Beauty and the Bodyguard

“Yi! It’s been a while! Your uncle Tang’s alright now, so I’m putting my stand out again!” Mrs. Tang was about to start a short chat with Lin Yi when she saw him take out the keys for his car. “You’re going out?”

“I’m going to get Tang Yin and also see how Uncle Tang’s doing.” Lin Yi nodded.

“Alright, you go ahead then! Remember to drive safely!” Mrs. Tang was bursting with joy at that response- Lin Yi was going to see her daughter! Seeing him treat her daughter so well was the best feeling she’d ever get. “Right, have you eaten yet?”

“Not yet, I’ll eat later.” Lin Yi said honestly.

“Just in time then, I have two skewers of barbequed chicken wings here, eat them first! Don’t starve yourself.” Mrs. Tang quickly seasoned the chicken wings before handing it to Lin Yi.

Lin Yi didn’t reject the courtesy. He took the sticks of chicken skewers with a smile, nodded at Mrs. Tang, and got in the car…

Song Lingshan rushed to Songshan’s First Hospital after receiving a report from an subordinate.

This was the sixth time. The sixth!

Lingshan rubbed at her forehead, the pressure getting to her.

In less than one week there’d been six cases of the homeless, beggars, and disabled losing a kidney and thrown near a hospital!

This wasn’t just simple crime anymore- Lingshan conjectured that this was a criminal organization at work!

“What’s the situation?” Getting out of the car, Lingshan noticed her subordinate Liu Wangli standing at a corner and preparing the police crime scene tape.

“Captain Song. The victim’s been sent to the emergency room, and I’ve sent men to investigate the crime scene. This isn’t the initial crime scene; the victim’s just been dumped here after having his left kidney cut out. The crime probably started around four in the morning, and the victim’s been placed here at around eleven in the morning. There’d been too many cars entering the hospital, and we haven’t found a witness yet…” Wangli smiled bitterly as he reported what he’d found out through investigation, understanding how pressuring the stress was for Lingshan as well. It was the sixth case, and things were getting extremely serious. The upper-levels hadn’t issued them a time limit yet, but it was coming sooner or later.

The victims may be the homeless, the beggars, and the disabled, but they were all equally important as the common man in Song Lingshan’s eyes. It didn’t matter what their position on the social ladder was, Lingshan would strive to break the case and bring the mastermind to justice regardless.

Lingshan nodded her head weakly at Wangli’s report. “How’s Liu Bojia?”

Liu Bojia was the victim of the psycho serial killer from before, the one who’d almost gotten killed. Bojia never revealed anything to the police, but Lingshan never loosened her focus and investigation on him!

A long time later, Lingshan managed to locate a suspicious clue- around six in the afternoon, on the day Bojia had been attacked, a phone call got through to the police station via a public phone in Bojia’s living area.

According to the officer who’d received the phone call, the man who made the call sounded very frightened as he told him about a criminal kidney-selling organization, and that it was very likely that they were aware of his discovery. The man then requested protection from the police…

He wasn’t being very clear with his information at the time, and refused to give his contact information when asked. With no options left, the officer asked for a police team to head to the public phone’s number, but no one picked up anymore. Nothing was out of the ordinary when they arrived at that public phone, and that was the end of it.

The incident passed by without anyone paying much attention to it, but Lingshan now connected the clue to the current case after investigating the call records for that night!

A criminal organization of kidney-sellers… Were these six cases all linked with each other? Lingshan only felt that slightly even now that Bojia getting attacked was connected with the kidney cutting case.

“Bojia hadn’t woken up yet, and he’s living on the mechanical support for his breathing… The doctor said that he’d be done for instantly if that support ever got disconnected…” Wangli sighed and shook his head, a bitter smile on his face. He was telling Lingshan to give up on that lead.

Lingshan frowned, but there wasn\'t much she could do. She understood the type of situation Bojia was in, but still hoped for a miracle, even if that miracle only gave Bojia a moment’s consciousness to give the police intel to work with! That miracle never came.

Before his current situation, Bojia would always stay silent when asked questions, as if he were terrified of something. Whenever he got tired of the questioning, he’d tell Lingshan and her colleagues that his family was already dead, that he was having it as tough as it got, that he didn’t want to die and that he wanted Lingshan to let him go.

Bojia’s injuries hadn’t recovered at the time, and he was still hospitalized- as a result, Lingshan didn’t rush things. She thought that Bojia would calm down and fortify himself mentally after getting out of the hospital, that she’d have a shot there in getting answers… when the unexpected happened.

A car horn sounded- it was Lin Yi, who wondered what the hell this Miss Song was doing, blocking the hospital entrance. Let him pass!

Every other car avoided the entrance when spotting Lingshan and Wangli in their police uniform, along with other police officers milling about. They’d all chosen the back door to gain entry into the hospital, but only Lin Yi was daring enough to honk at the police.

“What’re you honking at, can’t you take the back door?” Lingshan frowned, quite frustrated- this honking was coming out of nowhere and interrupting her thought process! She was trying to solve a case here!

“You think everybody’s the same as you, entering the police team through the back door??” Lin Yi retorted, curling his lips.

(don’t know if this works in english, but taking the backdoor is what Lin Yi says Lingshan did, using money and connections to get into the police force without getting in properly and honestly.)

She realized that it was Lin Yi honking at her- the words that followed made her face grow pale with anger. “What did you say?! Who’re you calling a back-door walker!!”

“We both know who.” Lin Yi said with a curl of his lips. “Get out of the way, I have something more important to do than talk to you!”

With that, Lin Yi stepped on the gas, intent on getting into the hospital.

“Wait!” Lingshan stood in front of Lin Yi’s car all of a sudden, blocking him. The bigger the rush Lin Yi was in the more she wanted to obstruct him! “I have something to ask of you!”

“......” Lin Yi hit the brakes and stopped the car, speechless. “I say, you dumb woman, as bad as your case-solving rate is you shouldn’t be thinking about suicide, right? Even if you wanted me to kill you with the car we should do it someplace isolated, right? What do you think you’re doing, doing this here in front of all your subordinates! I won’t be able to get away if I killed you!”

“You……” Lingshan was furious at this point. She gritted her teeth and glared at Lin Yi. “Call me a dumb woman or back-door walker again, and I’ll give you hell!”

“You’ve been giving me hell since day one!” Lin Yi was amused. “So that’s you being kind, apparently? Show me what hell is like then, I’d love to see it!”

Wangli cleared his throat- he couldn’t watch this any longer. “Captain Song…” What was the captain thinking, bantering with Lin Yi in front of all her subordinates? What would they think of this behavior??