That outburst did nothing to release the pressure building inside Ren Yi. Instead, it aggravated both his new and old injuries, leaving his face deathly pale from the pain.
Zheng Pei watched indifferently as Ren Yi curled forward, struggling to breathe. Once he had recovered a little, Zheng Pei continued delivering his verbal blows.
“Captain Ren, you’re a good person. Everyone says so. You might even be a reasonably intelligent person, but compared with Gong Yingxian, you’re simply too stupid. I don’t know whether you’ve been blinded by his profession, his background, or his appearance. Whatever he says, you believe. Whatever he tells you to do, you obey. Is that the behavior of a normal adult?”
Ren Yi opened his mouth and drew a breath, wanting to defend himself, but Zheng Pei cut him off.
“I’ve heard some rumors about the relationship between you two. I have no objection to anyone’s sexual orientation, but if those rumors are true, it would help me better understand your behavior around him, including why you were willing to risk breaking the law by harboring, shielding, and assisting a wanted fugitive.”
Zheng Pei’s gaze, tone, and words made Ren Yi’s entire face burn. Even being forcibly outed in the middle of the street probably wouldn’t have been more humiliating than this moment.
And Zheng Pei still showed no mercy.
“Regarding the case from nineteen years ago and the cases happening now, about eighty percent of the information you’ve obtained came from him, didn’t it? Did you never consider that he might be lying to you?”
Ren Yi’s lips trembled as he struggled to speak. “I conducted my own investigation…”
“But how much of your investigation was based on information he gave you, leading you to form preconceived judgments?” Zheng Pei asked sharply. “Even now, subconsciously, you’re still defending him. In reality, you’re also defending yourself. You’ve invested too much time and effort in trusting him and making sacrifices for him. You’re more afraid than anyone that he might have been deceiving and using you all along, making everything you’ve done wrong.”
Ren Yi glared at Zheng Pei with bloodshot eyes.
“I’ve suspected him before. I’ve made my own judgments about plenty of things. How long have you even been involved in this case? How much do you actually know?”
Zheng Pei’s relentless interrogation made Ren Yi feel deeply humiliated. In Zheng Pei’s eyes, he seemed to have become a brainless, spineless fool who was willing to break the law and help his lover commit crimes without a second thought.
He and Gong Yingxian had experienced serious conflicts over trust before, but they had eventually reconciled. That was because the trust between them had been built through several brushes with death. It was solid and profound. Their relationship was entangled with love, admiration, trust, and sympathy, so intricately that even Ren Yi himself could barely distinguish one from another. How could an outsider like Zheng Pei possibly understand?
Yet, despite his anger, Ren Yi had no choice but to confront reality. Zheng Pei’s doubts were not entirely unreasonable.
Gong Yingxian had done things that Ren Yi could scarcely defend. He had caused Qiu Yan’s death and brought Ren Yi to ruin. Ren Yi knew that losing his position in the firefighting service was not the only consequence he faced. He might also have to bear criminal responsibility.
But another voice inside him continued to argue desperately.
Gong Yingxian had risked his life to save him on several occasions. Those split-second decisions, made in moments when life and death hung in the balance, had been instinctive. They could not possibly have been fake.
Ren Yi refused to believe that Gong Yingxian didn’t care about him at all. Perhaps Gong Yingxian simply cared about him far less than he cared about the obsession that had haunted him for nineteen years.
Zheng Pei could see the conflict and struggle on Ren Yi’s face.
“Let me ask you a simple question. I told you over the phone that Gong Yingxian had known Zhang Wen’s identity for a long time, yet he chose to conceal it from everyone. Did you ever ask him about that?”
Ren Yi remained silent.
Zheng Pei gave him a look that said he had expected exactly this. Shaking his head, he said, “You’ve gone from being deceived by him to deceiving yourself. Why? Don’t tell me it’s because of some great love story. If the bullet Huang Yan fired had hit your head instead of your bulletproof vest, you wouldn’t even have known what killed you. What are you really running away from? Him, or the doubts inside your own heart?”
“What exactly are you trying to prove?” Ren Yi glared at Zheng Pei, baring his teeth. “That he deceived me? Fine, I admit it. Now what? What do you want me to do? Go to court and sue him for lying to me? Is that how you investigate a case?”
“I want to prove that none of your efforts to defend him have been worthwhile. You need to wake up. Only by cooperating with me completely and without reservation might you have a chance to save yourself and secure justice for Captain Qiu.”
Ren Yi pressed his lips into a thin line.
Zheng Pei bent forward, bracing both arms against the edge of the bed so that he was at eye level with Ren Yi.
“Do you understand what you’re facing? Once a formal case is opened against you, you won’t just lose your public position. You could also be sent to a detention center. Can you handle that? Going from being a respected, promising special-duty fire station captain to living in a concrete cage with murderers, rapists, fraudsters, people arrested for prostitution, drug users, thieves, robbers, petty gangsters, and all sorts of other scum, spending your days in darkness with no freedom?”
Ren Yi’s eyes blazed with anger, his fists clenched tightly.
“Don’t assume your brigade can protect you for long. This is a society governed by the rule of law. I can apply for your arrest at any time.”
Ren Yi leaned slightly toward Zheng Pei and stared fearlessly into his eyes.
“How much evidence do you have?”
“Enough,” Zheng Pei replied. “It depends on how cooperative you are.”
“You said you were assigned to investigate their dereliction of duty. You could clearly do that whether I cooperated or not. Yet you’re so desperate to dig information out of me that you’re willing to sow discord and threaten me.” Ren Yi’s voice was cold. “The more you behave like this, the less trustworthy you seem.”
Zheng Pei’s expression darkened.
“You really are determined to remain stubbornly deluded.”
“I’ve already done my best to cooperate with everything you’ve asked. I don’t know what else you want from me. Why don’t you just say it directly? What exactly do you want me to do?”
“It’s not about what I want you to do. It’s about what you should do for yourself. Do you really want to go to prison? Whether you were coerced into helping him or willingly assisted him will directly determine where and how you spend the rest of your life.”
Ren Yi had already guessed that Zheng Pei wanted him to testify against Gong Yingxian. Given Zheng Pei’s position, that approach was understandable, but Ren Yi couldn’t cooperate—not while the truth remained unclear.
“There are still so many unanswered questions. Ziyan and his X-cult followers haven’t been caught, and neither has Gong Yingxian. Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the more important aspects of the case instead?”
“I haven’t neglected anything.” Zheng Pei straightened up and pointed at Ren Yi with his index finger. “But you’re neglecting your own future.”
Ren Yi lowered his head. After a moment of silence, he asked, “Has Captain Qiu’s funeral been arranged?”
“I haven’t received any notification yet.” Zheng Pei put away his notebook. “Captain Ren, I’ll give you some time to think carefully. You can’t leave the hospital yet anyway. I hope that the next time we meet, it won’t be in a detention center.”
After Zheng Pei left, Ren Yi collapsed back onto the bed. His heart felt as though it had been thrown into boiling oil, every second filled with anxiety, fear, and torment.
Gong Yingxian, where are you? Where have you gone? What exactly have you done? For the sake of revenge, are you really willing to abandon your conscience and do whatever it takes?
You disregarded whether Qiu Yan lived or died. You pushed me into a situation from which there may be no escape. Are you still the same person I knew?
Because the situation was so serious, Ren Yi was now under strict control. Police officers were stationed outside his hospital room. Once the doctors cleared him for discharge, he would be taken back to the Hongwu District Police Station and formally detained.
However, he had been on friendly terms with the doctors here for years, so he probably wouldn’t be discharged anytime soon.
Chen Xiaofei hadn’t visited him this time. Perhaps he had completely lost faith in Ren Yi. Ren Yi, for his part, had also begun to harbor suspicions about Chen Xiaofei, so perhaps it was better that they didn’t meet.
Ever since Zheng Pei had left that day, anyone else who wanted to visit Ren Yi had to obtain police approval. Naturally, every application was rejected.
Ren Yi had heard Qu Yangbo angrily curse the officers outside before finally being forced to leave. The incident had left him so miserable that he hadn’t slept well all night.
To help Gong Yingxian, he had dragged the entire brigade into trouble. He could no longer remember the last time he had led his team on a normal emergency response as a fire station captain.
He missed his station. He missed his brothers in the team. But what face did he have left to show them?
He had let his brothers down. He had let his father down. And most of all, he had let Qiu Yan down. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have been put in danger, and she wouldn’t have died.
And all this pain, guilt, regret, and fear had been inflicted upon him by the person he loved most.
He should have become wary when Gong Yingxian had used his father. He should have reassessed the man then. But Ren Yi had softened in the face of Gong Yingxian’s remorse, and he had been unable to resist that fatal attraction.
He had told himself that Gong Yingxian had simply made one mistake. Everyone made mistakes, didn’t they? So he had chosen to overlook Gong Yingxian’s lack of empathy and his almost ruthlessly rational tendency to pursue the greatest possible benefit, regardless of the cost.
And yet, even at the time when he had been angriest with Gong Yingxian, if someone had told him that this would happen, he would never have believed it. He would never have believed that Gong Yingxian would stand by and allow criminals to shoot them.
Ren Yi had thought that Gong Yingxian’s childhood trauma had left him with irreparable flaws in his personality, but that a foundation of justice and kindness still remained beneath them.
Had he been wrong?
The price of this mistake was far too high. He would never be able to rid himself of the guilt and regret for the rest of his life.
——
Over the past two days, Ren Yi had drifted in and out of sleep several times. He felt as though he had been reduced to a useless shell. Even when no one was watching him, he barely got out of bed.
At dusk, a nurse came in as usual to administer his IV.
He could sense the sounds and movements around him, but he had no desire to react to any of them—until the nurse suddenly clamped a hand over his mouth.
Ren Yi jolted in alarm and immediately tried to struggle. But the nurse held a phone in front of his eyes instead.
The moment he saw the image on the screen, his entire body went rigid.