But before Liu Jun could figure out why Mr. An’s downfall, a vehicle with obvious public security characteristics came to Tengfei early in the morning to pick up Liu Jun. At the same time, they sealed his office with tape and took away the computer mainframe and laptop from inside. Liu Jun understood the situation and went downstairs to get in the car with the plainclothes personnel under everyone’s watchful eyes. Fortunately, the people who came didn’t use force. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of a vehicle with such obvious public security markings, others would have mistaken Liu Jun for having friends visit. Liu Jun heard that one of the people who came had a local accent, but the license plate of the car below was from the Northeast. When the office director saw this scene, he immediately called Liu Shitang and Cui Bingbing separately.
Liu Jun’s only concern was whether he would be taken to the Northeast. Moreover, Song Yunhui and his group were still in Germany at the moment. If he were detained locally, that would be fine, but if he were taken to another province, would Song Yunhui still be able to manage the situation when he returned? Fortunately, all three people in the car had quite good attitudes. Apart from stating how confessing would be handled versus how resisting would be dealt with, all other conversations sounded very casual. When the car passed through an intersection, Liu Jun saw that it didn’t turn left onto the road leading to the highway, and his heart eased a little. So he spoke up to remind the people that he was a scientist, and that the laptop contained a lot of research materials, many of which were unique and required confidentiality. He had also set up encryption on the computer, hoping that everyone would not destroy those materials during inspection, as there were no backups.
Then, the group stopped in front of a government building in the city. Liu Jun began to keep his mouth shut and activate the logical machine in his brain.
As soon as Cui Bingbing received the notification call, she had a brief conversation with her father-in-law Liu Shitang, who was lounging in the VIP room, explaining the situation, then asked for leave to meet with her father-in-law at a nearby coffee shop. The result of their discussion was that Liu Shitang would go to the company to take charge, while she would run around the city to use connections and observe developments. During this time, she called Liu Jun once. The call connected, but no one answered. Cui Bingbing simply sent a text message asking if he needed a change of clothes. After quite a while, almost when the two had decided to pay the bill and leave, a text message came back saying it wasn’t needed for now. Cui Bingbing wasn’t sure if this text was sent by Liu Jun, because at such a special moment, such a rare text message didn’t contain a single reassuring word, which didn’t match Liu Jun’s style.
Seeing his daughter-in-law speak steadily but with a drastically changed complexion, Liu Shitang advised Cui Bingbing not to worry too much. These days, public security is very polite to bribe-givers. Ordinary people could get out with just some maneuvering, let alone someone Song Yunhui had clearly expressed support for. Cui Bingbing couldn’t help but touch her face, thinking she could handle this calmly. Although she knew the matter wasn’t serious, even if Liu Jun confessed everything inside, the problem wouldn’t be that big. But thinking of her loved one losing freedom at this moment, it was impossible not to be flustered. As Liu Jun had described, it was an indescribable worry. Although her father-in-law advised her to stay calm, his face was rigid, so how much better could he be than her? They were both in chaos due to concern.
Just inquiring about Liu Jun’s current situation, rather than interfering with justice, was a small matter that Cui Bingbing only needed to call her parents about. These days, many people with high positions, high salaries have high blood lipids, high blood pressure, and high blood sugar. When the city’s number one expert on these “three highs” came to the door seeking help for his son-in-law’s matter, how could there be no response? Soon, Cui Bingbing learned that Song Yunhui had already made arrangements inside, and Liu Jun couldn’t possibly be taken to the Northeast. The “three highs” expert also said that since he was Dr. Cui’s son-in-law, they would naturally treat him with appropriate special consideration. At this point, Cui Bingbing was completely at ease. Damn it, as long as he was in the city, even if Liu Jun was forced to confess everything, it wouldn’t cause major trouble.
So, the only thing left was to wait. Cui Bingbing indeed took Dandan to stay at her parents’ house. At this time, being alone at home, she felt the house was too big, frighteningly big.
Fortunately, the waiting time wasn’t long. The next evening, the “three highs” expert notified Cui’s father to pick up his son-in-law. Cui Bingbing went together with Liu Shitang and saw Liu Jun coming out from inside with a composed attitude, as if he had just gone inside to handle some official business. The “three highs” expert came out together, instructing Liu Jun not to leave the city for the next few days and to be ready to accept questioning at any time. Of course, these words were said for Cui’s father to hear, essentially selling him a favor in front of Cui’s father: we’re making an exception to release your son-in-law’s freedom early, you must remember this.
After the “three highs” expert left, Liu Jun hugged his wife and whispered in her ear: “I didn’t say anything. My logical ability is even stronger than I expected. Turns out I’m very smart.”
Seeing this, Liu Shitang smiled with his in-laws, and the two got into the car first. Liu Shitang consciously sat in the driver’s seat, feeling sorry for his son who had just come out and not wanting him to work hard driving again. Cui Bingbing laughed and said, “The genius young man reeks of sweat, probably cold sweat from being scared.”
The two also got into the back seat. Liu Shitang quickly told his son about his in-laws’ contributions. After everyone had comforted each other, the car had already arrived at the Cui family home. The Cui family only had one daughter, Cui Bingbing, so they naturally treated their son-in-law like their own son. When they entered, Cui’s mother had already prepared everything and directly sent Liu Jun into the bathroom. Liu Shitang only prevented his son from contacting his granddaughter, saying his son carried bad luck and couldn’t contaminate the child. So Liu Jun bathed inside the room while the four adults outside were so excited they didn’t know what to say, with only Dandan standing in her walker, making “whoosh whoosh” sounds as she bumped around.
After a while, Liu Jun came out, and everyone ate while talking about what had happened inside. Liu Jun said his mood was worst when he was waiting for the investigators to come to his door. He always felt like some disaster was about to befall him, his heart full of unease and irritation. On the contrary, after getting in the car and exchanging a few words with the people who came, his mood completely settled down. Since he was already there and wouldn’t die, what else could happen? So he would treat this matter with his consistent scientific spirit. Also, having been educated by senior experts beforehand, Liu Jun wasn’t rushed or impatient. Even when the other party threw out bait like “Mr. An has already confessed,” his response remained unchanged: I’m a scientist, I don’t need to use bribery to compete for a purely research project. When those people couldn’t get anything out of him, they examined his computers, checking both the desktop mainframe and laptop. The computers are still being held there. However, his treatment inside was quite good, with decent boxed meals, eating the same as the person sitting across from him. He even got to sleep at night, though not comfortably, being bothered by mosquitoes. He knew he could stay in the city thanks to Song Yunhui, and receiving good living treatment inside was thanks to his father-in-law. As for the case, it would depend on whether Mr. An’s mouth was strong enough. But if someone was going after Mr. An from top to bottom, even if Mr. An had the spirit of Zhazidong Prison, it would be hard to keep his mouth shut.
Cui Bingbing was very curious about what it meant to treat this matter with a consistent scientific spirit, and where logical ability was needed. Unfortunately, she had to take care of putting Dandan to sleep, so she could only listen to bits and pieces. Finally, when Dandan fell asleep, she came out to ask again. Liu Jun told her, “The questions they posed all had purposes. They hoped to confuse me by asking rapid-fire questions to get true or false answers, then they would connect the clues from these true and false answers to deduce the truth, and then dig deeper into me. For their questions, I always told them I had this answer to your previous question, but between my answer and the several questions you asked later, there exists either a sufficient relationship, or a necessary relationship, or a sufficient and necessary relationship, so you can or cannot ask the next question based on this, which is what logical relationships require. The later it got, the more interesting I found it, completely treating it as a logical problem to deal with while staying detached. So by last night, they angrily discovered they had fallen into a logical paradox. All their insufficiently prepared stock questions were simply directed by me toward several ready-made answers, which I wrote on paper for their simple reference.”
Cui Bingbing was confused by all this, while Liu Shitang laughed: “When he got into trouble outside as a child, he would come home and deal with me the same way. He was always the most innocent, with the most reason. Hehe, in the end, I could only resort to physical force. This time, fortunately, we had so many people helping you run around outside. Otherwise, keeping you up for three days and nights without sleep, with several teams taking turns in a wheel battle to play logic with you, let’s see if you could still hold up.”
“So America established a prison at Guantanamo to deal with those terrorists, which wouldn’t work on home soil. When encountering someone like you, they’d be defeated. The evil capitalist state machinery tied itself up by respecting criminal human rights,” Cui Bingbing laughed.
“Our country now also implements the presumption of innocence. Right now, I’m only a suspect, not a criminal. There’s a fundamental difference.”
“Go away. Without Dad and Song Yunhui, you’d be a criminal from head to toe. Didn’t they question you again today?”
“They worked very hard preparing last night, and sought outside help. But I’m not stupid either. When water comes, use earth to block it; when soldiers come, use generals to stop them.”
“You made them lose face. Be careful they don’t become angry from embarrassment.”
“If I had been put directly on a plane flying north yesterday, I couldn’t have used this attitude. I would have had to both keep quiet and satisfy them. But yesterday and today, they were so angry they laughed. Fortunately, everyone has a good mentality these days and is quite tolerant. But psychology is scary. Several times I was almost induced, but luckily there’s a deep-rooted logical string in my brain that timely pointed out their illogical reasoning. Just thinking about it makes me break out in cold sweat.”
Cui Bingbing stared for a while: “Dad, when you do surgery, have you ever counted whether science and engineering students’ brains look different from ordinary people when opened up?”
“Mm, most people’s brain cells are round, but pure science and engineering students’ brain cells are square. Even their blood vessels are square tubes. Of course, their hearts are more like Rubik’s cubes with edges and corners, clearly compartmentalized.”
Seeing his family’s emotions stabilize, Liu Jun didn’t dare rest. He rushed to the company that very night. It wasn’t necessarily true that the company would be in chaos just because he left for two days and one night, but he needed to show up at the company to demonstrate that he was fine and stabilize everyone’s hearts from top to bottom. Having run the company for so many years, he knew that when people’s hearts are united, they can move Mount Tai – this old saying has a very sound scientific basis. Liu Shitang insisted on going with him, saying he could at least serve as a driver.