.

……

It was 10 p.m. downstairs at the provincial government building.

Rain pattered on the steps, splashing up a fine mist. Qi Tongwei stood under the eaves, without an umbrella. His police uniform was soaked through, the shoulder a deep, almost black, color.

On the phone were three briefings from Lin Huahua: the tea shop was closed, the account was emptied, and the middleman's signal had completely disappeared outside the base station coverage.

All five lines are complete, but the person is gone.

He put his phone back in his pocket and stared blankly at the rain.

Footsteps sounded behind me. The sound of an umbrella opening softly.

Lu Yike walked to his side without saying a word. She held the umbrella over his head, leaving her own left shoulder exposed to the rain.

Qi Tongwei turned his head and glanced at her.

She looked at the rain ahead, without glancing at him.

The two of them just stood there. The sound of rain drowned out all the noise from the provincial government building.

After a long while, Qi Tongwei spoke, his voice faint from the rain.

"If they disobey orders and forcibly take possession, Shen will cover it all. Or they can take a detour and find another hidden way."

Lu Yike didn't answer. She tilted the umbrella an inch further towards him.

"Both paths come at a great cost."

---

The lights in the dressing room were blindingly white.

The nurse cut open the gauze on Qi Tongwei's left arm. The cotton layer was stuck to the wound, and when she pulled it off, it brought out a patch of dark red. The area around the sutures was abnormally red and swollen, and two of the stitches had become infected.

"It's inflamed." The nurse's tone was rude. "If you keep doing this, it's uncertain whether you can even save this arm."

Qi Tongwei remained silent, his right hand resting on his knee, his expression as calm as if he were listening to someone else's medical report.

Lu Yike stood to the side, looking at the swollen wound, and pursed her lips.

The nurse disinfected, cleaned the wound, and reapplied medication. As the tweezers pressed the iodine-soaked cotton ball against the wound, Qi Tongwei's left hand clenched slightly, and a vein on the back of his hand twitched. He didn't make a sound.

"I'll do the gauze."

Lu Yike walked over and took the reel from the nurse. The nurse looked at her, then at Qi Tongwei, left the tray on the table, and went out.

The door closed.

Lu Yike bent over to wrap the gauze, her strength steady, pressing one circle over the other, following the muscle lines. Silence, under the light, resembled a thin film, taut, unbroken.

"That day in the eastern suburbs," she began, her eyes fixed on her hands, "when you rushed towards me against the flow of traffic, for three seconds I felt I would never have another chance to argue with you."

Qi Tongwei paused for a moment.

Lu Yike pressed the gauze tightly around the edge without stopping.

"Later, the hydraulic shears smashed into the car window, and all I had was a police baton. In those few seconds, I wasn't thinking about the case, or the chain of evidence; I was thinking about—"

She didn't continue.

When the gauze reached the end, she secured it with tape and straightened her back.

"What are you thinking about?" Qi Tongwei asked softly.

Lu Yike took a half step back, still clutching the roll of tape in her hand. She looked at him. At that distance, she could clearly see the bloodshot eyes and the swollen stitches.

"What I was thinking was that if you died before me, Gao Yuliang would blame me for the rest of his life."

Qi Tongwei paused for a moment, then his lips twitched.

It wasn't a laugh. It was as if something that had been tense all along had relaxed by half an inch.

"In this life," he put his left arm back on his knee, "I've been used as a chamber pot, as a knife. In the provincial government, I was surrounded by people who wanted to die or people waiting to be divided up like meat."

Lu Yike didn't interrupt him.

"No one has ever shielded me from a car before. And no one has ever had a backup tape in their pocket after losing the master tape." He looked up at her. "I'll remember that."