Chapter 10: The Ninth Cycle of Time (IV)

Ten minutes later, after a casual meal, Li Shiqing and Xiao Heyun arrived at the location set by the police and waited uneasily for them to arrive.

Almost as soon as they showed themselves, however, they were immediately swarmed by several stout men in ordinary dress who took control.

" Li Shiqing, Xiao Heyun?"

The man at the head of the group surveyed their looks and nodded to the rest of the group.

Li Shiqing had never been treated like this before and when one of the men cut her arms behind her back, she couldn't contain her inner fear and screamed out loud.

"Who are you people? What are you doing!"

Xiao Heyun's side wasn't much better, about as threatening as he was male, and most of the actions of these strapping men were directed at him.

He was pinned down to the point where he could not move at all, but staggered forward surrounded by three or four men with the expression of a lamb being sold.

The minds of the two men went blank.

In their original conception, they would wait here until the police officers came to summon them, and then follow them out of the area to cooperate with the investigation.

No one expected to be "kidnapped" right at the door.

The two men were controlled and boarded a spacious police car not far away.

It was only when they saw the police car that they realised that these burly men, who looked "not to be trifled with", were probably police officers on duty in plain clothes, and only then did their hearts settle down a little.

"Did the police find the explosives so quickly?"

Li Shiqing went pale and speculated in her mind, "Otherwise there would be no need to treat us with such harshness."

They were escorted from the rear to the car, and the two officers standing by the car immediately followed and got in with them.

The police officer at the head of the group is in his forties, with a face of a Chinese character, a deep gaze, tightly closed lips, and a deep head-raising wrinkle between his foreheads, a kind of unsmiling personality at first glance, and an aura of unrestrained anger.

The young officer who followed him was known to Li Shiqing as Officer Jiang, who had questioned him before.

When Li Shiqing saw Officer Jiang, she immediately withdrew her gaze and lowered her head nervously.

"What, you know me?"

Officer Jiang, who had just gotten into the car, didn't let go of the glance she had avoided him with, and his eyes were fixed on Li Shiqing with a stern look.

"Huh?"

Li Shiqing panicked and shook her head in a hurry.

"No. I was scared before when strangers took me away, but when I saw that it was the police who came and knew it wasn't some strange person who took me, I wasn't so scared anymore."

"That's some quick reflexes and natural acting, not bad for someone who can come up with strange ways to get out of a car."

Boy is secretly impressed.

And a quiet pat on the back to the police, what a talent.

"But ordinary people should be more frightened when they see that it is the police who have forcibly escorted them away, right?"

Officer Jiang said with an air of nonchalance, but without taking his eyes off Li Shiqing, "Wouldn't the average person first ask themselves what they had done wrong?"

"I, I ......"

Li Shiqing's palms were sweating as she panicked, and even though she was a good tactician, she was unable to organize her sentences when faced with such a question that was not at all "pre-determined".

Xiao Heyun learns his lesson and doesn't even look up anymore, staring at his toes without a word.

The officer in the lead identified himself as "Du", a criminal police officer, and after a brief introduction, he began to check his identity.

" Li Shiqing, female, 20 years old, university student at U of W, right?"

"Yes."

Li Shiqing nods.

" Xiao Heyun, male, 24 years old, employee of W City Branch of Hanmer Network Technology Limited, only transferred to W City for a month, right?"

Xiao Heyun also nods.

"The police summoned you by telephone several times this afternoon in the hope that you would cooperate with the police in their investigation of a car accident, but none of your mobile phones could be reached. We have since served messages and sent text messages based on notifying relatives and work units that we hope you will cooperate in contacting the police, but you have not taken the initiative to contact us."

Officer Du went through the summons process as written, "Based on your behaviour, we believe that the two of you have a tendency to evade summons, and with the approval of our leader, you are now subject to a mandatory summons in accordance with the law, and here is our summons document."

He took out a summons, showed it to the two men to finish looking at it, made sure both parties had seen it clearly, and put it away again.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

After the two officers had completed the summons process, they did not say anything more to Li Shiqing and Xiao Heyun, but went straight out of the car and went to a police car behind them.

"Do you see a problem with that?"

Officer Jiang fasten your seat belt.

"There's definitely something wrong, a big problem."

Officer Du is much more calm and collected than Officer Jiang's 'aggressive' approach.

Hanging up his gear and following the police car ahead, he snorted a laugh.

"A traffic accident seeking investigation is a summons issued by the criminal police department, they don't seem surprised at all."

When a normal person hears about a traffic accident and is taken into control, they should at least cry foul or something, not to say resist or question the "brutality" of the police, but neither of the two young men seemed to "resign themselves to their fate" as soon as they saw the police car.

Not to mention that traffic accidents are supposed to be under the control of the traffic police, and he deliberately showed them the summons issued by the criminal police directly, yet none of them had any questions.

Even though the two looked a little alarmed, they were too mentally fit for their age and with the life experiences on their CVs.

--

In the other car, the two young men, who had been lamented by the policeman as being "mentally fit", were already in a state of shock.

None of the two officers had spoken to any of them since they got out of the car.

The few police officers in plain clothes watching over them in the car could almost be equated with everything you could think of in a police officer, such as "stalwart, stoic and calm".

They sat motionless, but with their eyes and ears open, and in positions that unobtrusively blocked all the routes they could take out of the car.

The aura around them was completely different from the ordinary police officers the two young men had seen on the streets before, even from Officer Jiang and Officer Du, who had just come for questioning, and it was a calmness that had been honed through a wealth of experience.

Boy had tried to talk to them with a smile on his face, but was interrupted by a bland "don't talk, we'll talk in the police station", without giving them any chance to "try to get information".

It was such a blow to their confidence that the air in the car was as stagnant as if it were a physical object, which made the two young men feel heavy even to breathe.

Halfway through, Boy felt an itch on his face where it touched the frame and tried to scratch it, but as soon as he raised his hand, several wary eyes stared at him in unison.

Those guarded gazes were like steel cones, their cold light piercing the heart.

Under such a gaze, Xiao Heyun dropped his right hand in a stiff motion, even though he hadn't said a single threatening word, and never dared to move again.

If this "silence" and "tight focus" is also a way of making people feel pressured and intimidated, there is no doubt that the officers' techniques have worked on him.

Li Shiqing, perhaps more resilient as a woman, sits still under close scrutiny, but her mind is already rehearsing the plan they have just agreed on.

It was as if the only way to temporarily ease her apprehension, and the unknown that was to come, was to divert her attention in this way.

All arrived at their destination in such silence.

Neither Li Shiqing nor Xiao Heyun had ever been to the city's criminal investigation brigade before, and they didn't even know where this place was. They were taken away by Officer Jiang and Officer Du, who got out of the car behind them, with a cold heart, no trace of their previous appearance of "pointing and pointing" and "waving and waving" in the fast food restaurant.

As it was a summons and not an arrest, the two men were not handcuffed, but were simply taken into separate questioning rooms. In each questioning room there was a clerk who took statements and an officer who was a witness.

Even though he was dealing with a young girl, Officer Jiang did not look relaxed at all and began his questioning with a straightforward questioning of Li Shiqing.

"At 13:37 this afternoon, you and another passenger, Xiao Heyun, got off a bus on route 45 without waiting for a stop, is this true?"

"True."

Li Shiqing replied in a submissive manner.

"Why did you get off temporarily?"

Officer Jiang followed up with another question.

The question that had almost driven her mad now had a "suitable" answer.

"Because the passenger touched my breasts in the car, I got angry and I asked the driver to let me out of the car and call the police."

Li Shiqing said with some embarrassment as she bit her lower lip.

There was no need to disguise this emotion, her face immediately burned at the thought that Boy had touched her breasts without expecting her to have recovered her memory.

In another interrogation room, Xiao Heyun gave a different answer to the same question.

"Because the girl had to say I touched her boobs and said she was going to call the police, the people in the car treated me like a hooligan and blew me off the bus."

He replied.

Officer Jiang and Officer Du were somewhat surprised to learn of each other's answers through the voice transmission in their respective headsets.

Surprisingly, the statements were inconsistent.

"And did you know that your bus crashed into a tanker truck and exploded not long after you got off the bus?"

Officer Du's eyes were fixed on Xiao Heyun, and he spoke with emphasis, word by word.

"The timing of your exit from the car is too coincidental?"

"You'd have to ask that Li Shiqing, I was shocked too when I found out the car had exploded."

Xiao Heyun put all the blame on Li Shiqing, as if he was a "friend in need".

"At first I was pissed off that I got off the bus with such a shitty thing."

"When I saw the car blow up later, I was glad to see it, but after that I was only scared. It's better to be vilified as a pervert than to die, right?"

Just like Li Shiqing, he doesn't need to pretend. Just think of the aggravation he felt when he was dragged out of the car for the first time after Li Shiqing inexplicably accused him of being a "pervert", and that look comes naturally to his face.

As for the panic he felt at the scene when he found the car exploding and the despair he felt when he was taken to the hospital, his face turns pale and his heart beats wildly as he recalls it.

On the other hand, Li Shiqing burst into tears when she heard the same questioning.

"Then shouldn't you guys ask the man? I was having a nice ride in the car and something like this happened. I wanted the driver to help me take the car to the police station and he wouldn't! I wanted the people in the car to testify for me, but no one would either! They even thought I was taking up their time and told us to get out of the car and settle this 'private matter' ourselves.

She had directly faced the distrustful and reluctant questions of the passengers on the bus, and this moment of aggression and resignation was genuine.

"You ask me why the timing was too coincidental, why didn't you guys find out why that man didn't touch me earlier or later, but at that exact moment? He was the one who forced me out of the car at that time!"

With tears in her eyes, she complained to the officer.

Plan A.

--Mutual identification.

Execution.