Chapter 53.1: Good Thing She Became a Police Officer
Rong Zhenhai’s first reaction was to suspect that he had seen wrong.
It had to be the pressure of the case getting to him. He had been stuck for so long without making any breakthrough that his nerves were constantly wound tight, while exhaustion was taking its toll. He was starting to see every person as a murderer—even the police officers who had come to assist them.
Getting only three hours of sleep the previous night really wasn’t enough. He’d have to find some time to catch another half hour of sleep later. Otherwise, he didn’t know if he might suddenly drop dead from exhaustion. His brain, at the very least, was definitely going to turn into mush.
Thinking this, Rong Zhenhai rubbed his face and shook his head a couple of times, trying to clear his mind.
Feeling a little guilty, he glanced at Jiang Xia again.
He had thought that taking another look would dispel his suspicions. Instead, the closer he looked, the more violently the alarm bells built up in the radar he’d developed over years of apprehending serious criminals.
For an instant, he even felt as though every hair on his body was standing on end.
Something was wrong.
This female police officer really did have an aura of bloodlust about her!
Rong Zhenhai’s expression immediately became extremely serious.
The concept of ‘sha qi’, or a murderous aura, might sound mystical when put into words, but sometimes it really did exist. And it wasn’t entirely a matter of intuition, either. Put simply, it was a special aura formed by the combination of numerous extremely subtle behaviors that were completely different from those of ordinary people.
Most people simply couldn’t consciously distinguish what those differences were with their eyes, yet they could clearly sense that something was different. That was why people summed it up as having a “murderous aura.”
The most common example was a school’s discipline director. In order to keep students in line, they would spend years standing ramrod straight, wearing a stern expression, and fixing students with an intimidating stare. Over time, it became habitual, and their posture itself acquired a sense of authority. They could frighten children simply by standing there.
Murderers could develop something similar.
Someone who had killed before would undergo a psychological change. They would discover just how fragile and easy to kill a human being actually was. When they looked at other people afterward, their mindset would naturally be different, and that change would also manifest itself in the way they moved and behaved.
Of course, you couldn’t lump all people together.
For most ordinary murderers who killed someone by accident or in a fit of passion, their dominant state was one of fear and lingering dread over having killed one of their fellow human beings and knowing they would face severe punishment under the law. As a result, they weren’t particularly aggressive. If anything, they tended to be timid and overly cautious, even wanting to run the moment they saw a police officer.
But there was a small minority of murderers who either had a naturally violent disposition, or had simply killed so many times that experience had made them bolder. Those people would carry a certain murderous aura about them.
To put it more precisely, when an ordinary person looked at someone for the first time, they would generally look at the person’s face and focus on who they were.
But some murderers would instinctively assess whether they could hunt and kill the person in front of them.
And the way Jiang Xia had looked at him just now was exactly like that. Her gaze had gone straight for his chest and neck first, and she had even seemed to make some sort of assessment.
That was a serious problem!
Rong Zhenhai’s scalp instantly went numb, and his hand instinctively pressed against the gun at his waist. Fortunately, his rationality stopped him from doing anything more.
They were all police officers. Jiang Xia’s condition was obvious enough, and the criminal investigators from Changning City weren’t blind. If he could see something strange, they certainly could too. If there really were a problem, they would have arrested her long ago. There was no way they would have sent her here to assist with the case.
So where had this murderous aura come from?
“Comrade Jiang, you’ve had a tiring journey, haven’t you?”
After thinking it over briefly, Rong Zhenhai decided to probe her. In a casual tone, he asked, “You seem pretty tense too, Comrade Jiang. Did you happen to run into some major case yourself?”
Jiang Xia was walking up the stairs.
Seeing that Captain Rong had already glanced at her several times, and that his expression had grown more and more serious with each look, Jiang Xia knew for certain that he had begun to suspect her.
‘How is this old detective’s radar so damn sensitive?’
When he finally voiced the question, Jiang Xia wasn’t surprised in the slightest. She had already thought of how she would respond, so after remaining silent for a moment, she let out a long, heavy sigh.
“Ah.”
The sigh was extraordinarily complicated, carrying three parts helplessness, three parts lingering fear, and four parts reluctance to remember what had happened.
Jiang Xia lowered her head slightly and added briefly, “We ran into some robbers on the train on the way here.”
“Robbers?”
The moment Xu Changsong heard those two words, he stopped in his tracks. He turned around with a serious expression and asked with concern, “That actually happened? Neither of you got hurt, did you?”
Jiang Xia shook her head slightly. “No.”
“Traveling by train these days is just asking for trouble.”
Chen Yongyi had spent years traveling around for work, so he naturally knew just how dangerous it could be to travel by train these days. After all, he had encountered robbers more than once himself.
He sighed inwardly. Looking at Jiang Xia’s slightly pale complexion, he felt that her appearance couldn’t be attributed solely to the fatigue of the journey. He offered some words of consolation.
“Losing a little money isn’t a big deal. As long as you’re safe, that’s what matters.”
Xu Changsong’s expression couldn’t help turning a little green when he heard Chen Yongyi say this.
‘The police got robbed, and all they can do is console themselves that at least they only lost some money and nobody got hurt?’
That was far too embarrassing.
But unfortunately, that was simply the reality of the times, and there wasn’t much he could do to change it. All he could do was swallow his frustration.
“We didn’t give them any money.”
Jiang Xia’s tone was calm. “We subdued the robbers.”
“You caught the robbers?”
Xu Changsong liked the sound of that much better.
His face brightened, and he said with a grin, “Now that’s satisfying! The criminal police from Changning City really are something. By the way, how many robbers did you run into on the train? Were they armed?”
“We weren’t armed. One of the robbers was, though. There were quite a few of them—seven in total.”
Jiang Xia shook her head slightly. “We were lucky. Comrade Lu, who came with me, is a demobilized soldier. He’s good in a fight, and he managed to take the gun away right away. That’s how we were able to subdue them.”
‘One against seven?’
Xu Changsong was astonished. He looked back over his shoulder.
When they’d arrived earlier, he had taken a look at the man. There had certainly been something distinctly military about the way he moved, but plenty of soldiers became police officers after leaving the military these days. Since Xu Changsong hadn’t expected him to be of much use, he hadn’t paid much attention.
He hadn’t expected the man to be ‘that’ capable.
“One against seven? And the other side had a gun?”
Chen Yongyi’s brows furrowed. “That’s way too risky. If something had gone wrong… sigh. The robbers you ran into weren’t the kind who just collected protection money, were they?”
Taking on two people at once was already difficult. But there had been seven robbers, one of them armed. Dealing with that kind of situation meant risking their lives. Who would do something like that unless there were absolutely no other choice?
“That’s how it was.”
After remaining silent until now, Lu Yixing finally spoke. “When people didn’t give them enough money, those robbers would beat them half to death. One of the passengers was seriously injured, so we had no choice but to intervene.”
“Fortunately, four of the robbers were stationed on either side of the train passageway and didn’t come over to collect the money. We only had to deal with three of them. Jiang Xia held off the strongest one, which gave me the chance to take the gun from the gang leader.”
“Hm?”
Chen Yongyi raised an eyebrow and looked at Jiang Xia, genuinely surprised.
‘This girl can fight too?’
Someone who served as muscle for a group of robbers definitely wouldn’t be weak. Jiang Xia showed obvious signs of having received some training, but she clearly wasn’t a martial artist or professional fighter.
If she wasn’t a trained fighter, then how had she managed to hold off a robber?
That strange feeling he’d had when he first saw her surfaced again.
It was as if someone had suddenly flipped a switch, and an electric current shot straight through his heart.
In an instant, Chen Yongyi understood what had happened.
She must have gone all out and struck hard enough to completely incapacitate her opponent. That was the only way she’d been able to hold him off.
And that strange feeling he’d noticed when he first saw her…
It was clearly the stress response from having been robbed and then killing—or nearly killing—someone in self-defense. After something like that, anyone would feel unsafe around everyone they encountered!
“You held off the strongest one?”
Rong Zhenhai had also picked up on the key point. He arrived at the same conclusion, but still wasn’t entirely reassured, so he asked again to confirm.
“Is that what happened?”
As he spoke, Rong Zhenhai raised a hand and drew it horizontally across his neck.
It was the gesture for slitting someone’s throat—or, more broadly, killing someone.
Like an ordinary person who had just gone through such an ordeal, Jiang Xia silently turned her eyes away without answering.
“That’s what happened.”
Lu Yixing took the initiative to speak for her. “That’s why she’s been in a bit of a bad state these past few days.”
After all, fighting back against robbers still meant killing someone. It was only natural that she wouldn’t be feeling particularly well in the short term.
Xu Changsong was quite understanding. “So that’s why Comrade Jiang looks so pale. I was wondering what was going on.”
Rong Zhenhai nodded in understanding as well.
Sure enough, his instincts hadn’t been wrong. Jiang Xia really had killed someone. It just wasn’t under the circumstances he’d initially imagined, though the end result was more or less the same.
He’d actually thought some criminal had targeted Jiang Xia for revenge and that she’d killed them in self-defense.
That kind of killing was legally justified. Considering the circumstances, Jiang Xia’s aggressiveness suddenly seemed understandable too. She had probably been shaken up by the robbers and was now instinctively on guard around everyone, subconsciously trying to determine whether she could take them if something happened. That would explain why she’d seemed the way she did.
With that explanation, Rong Zhenhai could finally relax. Even so, he couldn’t help glancing at Jiang Xia once more.
Police officers were ordinary people too. Especially those working in technical or administrative positions—when faced with something like this, fear was usually the dominant reaction. It was genuinely rare for someone to have that kind of ferocity stirred up instead.
‘This girl really isn’t ordinary. She’s got some ruthlessness in her.’
Then again, if she weren’t ruthless enough, she wouldn’t have dared to risk her life against those robbers.
‘With that kind of personality, it’s actually a good thing she became a police officer.’
‘If she’d gone into some other line of work…’
He had a vague feeling that could have ended very badly.
Xu Changsong likewise gained a newfound respect for Jiang Xia.
It was normal for someone coming out of the military to dare to act. But it was genuinely rare for a civilian police officer to be that decisive.
She had guts.
He looked at her a few more times. Seeing how pale Jiang Xia’s face was, he thought for a moment before speaking up.
“Comrade Jiang, I really don’t think you’re in very good shape. Why don’t you take today off and get some rest? Come back tomorrow once you’ve recovered a little, and then you can work on the composite sketches.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Jiang Xia shook her head. “Solving the case is more important. My condition won’t affect the sketching. I’d rather finish it as soon as possible. Then I can put everything out of my mind and get a few days of proper rest afterward. Otherwise, I’ll just keep thinking about the case while I’m resting, and I won’t be able to rest properly anyway.”
When it came to a major case like this, no one was more eager to solve it than the people working on it. And considering Jiang Xia had even run into danger on her way here, Xu Changsong could understand her mindset.
He thought about her current condition for a moment before saying, “How about this? The two of you don’t need to stay at a guesthouse either. We still have vacant rooms in the unit dormitory, and there are beds available. Someone is on duty at the building around the clock, so it’s quite safe. Why don’t you two stay in our dormitory for the next few days?”
It was a rather thoughtful arrangement. For someone who had just encountered a group of robbers, a police dormitory where the entire building was occupied by police officers was obviously safer than a guesthouse.
Jiang Xia thought about it, then nodded. “Then I’ll be imposing on everyone.”
“Police officers all over the country are one family. What do you mean, imposing?” Xu Changsong said with a smile. “Just make yourself at home. Now I’m just waiting for some good news from you.”
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