Jing Shu leaned down and placed two gleaming candies in the little girl's outstretched palm. "You explained it perfectly," she said, her voice warm with a sincerity that cut through the room's tension. "Thank you. Even a child knows right from wrong, knows when a home has been seized." She straightened, her gaze shifting like cold steel toward the senior officer. "With evidence this clear and public, Officer, shouldn't the illegal seizure of property be your primary concern?"
Director Zhang snapped, his face flushing a mottled purple. "You can't trust what children say!" he blustered, the words bursting out of him. "What do they know of legal transfers? They're parroting gossip!"
A fresh, visceral wave of boos rolled through the packed onlookers. This time, the sound was heavier, angrier. Even the jaded, survival-focused bystanders couldn't stomach such blatant hypocrisy.
Jing Shu drew out a long, contemplative "Oh~" The syllable hung in the air, dripping with mock realization. "Just a minute ago, you said children understand reason and always tell the truth. Now you say they can't be trusted."
She spread her hands, a picture of innocent confusion. "In this matter, only these children are neutral witnesses. So which is it? Do we believe them, or not? Or," she paused, her voice dropping to a razor's edge, "do we believe them only when their words help you, and dismiss them when they hurt you? Is that your idea of justice? Selective truth?"
Shi Jiuyou, her phone still secretly broadcasting, felt a surge of adrenaline. This was the moment. It was time to move from observer to participant, to stand with her goddess. She shouldered her way forward, her voice clear and carrying.
"She's right! For the sake of basic fairness, either everything the children say counts as evidence, or nothing does! You can't just pick and choose which sentence is 'true' based on what's convenient for you! That's not law, that's farce!"
Director Zhang fell silent, but his eyes were not on the moral argument, they were locked on the senior officer. His lips pressed into a thin line, and beneath the cover of his sleeve, his hand came up, two fingers held taut and unmistakable. Two hundred. The bribe, or the promise, was being reaffirmed.
The senior officer saw it. His jaw tightened, a muscle twitching in his temple. He was caught between a live-streamed audience, a furious crowd, and the corrupt system that fed him. He made his choice.
"I already said," he barked, his voice roughened by strain, "the property issue is legally complex! Each side has documentation! We cannot rule a unit 'seized' based on the chatter of a few children! If your owner is truly a SWAT officer on a secret mission, we will address it when he appears and files a formal complaint!" He pointed a rigid finger at Jing Shu. "I am here for a reported assault. That is a clear and present matter. Take those two into custody for questioning."
Two junior officers moved in, their hands rough as they grabbed Jing Shu and Wu You'ai by the arms. Jing Shu gave Wu You'ai an almost imperceptible shake of her head, not yet, then raised her voice, not in a scream, but in a ringing, declarative shout that echoed off the concrete walls:
"Shrouded in horsehide is a hero's end, but do not break your hearts at the Yang Pass! The hero comes home, and you have occupied his house! Do you want to chill a hero's heart? Does the state really let you do whatever you want?"
The classical allusion to a loyal warrior wronged hung in the air, a cultural gut-punch. Shi Jiuyou, sensing the climax, held her phone high, panning across the officers, the director, the injured grifters on the floor. The live chat on her stream exploded into a firestorm of outrage. Emojis of fire and fists flooded the screen, comments scrolled too fast to read: "This is disgusting!" "Where is the justice?" "Release her!"
Shi Jiuyou tucked the phone into her jacket, still broadcasting audio, and rushed forward, putting herself between the officers and Jing Shu.
"You're just covering for your own!" she accused, her finger jabbing toward the director. "This is as obvious as lice on a bald head! They seized a hero's home, and you ignore that giant crime to fuss about who pushed who in a scuffle? You're not blind, you're bought!"
"We are taking them in to establish the facts!" the senior officer roared, his patience evaporating under the heat of so many watching eyes and the live-stream he now suspected. "We will get to the bottom of all of it!"
"If you're truly investigating, then take everyone!" Shi Jiuyou shot back, gesturing wildly at the men still groaning on the floor. "Take them too! Why only these two women? Aren't you going to ask why these men occupied someone else's home without any right? This isn't an investigation, this is a sham!"
That did it. The officer's professional composure shattered. "This person is obstructing law enforcement and publicly insulting an officer!" he bellowed, his face dark. "Ten days of mandatory labor reform! And if anyone else objects, they join her! See if I don't make it twenty!"
The words "labor reform" fell like a guillotine blade. The mutters died instantly. People stepped back, faces paling. They had all seen the labor reform crews, pallid, exhausted figures in drab uniforms, chained at the ankles, clearing rubble or scrubbing filth from dawn until dark under the watchful eyes of guards with electric prods. They were less than slaves, they were the disappeared.
With the crowd cowed, the officers grabbed Shi Jiuyou as well, clamping cold metal cuffs around her wrists.
"You can't do this!" Shi Jiuyou struggled, not for herself, but for the narrative. "Do you know who you're taking? This woman," she nodded furiously toward Jing Shu, "was the one who piloted the shark submarine at Ai Jia Supermarket! She saved over a thousand people from the first flood wave! She's a public hero, and she's standing up for what's right!"
At the words "shark submarine," a spark of collective memory ignited in the crowd.
"It is her!"
"I saw that video! She drove that thing right through the mall!"
"The Submarine Lady…"
A new, more dangerous hubbub swelled, tinged with awe and a sense of betrayal. The senior officer's eyes narrowed to calculating slits. What a coincidence, he thought. This was the very woman whose documented heroism had provided Li Yuetian with his "model disaster response" merit, the shield that had, until now, protected him from his rivals' knives.
This officer was a subordinate of the "second-in-command," the man who had languished in Li Yuetian's shadow for years. A vicious hope flickered in his chest. Perhaps this arrest wasn't just a favor to a corrupt director. Perhaps it was an opportunity, a gift to his superior.
He turned away, pulling out his own communicator, and made a low, quick call. "Captain Hu? It's me. At Building No. 1. We have a situation. The woman involved, yes, that one. The one from the submarine. The crowd is getting heated. I'm worried a public arrest might cause a larger incident."
The voice on the other end was crisp, devoid of hesitation. "Understood. Bring her in. Quietly."
Backed by authority from above, the officer's last shred of doubt vanished. This woman had stumbled into the heart of a high-stakes power struggle. Her fate was no longer about a stolen apartment. "Take all three," he ordered, his voice now flat and final. "A prince who breaks the law is punished like a commoner. If she committed assault, she bears the consequence. Move."
Ignoring the renewed, helpless muttering of the crowd, they hauled Jing Shu, Wu You'ai, and Shi Jiuyou away. This was not the world before the floods. Public opinion was a feeble ghost compared to the solid reality of power and chains. These people were fighting for their next meal, what tsunami could they possibly stir?
Director Zhang's face blossomed into a smile like an old, wrinkled chrysanthemum. He addressed the shell-shocked onlookers. "Show's over! Back to your units! Anyone else looking for trouble, I'll reassign you to the underwater parking garage ventilation team!"
The threat was immediate and visceral. The crowd scattered like roaches under a sudden light, leaving only echoes and the stench of defeat. No waves rose.
Director Zhang helped the beaten men to their feet, oozing false sympathy. "Don't you worry. I'll see you get justice for this," he promised, then hurried off, his mind already racing ahead. There had been a minor snag with the live stream, but the core of his plan was intact, even advanced.
Where was he going? To knock on the door of the villa by the lake.
This time, Director Zhang didn't believe that with the man's troublesome daughter in custody, he couldn't pry those nine hundred-plus virtual coins from his grasp. The old man would pay anything to get her back.
Jing Shu, Wu You'ai, and Shi Jiuyou were not taken to the proper community police station. Instead, they were marched to the sprawling, repurposed mall at the center of Banana Community. Because administrative procedures were still in chaos, they were processed with brutal simplicity in a cluttered, dimly lit back area that resembled a warehouse loading zone. Their personal phones were confiscated and tossed into a dented metal locker.
"Stay put. Don't try anything stupid," the senior officer grunted, securing their cuffs to a heavy pipe that ran along the wall. He wasn't worried about escape. The space was a concrete box. Unless they could tear through half a meter of reinforced wall, they were going nowhere. And even if they did, the Big Data tracking network could hunt a registered citizen across the entire flooded province.
He had completed the task Director Zhang had handed him. What Captain Hu and the second-in-command planned to do with the "Submarine Lady" to dismantle Li Yuetian's legacy was above his pay grade. To topple a captain, they would have to discredit his greatest asset. Best to saddle her with a serious, permanent charge.
The heavy metal door clanged shut, plunging them into near-darkness, broken only by a single, flickering emergency light high on the wall.
In the gloom, Jing Shu's senses heightened. She took silent stock. It was a large, sealed storage room, jammed with haphazard stacks of crates, rolled carpets, and furniture, salvage from the flooded downtown, waiting to be sorted or redistributed. The air smelled of damp mold, dust, and stale desperation.
Aside from the main door, now guarded from the outside, there were no windows, no vents large enough to crawl through. A good place to store things you didn't want seen. A slow, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips as her eyes, already adjusted to the low light, studied every contour, every shadow, every potential tool in the room.
Of all the places to be chained up… a warehouse full of unregistered salvage.
How embarrassing for them, given her particular habits.
"What is this place?" Shi Jiuyou whispered, her bravado fading into unease. The cuffs chafed her wrists. "Why chain us in a dump like this? This isn't a holding cell."
"Because we can't be seen," Wu You'ai said calmly, having already settled into a cross-legged position on the concrete floor, as if beginning a meditation.
"Why not?"
Jing Shu answered, her voice a low murmur in the dark. "The first floor of this mall is the central cafeteria. Too much foot traffic. The second floor is their official station. If we were paraded through there, we might cross paths with someone still loyal to Li Yuetian. That would complicate things for Captain Hu." She nodded upward. "If I'm right, the third floor is their armory and evidence lock-up. Too sensitive. That leaves… here. The forgotten basement storage. Where inconvenient things disappear for a while."
She then twisted her body in a seemingly impossible contortion, her cuffed hands slipping into a hidden, sewn pocket inside her raincoat. She pulled out a slim, black satellite phone.
Shi Jiuyou stared, her jaw slack. "Didn't they confiscate our phones?"
A ghost of a smile played on Jing Shu's lips as her fingers flew over the screen, its pale glow illuminating her determined face in the darkness.
"I have two."
===
"Shrouded in horsehide is a hero's end, but do not break your hearts at the Yang Pass." That line is Jing Shu using two classical allusions to shame the officials and sway the crowd.
"Shrouded in horsehide is a hero's end" (马革裹尸, mǎ gé guǒ shī) echoes an old saying (often linked to the Han general Ma Yuan) that a soldier's honorable death is on the battlefield, buried in horsehide. It signals ultimate sacrifice for the country.
The story is like this: Ma Yuan declared that he would fight for his country until death and, if he fell, his body should be wrapped in horsehide (the skin of his warhorse) instead of a coffin. This meant he expected to die on the battlefield.
"Do not break your hearts at the Yang Pass" alludes to Yang Pass in the far west, famous for farewell songs so sad they "break the heart." Here it means: do not turn a hero's return into a scene of grief and humiliation.
The origin of that was from Wang Wei's (王维) Tang dynasty poem Seeing Yuan'er Off to Anxi (送元二使安西).
Famous lines: "劝君更尽一杯酒,西出阳关无故人." (Quàn jūn gèng jǐn yībēi jiǔ, xī chū yáng guān wúgù rén.)
"I urge you to drink another cup of wine, for once you pass west of the Yang Pass, there will be no old friends."
It have meaning: A farewell sentiment full of sorrow. To "not break your hearts at the Yang Pass" is telling someone not to weep too bitterly at parting.
Put together, plus the lines that follow, she is basically saying:
"Soldiers risk dying for the nation. Now the hero finally comes home and you have seized his house. Are you trying to crush a hero's spirit. Will the state really let you bully people like this."
It is a moral and patriotic appeal, designed to embarrass the corrupt Director Zhang side and win public support on the spot.
-
"a prince who breaks the law is punished like a commoner" also another classical allusion.
The phrase "王子犯法,与庶民同罪" (wángzǐ fànfǎ, yǔ shùmín tóng zuì) literally means:
"If a prince breaks the law, he is punished the same as a commoner."
It originates from Chinese legal and Confucian traditions, emphasizing equality before the law—at least in principle. The idea is that even nobles or members of the royal family should not be above justice.
The implication is:
Status doesn't exempt you from responsibility. Even if she's important, if she attacked someone, she must face the consequences.