After Li Qian completed the important task of releasing Yang Wei with great enthusiasm, in the blink of an eye she was kicked back to the office like a ball by these three stinking men, making her chest heave with anger. She returned to the office, picked up her phone to look at it, and saw that Zhou Rong had sent her many long text messages on WeChat.
Just now they had made her responsible for arresting Mei Dong, and in her heart she immediately decided to throw the plan to privately investigate Zhou Rong to the back of her mind. Now, she could only pick up the cold steamed bun that was Zhou Rong and gnaw on it again. If she alone obtained evidence of Zhou Rong’s crimes, just watch how these liar cops would bow their heads and apologize to her!
She slid the phone screen and saw a passage of stale middle-aged man pickup artist chicken soup leap into view.
“When people walk outside, every day they encounter many people who pass by. The vast majority afterward won’t have any intersection with your life, so I’ve always felt that encounters and acquaintances between people are a very rare fate. Like how I rarely go to 4S dealerships normally, and even when I go I don’t stay too long. I’m sure you also only went to the 4S dealership to look at cars by chance. That day I happened to be at the shop, you happened to be test driving, and the two cars happened to scrape each other. From a mathematical probability standpoint, such an encounter is incredibly small. This makes me feel that everything is full of magic.”
“…”
“But don’t forget you promised to treat me to ten meals.” Followed by a mischievous little emoji.
Li Qian sneered coldly and typed back: “Of course, I haven’t forgotten. I’m just afraid this big busy man doesn’t have time.” Also followed by a mischievous little emoji.
One could tell that upon receiving this message, the other party must be overjoyed. Several big smiling faces immediately followed, and he said: “Haha, being busy depends on the person. For you, I always have time. How about this—I’ll make arrangements, and we’ll have a proper date.”
Seeing this double entendre of “have a proper date,” Li Qian naturally understood the other party’s intention. She wanted to get close to Zhou Rong to grasp clues. Of course she wouldn’t put her own body on the line to solve the case. As a girl—even a tough girl like Li Qian—methods of going along with his scheme and playing hard to get came easily to her.
She pondered slightly, already forming a plan. She sighed again. Intelligence said Zhou Rong was lustful, which was naturally true, but it seemed Zhou Rong wasn’t completely superficially lustful. He was a big boss, the richest man in San Jiang Kou, yet he had the time and patience to sit at his phone typing out messages to chat with her one character at a time. He was much more sincere than those three liars.
On the other end of the phone, Zhou Rong had just returned to his office. Hu Jianren, who was sitting at the computer logged into WeChat’s computer version, claimed credit with him: “Brother Rong, it’s done. That chick agreed to a date.”
Zhou Rong walked to the computer and roughly browsed through the chat records, then sighed: “So easy to make a date—it actually makes it boring.”
“It wasn’t easy! Brother Rong, I chatted with her for a full three days. Those other chicks in the past would agree to a date the same day. This one held out for a full three days.”
“But in the end she still agreed so easily. It lacks that element of fun in the pursuit process.” Zhou Rong said with no small amount of regret.
In his heart, Hu Jianren disdainfully said: If you want the fun of the pursuit process, you go chat with her by typing. Why do you call me to chat every time? No matter how happily I chat with her, in the end isn’t it still you who sleeps with her?
Zhou Rong glanced at him and saw through his thoughts. He smiled, walked to the decorative glass behind his desk and smoothed his hair, quite satisfied with his appearance, and said: “That’s that then. You arrange for her to come to my house for dinner tomorrow night.”
Hu Jianren operated the computer a few times. After finishing, he said: “By the way, Brother Rong, just now someone from Zhu Yifei’s team called. He said Boss Zhu will come to San Jiang Kou any day these next few days. He wants us to prepare one million US dollars in cash first as a deposit for the day we meet.”
Zhou Rong frowned, dissatisfied: “We haven’t even seen the goods yet. Not even the first stroke of the business has been made, and they want me to prepare a deposit?”
“His meaning is to see our sincerity. That day he’ll bring one of the small chime bells. We prepare one million US dollars in cash. If we reach an agreement, we’ll first trade this one. He’ll have his subordinates come to trade the remaining chime bells with us as quickly as possible. He’ll leave one small chime bell in our hands as collateral, so we don’t need to worry about him running away with one million.”
Zhou Rong thought about it: “Is a small chime bell worth one million US dollars? How much would the big ones be?”
“We can’t calculate it that way. These chime bells are like shoes—no matter how expensive a pair of shoes is, a single shoe can’t be sold. So the model of leaving one small chime bell as collateral for the deposit is a guarantee for both of us.”
Zhou Rong nodded and instructed Hu Jianren to prepare one million US dollars in cash and have it ready.
On the other end of WeChat, Li Qian received the message from Zhou Rong inviting her to dinner together tomorrow. He would send a car to pick her up. The location was Zhou Rong’s home.
Regarding this message, Li Qian had mixed feelings.
The joy was that she hadn’t expected Zhou Rong would invite her to his home for a meal. Going to Zhou Rong’s house would give her the opportunity to confirm whether there really was a safe in his study, and she could even use some methods to open the safe and find evidence of Zhou Rong’s crimes. If she found evidence of Zhou Rong’s crimes from the safe, then no one in the entire Criminal Police Team would ever again dare to underestimate her abilities. You see, in all these years you couldn’t catch Zhou Rong’s incriminating evidence, but Auntie single-handedly took care of it.
The worry was that intelligence said Zhou Rong was lustful. Zhou Rong invited her to a meal—not outside but at his home. What he was scheming, even a blind person could see. Once she entered the villa inside Zhou Rong’s high-walled compound alone, if Zhou Rong wanted to assault her, she’d have no way to call for help then.
Li Qian was very conflicted.
Refuse the invitation? But the opportunity was really rare. To date, no police officer had ever entered Zhou Rong’s home. They knew nothing about the situation in his house. She thought about reporting this matter to leadership, then coordinating from inside and outside, but the next second she abandoned this fantasy. With Director Zhang’s personality, if he knew she wanted to risk going deep into enemy territory, he would definitely refuse outright and even send people to watch her twenty-four hours a day. Even if she successfully shook off the police watching her, Director Zhang would definitely bring the entire Criminal Police Team to Zhou Rong’s doorstep immediately and use a megaphone to shout inside: “Li Qian is a police officer! Let her out quickly, or we’ll attack!”
Telling leadership about this matter wasn’t feasible. Consulting with other criminal police also wouldn’t work. Wang Ruijun, Song Xing, and the others now followed Director Zhang’s every command. How would they help her?
Li Qian weighed things left and right. Naturally, the best outcome would be obtaining evidence of Zhou Rong’s crimes. What was the worst outcome?
Going to Zhou Rong’s house for the date, Zhou Rong naturally wanted to sleep with her. She would of course refuse. She believed someone with Zhou Rong’s status and position wouldn’t go so far as to rape, right? Assuming Zhou Rong was audacious enough to really try to rape her, at the last moment Li Qian would reveal her police identity, tell Zhou Rong she was undercover, and if you dare to force it the police outside will immediately rush in—Zhou Rong would naturally stop.
So the worst outcome was Zhou Rong knowing she was a police officer, thus alerting the enemy. When she returned to the unit, she would naturally be severely scolded by Director Zhang and might even be transferred away. However, right now Director Zhang wouldn’t let her participate in case handling anyway. This wasn’t much different from being transferred.
So it seemed the worst outcome wasn’t very terrible either.
After Li Qian considered it all around, she decided in her heart to keep the appointment. However, she also considered that she was so beautiful—what if after Zhou Rong knew she was a police officer, he still coveted her beauty and couldn’t extricate himself, disregarding being arrested for crime and insisting on raping her? Hmm… being beautiful was also a burden. She’d better prepare for both possibilities.