Chapter 5: Legal Aid! A Criminal Case? |
Xu De's brow furrowed as he swept a glance over Sun Hao standing before him.
The man wasn't generous enough to hand him a lucrative case — which meant it had to be...
Xu De's frown deepened as the realization hit him.
"Criminal legal aid!?"
A radiant grin spread across Sun Hao's face. He reached out, grabbed Xu De by the shoulder, and gave it a hearty slap.
"Bingo!"
Now, what exactly is legal aid?
Consider this example.
Say you're destitute — a car hits you, you need to take it to court, but you can't afford a lawyer.
And a lawyer has virtually no right to refuse.
Of course, Xu De didn't particularly mind taking on legal aid cases — it was, after all, a lawyer's professional duty.
Under normal circumstances, he might have resented Sun Hao's heavy-handed way of forcing the matter on him.
But right now...
A glimmer flashed through his eyes.
He hadn't forgotten what the system had shown him — those precious skills only appeared in criminal cases!
Without hesitation, Xu De looked up at Sun Hao and spoke.
"When does my client arrive? And what's the case?"
He's... actually taking it?
Sun Hao's heart leapt with delight.
Looking at the "overreaching" Xu De before him, he couldn't help but let the corner of his mouth curl upward. He chuckled warmly.
"The details will be explained to you by someone else — they know more about the case than the firm does."
"As for timing..."
Just as Sun Hao spoke, a sound suddenly rang out from behind them.
Knock knock knock!
"Where's Attorney Xu?"
The voice was loud and booming, drawing the attention of everyone working in the main office. Heads turned — and there, parked outside the law firm's entrance without anyone noticing, sat a minibus.
Standing at the front door, one hand holding it open, was a stocky, middle-aged detective.
"Time's about right. Let's move."
The officer's sharp eyes swept across the room as he spoke. A cigarette smoldered slowly between his lips.
At the sight of him, Sun Hao quickly called out.
"Officer Li, one moment."
Then he turned back to Xu De, a schadenfreude-tinged urgency in his tone.
"He's here. Sign the contract and go with Officer Li!"
With that, he pulled a document from his briefcase and thrust it into Xu De's hands.
Xu De gave him a long, measured look, then signed his name on the document without further ceremony.
Sun Hao's grin could no longer be contained.
"Ha! I won't take up any more of Attorney Xu's valuable time — here's wishing you a speedy rise to becoming the firm's star lawyer!"
Xu De had no interest in indulging those hollow pleasantries.
The moment his signature was down, he turned on his heel and walked toward the entrance.
Sun Hao was a nepotism hire — and a mediocre one at that, with nothing more than an ordinary bachelor's degree to his name. Xu De, on the other hand, had graduated from one of the country's most prestigious universities. In terms of both ability and appearance, there was simply no comparison between them.
At the end of the day, it was nothing but jealousy.
Xu De couldn't be bothered with someone like that. Far better to use this opportunity to work a few major cases and build his reputation.
With that thought, he cleared his mind of distractions.
The case comes first.
Xu De paused — he had reached the entrance.
He came to a stop beside "Officer Li," then tilted his head back to look at the man.
Officer Li was still working on his cigarette. When he noticed someone walking toward him, he instinctively stepped aside to make way — only to find the person stopping right next to him. He halted.
Then Officer Li's eyes flickered with faint surprise as he looked at the young man before him.
"You're Xu De? Attorney Xu?"
Xu De nodded. "That's me."
"This young?"
Officer Li's expression was a little odd.
Still, he said nothing more about it.
After all, this was just a free legal aid assignment.
When you're not paying a dime, what more do you expect? Having a licensed attorney show up at all was plenty.
"Get in."
Officer Li took a long drag from his cigarette, then stepped aside to reveal the minibus waiting at the entrance.
"We're short on time. Talk on the way."
With that, he stepped into the vehicle in one stride.
Xu De followed close behind. As he boarded, his gaze instinctively swept across the interior.
The 2002-era minibus was sparse and utilitarian, though not dramatically different from what he remembered of later models.
Besides Officer Li, there were six other officers aboard. The six appeared somewhat distracted — they glanced at him once, then paid him no further attention.
There was also a middle-aged couple.
The two of them stood at roughly 165 centimeters, not particularly tall, their frames stooped and slight, dressed in thin, worn clothing. They were gaunt as scarecrows, somewhere around fifty years old.
Their faces were unremarkable — plain, honest-looking, the kind you'd find bent over a field somewhere... only thinner.
When the suit-and-tie-clad Xu De stepped aboard, the two of them tugged weakly at the corners of their mouths. The wrinkles on their faces bunched together like crumpled tree bark. Their eyes were evasive, darting sideways every so often — and when they glanced over again, they happened to meet Xu De's gaze directly.
They immediately dropped their eyes. They looked at Xu De's immaculately polished shoes and seemed to find even that too much. Then they looked back up, offering a fawning, tentative, apologetic smile, their hands wringing together with restless unease.
"Lao Zhang, get us moving," Officer Li called out from his seat. "We've got a tough one ahead — the sooner we deal with it, the sooner we go home."
The moment the words left his mouth, the engine shuddered to life with a low, steady hum. Before long, the minibus rolled out onto the road.
Officer Li took a drag from his cigarette, then turned toward Xu De. He glanced briefly at the middle-aged couple and clicked his tongue.
"These two are your clients."
"Attorney Xu, ask what you need to ask now. Once we're there, there won't be time."
"Understood."
Xu De nodded, then walked over to the couple and extended his hand.
"How should I address you?"
At that, Wang Qiang looked almost overwhelmed by the gesture. He hurriedly rose and bent forward, wiping his hand on his clothing before clasping Xu De's outstretched hand.
"My name's Wang Qiang... She's Sun Hong — she's mute, can't speak..."
His voice was murky, as though something was perpetually caught in his throat.
The middle-aged woman gave an embarrassed, awkward smile.
"Good to meet you, Mr. Wang. I'm Xu De. I will be handling your case with full authority."
Xu De shook the man's hand.
Wang Qiang's palm was rough — like a sheet of sandpaper, or a strip of bark.
They released hands. Xu De turned to Officer Li beside him.
"Officer Li, could you brief me on the case details?"
"You don't know the details yet!?"
Officer Li blinked, then let out a disbelieving click of his tongue.
At those words, Wang Qiang and Sun Hong instinctively gripped their hands together.
"We still have time," Xu De replied evenly, without a trace of agitation.
"Tch... I suppose we do."
Officer Li smacked his lips, drew another drag, and shifted his crossed legs.
"Name's Li Xiang."
"This case... it's a trafficking case."
A trafficking case?
"How many years back?" Xu De asked, eyebrows lifting. "Can't be easy to crack."
Li Xiang raised a brow at that — he clearly hadn't expected the young attorney to already understand the difficulty of trafficking cases.
He gave a casual reply.
"Ten years ago in Yangcheng. Wang Qiang and Sun Hong's fourteen-year-old daughter was trafficked. No word of her since."
"Not long ago, the Lüsen City Police Bureau arrested a trafficker by chance."
"Under interrogation, it turned out he was the ringleader behind this case — and he'd kept a list of victims. Once it went public, the family came forward."
A trafficking case from ten years ago!
That would be 1992 — and Yangcheng was a city in the south of East Nation, over 1,200 kilometers from Lüsen City...
"They've been searching for ten years?"
"And crossed over twelve hundred kilometers to get here?"
Xu De turned, genuinely taken aback, and looked back at Wang Qiang and Sun Hong.
The two of them shifted awkwardly. Their feet — clad in worn, flattened cloth shoes — slid further under their seats.
"Shocking, isn't it."
Li Xiang gave a short laugh, then his expression hardened.
"The girl's name is Wang Mei."
"She was sold to a man in Li Family Village — a remote hamlet deep in the mountains outside Lüsen City — to be his wife. She's twenty-four now, with a six-year-old child."
Xu De paused at that, brow knitting.
From the sound of it, this was...
"They haven't been reunited yet? She's still with the buyer!?"
Under normal circumstances, a lawyer wouldn't be brought in before a reunion had even taken place.
So what exactly was he here for?
"Not yet. Officers went out there twice. They saw her, but couldn't bring her back."
"That said, per her own wishes, a prior arrangement was made through a legal aid organization to retain a lawyer — she wants to fight for custody of her child."
Li Xiang shook his head with a slow, heavy sigh.
Then he took one final, deep drag from his cigarette, his eyes hardening, his voice dropping to a low, resolute tone.
"This time... we've brought some 'equipment.' We're going to try to bring her out."
He paused.
"As for you..."
"Your primary job is to file charges against the buyer for trafficking, and then act as the victim's litigation representative going forward."
"If anything goes sideways during the extraction... keep it in your head. You'll need it later."
"If any disputes break out on-site, help mediate."
In the extraction phase, a lawyer wasn't strictly necessary — but from the standpoint of the full rights-protection process, the earlier an attorney became involved, the better the family and the girl's legal interests could be safeguarded.
Besides...
The place they were heading to was, by all accounts, treacherous terrain in more ways than one. Without a lawyer present on-site, Wang Qiang and the others might find themselves at a serious disadvantage afterward.
"Understood."
Xu De gave a single nod.
He turned and began speaking with the tense, uneasy Wang Qiang.
Outside the windows, the scenery shifted with every kilometer.
Asphalt roads gave way to concrete, dust rising in pale clouds around them, skyscrapers shrinking into low-slung buildings.
Then concrete roads became dirt roads, and low-slung buildings became mud-brick houses with tiled roofs.
And finally — dirt roads crumbled into winding mountain paths. The minibus lurched and jolted without mercy, as though intent on rattling loose every organ in their bodies. Beyond the windows stretched a bleak, barren wasteland that seemed to have no end.
......
Eleven thirty in the morning.
Vrrrm—
The minibus shuddered violently, jerking awake the drowsy passengers inside.
Heads snapped up, eyes cutting instinctively to the window.
Outside was a barren mountain — a mountain stripped of any vegetation whatsoever. And halfway up its slope, a faint cluster of dark shapes clung to the hillside, like smudges of ink on a painting.
Those smudges were a village.
Xu De narrowed his eyes, his gaze sharpening.
At that moment, the voice of Lao Zhang — the officer behind the wheel — rang out.
"Li Family Village. We're here."