When Fan Jia was no longer afraid, her voice was clear and pleasant, her expression sincere and brave. Chen Zhaoci gazed at this woman in the dimly lit air-raid shelter—dirty yet utterly pure—and felt a tugging pain in his chest.
From Fan Jia's perspective, the man sitting at the cave entrance was gradually calming down. Though his actions were distorted and horrifying, his profile now appeared merely ordinary, his tone placid as he spoke with her.
So it went, question and answer, sentence by sentence. What seemed mundane at the time unexpectedly sketched out a small, isolated life.
Yet, after successfully learning about this man's past, Fan Jia desperately wanted to ask: Since your beloved girlfriend fell victim to Campus Loan, why did you turn around and become their gatekeeper? Especially when considering that the person holding the camera in that video was most likely him. Fan Jia felt a bone-chilling coldness. Looking at his serene features, she could almost glimpse another distorted face lurking beneath the surface.
Chen Zhaoci noticed her hesitation, bent down, and brought his face closer to the iron bars: "What do you want to say?"
Fan Jia's heart jolted. She frantically recalled everything Ding Xiongwei, You Mingxu, and Yin Feng had ever mentioned about dealing with psychopaths. Even Xu Mengshan—that guy only two years older than her but cunning as a fox. If it were him, he'd probably already be scheming and maneuvering against the criminal!
Thinking this, Fan Jia suddenly calmed down.
She would defeat him. She would escape.
A people's police officer's weapons weren't just guns and handcuffs. There was also... this fiercely beating heart in her chest.
She remained silent for several seconds, her breathing clearly audible in the gloomy cave. Then she instinctively moved her hands behind her back, keeping the symbol of hostility—the ropes—out of Chen Zhaoci's direct line of sight. She lifted her head again, raising her chin high. Would this make her appear more sincere?
She didn't know if she was doing the right thing, relying entirely on guesswork and intuition.
Chen Zhaoci stared at her elegantly lifted oval face without speaking.
Fan Jia smiled, resembling the girl he had once deceived, shallow dimples appearing on her cheeks as she said: "Thank you. You said earlier that you brought me here originally to save me."
But Chen Zhaoci sneered: "But you're a police officer! You didn't need saving at all, and you've exposed everything about us! Now we're all going to jail. If I'm caught, I'll go to jail too!"
Fan Jia faltered, thinking: Damn, that's true! A flicker of pride surfaced in her heart, though she kept her expression rigid. Seizing an idea, she evaded the main issue and replied: "But regardless of my profession, no one has ever saved me before. At that time, I wasn't sure if I could escape—I might have fallen victim to them. It's all thanks to you bringing me to such a safe, hidden place."
Chen Zhaoci fell silent for a moment, the corner of his mouth finally twitching slightly as he said: "Indeed, in all of Huaicheng, no one knows these air-raid shelters better than me. Nobody needs them anymore—demolished, collapsed one after another. Only I remain with them."
Fan Jia suddenly realized something and asked: "When you took me... saved me from the Gold Splitting Treasure Company, did you use them too?"Chen Zhaoci snorted and replied, "Of course. Every day, my bosses and colleagues walk around right above the tunnel. Sometimes I stay in the hole and listen to their footsteps. If I wanted, I could make any one of them disappear from this world without a sound."
Fan Jia felt her throat go slightly dry, but she still looked at him calmly and forced out the words, "You've really... been very persistent all these years. Quite unique, different from others."
Chen Zhaoci looked at her and suddenly laughed, "Why have you been buttering me up since earlier? Want me to let you go and turn myself in instead?"
Fan Jia's heart trembled, thinking this guy was actually very alert. Why did she have the strange feeling of a rabbit teasing a tiger by pulling its whiskers? But the feeling was fleeting, and a stubborn unwillingness to admit defeat rose in her heart. She blurted out, "I'm willing to understand you because even in that environment, even though you frequently witnessed crimes, you never actually took a life. When Zhu Xinya betrayed you, you only wanted to uncover the truth and didn't seek any revenge. You never truly participated in the perverted acts of Fen Jinbao and his gang. And with me, your first thought was to save me, not kill me. Chen Zhaoci, we're actually the same kind of people. Though life is hard, we're still striving to find meaning in it. You haven't done anything wrong."
Fan Jia didn't know why, but tears welled up in her eyes after she finished speaking. One above, one below; one in light, one in shadow—separated by a few meters, Chen Zhaoci stared at her in a daze, and both fell silent.
After a while, he lowered his head and gave a bleak smile, "I... never killed anyone with my own hands. But I handled Liu Yisha's corpse according to how it was done in the news. That feeling... I'll never forget it for the rest of my life. Watching a living person's bones break into pieces under my hands. Picking them up and shaking them, you could still hear the fragments rattling inside... You're wrong. We're not the same kind of people. All these years, even though I didn't participate, I watched those I once hated bully one girl after another, and I couldn't control myself, couldn't stop... Fan Lingling, you're an upright people's police officer. But I'm in the gutter. My whole life, I've been in the gutter!"
For a moment, Fan Jia was almost convinced by his words, even feeling tempted to give up. This confessional Chen Zhaoci made her feel a trace of fear, but also an inexplicable bitterness. A voice inside her said: Being human shouldn't be like this.
"No... that's not how it is, that's not how it is," Fan Jia stammered.
Chen Zhaoci looked up at her, his eyes still somewhat disordered, "Then what is it like?!"Fan Jia's face had flushed red, her eyes burning hot as she said, "Chen Zhaoci, do you know? When I was in police academy, I learned that every one of us—every person in this world—is born with a natural tendency to pay more... more attention to violence and crime. This is... probably an innate part of our human nature. That is to say, if it were someone else—someone who lost their mother and home from a young age, who worked hard to build a life only to have their girlfriend die right before their eyes—they might also have the impulse to do something bad. If it were someone else desecrating the body of their own kind, they might also lose control. Others might not necessarily do better than you, but so far, you haven't taken anyone's life. Because deep in your heart... you still hold onto hope—hope to climb out of the gutter, to stand under the sunlight, to break free from all of that, isn't that right?"
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