Chapter 61: Smashed |
Afternoon.
1:06 PM.
The temperature in November was not high. The biting autumn wind, even on a sunny day, would leave people shivering.
However, at Green Forest 18th Academy.
Principal Feng Yi was currently sweating profusely.
Sweat soaked through his shirt. He stood in front of the main hall, staring at the dark brown stains remaining on the ground, his breathing growing increasingly ragged.
Bits of mashed flesh still clung to the cracks in the pavement...
A few minutes ago, someone had fallen from the sky, smashing into a pulp on the spot.
By the time the ambulance arrived, the person had already been dead for quite a while.
"How could this happen? How could something like this happen..."
Feng Yi muttered to himself. His unfocused eyes swept over the faces of the people standing around.
The Dean of Students, the Vice Dean, the heads of each grade...
All the administrative staff were gathered here, their faces a mix of shock, bewilderment, panic, and unease.
In a corner.
"Pick up... hurry up and pick up..."
Lu Guangjun''s forehead was beaded with sweat. With his back to the crowd, he stared at his constantly dialing phone, his heart burning with anxiety.
Following a ''beep'', the call finally connected, and a woman''s full-bodied voice rang out from the speaker.
"Hello? What''s the matter, Teacher Wang? Was the color TV from last time not suitable or..."
Before the other party could finish.
Lu Guangjun''s face instantly scrunched up. He lowered his voice and said, "Something happened to Liu Jingqi!"
The other end of the line fell silent for a moment, followed by a sharp shriek.
"What happened to her? Did someone hit her!? Our family gave you so many..."
Lu Guangjun gritted his teeth and said, "Liu Jingqi killed someone!"
"The person died on the spot, beyond saving. The police will be here soon. You need to get over here first!"
With that, Lu Guangjun hung up the phone directly.
He turned around, looking at the cluster of school leaders. His heart was in a panic, his hands and feet trembling.
Someone had died...
Yang Jiale, the one who had sought him out to complain, was dead!
He truly never expected that Liu Jingqi could cause such a massive disaster, or that his attempts to curry favor would result in something like this...
In a daze, a furious roar tinged with a tremor rang out.
"Lu Guangjun! Where is Lu Guangjun!?"
In the crowd, the Dean of Students glared with wide eyes, shouting angrily as he looked around.
"I... I''m right here."
Lu Guangjun snapped back to his senses and walked before everyone, his heart quivering.
Seeing him appear.
Feng Yi was furious. Taking three steps in two, he marched right up and grabbed Lu Guangjun by the collar.
"Is this how the hell you manage your class!?"
"Tell me, what the hell is going on here!!!"
Lu Guangjun''s legs felt weak, but he still put on the pitiful, innocent look of a victim. Looking at the principal, he said in a trembling voice:
"I... I don''t know."
"You don''t know!?"
Blood rushed to Feng Yi''s head. He felt his blood pressure hit the roof, his expression twisting into a savage grimace.
The people beside him immediately stepped in to hold him back from doing something drastic.
"Don''t be rash!" The Dean stopped Feng Yi.
"Tell me how I''m not supposed to be rash!? Someone is fucking dead, and this bastard says he doesn''t know!"
Feng Yi was dragged backward by several people.
The Dean gritted his teeth and said:
"The most pressing matter right now isn''t assigning blame."
"First, stabilize the scene. Don''t let the impact spread, and cooperate with the investigation into this matter!"
Hearing this.
Feng Yi clenched his jaw. He looked at Lu Guangjun, who was covering his face and crying innocently, and almost shattered his molars from grinding them.
Right at this moment.
"The police are here! The police are here!"
A sudden shout acted like a shot of adrenaline for the crowd.
"Where?" Feng Yi looked back anxiously.
A young man was seen running toward them from the outside in a panic, shouting as he ran:
"They''re all at the gate!"
After those words.
Without hesitation, leaving a few administrative staff behind.
Feng Yi led the rest of the key personnel and hurried toward the school gate.
The police were here.
It was just that...
It wasn''t only the police who had arrived.
...
At the gate of the 18th Academy.
A blue-and-white police car slowly killed its engine, parking at the entrance.
"Greenwood City is really getting more and more unsettled, especially these last few years."
In the police car, Li Xiang muttered to himself.
Currently, anti-gang operations were being carried out across the country, so it was normal to have a lot of incidents, but... the cases popping up in Greenwood City were a completely different beast compared to everywhere else.
The nature of it was different; the cases couldn''t be lumped together!
"I just hope nobody died."
Li Xiang took a deep breath. Once the car stopped, he prepared to quickly get out.
Unfortunately...
In a daze, Old Zhang, the detective in the driver''s seat, looked into the distance and cried out in alarm.
"Old Li, we have a situation outside!"
A situation? What situation?
Li Xiang paused and looked up.
Only to see...
On the road directly facing the front of the car, a massive, surging crowd of figures was marching toward them.
At first, it was just a blur of dark shapes. But soon, their cement-stained clothes, along with the shovels, steel rebars, and iron pipes in their hands, came into clear view.
At a rough glance, there were at least ten-odd people.
And the person leading them was none other than a dark-faced Sun Zhigang, with Wang Fen standing beside him, sobbing.
"Bad news!"
Li Xiang''s heart jumped, and he hurriedly got out of the car.
At the guardhouse.
The group of construction workers stopped at the entrance.
Wang Fen pointed at the bewildered security guards and cried out her accusation:
"Foreman, it''s right here. Just now, it was him who wouldn''t let me leave. Sister Zhao fainted right here too..."
When the incident occurred, the guards had received a phone call and subsequently barred her from leaving.
If she hadn''t taken the opportunity to run while they were making another call... Sun Zhigang probably still wouldn''t know about this.
Sun Zhigang suppressed his fury, staring at the security guards with eyes that looked ready to devour someone.
"Tell the person in charge to come out!"
The security guard looked at the group of workers—men who performed heavy manual labor year-round, armed with assorted clubs and pipes—and his legs went somewhat weak.
Fortunately, before he had to answer.
"Make way, make way!"
After Li Xiang and his men got out of the car, they pushed through the crowd and split into two groups: one went into the academy, and the other stood next to the workers.
He squeezed into the center. Looking at the dense crowd surrounding them, he felt a wave of pressure.
Finally, his gaze landed on the fiercely scowling Sun Zhigang.
"Let''s talk this out calmly. Let''s talk this out."
"Fuck your mother, how the hell am I supposed to talk calmly!?"
Sun Zhigang cursed right in his face. He swung the steel rebar in his hand directly at the window of the security room.
"Crash!"
The glass shattered on impact.
"Someone is dead. Someone is fucking dead, and you want me to talk calmly!?"
Sun Zhigang pointed at the buildings inside the gates, his body shaking with uncontrollable agitation, and roared at Li Xiang:
"Someone fucking died right here!"
"And they fucking stopped two women from leaving. Picking on easy targets?"
"Bullying people! You see that we''re bottom-rung construction workers and think we''re easy to push around, huh!!!"
His voice was like rolling thunder, booming in everyone''s ears.
The faces of the construction workers grew even uglier. Their fists clenched tight; they looked ready to erupt into violence at any second.
Li Xiang''s face turned green again. His tone softened a bit as he tried once more:
"Right now, the situation isn''t clear. Let''s calm down and get the story straight..."
"Otherwise, acting like this just makes things difficult for us."
This kind of mobbing behavior was already clearly illegal.
Let alone mobbing with weapons!
But alas, Sun Zhigang gave him absolutely no face. His eyes were icy.
"Your name is Li Xiang, right?"
"Let me tell you, even if your Detachment Leader Wu Kang comes looking for me today, it won''t do any good!!!"
Great. Being able to name-drop like that meant the other party had backing.
Which was true enough—these days, you couldn''t run a construction site without someone watching your back.
Li Xiang was completely out of options.
Luckily, a few figures walked out at that moment to bail him out.
"Let''s talk this out calmly. Let''s talk this out calmly!"
Seeing a crowd gathered outside, Feng Yi realized things were bad, but he still bit the bullet and stepped forward, hurriedly trying to placate them.
Seeing this man, Sun Zhigang''s fury instantly spiked, his emotions flaring.
"Fuck your mother, where did you hide them!?"
Feng Yi put on a pained expression and quickly explained, "We didn''t hide anyone! We aren''t hiding anyone!"
"That female worker was just sent to the hospital. If she has her ID on her, the hospital will probably contact you. As for the child... the child indeed had an accident, and the body has been taken away."
Without waiting for the other man to react violently, he quickly added:
"But, us blocking the gate like this isn''t a solution either."
"We still don''t know exactly how the accident happened. Brother, blocking the gate like this means the police can''t get in. Isn''t that worse for the family?"
"Rest assured, I absolutely will not show favoritism to anyone!"
Sun Zhigang stared at him. Those unblinking eyes locked onto Feng Yi as he fell into deep thought.
Seeing this.
Li Xiang breathed a sigh of relief.
He knew that everything had happened too fast; the construction crew probably didn''t know anything.
Rather than causing trouble, these people wanted the truth and an explanation.
"I..."
After a long while, Sun Zhigang slowly opened his mouth.
But just as he did...
"Ring, ring, ring~"
An abrupt phone ringtone blared from Sun Zhigang''s pocket.
Sun Zhigang frowned. He reached in, pulled out his phone, and right in front of everyone, pressed the answer button.
"Beep~"
"Hello?" Sun Zhigang said.
The other end of the line was silent for a moment before a crisp, youthful woman''s voice came through.
"Hello, is this Mr. Sun Zhigang?"
"We are calling from Green Forest City First People''s Hospital. We are calling the emergency contact number listed on Zhao Li''s medical records."
A nurse?
"I am her..."
Before Sun Zhigang could finish speaking, another voice suddenly spoke from the phone.
"I am very sorry, Mr. Sun."
"Zhao Li was diagnosed with a heart condition, ''cardiogenic embolism'', and her deformed, limping lower limb was also a result of her heart disease."
"Twenty minutes ago, Zhao Li suffered a sudden embolism dislodgment. Three minutes after the dislodgment, she passed away. After being brought to the hospital... I am very sorry, but resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful."
"Now, we would like to ask."
"Before the patient passed... did she experience any severe emotional trauma?"
Every word carried clearly into the ears of everyone present.
Someone... died? Zhao Li was dead too?
Two lives!
In an instant.
No one in the entire area spoke. It was eerily quiet.
The phone slipped from his hand and smashed onto the ground.
"Clack!"
From the dropped phone, the speaker continued to broadcast a voice.
"Hello? Mr. Sun, are you listening?"
"Hello?"
Li Xiang closed his eyes, his heart giving a violent lurch.
''We''re doomed.''
The very next second...
"I''ll fuck your mother!!!"