Chapter Ninety-Eight

At midday, the martyrs' cemetery was empty and desolate, with pine and cypress trees standing proudly and lushly.

The surrounding area is filled with tombstones, most of which are engraved with names as you climb the steps. Even with the blazing sun overhead, the bright white stone steps cannot reveal the original appearance of these loyal bones in the green hills, just as no amount of wind or rain can dispel the solemn peace here—the silence here is uniquely solemn and dignified.

Li Yingqiao has come here alone many times. Ever since she learned of the existence of "0315", she would come here to report the day after she returned to Fengtan, and tell him about her work and recent daily life. Her opening was always pale: "Hello, 0315, long time no see, I'm here again."

She never called him "Dad." The title was foreign to her; she had never called anyone "Dad" in her life. That's why she resisted marriage, resisted the kind of relationship that could bind two families together with just a certificate. Moreover, she had never used a title that was mysterious and serious to her to address anyone else.

She knew nothing about his name, age, or resume; she only knew that he was from Fengtan and his police badge number was KL-0315.

When Xiao Bo first visited 0315 with the pension according to his will, his file was still under a five-year confidentiality period, and the organization had not provided any information about him.

Xiao Bo said he was only responsible for distributing the pensions and had no other information.

Li Yingqiao also asked Li Shuli, who was stunned for a long time before finally saying that his name might be Song Liuqing, but it was most likely a pseudonym.

Until this year, when she was trying to catch Li Lianfeng, she ran into Xiao Bo at a noodle shop across from the government building. Xiao Bo mentioned 0315 again, saying that the five-year confidentiality period had expired and that he could tell her about the whereabouts of another pension payment, perhaps the other party had information about her father.

But Li Yingqiao had already let go of that obsession. She was no longer curious about 0315's appearance or name. By then, she had come to understand, through her long journey through life, what a hero truly desires.

Heroes yearn for ordinariness, for a life as simple as flowing water, rather than being remembered for their names.

So Li Yingqiao said the same thing again: "No need, Uncle Xiao. It's fine as it is."

As she spoke, she gently and solemnly wiped away a layer of dust from the tombstone, just as Xiao Bo had done earlier. It had been a long time since she had been there, and a thick layer of dust had accumulated on the top of the tombstone.

Even Xiao Bo had a moment to understand Li Yingqiao's stubbornness. The mother and daughter were stubborn in some ways. Except for the day of the burial, Li Shuli never came again.

A solemn silence fell.

Xiao Bo and Yu Jinyang both looked at her in silence—

Yu Jinyang looked at her silently, then quickly looked away. After a brief moment of bewilderment, he realized what this meant to him. He wondered: if a father's image in his daughter's heart had reached this level, then as her boyfriend, how much love did he have to give her to achieve that level of importance?

Xiao Bo seemed to sense his thoughts and joked, "How about considering joining our police force? You're so handsome, if you film a few anti-fraud videos, you'll definitely become famous instantly. It'll be a form of indirect publicity for our police force."

"Uncle Xiao, you're joking."

"Who's kidding? Be serious."

"I'll listen to her."

Xiao Bo smiled and stopped teasing him. The two remained silent for a long time.

Li Yingqiao, however, kept looking at the only nameless tombstone, covered in dust and desolate, standing among the many tombstones surrounded by flowers.

Actually, the reason she refused at the noodle shop that time was more because she was afraid of being disappointed.

Because over the years, every time she came here, the dust on the tombstone was always about the same thickness, which means that in fact, no one else would come here to see him except her.

She guessed that the owner of the pension must have passed away.

He had no relatives, only her and his mother.

Did 0315 herself know of her existence?

Perhaps they don't know.

...

When Li Yingqiao was eight years old, she got into a fight with Zihao from Xiaohua City for the first time. She won first place in the hopscotch game again, which Zihao was very dissatisfied with. He brought up her father and tried to form a gang to isolate her from the other children.

She didn't say a word or defend herself at first. With just one punch, Zihao fell to the ground, blood flowing from his nose. He shouted that he was going home to tell his mother. Hearing this, she figured that since he was going to go home to tell her anyway, she took a step forward and punched him again.

Zihao lay on the ground and refused to get up, cursing her father as a convict and a murderer!

Yu Jinyang knew back then how terrifying Li Yingqiao could be when she went berserk. He couldn't understand how a girl could be so strong. He couldn't hold her back at all. He tried to stop her a few times at first, but each time he returned injured. So he learned his lesson and stopped trying to intervene. He stood aside and counted down for her: 3, 2, 1... Sure enough, she suddenly lunged forward, pinned him to the ground, and started beating him mercilessly, her fists raining down on him.

One Zihao was beaten into submission, but more Zihaos came to provoke him.

In short, she won them all over.

However, the subjugation under her tyranny meant that she would no longer openly talk about it to her face, but the gossip behind her back never stopped.

At that time, she truly wished her father were a policeman, a hero who would appear out of nowhere, dressed in a smart and imposing police uniform, at the entrance of the small painting town's general store whenever she had to endure being pointed at and gossiped about, to support her and her mother and dispel those baseless accusations.

This is eight-year-old Li Yingqiao, having the most unrealistic dream.

However, it was actually Ms. Liang Mei who entered her life before her father.

Liang Mei stubbornly believed that Li Yingqiao was born to study and was determined to send her to a prestigious university, despite Li Yingqiao's dislike of studying.

At that time, she thought, "If I don't have a father, then I don't have a father. I have two mothers."

In her heart, she always regarded Liang Mei as another mother. Shu Li was the mother who always supported her no matter what she did, while Liang Mei was strict and harsh, and only cared about grades. But Li Yingqiao actually knew that she couldn't cook, but she secretly followed Li Shu Li to learn how to make soy milk.

Liang Mei made the soy milk on the day of the high school entrance exam because Yu Jinyang had been kidnapped the night before, and Li Yingqiao and Zhu Xiaoliang had racked their brains trying to crack the code, exhausting themselves. Liang Mei barely slept all night, tossing and turning, thinking about what to feed Li Yingqiao the next day to help her brain function.

Zhu Xiaoliang only revealed this during the year of the college entrance examination.

By then, Liang Mei was already quite adept at using a range of kitchen utensils, such as juicers and air fryers. Zhu Xiaoliang, however, began to expose her past: "When you were taking the high school entrance exam, it was the first time Teacher Liang used a soy milk maker. She usually just ate instant noodles. Hu Zheng gave her a soy milk maker, but she never thought about using it. But the time you took the exam, she got up in the middle of the night to look for the instruction manual and even called your mom to ask how to make soy milk. Your mom patiently taught her. When I saw this, I said maybe we should just forget about it, in case the kids got diarrhea, that would be even more troublesome. She calmly told me it was fine. And what happened? I got up at four in the morning and drank four big bowls of soy milk for the first time. Now you know why I didn't take you to the school gate on the day of the high school entrance exam, right? Because I was constantly running to the toilet."

Everyone burst into laughter. Liang Mei, who was in the kitchen, had no idea what they were laughing about. But when she saw Li Yingqiao laughing so hard she was doubled over, she knew that Zhu Xiaoliang was up to no good. Without saying a word, she glared at him fiercely.

This is Li Yingqiao at eighteen years old. She finally understands that there is no absolutely correct path in life, and there is definitely more than one kind of heroism in this world.

She no longer expected her father to appear.

However, he appeared in a way she least expected.

By the time she actually received the message from 0315, she had already been taking classes in Beijing for a semester and had blocked Yu Jinyang for almost half a year.

That year, it had just snowed in Fengtan. Xiao Bo braved the biting wind to come to the door, clutching an envelope tightly in his hand. He was young then, in his early thirties.

It has only been three or four years since the kidnapping case during the high school entrance exam. The spirit between his brows has faded, and wrinkles have appeared. Perhaps it is because of working overtime day and night to solve the case, but his police uniform is also noticeably wrinkled. Only the envelope solemnly handed over in his hand is brand new and flat.

When Xiao Bo looked at this beauty salon technician, whom his colleagues had once thought "lacking in vision," he called her "sister-in-law" in a hoarse voice.

Before Li Yingqiao could figure out what was going on, Li Shuli's back suddenly stiffened, as if she knew everything.

Li Yingqiao rarely saw Li Shuli like this. She didn't immediately take the envelope, but stared blankly at Xiao Bo for a long time, her lips twitching repeatedly, as if a piece of burning coal had been stuffed into her mouth, opening and closing her mouth several times.

It wasn't until she came to her senses and realized that Xiao Bo had been standing at the door for a long time that she calmly said to her daughter, "Qiaoqiao, take this. Mom's hands are very fishy; I was just scaling fish."

Fifteen minutes before Xiao Bo arrived, her mother was cooking her favorite crucian carp and tofu soup. She had been drinking this soup since she was a child, and the taste had never changed.

Only that day did she feel that her mother had forgotten to add salt.

It was at this moment that she realized that when her father truly appeared in her life as a policeman, it was far more meaningful than having him dramatically transform her life as a "hero" and overturn those infuriating rumors—

She would rather he were an ordinary person, clumsily struggling with life, slowly growing old in the ordinary days, even if it was mundane and unpredictable.

However, at this very moment, now that he is twenty-eight years old, Li Yingqiao stands before this towering, nameless monument.

From the heroic moment when she saved Yu Jinyang and Gao Dian as a child, to the time when she lost points in the high school entrance exam and Li Shuli couldn't take out 40,000 yuan from her pocket but still resolutely said, "Let's buy it."

From learning about Liang Mei's soy milk and her eight-year teaching stint in G province; her own sleepless nights in Beijing and her helplessness in the face of capital; even Xu Quyu, who came from a capital background, took seventeen years of hard work to barely gain a foothold in Convey.

From the moment she returned to Fengtan, she saw that once vain Fourth Brother, who now only had one leg but was still optimistically swinging his crutch and teasing her by saying, "I can make you catch up," and Yu Jinyang's day-to-day waiting, his undiminished gentleness and patience.

These ordinary things are like grass seeds deeply rooted in the soil, no different from the loyal bones buried deep beneath the green mountains.

She then realized that the ordinary are just as immortal as the heroes.

***

After leaving the Martyrs' Cemetery, Xiao Bo drove the two back to Xiaohua City to retrieve the surveillance footage of the park's activities.

Jiang Le proactively reported the incident to the police. Led by Yu Jinyang, they found the car he had smashed to pieces near location number 10. Yu Jinyang immediately gave the recorded video to Xiao Bo, who glanced at it and his brows furrowed more and more.

Only then did they realize that Qian Dongchang's despicable actions had far exceeded the scope of framing Xiaohuacheng.

"That bastard." Xiao Bo cursed through gritted teeth, but the next second, his gaze fell on him, and at least a hint of approval appeared. "Fine, you've got some guts after all."

Xiao Bo wasn't praising his actions, but from 0315's perspective, he was somewhat relieved that Li Yingqiao had someone capable of handling things by her side. If Yu Jinyang had immediately called the police after discovering Qian Dongchang that night, this video wouldn't exist. At most, the police would have investigated his business dispute with Xiaohua City, which would have meant Qian Dongchang would only be locked up for a year or two at most, especially since the two girls hadn't even planned to call the police in the first place. Like the silent victims of years ago, with limited police resources, this case would probably be closed soon.

But things are different now. This video, at least, gives Xiao Bo a reason to request a thorough investigation into all of Qian Dongchang's related cases.

Xiao Bo immediately called his colleagues to come and collect evidence, and then quickly found several staff members to take statements. Li Yingqiao and Yu Jinyang stayed quietly by his side, occasionally glancing at each other, but quickly looking away.

As dusk settled, they finally began to pack up in small groups. Xiao Bo drove off in the police car, and Xiaohua Town returned to peace and quiet.

Li Yingqiao was sending emails; she was about to return to Beijing to hand over the remaining work. She had prepared a detailed document and sent it to Wu Juan.

Yu Jinyang leaned against the office door, looking sadly at the leaves outside the window, as if his soul had not yet returned from the martyrs' cemetery. He seemed to be brewing something, and the two of them had not exchanged a single serious word since leaving the cemetery.

Yu Jinyang knew she was waiting for him to speak.

But he didn't want to coax her now, didn't want to say anything vague or romantic. 0315 was indeed special, so special that he needed time to process it, and anything he said would lack weight.

So what about Li Yingqiao when she first heard the news? Did she stay up all night again?

He had just searched the news on his phone and found that the police had cracked several major transnational drug trafficking cases in recent years. He asked Xiao Bo in the afternoon and found that 0315 was not returned to his hometown until January 27, 2017. That means the case was closed around that time.

There are related case information online, but the information is very vague. The only things you can find through searches are roughly:

More than 200 kilograms of drugs were seized, nearly 47 drug traffickers were arrested, and four drug manufacturing dens disguised as timber factories were destroyed. The amount involved in the case reached 200 million yuan.

as well as--

It is reported that several undercover police officers infiltrated the criminal gang in this major drug trafficking case, and all of them have sacrificed their lives in this operation.

And how many times has she read this report?

"Shall we...go home first?"

Seeing her start to shut down the computer, and reaching for the down jacket hanging on the back of the chair—which was his—Yu Jinyang finally opened his mouth.

Li Yingqiao glanced at him from behind the computer screen, feigning indifference, and gave a vague "hmm," as if to say, "I really can't coax you today."

Yu Jinyang felt a chill run down his spine. He was about to say, "Oh no, were we too much last night?"

Even though he was so jealous, he still granted her every request, except for that post-coital kiss on the forehead.

So when Gao Dian, who had just rushed back from Shenzhen, saw that Li Yingqiao's office light was still on, he wondered why she was still working so late, since the park activities had ended. Just as he was curiously pushing open the office door a crack—

At a glance, he saw his usually calm and composed, innocent brother, as if possessed by Daji, kissing Qiao Zhouwang's forehead again and again, just like Qiao Zhouwang used to hold a Conan comic book. Yu Jinyang also kissed him repeatedly, the kisses falling quickly and urgently: "I was wrong, I was wrong, I was really wrong."

"Qiao Bao".

This was a name he would never call out, except occasionally in certain moments in bed.

"Hmm? Please don't be angry anymore."

King Zhou of Qiao chuckled at the thought of his son being jealous of everyone: "Then tell me, what kind of lousy manly habit is this?"

Yu Jinyang said seriously, "I just couldn't help it, cough, just this once."

Gao Dian rushed in, shouting, "…Break up! Qiaoqiao! Break up!"

Holy crap! Yu Jinyang actually made such a basic mistake!

Does love still exist in this world?