Chapter 32

Chapter 32 Chapter 32: Shi Hong.

Dead silence.

Perhaps it was because He Linfeng’s appearance was too gentle, or perhaps Wang Lai’s baby face looked too youthful, or perhaps Song Xiaotong’s temperament made her look like a newly hired intern. In short, Jian Qing disliked Li Guojian and his wife’s bullying of the weak, unreasonable troublemaking, and superior attitude, so he decided to make an example of them.

Absolutely not to protect anyone in particular.

A thorn was already stuck in Mrs. Li’s heart. Hearing this, she pretended to faint again: “Why? Why?! Why is their child placed behind ours?!”

“Because President Jian is clean and upright and would never do something like taking money and running,” He Linfeng said with a smile, waiting for the young man to finish speaking. The moment he turned around, his expression instantly changed as if by magic, turning cold. “So, tell me—among the property owners who bought into Leiao New City, are there any who insisted on appeals but then suddenly went silent recently?”

To abduct four children at once—this was highly likely a group operation.

The parents looked at each other in confusion.

Every day they were busy with work, social gatherings, shopping, and afternoon tea. For people like that, cases small enough to be handled by a lawyer—who would bother paying attention?

Knock, knock.

At that moment, someone knocked on the door.

Song Xiaotong glanced over and saw a stunning woman without makeup. She looked to be in her early thirties at most, her hair casually tied up behind her head, as if she had rushed out the door.

Jian Qing stood up: “Aunt.”

He then nodded at He Linfeng before stepping out into the corridor and closing the door.

“I had a bit of alcohol last night and didn’t dare drive, so I took a taxi,” she briefly explained why she was late. “How’s the situation?”

Jian Qing roughly repeated the earlier deduction.

“I wasn’t involved in the Leiao New City project,” he said, eyes lowered. “At that time the group had already transformed. I only glanced at that proposal once during a banquet.”

The world of fame and profit is itself a vast web of intertwined relationships. Li Guojian had gone through layers of connections to get the proposal into his hands. Out of politeness, Jian Qing had briefly looked at it before.

As the group grew stronger, companies seeking cooperation with him were countless. Li Guojian was just one of the most ordinary among them. Five or six years later, Jian Qing had almost completely forgotten about it and failed to recall it in time.

“I searched using keywords,” he said, the screen showing a series of opened webpages, his expression dark. “In the first few months when Leiao New City halted construction, there were indeed reports speculating it was because I suddenly withdrew investment.”

“So it’s my fault—”

“What are you talking about?” Ning Shuyan interrupted her nephew decisively. She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “When your aunt catches those blind kidnappers, I’ll make them apologize to you and Haohao one by one.”

——“Shi Hong. There seems to be someone named Shi Hong.”

Noticing the young man’s movements from the corner of his eye, He Linfeng pulled his thoughts back and turned his head. “Shi Hong?”

“Yes,” Gao Zixuan’s father said thickly, clearly under pressure. “She came to our company gate several times to make trouble—sitting in protest, hanging banners. All of it was driven away by security.”

“She even scratched a cut on my neck.”

However, in the past six months, he had never heard news of Shi Hong again. He had thought she had given up and accepted reality, and had even felt secretly relieved to be rid of such a troublesome person.

He never expected it would lead to today’s kidnapping case.

“I’m willing to apologize, even kneel and compensate,” since entering the room, Gao Zixuan’s mother had been quietly crying the whole time. Her voice trembled: “As long as they let my daughter go.”

“Pah.”

With a disgusted spit, the bald strong man locked the iron-sheet shack and waded through the weeds toward the warehouse.

“Red Sister, that little brat fainted from fear.”

“He pissed all over the floor. Disgusting as hell.”

Sitting on a bench with her legs spread apart, the woman called Red Sister had an ordinary face. She was bent over, carefully sharpening a knife, not even lifting her head.

“Phone turned off?” she asked.

The strong man casually found a clean spot and sat down.

“Turned off. Just like you said—virtual IP, account wiped. That should keep those cops busy for a while.”

“Where’s Qiangzi?” he asked, ignoring the dried blood sticking to his skin. He looked at the thin, scholarly-looking young man beside Red Sister. “How’s the thing I told you to do going?”

Completely mismatched with his name, the stick-thin Qiangzi let out a cold snort.

“Do I even need to answer that?”

“The phones of those little bastards are all in Leiao New City. If the police want to track them, they won’t come out to the suburbs.” They had plenty of time left.

Enough time for certain blood-sucking bastards to die without descendants.

“Ha… I really want to know what Beijiang looks like right now because of the mess we’re making,” the strong man tilted his head back to look at the sky and sighed dramatically. “What a pity. We should’ve brought a TV over.”

Suddenly, he remembered something.

“That extra girl inside—what’s going on with her?”

Although grievances should have clear targets, once the plan was actually carried out, accidents were inevitable. Since she had been sticking close to Yuan Qian the entire time, she had been dragged into it as well.

“Song An’an.”

Red Sister, still sharpening her knife, accurately said the girl’s name without stopping.

“A poor scholarship student. Good grades, full tuition waiver. A well-behaved kid.”

The strong man curled his lip.

“Good kid? Still ended up being the lapdog of those rich young masters and ladies. If she’d just stayed home properly, she wouldn’t have run into us.”

“Back when Li Ming that little bastard was bullying her, I was almost itching to beat him myself.”

“So…” Qiangzi hesitantly spoke, raising his hand to make a throat-slitting gesture, then glanced toward the iron shack in the distance.

The strong man narrowed his eyes.

“Scared?”

“I just think… if we really kill Song An’an, we’re not much different from Li Guojian,” Qiangzi replied, his gaze flickering away.

The strong man fell silent for two seconds. He scratched his bald head and violently pulled up a handful of weeds.

“Innocent? Who the fuck isn’t innocent?”

“If I were about to die, I wouldn’t care. But what about you and Red Sister? You really want to go to prison or get shot for a little girl? We’ve already bought tickets to the neighboring city—we can leave as soon as dawn breaks.”

“That’s my damn wedding house. I emptied my parents’ coffin savings for the down payment and signed a thirty-year mortgage. And what happened? My fiancée ran off, and the place didn’t even get built up to my sixteenth floor.”

“Red Sister’s daughter is even more pitiful. If that building could’ve been sold, or if any boss had followed procedure and paid compensation, it wouldn’t have come to this…”

Clang!

The knife tip struck a stone. Red Sister, her knuckles covered in calluses, said calmly: “Slipped.”

The strong man immediately shut up in apology.

“Fifty million,” Red Sister said slowly, the knife tip casually pointing toward Qiangzi. She lifted her eyelids slightly. “Jian Qing’s offer made you tempted?”

Excluding Song An’an, among the four families targeted in their revenge plan, only Jian Qing had not treated them like scammers and had instead responded quickly with a countermeasure.

“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you don’t need to fear ghosts knocking at your door.”

To be able to pull a dying family business back up and make it strong again, Jian Qing was definitely a smart person. Yet such a smart person had actually believed their empty threats after just a few sentences.

Aside from “guilt,” Shi Hong could not think of any other explanation.

And that only strengthened her belief that she had not hated the wrong people.

In the unfinished building, when using voice-changing software to make calls, the two of them had been keeping their own phones on video the entire time. Qiangzi knew he couldn’t hide it from the other side, so he simply admitted:

“Yes.”

“I was… a little bit tempted.”

“Once this knife goes down, we really won’t have any way back. Killing those little bastards—I have no objections at all. But dragging in a girl with a fate as miserable as ours… I really can’t bring myself to do it.”

“That guy surnamed Jian definitely has some dirty secrets. He won’t dare call the police. By then we can beat those brats one by one, upload the videos online, and use it to cover our escape…”

“Spit!”

From deep inside the silent warehouse, someone suddenly imitated the strong man and spat fiercely.

Red Sister, sitting at the warehouse entrance, turned back and met a pair of eyes burning with rage.

She had already scouted this place several times in advance and knew no one usually passed by. Making some noise didn’t matter. That was also why they had taken Li Ming out separately.

Signaling for Qiangzi to close the door, Shi Hong picked up her knife and walked step by step toward Xu Hao:

“You’ve got something to say?”

Having witnessed how brutal this woman was, Gao Zixuan desperately tried to signal his friend with his eyes, almost rolling them out of his skull—but still couldn’t stop Xu Hao from “lowering his intelligence and seeking death.”

“I don’t know anything about what house you’re talking about,” Xu Hao forced himself to lift his chin despite his fear. “But my brother is definitely a good person.”

Since he was already meat on the chopping block, dead either way, he simply went all out and cursed them first to vent his anger:

“Have you even met him? And you’re already talking nonsense behind his back? Dirty secrets? He just recently saved a female livestreamer from a perverted disfigurement criminal. No one praised him for it, and now you’re even fabricating rumors about him.”

“My brother works in the internet industry. Do you even understand what that means? What does it have to do with real estate? The land Li Ming’s father could buy isn’t even worthy of carrying his shoes.”

Immature, reckless, arrogant.

Before Shi Hong could even act, Qiangzi already burst out laughing.

“You little idiot, feeling so wronged for your brother? President Jian himself said he wouldn’t shed a single tear for you.”

Xu Hao choked for a moment.

Thinking about it, it did sound like something Jian Qing would say—but still:

“That doesn’t change the fact that my brother is a good person.”

Because their relationship was far from “close,” Xu Hao was able to use what he had seen and heard to make as objective a judgment as possible.

“Song An’an is innocent,” he said, accurately identifying who the leader was as he stared at Red Sister. “Let her go.”

“After Li Ming was dragged out, she cried and told me she still has a seriously ill mother to take care of. She has ties to this world—she won’t call the police.”

Mother.

Shi Hong closed her eyes very briefly and very lightly.

The girl’s suppressed sobbing echoed faintly.

As if to reinforce some belief, Shi Hong composed her expression and took out a brightly colored children’s watch from her pocket, rubbing it repeatedly and gripping it tightly.

“Fifty-nine minutes left.”

Qiangzi immediately understood—she had already made up her mind to go all the way down a road of no return.

But him…

Fifty million—enough for him to start a new life with a completely different identity. If he had a choice, why would he choose to be a fugitive hiding for the rest of his life?

He wasn’t like Shi Hong and the bald Zhao Guangtou—one driven by a “sea of blood and deep hatred” tied to a dead daughter, the other terminally ill with no way out.

He was different.

As long as there was money, he would have a future.

“Qiangzi.”

Behind her stood the tall and sturdy “bodyguard.” The woman suddenly called his name against the light, and as if casually gave an instruction:

“When it comes to finishing off Li Ming with that final knife…”

“…you do it.”