"Get in the car. It's so late, it'll be hard to hail a taxi. I'll give you a ride." Officer Xu smiled, tossed away his cigarette butt, and opened the car door.
Can you refuse if a police officer "invites" you into their patrol car?
Chen Xiao gave a wry smile and got into the car. After starting the car, Chen Xiao was mentally prepared, knowing that the policeman would definitely have questions for him, but he simply steeled himself, thinking: There are many things I don't even understand myself, so if you ask me, I don't know either.
Thinking about it this way, he actually felt more at ease.
"Want a cigarette?" Officer Xu pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
"No." Chen Xiao shook his head—actually, he used to smoke. He started smoking two years ago when he was feeling down after his parents passed away, but he hadn't touched a cigarette in a long time.
"Not smoking is a good habit." Officer Xu smiled as he put away his cigarette pack. While driving, he kept his eyes on the road ahead but casually asked, "Are your injuries from a few days ago fully healed?"
"..." Chen Xiao was speechless.
This was the question he was least able to answer.
The injuries I sustained before, after being taken away by Hei San and Lei Hu, I don't know what they did to me, but when I woke up, all the injuries on my body had miraculously healed, without leaving a single scar.
Who would believe that? Even with the best physical condition and the strongest recovery ability, the saying goes, "It takes a hundred days to recover from a broken bone," so how could it be healed in just three days? Moreover, with so many wounds, even if they healed, it's impossible for them to leave no scars at all.
Seeing that Chen Xiao remained silent, Officer Xu seemed to smile and asked, "Don't you have a way to answer?"
His tone was meaningful: "Actually, I've always had questions about that robbery case. The scene investigation that day showed that the robbers' car was overturned by a powerful impact. Only a heavy truck could cause such a powerful impact. But... there were no trucks passing by at all. Moreover, afterward, I specifically reviewed the surveillance footage from the nearby roads, and found that during the ten or so minutes that happened, the nearby surveillance cameras seemed to have been interfered with by something, and they didn't record anything."
He finally turned to look at Chen Xiao and asked coldly, "You were in the robber's car at the time. Can you answer these questions I have?"
Chen Xiao was silent for a while, then finally sighed and said with a wry smile, "Officer Xu, if I told you that there really are 'supermen' in this world, would you believe me?"
"Superman?" Officer Xu raised an eyebrow, as if smiling. "You mean the kind from the movies? Superman? Batman? Spider-Man?"
Chen Xiao sighed, "That's roughly the idea." But then he said with some frustration, "I know you won't believe it. You're a policeman, how could you believe such a ridiculous thing?"
Squeak!!
Officer Xu suddenly slammed on the brakes! The car came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the road!
It was late at night, and the road was not busy. Looking around, there were no pedestrians or vehicles in sight. The police car was parked in the middle of the road. Officer Xu gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands, took a deep breath, then took out his cigarette case, lit a cigarette, took several deep drags, and then said in a deep voice.
"If I told you I believe you, what would you say?"
Chen Xiao: "Huh?? You believe that?"
"Yes, if you had encountered any other police officer today, they would have told you you were talking nonsense... But I believe you!"
Officer Xu's face was somewhat gloomy. He took a few deep drags on his cigarette, and seemed a little irritable. He opened the car window and threw the cigarette butt far away.
His eyes were unpredictable, as if some memory had been stirred up in his heart.
The carriage was filled with the strong smell of tobacco. After a long silence, Officer Xu finally spoke with a wry smile.
"Actually, I'm not a native of K City. Nine years ago, I was in a city on the eastern coast, working as a special agent in a police department there. I can't tell you which department it was. One day nine years ago, I was ordered to protect two foreign businessmen from Japan with several colleagues. Because they said someone was threatening their lives, so... my colleagues and I were ordered to protect them 24 hours a day while they were staying in the country, until they left..."
Chen Xiao's heart skipped a beat. Hearing the bitterness in Officer Xu's tone, he couldn't help but wonder if this was some unbearable past event for him.
"...I remember, it was January 6th. That year was a rare winter with heavy snowfall—haha, you know, it rarely snows heavily in the south. But that day, the snow was very heavy. Our group of four colleagues, along with six bodyguards from two Japanese businessmen, a total of ten people, were guarding around the rooms where the businessmen were staying. It was in a hotel, and our people were in all the surrounding rooms and at the entrances and exits of the floors. With such tight security, I was confident that even a fly would have a hard time getting in...but..."
He paused here, then turned to look at Chen Xiao: "That incident almost overturned many of my beliefs."
Chen Xiao understood somewhat and tentatively asked, "The target you were protecting is dead?"
"Dead." Officer Xu's face was grim. "Right under my nose!"
Chapter Thirty-Seven: [Even If It's a Knife-Raising Scene, We'll Go]
His voice was filled with frustration: "At the time, I was the leader of that special operations team, responsible for close protection, and I was with two targets. I used to be a thorough materialist, a staunch atheist, and I didn't believe in any supernatural or mystical things in this world, but that day..."
Chen Xiao's curiosity was piqued.
Officer Xu raised his hands and gestured: "The only place in the room that leads outside is the central air conditioning vent, and it's this high." He gestured a distance of only a dozen centimeters. "The pipes inside are all flat! But that day, I saw with my own eyes a man who was at least 180 centimeters tall crawl out of there, out of the air conditioning vent in the ceiling! Every part of his body seemed like dough, able to bend and fold at will!"
His voice was filled with frustration and dejection: "That guy suddenly jumped down and stood in front of me. I was stunned. When I came to my senses, he easily subdued me. I remember he just glanced at me and raised his hand, and I felt like my whole body went numb, unable to move at all!"
I just fell straight to the ground, unable to lift a single finger. Then I watched helplessly as that guy, right before my eyes, used a thin piece of paper to sever the necks of two people I was protecting!
"Could it be yoga?" Chen Xiao smiled wryly. "I seem to have heard that some kind of magical yoga can make people shrink their bodies, and there's also a bone-shrinking technique in our ancient Chinese martial arts... As for paralyzing your whole body, could it be that some kind of drug was released into the air?"
“I’ve thought of all of those things you’ve considered.” Officer Xu’s expression was helpless: “Do you think that yoga or bone-shrinking techniques could allow a burly man who is over 180 centimeters tall to shrink his body to fit through a small pipe that is only a few centimeters wide?”
Chen Xiao: "..."
"As for my paralysis, I also thought it was some kind of drug, but afterward I underwent a physical examination and there was not a single drug reaction! Besides, don't think that anesthetic drugs can do that... I was perfectly conscious at the time, and I didn't feel any of the dizziness or sluggishness that comes with anesthesia!"
He finally let out a heavy sigh: "The murderer killed someone right in front of me, then opened the window and jumped straight down from the building, which was dozens of meters high... and then he disappeared without a trace. I thought he would die from the fall, but... nothing happened. After he jumped out of the window, he was gone."
Officer Xu turned to stare at Chen Xiao: "Afterwards, my team was severely punished internally for the mission's failure, and as the team leader, I naturally suffered even more. Most importantly, I wrote down everything I experienced and saw in a report and submitted it. But the higher-ups thought I was just making things up, and even more so, they thought I was fabricating these absurd stories to evade responsibility after the mission's failure..."
His tone was dejected: "I firmly believe that the person who did that was definitely not a normal ordinary person! But no one believed my report or my words! I was severely punished internally, and because of that absurd report, I was considered to have mental problems and was ordered to be suspended from duty and undergo six months of psychological treatment. Later, I was dismissed from the special task force and transferred to K City to work as a junior police officer... That's roughly how it happened."
Chen Xiao looked at Officer Xu, a pang of sympathy rising in his heart. Based on what he said, it was most likely the work of someone with superpowers. A few days ago, Chen Xiao probably wouldn't have believed such nonsense, but now…
“Nine years have passed.” Officer Xu shook his head. “I’ve always tried to forget it, and I’ve pretended it never happened. I’ve been an ordinary policeman, doing my job diligently. But I never expected that these two cases involving you would remind me of what happened back then!”
His gaze gradually became aggressive: "Chen Xiao, your injuries, and the incident of the robbers' car overturning that day, there must be more to it than meets the eye, right!"
Chen Xiao remained silent, unable to speak, while Officer Xu restarted the car and continued driving forward.
The two remained silent throughout the journey. The car pulled up to the side of the road near Chen Xiao's residential area, where Officer Xu finally spoke to Chen Xiao: "I know you must have something special about you. Chen Xiao, I mean you no harm. I've investigated your background and information. You're an ordinary student, nothing special, and you're law-abiding. I can roughly guess what kind of dispute happened between that couple today. Your act of bravery in saving someone shows you're a good person. I won't cause you any trouble."