Unexpected Encounter and Divine Retribution, Part Two

“Then this was all your doing, Brother Lin?” Hou Rui looked around to make sure no one was near before lowering his voice.

“I don’t have the brains for that. I spend all my time chasing women. This time it was the work of the Knight of Divine Punishment. I just ran errands and made a little pocket money.”

“The Knight of Divine Punishment!” Hou Rui had just witnessed the methods of the Thorn Knight in Hong Kong, and he had not expected that upon returning home he would run into yet another knight from the organization who specialized in arranging accidents.

“Even if I told you, you wouldn’t know him. That lord is a legendary kind of ruthless man. Under his arrangements, the dead and the living alike have no complaints, and everyone thinks it was simply heaven’s will.” With a flirtatious glance at two fashionable girls passing by, Little Lin leaned close to Hou Rui’s ear and whispered on.

“The organization really is full of hidden dragons and crouching tigers!” Hou Rui meant it sincerely. He truly had no idea how many figures like the Thorn Knight and the Knight of Divine Punishment there might be in the organization.

“Heh. Nearly three thousand knights in the organization. Calling it hidden dragons and crouching tigers hardly does it justice.” The moment Little Lin mentioned the number, Hou Rui’s heart sank. Three thousand knights. Even if Little Lin was exaggerating the actual number by half, that still left fifteen hundred. Add the members under them, then the codename members and the trainers like himself, and the organization, by the most conservative estimate, was a superpower with tens of thousands of people.

Tens of thousands of people. Even if they worked in teams of ten and each team carried out one mission a month, with each person earning fifty thousand dollars per mission, the commissions flowing through the organization each year would amount to hundreds of billions. What immense wealth, what immense power. It already surpassed the annual national output of many small and medium-sized countries.

While Hou Rui was deeply shaken by these figures and deductions, Little Lin may have also felt he had said too much. He tightened his arm and pulled Hou Rui closer, then whispered into his ear, “Forget it, let’s not talk about such boring stuff. Wild Dog, want to go chase girls with Brother Lin? I remember there’s a pretty good bar up ahead. College girls, take your pick. My treat.”

“No, I’d better not. I’m still injured.” Since he had already confirmed his suspicion, Hou Rui no longer wanted to keep talking nonsense. From what he knew of Little Lin, in the end the man would surely take the girls back to the driving school.

“Tch, you really are boring. Fine, let’s split up then!” With that, Little Lin loosened his arm, but just as Hou Rui was about to pry away the arm resting on his shoulder, Little Lin suddenly exerted force, clamping Hou Rui’s neck hard against his chest. Only then did Little Lin whisper against Hou Rui’s ear, “Don’t forget, if you keep following me, I’ll kill you.”

After the threat, Little Lin laughed and strode away without looking back, leaving Hou Rui to watch his retreating figure in silence.

Not long after, Hou Rui, lost in thought, returned to the emergency room of that hospital. The matter of the car accident had been clarified, but the wound he had torn open could not be ignored, so he had come back to have it treated.

Who would have thought that the moment he stepped inside, he would see Wang Si standing sadly at the door of the debridement room. Hou Rui approached and asked, “How is it?”

But Wang Si only shook her head in silence. Then Hou Rui saw a nurse hurriedly passing by with a cart piled high with discarded medical supplies. In that brief glance, he caught sight of a tiny arm sealed inside a transparent plastic bag—the little arm he had once seen through the gap in the nanny van. By now it had been severed off.

“The mother of the family of four didn’t make it to the hospital. Their father has just been declared beyond resuscitation. The older boy has already had his leg and arm amputated, and the little girl as well...” Wang Si could not go on. Though she was studying forensic medicine and had long grown used to death and mutilation, what lay before her now was still far too tragic.

Hou Rui, equally speechless, could only pat Wang Si’s shoulder in comfort. There was nothing else he could do.

“Waaah...” Suddenly, Hou Rui noticed a woman in a white coat not far away, crying. She looked to be in her thirties, ordinary in both appearance and figure, yet she was crying with genuine anguish. She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, but the tears still poured down in torrents.

“Does she know this family?” Hou Rui said instinctively.

“If you don’t know, then don’t spout nonsense. Doctor Su is just softhearted,” said the little nurse who had just checked Hou Rui’s wound, appearing once again. She snapped at him irritably, “Where did you run off to? I’ve been looking all over for you, do you know that? Aren’t you going to have that wound treated?”

“I am, I am. I just went to the restroom. Sorry.”

“Don’t go wandering around in the hospital. Once you step through the door, you’re a patient. Our hospital is responsible for your safety, understand?”

“Understood, understood. I definitely won’t run off again.”

As she spoke, the nurse dragged Hou Rui aside and began disinfecting and bandaging the wound on his shoulder.

“Huh, a circular puncture wound, and it’s pretty deep. How on earth did you do this?” After removing his shirt, the nurse examined the wound carefully and asked in puzzlement.

Damn it! Don’t tell me she recognized it as a gunshot wound! Hou Rui’s heart began to hang in the balance again. His eyes rolled once, and then he said, “A metal rod flew over during the accident and stabbed me.” Secretly, though, he used his other intact hand to quietly feel for the pointed tweezers hidden in his palm. If this nurse really guessed something, then he would not be to blame.

“You really are unlucky. All right, I’ll disinfect it first, then give you a tetanus shot. After that, come back every two days for a dressing change. If nothing goes wrong, you should heal in two weeks. Remember to keep the wound clean.”

As she talked, the little nurse swiftly wiped the wound with alcohol-soaked cotton, making Hou Rui break out in a cold sweat from the pain.

After enduring more than ten minutes of the nurse’s torture, the wound on Hou Rui’s shoulder was finally bandaged anew. He then returned to the debridement room and found Wang Si, though by then the crying female doctor was nowhere to be seen. Since he did not know her anyway, he simply took her for some sentimental older sister he had happened to meet. Not thinking much of it, Hou Rui left the hospital with Wang Si.

Over the next week and more, Hou Rui endured Jin Shanshan’s WeChat surveillance every day, or rather every hour. That girl had become highly vigilant after meeting Cheng Lin, and every time she contacted Hou Rui she insisted on a video call to make sure there was no fox spirit lingering by his side, leaving Hou Rui in utter disarray.

Still, in the second week afterward, things improved a little. At the very least, Jin Shanshan’s calls and messages were not coming so frequently. But Hou Rui did not have time to be pleased for more than a few minutes before he discovered the truth: Li Lei and Ma Siyuan, those two fellows from his dormitory, had already been taken in by Jin Shanshan’s best friend Cannonball and had decayed into her allies, becoming her planted eyes and ears beside Hou Rui, watching his every move around the clock.

Even so, when Hou Rui went to French class, the beautiful Cheng Lin would still take the initiative to be friendly and would automatically shoulder the task of helping him catch up on the coursework. As a result, thanks to the reports from Li Lei and Ma Siyuan, Jin Shanshan was already furious enough to explode, wishing she could storm straight into the Communication University to execute this shameless womanizer.

After exhausting himself with explanations and talking until his mouth was dry, Hou Rui finally managed to placate Jin Shanshan for the time being. He promised that this weekend he would take her somewhere special to have fun, that everyone else could stand aside, and that he would bring no one else. Only then was the little policewoman, whose jealousy had stirred the sea into waves, temporarily soothed.

Time passed swiftly. Soon the weekend that Hou Rui had promised Jin Shanshan arrived, and so he drove his forty straight to the entrance of the Police Academy.

So many days had passed since the accident that all traces of the crash scene were long gone. When Hou Rui passed by, he merely glanced over it briefly before returning his attention to the wait.

For this important date, Hou Rui had specially made a trip to Xidan, where he dressed himself up in a brand-new pair of slim jeans and a white jacket, looking impossibly crisp. Add to that his sturdy build and cool expression, and as he leaned casually against the side of the forty, he immediately drew the subtle attention of the policewomen coming and going through the academy gate.

At a quarter past six in the evening, Jin Shanshan appeared at the school gate as promised. Just as Hou Rui was about to present a bright red rose to the little beauty, Jin Shanshan rushed over with a dark face and snapped, “You rotten monkey, what are you doing?”

“Huh? What did I do now?” Hou Rui widened his eyes in surprise. This time it was not feigned innocence; he really did not know.

“What are you dressing up like a peacock for? Did you set your sights on some girl from our school again?”

“How am I guilty, wife!” Hearing this, Hou Rui’s face even twitched. So after all that, he had died because he dressed up when he should not have! Fortunately, Hou Rui was no ordinary man, and he instantly came up with a line. “Wife, since I came to pick you up at your school gate, I can’t embarrass you, right? That’s why I dressed up a little. If you don’t like it, then next time I’ll come wearing a sackcloth rag, all right?”

“Really?” Jin Shanshan looked at him sidelong, the threat in her eyes unmistakable.

“Absolutely true. You’re my one and only.” As he spoke, Hou Rui seized the chance to hand over the red rose. This time Jin Shanshan finally accepted it, which allowed Hou Rui to quietly breathe again. Next, he very considerately opened the car door, and only then did Jin Shanshan pout and climb into the forty.

Before long, the two of them were riding in the forty through Beijing’s vast river of traffic, setting out on the date Hou Rui had carefully arranged.