“Ring, ring, ring…”
Li Yi had just seen Zhou Rui off and returned to the living room; he hadn’t even had a chance to settle in when the phone beside him began ringing urgently.
Without hesitation, Li Yi grabbed the receiver and answered the call: “Hello, who is this?”
“It’s me, Wang Anguo!”
“Brother Wang, what’s going on?” Li Yi asked immediately.
Wang Anguo said angrily, “Brother Li Yi, you really are a master at getting things done. That bastard Liu Dongping had his henchmen take the fall for him, just as I expected.”
“I expected as much. Tell me the details,” Li Yi said calmly.
“That bastard is now shifting all the blame, claiming he has nothing to do with any of it. He even says that when he raped that young girl, he was forced to do it. I’ve been a cop for so many years, and this is the first time I’ve heard of someone forcing another person to rape a girl. It’s absolutely ridiculous…”
Hearing the anger building in Wang Anguo’s voice, Li Yi immediately interjected, “Brother Wang, don’t get so worked up. Whether he’s the mastermind or an accomplice isn’t up to Liu Dongping to decide. As long as the chain of evidence is complete and the pieces fit together, we can still convict him.”
“That’s exactly where the difficulty lies. Right now, we don’t have much substantive evidence against that bastard. On top of that, someone at the bureau is helping Liu Dongping cover his tracks—the police reports and witness statements from that old case years ago have all vanished. It’s going to be tough to convict Liu Dongping with what we have right now!” Wang Anguo said in a low voice.
“Never mind. Even if the Liu family is powerful, they can’t cover everything up. Besides, we’re in no rush right now!” Li Yi said.
“Not in a hurry… what do you mean by that?” Wang Anguo asked, puzzled.
“The Liu family is using a strategy of retreating to advance. They’ve actively encouraged Liu Dongping to turn himself in and secured a scapegoat for him early on. This was clearly a carefully orchestrated plan. Breaking through this impasse won’t happen overnight!”
Li Yi continued, “You needn’t worry. From now on, dig deep into Liu Dongping and his inner circle. Just remember one thing…”
“What?”
“Don’t close the case just yet. Drag this out!” Li Yi said.
“Drag it out?”
“Right. Don’t ask any questions for now—just leave the rest to me!”
There were some things Li Yi couldn’t explain openly to Wang Anguo and the others—after all, they were hard to justify.
Wang Anguo was a smart man, though, and didn’t press for details; he simply agreed to the plan.
After discussing the details a bit more, they ended the call.
After hanging up, Li Yi leaned back on the sofa, his mind racing.
Although the Liu family had pulled off a clever scheme, Li Yi wasn’t without a way to deal with them. The simplest method was to turn their own tactics against them—in other words, to use force to intimidate them.
Although the Liu family was powerful, they were still no match for the Jiang family. Moreover, in addition to the Jiang family, Li Yi could also enlist the Ye, Lin, and Liang families to join forces.
With so many major clans joining forces to take down the Liu family, not to mention Liu Dongping’s mountain of dirt, even if he were completely clean, they could still send him to prison.
However, Li Yi didn’t want to go that far. On one hand, he didn’t want to owe anyone a favor; on the other, doing so would change the nature of the situation, and he wasn’t sure it would lead to the outcome he envisioned.
After all, their current mission was to punish evil, promote good, and uphold justice. But if the Jiang and Ye families got involved, it would turn into a clan feud.
Furthermore, there are limits to the conflicts between major clans. They may fight, but they generally don’t seek to exterminate their opponents.
If the Jiang and Ye families intervened, the Liu family would certainly fall, but it was highly unlikely that anyone—including Liu Dongping—would die.
Just as Marshal Zhang said before, the underworld isn’t just about fighting and killing; it’s about human relationships and social conventions.
Once human relationships and social conventions are involved, it becomes very difficult to take things to the extreme!
Therefore, unless absolutely necessary, Li Yi absolutely did not want the Jiang and Ye families to get involved in this.
He… intends to go all the way with this. He wants the Liu family to fall, and he wants Liu Dongping dead!
Since he didn’t want to rely on the power of families like the Jiangs and the Yees, he had no choice but to leverage the might of the state. Only the overwhelming power of the nation could easily crush a powerful family like the Lius and force them to completely give up resistance!
But to leverage the state’s power, he would have to wait for the results of Zhou Rui and the others’ investigation…
……….
Before he knew it, a month had passed!
During this time, Li Yi had kept a low profile, spending most of his time with Jiang Xue and the children, occasionally visiting his third sister and young nephew, and accompanying his eldest sister to her prenatal checkups.
Other than that, he hadn’t met up with Jiang Longcheng, Ye Jianhua, or others for meals or gatherings; he rarely went out, and he barely even went to the office.
He didn’t even see his eldest sister’s husband off when he returned to Hong Kong.
As for the Liu family’s affairs, he didn’t get too involved.
Even when the Liu family intervened to stop the media from exposing Liu Dongping’s scandals, Li Yi did not step in, appearing completely indifferent to the matter.
To the Liu family, however, his reaction carried a different meaning.
Whether it was Liu Dongxia, Liu Xiao, or even the head of the Liu family, they all believed this meant the Jiang family had accepted their offer of reconciliation—a result of their bowing to the Jiang family—and that the Jiang family had no intention of wiping them out completely.
And without the Jiang family’s support, Li Yi alone was simply incapable of making any significant waves.
To test whether the Jiang family and Li Yi had truly washed their hands of the matter, the Liu family used their connections to secure Liu Dongping’s release on bail after he had been detained for half a month.
They had expected that once Liu Dongping was released, Li Yi or others from the Jiang family would react.
But in the end, everything remained calm. Li Yi did not intervene, and the Jiang family showed no signs of action, as if the matter had nothing to do with them at all.
Only Wang Anguo and his associates stepped in to intervene, but to no avail.
Under these circumstances, the Liu family immediately sought to close the case as quickly as possible and put an end to the matter once and for all, to avoid any further complications.
But just as they were pressuring the branch bureau to close the case quickly, Wang Anguo and his team refused.
Their reasoning was that the investigation was not yet complete, and many victims had not yet been contacted, so the case could not be closed.
No matter how much the Liu family tried to leverage their connections with leaders at the sub-bureau or the municipal bureau, Wang Anguo and his colleagues refused to budge.
By now, the entire public security system was aware of the ties between Wang Anguo and his associates and the Jiang family, so no one dared to press them too hard, and the situation remained deadlocked.
But neither Liu Dongping nor the Liu family behind him, nor the people they had planted in the branch and municipal bureaus, realized that Li Yi’s silence did not mean he had accepted their offer of reconciliation, but rather that he was waiting for news from Zhou Rui.
Normally, given the capabilities of State Security, it wouldn’t be difficult to verify the details Li Yi had mentioned, and it certainly wouldn’t take this long.
But when Zhou Rui ordered an investigation into Beijing’s street gangs and the Tangcheng Knife Squad, they discovered the situation was far more complex than they had anticipated.
First, the number of street gangs in Beijing was unimaginably large.
From the outlying counties like Changping and Miyun, to the urban areas and the southern suburbs, every village and every street was likely home to criminal gangs made up of thugs and hoodlums.
These scoundrels bullied men and women, extorted merchants and street vendors, and collected protection money—they had become a veritable cancer on society.
And the investigation into the “Kitchen Knife Squad” in Tangcheng nearly left Zhou Rui and his team speechless.
If the thugs and gangs in the capital still made some effort to hide their activities, the Tangcheng Knife Gang was completely lawless and had no qualms about anything.
As the State Security agents followed a lead, they found that the more they investigated, the more complicated the case became, and the more issues were uncovered.
Zhou Rui had originally given his subordinates a week to complete the investigation, but he soon realized that a week was nowhere near enough. Consequently, he had no choice but to continuously call in reinforcements and extend the investigation period.
It took a full month of investigation before they finally managed to get a handle on the basic details of the Knife Squad just before New Year’s Day.
Upon receiving the materials Zhou Rui had sent, Li Yi knew the time had come to strike back…
……….