Chapter 34 The Kidnappers' Surprise Attempt
After climbing three floors, Gu Yiliu felt that she could definitely take the stairs.
"..." Spending too much time with Peng Jie and the others has influenced my way of thinking.
She was able to climb the wall because Peng Jie said they planned to climb upstairs tonight to check the situation. And then she actually agreed with their idea. Gu Yiliu didn't know what to say about himself.
Gu Yiliu turned her head and glanced down at the four-story height, making her nervously swallow. Although she had superpowers, she was still somewhat afraid of heights deep down.
After thinking for a moment, she climbed in through the window next to her. She was going to take the stairs.
The apartment building was still in its unfinished state, with a lot of construction waste.
Gu Yiliu carefully stepped over the piles of construction debris. As he walked towards the fifth floor, he heard noises from upstairs.
"Old Yuan, go downstairs and take a look. I have a feeling someone's downstairs." It was the same old voice from earlier that day. "See if it's that policeman."
"Okay, I feel the same way."
Gu Yiliu paused, surprised at how perceptive he was.
A beam of light shone down from upstairs, and Gu Yiliu immediately hid behind a wall on the fourth floor without hesitation.
Clear, heavy footsteps echoed from inside the building. The lights grew closer, soon reaching the wall where she was hiding.
Gu Yiliu turned to look at the ground and picked up a stone. Then she moved to another hiding place. The apartment building had many partitions.
Old Yuan, who was coming downstairs, was certain he had heard faint footsteps. He immediately shouted and strode over, "Who's there?!"
Gu Yiliu glanced at the window, ran to hide behind the outer wall, or... she threw the stone in her hand outside.
A dull whistling sound came from behind, and Gu Yiliu spoke up, "Don't move! Let's talk!"
Old Yuan stopped in his tracks, and the beam of his flashlight immediately began to swing wildly. "Who are you?! You're not Officer Yue!"
Old Yuan heard it clearly. It was an unfamiliar voice.
Without thinking, he raised his voice, which cracked. He was mainly scared, not that he agreed to talk to her.
"Old Wang! Come down here quickly!"
The sound echoed through the corridors from the first to the eighth floor. The old Wang and others he saw quickly rushed to Old Yuan's side.
Gu Yiliu could sense that they had guns. She could hear the sound of clothes rubbing against gun barrels.
"Where is he?" Old Wang asked Old Yuan.
The latter pointed to the wall next to him. A cement stone was embedded in the wall, breaking a whole brick in half.
Old Yuan quietly explained the situation to Old Wang, "There's someone, a woman, she wants to talk to us, not that Officer Yue."
"Who are you? What do you do? Who are you representing?" Old Wang asked several questions in a row.
Based on the sound coming from them, Gu Yiliu estimated that they were at most 60 steps apart.
She also sensed the compromise in Lao Wang's words; he was willing to talk.
“I’m also a policeman, my surname is Gu. If you want to talk, put down your gun and we’ll talk on the sixth floor,” Gu Yiliu said.
Old Wang looked ahead; the beam of light illuminated only a short distance. But Old Wang felt that Officer Gu was just a little bit ahead of the beam. There was a wall there; he was probably crouching behind it.
His mind raced; he needed this person to help them, because helping them meant helping the child.
Old Wang finally gritted his teeth and agreed, "Okay, we'll go up first, you... remember to come up."
Gu Yiliu listened to them go upstairs, and after they stopped making noise, she waited for a while before going up herself.
Her footsteps were light, and she made almost no sound.
On the sixth floor, Old Wang kept shining his flashlight towards the door.
After waiting for a while, I finally saw a person standing in the light.
Gu Yiliu used the dim light to sized up the four people in front of her. The one holding the flashlight should be Old Wang. She looked at them one by one. Apart from Old Wang, the other three were not young either, all around 30 to 40 years old.
As she looked at Lao Wang and the other three, the four of them were also looking at her nervously.
“…Officer Gu, you can come over now.” Old Wang said, taking a step to the side. “This child has a fever. When we saw her during the day, she already had a fever, and we don’t know how long it’s been going on.”
Gu Yiliu's pupils contracted as he saw the child that Lao Wang and the others had placed on the ground. The child was asleep, his head and feet curled up together, his face flushed with fever.
Gu Yiliu strode over, but was stopped by Old Wang as he approached the child. "If you want to take the child away, you have to help..."
"Get out of the way!" Gu Yiliu reached out and shoved Old Wang back several steps and he fell onto a pile of construction debris, which was all broken cement and contained nails.
"Old Wang!" The other three exclaimed in surprise, rushing over to help him up. "Are you alright?"
Old Wang shook his head. They were all superficial injuries. He was lucky that he was sitting on the bricks he had placed a couple of days ago, so he only fell and hurt a little, but he was fine after he recovered.
Gu Yiliu picked up Lu Zhuoguang, whose body was also burning hot, and couldn't help but feel a little worried. She glanced at Lao Wang and the others, then quickly walked outside.
Old Wang's eyes flashed with a sharp look. He had good eyesight. He reached out and picked up the hunting rifle from the ground, cocked it in one smooth motion, and pointed it at Gu Yiliu's back. "Stop! If you move again, I'll shoot!"
Gu Yiliu paused, and Old Wang noticed. He thought there was a chance. "You can take the child, but you have to help us. We had no other choice. Don't you want to know who orchestrated this kidnapping?"
"You wait here. This child needs to be taken to the hospital first. I'll be back after that." Whether she helps or not depends on her mood. These people who dare to kidnap a child are definitely going to jail.
As for whether she was afraid when Lao Wang fired the gun, she was definitely afraid, but she was confident that she could use her superpower to block the bullet when it got close.
Old Wang froze, his hunting rifle remaining motionless.
At this moment, Gu Yiliu had already left with the child in his arms without looking back.
She hurried downstairs. Only Yue Shuyao was downstairs. "Comrade Gu...you're down?" she asked, surprised to see the child Gu Yiliu was holding. "This child...where are the kidnappers?"
"Take them to the hospital quickly. According to the kidnappers, the child has had a fever for a day."
Yue Shuyao felt the warmth in her arms. Although she had a lot to say, she knew that things had to be prioritized. She nodded seriously and said, "I'll have them send a police car to the hospital."
"Brother Peng climbed up there," she said, then ran away with the child in her arms.
Gu Yiliu walked to the spot where she had climbed the wall and looked up. Peng Jie had already climbed to the spot where she had just climbed.
"Not bad," she thought to herself.
She smiled and called out, "Officer Peng..."
Hearing the sound, Peng Jie was startled, and a cold sweat broke out on his back. He had been completely focused on climbing the wall.
He paused for a moment, then turned to look down. Gu Yiliu was standing below him.
"..."
"Officer Peng, let's go up to the sixth floor and talk to the robbers."
Peng Jie was about to say that he was going to the sixth floor and was almost there. Then he suddenly paused, realizing he hadn't missed the "we" in her words; it would be fine for the two of them to go together.
He looked down, wanting to say a few words of advice, only to find that she had already left.
"?" Aren't we going to negotiate together? Didn't we say we'd negotiate on the sixth floor? How can we negotiate if we don't climb up?
Gu Yiliu went up the stairs. She didn't remind Peng Jie, since Peng Jie had already climbed to the fourth floor anyway. Going up was easier than coming down.
So when Peng Jie climbed to the sixth floor, he found that Gu Yiliu had already arrived.
He was startled, his steps faltered, and he kicked a bump on the cement floor.
"Can we use the stairs?"
Gu Yiliu nodded with a smile.
He took a deep breath. He'd already climbed up. There was no point in arguing anymore.
Peng Jie looked at the four kidnappers standing together and frowned: "Where's the child?"
Old Wang looked at Gu Yiliu, "She took it away."
Gu Yiliu nodded to Peng Jie and told him that the child had a fever and that she had handed the child over to Yue Shuyao to take to the hospital for treatment.
Peng Jie thought to himself, "No wonder," and looked at Lao Wang to get straight to the point, "Before we negotiate, tell me, why did you kidnap this child? What is your relationship with Lu Zhisong?"
The four men exchanged glances, and finally Old Wang spoke up, "We don't know Lu Zhisong, but Lu Zhisong should know our boss."
Peng Jie frowned: "Who is your boss?"
"This apartment building belongs to my boss, Chen Hui."
Peng Jie quickly connected these relationships and events in his mind, "Was the child kidnapped on behalf of your boss Chen Hui? Was the purpose to extort money?"
“It wasn’t Chen Hui who ordered the kidnapping. Lu Zhisong and Chen Hui should know each other,” Old Wang thought, since they were both rich. “But whether they know each other or not is none of my business. We were taught how to kidnap children.”
"Chen Hui owes us three months' wages. We agreed to help him build this apartment building, but after it was completed, we didn't receive any wages. We went to his workplace to demand our wages, but we didn't get any. However, we ran into Sun Ming, who asked us to do him a favor. He said he could not only teach Chen Hui a lesson but also get some money from him."
A new name appeared. Peng Jie asked them who they were.
"Isn't that the man who comes to deliver money every day?" Gu Yiliu said.
She found the suitcase containing the money, as well as some notes with messages.
She asked Lao Wang, "You took all the money that was delivered so many times?"
Old Wang didn't expect her to guess who it was so quickly. He had no intention of hiding it, so he shook his head and said, "He only sent money twice, a total of 90,000 yuan."
Gu Yiliu looked at Peng Jie.
Peng Jie knew what she wanted to know, and he also had many questions.
“At first, they asked Lu Zhisong to send them 50,000 yuan in cash every day, so was it embezzled? Was it withheld by Sun Ming?” Peng Jie didn’t think any further.
Old Yuan spoke up, "That's right, he's been hiding all the money. The first time he sent 50,000 yuan, and the later ones were bricks and food. Sometimes he would slip in a note or two with a message, and then yesterday he sent 40,000 yuan."
It's because we wanted to turn against him. He wanted to extract a lot of money, but we weren't willing to cooperate, so he panicked and sent in another 40,000, not even 50,000.
Old Yuan was seething with hatred. He was initially overjoyed to receive the 50,000 yuan, but after seeing bricks every day, he regretted the kidnapping even more. This deal with Sun Ming was a complete disaster. They shouldn't have trusted a stranger. They should have known better than to expect something for nothing.
Sun Ming was using them as stepping stones.
"Was it also Sun Ming's idea to prevent us from seeing Lu Zhuoguang later?" Peng Jie asked.
Old Wang nodded. "He said as long as he doesn't die, he'll be fine even if he goes hungry."
"Lu Zhisong actually trusts Sun Ming so much?" Gu Yiliu looked at Peng Jie, and even Lao Wang and the other three looked at him.
Peng Jie sighed, "Sun Ming is Lu Zhisong's half-brother, and they have a good relationship. When the child was kidnapped, we investigated the body immediately. Sun Ming was busy with everything and we couldn't find any fault with him."
They share the same mother but different fathers.
All six men shared the same thought: no wonder Sun Ming didn't care about Lu Zhuoguang's life, only about money. His switcheroo was too clever.
After hearing the story, Peng Jie took out handcuffs and walked towards Old Wang and the other three, saying, "Let's go."
“I know I’ll go to jail, maybe for life, but I want to see my family, Officer Gu, please help me.”
Gu Yiliu found it unbelievable that he would ask him for help. "Why would you ask me for help? I'm just here to support him."
Old Wang looked rather ashamed.
"However, I'm a little curious about you. I walk almost silently, so how could you hear my footsteps from two floors away?"
"What's so difficult about that? We used to hunt tigers and wolves all the time, so our ears are trained." Gu Yiliu understood; no wonder they had hunting rifles.
"I want to see my family as soon as possible, preferably within three days. My home is not far from here, and it usually takes two days to get there. Could you please help me notify them?" Old Wang pleaded again.
Gu Yiliu smiled and agreed on Peng Jie's behalf, then she looked at Peng Jie and said, "You go first, I'll cover the rear."
As Peng Jie led the man downstairs, he turned around and saw Gu Yiliu still standing there motionless.
Gu Yiliu only started moving when she heard no more footsteps behind her. She walked to a wall, and because she was wearing contact lenses provided by the system, she had already seen what was hidden there.
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