The 'old man' who was kicked out of the ward by Liu Chen was now taking the elevator down the hospital building. Behind him, two plainclothes police officers who had been hiding on the first floor of the hospital building had quietly followed his steps.
They planned to wait until this 'old man', who had mistaken the person, reached a sparsely populated area before carrying out the arrest.
Just as the two plainclothes police officers were following the 'old man', who walked with a limp and coughed from time to time, and were about to reach the parking lot, they saw the 'old man' suddenly stop. The two plainclothes officers exchanged glances and placed their hands on the guns holstered at their waists.
At this moment, the 'old man' stood in front of a van. He took out a Nokia phone from his pants pocket. Perhaps because the sunlight was a bit glaring, in order to see the message on the phone clearly, he had to bring the phone up to his face.
He didn't know what message was written on it, but a ferocious smile appeared on the 'old man's' face. He clenched the Nokia phone in his right hand and cursed in a low voice:
"Damn it, you bitch, let's see how you escape this time!"
Then, the 'old man' hummed a tune, coughed a couple of times, and stood under the shade of a tree on the side of the parking lot. The scorching sun after three o'clock in the afternoon was truly baking.
The two plainclothes police officers were now hesitating. The 'old man' was clearly waiting for an accomplice, so should they subdue him and take him away now?
After a moment of hesitation, a slightly worn Jinbei van quietly entered the parking lot.
The two plainclothes police officers then had to quietly report the situation to their leader through their earpieces.
"Follow them. They're probably going to do it again!"
Liu Chen looked down at her phone, seemingly scrolling through Weibo and replying to messages. Sun Jin, seeing her feigning composure, wished he could jump up and tear her face apart.
Sun Jin, or Sun Dahai, was indeed a Chinese immigrant, but his family had always been working low-wage jobs. He didn't want to end up like his family, washing dishes in the back kitchen of a Chinese restaurant for his entire life. He had ambitions since childhood; he wanted to be rich.
But he found learning difficult in junior high. He couldn't understand what all these messy subjects were for. After all, in this society, as long as you knew how to use a mobile phone and computer, that was enough, wasn't it?
So, during a truancy, he accidentally saw a woman in her late thirties giving a hundred US dollars to a delinquent he knew from school in the alley behind the school.
Then, that delinquent went to a motel with the woman who could have been his mother's age.
From then on, Sun Dahai had an epiphany. He felt like he had found a path to wealth.
But as he grew older, combined with his ordinary looks, fewer and fewer people were willing to spend money on him. So, he could only trick young girls, coax them into earning money, and then hand it over to him.
Until... one of the young girls found someone like Liu Chen, a Chinese girl who liked to feign composure. She said she wanted to kill him.
He, Sun Dahai, didn't take this threat seriously at all. She was just a small girl without much muscle. He had lost count of how many times he had killed such girls when he was punishing them for disobedience.
But then, one night, someone really came looking for him. If it hadn't been for an accident that day, and his customer had been sleeping in his bed instead of him, it would have been him who died.
He ran frantically down the street and was then knocked unconscious.
When he woke up, his face was stinging. He was lying on an operating table, only seeing the blinding white surgical lights shining on him.
Then, for the next week, he was forced to memorize the social connections and family background of a person named Sun Jin, and even his bank card account and password.
Sun Dahai had a vague suspicion that the people who had imprisoned him wanted him to impersonate this Sun Jin. Sure enough, half a month later, they told him his mission for this time.
Seduce a Chinese girl named Liu Chen, preferably control her. If he couldn't control her, then find a way for her to leave school alone.
Thinking back to how relaxed he was when he received this mission, Sun Dahai couldn't help but feel a pang of pain in his face now.
Who knew that this girl named Liu Chen would be the type of feignedly composed girl he was worst at dealing with?!
This was not his fault!
Besides, thankfully he hadn't acted forcefully. Otherwise, could he really have endured that kick he just received?
Why couldn't she just be obedient, like those girls he had manipulated to make money for him!!
Liu Chen felt the burning gaze of accusation. She raised her head slightly, moving her eyes from the message on her phone to the resentful look in Sun Jin's eyes that he hadn't yet retracted.
Sun Jin didn't expect Liu Chen to suddenly look up. He was momentarily worried that she had seen his gaze and would become suspicious of him. He immediately opened his mouth to explain, but because he was in a hurry, he choked on his own saliva. For a moment, before he could even start his explanation, a string of coughs erupted from him.
Liu Chen raised an eyebrow and asked with feigned concern:
"Do you want me to call a nurse to take a look?"
Sun Jin frowned and quickly waved his hand. He didn't know when those people would arrive. He absolutely couldn't let anyone from the hospital into the ward at this time, lest their plan be ruined.
Seeing that his face had turned red from coughing, Liu Chen nodded.
"Then never mind."
Then she lowered her head and continued replying to messages.
In reality, Liu Chen was replying to updates about Sun Jin on an app developed and installed by Ren Yu.
'Sun Jin seems unwilling to let hospital staff into the ward. It seems they do have a second move.'
After saying this, Liu Chen switched out of the app and closed it, then began scrolling through Weibo.
Because only by scrolling through Weibo could she multitask, paying attention to the movement at the ward door while resting.
Compared to Liu Chen's busy multitasking, Sun Jin, lying on the hospital bed, was getting restless. To be honest, the most frightening injury he sustained in the fight was the bleeding wound on his head.
The other injuries? They weren't as bad as when he was beaten by a rich woman's husband after sleeping with her.
But he absolutely couldn't show that he wasn't in pain. He had to feign being sick in bed to create an opportunity for those people. Otherwise, he was sure that if he failed to complete the mission, they would kill him.
Or do something even more terrifying than killing him.
With their clumsy acting cooperating, the scorching sun outside finally finished its shift. The scorching sun turned into an orange-yellow dusk, like a vanguard sent by the moon, which was about to start its night shift.
Liu Chen refreshed Weibo again and then heard a knock on the door of the quiet ward.
Sun Jin, who had been lying down for hours, subconsciously smiled at the sound of the knock and looked up.
Seeing Sun Jin's expression, Liu Chen couldn't help but sit up straight, her eyes also vigilantly fixed on the ward door that was being knocked upon.
The family member of the patient in bed number one, sitting near the bathroom, lazily got up after hearing the knock. As they opened the door, they asked:
"Who is it?"
Outside the door was a middle-aged man Liu Chen had never seen before, about forty-three years old, with half of his hair graying. He was pushing a small food cart similar to those pushed by nurses.
Seeing the person who opened the door, he smiled honestly:
"I'm selling bento boxes. Do you want to buy any? Ten yuan per serving, two meat dishes and one vegetable dish, plus a bowl of soup. But you have to ladle the soup yourself."
After speaking, the person peeked inside at the other patients in the ward.
"Do you want any? If not, you'll have to go down to the hospital's second-floor cafeteria to buy food. It's mealtime right now, and you'll have to queue. Plus, it's not hygienic to bring food trays up by elevator."
After speaking, the fast-food owner smiled honestly again, but this time, he looked at Sun Jin lying at the innermost part of the ward.
Sun Jin looked at this face and was stunned for a moment. Then he swallowed and turned to Liu Chen, who was sitting, and said:
"Chen, cough, cough, Liu Chen, I'm hungry. Buy two bento boxes, and eat with me."
Liu Chen pretended not to notice anything, calmly took out a wallet from her bag, and then took out a twenty-yuan bill.
"Boss, two for us."
Upon hearing Liu Chen's words, the smile on the bento box owner's face deepened, and he looked at the caregivers of the other three beds.
"And you?"
After a moment of hesitation, the other three beds also bought them. The bento box owner then distributed the bento boxes, which were wrapped in plastic trays and covered with a layer of transparent plastic film fogged by the heat, to the patients and caregivers in the three beds one by one from the food cart.
Finally, the bento box owner took out two bento boxes from under the food cart and walked towards Liu Chen, one on the left and one on the right.
Liu Chen appeared nonchalant, but her feet were already on the ground. If the boss dared to suddenly exert force, she would definitely make him taste the power of her Liu-style shadowless kick!
However, contrary to Liu Chen's imagination, the boss just smiled and handed the bento boxes in his hands to the two of them, and then collected the twenty yuan cash Liu Chen had handed over.
Then, he pushed the food cart and left without looking back, just like any normal bento box vendor.
After the door closed, Sun Jin turned around and saw Liu Chen already holding the open bento box in one hand and a pair of disposable chopsticks in the other, ready to eat.
Seeing Sun Jin looking at her, Liu Chen raised her chin and nodded slightly.
"Eat, don't you want to eat? How about I buy you two bowls of instant noodles?"
As she spoke, Liu Chen began to lower the hand holding the bento box, as if she was about to go downstairs to buy instant noodles if he didn't want to eat.
Frightened, Sun Jin quickly turned around, opened the bento box beside him, broke open the disposable wooden chopsticks, and began to eat frantically.
"Eat, eat, this rice tastes so..."
Before he could finish speaking, the bento box and disposable chopsticks in Sun Jin's hand fell onto the green checkered hospital blanket.
The food and rice from the bento box spilled onto the blanket, and the rich soup soaked into the sheets.
Meanwhile, the three fellow patients who had bought six bento boxes were now looking at the bento boxes placed on their bedside tables.
The patient lying next to Sun Jin was about to speak when Liu Chen raised a finger to stop him, then reached out and covered Sun Jin's now closed eyes.
No eye movement. It seemed he had truly fainted.
After confirming that the middle-aged man who had sold the bento boxes had gone downstairs with his food cart, a prepared caregiver rushed in, quickly changed Sun Jin's bedding, and poured all the food from the bento boxes into a container, then placed the empty disposable trays in the ward's trash can.
After all this was done, the sky outside had completely darkened. Looking out from the ward building, the campus of Shuimu University was visible not far away. One could faintly see members of the basketball team starting to play as the night cooled down.
Liu Chen had just looked at them for a moment when her phone vibrated. Liu Chen quickly sat on a chair and lay on her stomach on the side of Sun Jin's hospital bed.
Sun Jin, who was unconscious and had been given another dose of anesthetic, was sleeping on his side facing Liu Chen, with his back to the ward door.
"Creak."
The ward door was pushed open from the outside, followed by two agile footsteps. After they passed the first bed, the patient in the first bed opened his eyes and shouted at the two of them:
"Hey! Aren't you the old man and the bento box seller who mistook the person?"
The two who were identified let go of the pushcart, and the bento box seller raised a syringe and lunged towards the patient lying on the bed.
"Clatter!"
The ward lights were turned on. Everyone except Sun Jin, who was near the window, 'woke up' and quickly joined the fight. Within a few minutes, the two were subdued.
After the two were subdued and caught red-handed, the young man who had been lying in bed number three all day couldn't help but stretch.
"My God, lying in bed all day is so tiring!"
Seeing that their plan had failed and Sun Jin, their inside contact, had not reacted at all, the fast-food owner also realized what was happening.
"You're scammers! This is a trap! It's a trap!"
Realizing this, the fast-food owner's expression broke down, and he shouted loudly: "Help! Help! Murder! Ugh..."
Liu Chen looked at the lid of the bento box that she had stuffed into the fast-food owner's mouth and nodded with satisfaction. Then, she took another bento box lid from the trash can and looked at the 'old man' who was pressed against the wall, his hands tied behind his back and silver handcuffs on his wrists.
Seeing Liu Chen retrieve the bento box lid from the trash can with her own eyes, the 'old man' closed his mouth and shook his head rapidly, as if to say:
Don't stuff it in me, I absolutely won't speak!
Liu Chen was about to give up when she saw someone take the bento box lid from her hand, roll it up, and stuff it into the 'old man's' mouth.
At this moment, a distinguished middle-aged man walked in from outside the door, his back straight as he walked. Seeing Liu Chen, he smiled and greeted her:
"Comrade Liu Chen, thank you for your hard work. Without your cooperation, these people would have scattered like maggots in a sewer at the first sign of light. We'll take these three away first."
"Um... Captain Lei, I wanted to ask, are you taking Sun Jin away because..."
Captain Lei stopped in his tracks and nodded upon hearing Liu Chen's question:
"That's right. The DNA test results are out. The Sun Jin who came to our Beijing is not Sun Le's biological son, Sun Jin."
Liu Chen then nodded in understanding.
"Captain Lei, please go safely, goodbye!"
Captain Lei, having achieved significant success in this operation, waved his arm upon hearing Liu Chen's words.
After Captain Lei left, Ren Yu, who had been in the next ward, was finally allowed to come out. This time, Ren Yu did not have the usual composure of dealing with business partners. Instead, he walked with hurried steps, his expression serious.
When he saw Liu Chen standing in the ward, he couldn't help but step forward and embrace the girl tightly, holding her in his arms. He restrained the force in his arms, managing to suppress the urge to crush her into his embrace.
Liu Chen was hugged so tightly by Ren Yu that she couldn't breathe. She patted Ren Yu's shoulder and finally managed to calm him down.
Then she remembered that the bruises on Sun Jin's face had become more apparent after an afternoon, and couldn't help but complain a little:
"When you hit him at noon, couldn't you have hit him in a place where it wouldn't be visible outside? Look, you hit him so hard, what will people at school say about you? Will anyone say you're a violent person?"
Upon hearing Liu Chen's words, Ren Yu placed his hands on Liu Chen's cheeks, tilting her head up slightly to look at him, and said earnestly:
"I want everyone to know that my foundation is not easy to dig."