Chapter 331: Support
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
This time, the middle-aged man did not come alone. He had brought his lackeys with him.
Five young policemen swarmed in all at once, and the fair-faced cop at the very front even pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“Li Zhongtian! Make them stop!”
Xie Qin screamed out suddenly and threw herself in front of the policemen, her arms open wide.
“These are our family matters, there’s no need to get Lil Yi involved. Let him leave.”
“Hmph, Lil Qin, I’ll just ask you one thing. Do you agree with the plans for Lil Jiao’s marriage?”
The middle-aged man gave Li Yi a cold smile, evidently taking him hostage.
Xie Qin said unhesitatingly, “I don’t!”
The middle-aged man waved his hand. “Take him away!”
Jiaojiao roared loudly, “Don’t you dare!”
The situation was getting somewhat chaotic.
The middle-aged man was furious. “Arrest this unfilial daughter of mine first. Gah, what a headache this is! If I don’t teach her some manners now, she’ll be finished for life.”
“Leader Li, are you sure about this?” said the fair-faced cop with the handcuffs.
The fair-faced cop was finding this hard to swallow, and the other four looked dissatisfied as well. They were clearly at odds with the middle-aged man’s actions.
The middle-aged man, Li Zhongtian, was a squadron leader with the public security bureau. The five helpers he had brought with him were just his colleagues, not his underlings, so they would willingly carry out his orders, but they would never accept anything that went beyond their jurisdiction.
“Forget it, then, I’ll just do this myself. You guys, go arrest that rapist.”
Li Zhongtian swore inwardly and grabbed Jiaojiao’s arm, twisting it around as though he were apprehending a criminal. His actions were smooth and well-rehea.r.s.ed.
“Oh, Lil Jiao, Papa is doing this for your own good. You’ll definitely regret this terrible temper in the future.”
Just as Li Zhongtian was feeling pleased with himself for a mission accomplished, a large leg reached out and kicked him in the waist. He fell, sprawling, onto the floor.
The kick had kicked all the wind out of him. His eyes popped and his face was red from the suffocation, and his legs curled up from the pain…
The one who had kicked him was Li Yi. Li Yi had been tolerating this for a long time now, because that man was Jiaojiao’s father. However, he had reached his limits because that man had gone too far.
What kind of father was he? How could he capture his daughter as though he was apprehending a criminal?
“You’re inhumane!” Li Yi spat at him.
Li Zhongtian’s five helpers were stunned and took some time to recover their senses, before they rushed to arrest Li Yi.
“How dare you a.s.sault a cop! Are you revolting?”
“He’s a cop? Are you telling me that he’s a cop?”
Li Yi rushed up to Li Zhongtian, raised his leg once more, and kicked the latter hard. If someone had not stopped him, he probably would have gotten a few more kicks in.
“We’re not arresting him.”
The fair-faced cop relaxed his grip on Li Yi and gave the other four cops a look before releasing Li Yi completely.
“Zhang Li, what’s the matter?”
“Is your name Li Yi?” asked the fair-faced cop, Zhang Li.
“Yeah.” Li Yi nodded.
Zhang Li heaved a sigh of relief. “Looks like I wasn’t wrong. My name’s Zhang Li, I was the one who took your statement back in Nanning.”
Li Yi replied with an “Oh, okay”. He still had no idea who Zhang Li was, not because he had a bad memory, but because anyone in a police uniform looked the same to him.
Li Yi took a name card out of his wallet and handed it over. “Are you Squadron Leader Zhang Feng’s subordinate?”
“That’s my uncle.” When he saw the card in Li Yi’s hand, Zhang Li laughed.
Last time when Li Yi went to Nanning to look for Xiao Xue, he got to know a squadron leader, and the latter had given him a card. On Li Yi’s part, he had stuffed the card into his wallet without even giving it a second look.
“This guy’s a friend of my uncle’s, how could he be a rapist?” said Zhang Li to the four cops around him. Walking aside, he gave his uncle a call.
“What are you thinking, Leader Li? How could you try to arrest Uncle Feng’s friend?” The four caps immediately turned their hostility toward Li Zhongtian.
Li Zhongtian lay on the floor, drowning in his regret.
Before he came knocking on Xie Qin’s door, he had intended to get some gangsters from the underground to support him. However, since he was currently applying for a promotion, he was worried that being seen in bad company may have adverse effects on his chances. That was why he had brought five younger cops with him instead. He had never expected that the five young cops would turn on him at the drop of a hat.
Just then, Zhang Li completed his phone call.
“My uncle said to leave him for dead here. Let’s go back.
“My uncle also asks you to call him if you’re ever in Nanning, and he’ll buy you a meal as an apology.”
Zhang Li gave Li Yi a smile and led his four buddy cops away.
The whole predicament blew away with the wind, just like that.
This surpa.s.sed Li Yi’s expectations as well, and here he was thinking that things would get very messy.
‘This kid’s Zhang Feng’s friend? I’m done for…’
Li Zhongtian rolled back and forth on the floor, still trying to get over the shock.
He and Zhang Feng were colleagues. Both of them had been squadron leaders with Nanning’s public security bureau, where Li Zhongtian was the first squadron leader and Zhang Feng the second. Initially, the two of them had the same position, but something peculiar happened not too long ago, and somehow Zhang Feng got a huge promotion for cracking some important case (the incident with Xiao Changfeng). As a result, he was promoted to the position of the city’s public security bureau chief.
Li Zhongtian was envious and utterly furious. This was also one of the reasons why he was trying to leave Nanning and reach the provincial Public Security Department instead.
Xie Qin helped Li Zhongtian up. Holding his waist, he asked Li Yi, “You know Zhang Feng?”
“Zhang Feng’s the one who knows me,” said Li Yi with a cold laugh.
Li Zhongtian froze for a moment and then began to groan. Li Yi’s two heavy kicks made him feel as though his bones were falling apart.
“I don’t know what’s your relations.h.i.+p with Zhang Feng, but remember this, I’m covered by the provincial Public Security Department’s Deputy Section Chief Lan. You’d better think twice before you wanna mess with me!” Li Zhongtian said harshly.
“Lil Qin, we’ve been married for over ten years, and I never asked you for anything much. I’m begging you this time, let Lil Jiao get engaged to the Lan family. It’d be good for you, Jiaojiao, and me too. Lil Qin, don’t you want Lil Jiao to be happy?”
Even now, Li Zhongtian still felt that a relations.h.i.+p with Li Yi was not as useful as one with the Lan family, so he was still h.e.l.l-bent on having his daughter marry into the Lan family…
“Brother Tian, please leave. I won’t budge on this, and if you continue insisting, I’ll have to report this to the police.” By the time Xie Qin said those words, she had already run out of tears to cry.
“Lil Qin…”
Xie Qin picked up the phone and dialed 110.
Li Zhongtian was a Nanning cop, but this was not Nanning!
“Fine, I’ll go back first, but let’s discuss this again when we’ve all calmed down.” Li Zhongtian hobbled away, still holding his waist.
Jiaojiao looked through the window and saw Li Zhongtian squeeze into a salon car. Her stepmother, the flirty woman who destroyed her family, was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat.
“You should’ve kicked him harder!” In her fit of fury, Jiaojiao kicked the wall with her long legs. As a result, the wall escaped unscathed, but she squealed out in pain…
That man had discarded his wife and abandoned his daughter, even demanding that they leave the family without a single penny when he split up their finances. Jiaojiao had long since stopped thinking of that b*stard as her father.
Xie Qin wiped her tears and forced a smile at Li Yi. “Lil Yi, Aunty’s sorry for dragging you into our problems. I’ll go cook now.”
“No worries, it’s no problem at all.”
“I’ll give you a pa.s.sing mark, that was pretty manly of you.”
Jiaojiao grinned and hobbled over to him.
Li Yi chuckled. “It’s cuz he’s your father. If he wasn’t, he’d be leaving this place in a stretcher.”
“I ain’t got no father like that. When he’s all high up there, he can throw away his wife and kid like nothing, but when he needs something from us, he begs us like a dog…”
Jiaojiao sat on the sofa, rubbing her foot. As she rubbed on and on, she began to cry.
No matter what happened, Li Zhongtian was still her father. The fact that blood was thicker than water would never change.
“Whatchu crying for? Do you regret it? D’you wanna marry that Young Master Lan?”
Li Yi walked up to her, grabbed her foot, and began to rub it for her.
“Speak for yourself. That Young Master Lan sure is a catch, would you take him if I offered him to you? Ow-ow-ow, lighten up, that hurts…”
“You were the one who kicked it so hard. It’d be bad if you bruised the bone, so I gotta make sure to disperse the blood there.”
Li Yi ignored her and rubbed even harder, making Jiaojiao scream out in agony.
Seeing how seriously Li Yi was rubbing her foot, Jiaojiao could not help but say, “Perverted Wing, to be honest, I…”
“What about you?” Li Yi raised his head.
“I… I… Forget it, I can’t say it.” The words were right at her lips, but Jiaojiao just could not voice them.
“You really wanna marry Young Master Lan?”
“Pfft, as if.”
Jiaojiao glared at him, poutingly. Her look made Li Yi’s heart waver, and he reached for the bottom of her foot.
“Hahaha, why… Why’re you tickling my foot? I’m way too ticklish, this is too much, hahaha… Stop, you little gangster, you b*stard… Hahaha…”
Li Yi’s little prank made Jiaojiao laugh and cry at the same time, tears leaking out of her eyes. She was naturally ticklish, so how could she stand this kind of treatment?
Li Yi stopped, but he maintained his grip of her little foot as he snorted. “Speak, do you really wanna marry Young Master Lan?”
“Go find a bucket and kick it, stop grossing me out.” Jiaojiao wiped the tears from her eyes and struggled a few times, but she still could not pull her foot out.
She harrumphed. “Me? I don’t really mind if a man’s flirty, but I can’t stand being lied to.”
Jiaojiao’s words stunned Li Yi, and she seized that chance to pull her foot out of his grasp.
“My father had been lying to my mother from the day they got married. He said he would love her and her alone for his entire life, but look how that turned out? He still kept three lovers out there. He’s been lying and lying all my life. I’m all grown up now, and I know things now, but he’s still lying.
“That’s why I hate it when people lie to me. Since I was young, I ignore anyone who lies to me, because I don’t lie to anyone either, so I just hope that no one lies to me.”
Jiaojiao clenched her teeth and gripped her hand tightly.
“But I lied to you before,” said Li Yi, looking at Jiaojiao.
“That isn’t the same, you never really lied to me. You told me all about what happened between you and Lil Xue, and with that Missus too. Hmph!”
Jiaojiao harrumphed loudly, clearly jealous.
“Why did you mention that? Don’t tell me, do you really like me? You just told your father that I’m your boyfriend, so does that mean…”
Li Yi glanced toward the direction of the kitchen and then held Jiaojiao’s little hand sneakily.
Jiaojiao did not struggle and let him take her hand. Just as Li Yi was feeling overjoyed, Jiaojiao’s next words brought him back down to earth exasperatedly.
“Beggars can’t be choosers. You think I want this?”
A gust of wind blew through the window and picked up that photograph of Young Master Lan. The person in the picture had a very memorable appearance, with a skinny and long horse-shaped face, triangular eyes, and a perverted, sc.u.mmy expression. It was none other than Sc.u.mbag w.a.n.g.
So that was Young Master Lan…
…