Chapter 155: Li Qing's Past

"What kind of job?"

Chen Yu's eyes darted away, sporting a cowardly expression of wanting to ask yet not daring to.

"If it's illegal... I'm not doing it..."

Hearing this, the man's smile widened.

Chen Yu immediately added another line, completely exposing a gambler's bottom line.

"...How much does it pay?"

"Hahahaha!" The man burst into laughter, patting Chen Yu's shoulder. "Brother, I like your style! You're really straight-up!"

He leaned in close to Chen Yu's ear, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"It's nothing illegal. Just some manual labor out at sea."

"Going to an island, working as a waiter."

"A year," the man held up a single finger, waving it in front of Chen Yu's eyes, "and the money you make will be enough to buy an apartment in Jiangcheng."

Chen Yu's breathing grew heavier.

Even he himself believed this acting.

"What kind of island pays that much?" he pressed further, greed plastered all over his eyes.

"Don't ask things you shouldn't." The man's expression froze instantly, his smile vanishing without a trace.

"All you need to do is nod or shake your head."

"Are you in, or are you out?"

Chen Yu looked at him, remaining silent for a full half-minute.

His mind was calculating at lightning speed.

This hook was thick and rigid, cast out so bluntly right in front of him.

He had no choice but to bite.

"I... How can I trust you?" Chen Yu struggled to ask, making a last-ditch plea of reason.

"Do you even have a choice now?" The man stood up, looking down at him from above. "The debts chasing you out there add up to at least hundreds of thousands, right?"

"If you don't come with me, the moment you walk out this door, someone will break your hands and legs by tomorrow and throw you into the river."

"Come with me, and in a year, you'll be a man above men."

With that, the man turned and walked away.

"Make up your mind. Tomorrow morning at six, Warehouse Number Three, West City Freight Terminal. I won't wait past the hour."

Chen Yu collapsed onto the ground, watching the floral-shirted back disappear into the bustling crowd.

He knew he had just accepted a ticket to hell.

...

Early the next morning.

Just as the sky was beginning to pale.

The West City Freight Terminal was deathly quiet.

Inside an unassuming black sedan, Zhang Luyao sat in the driver's seat, nervously tapping her fingers against the steering wheel.

Chen Yu sat in the passenger seat, gazing out the window at a rusted gantry crane.

"Hey, Expert Zhang, can you stop shaking?" Chen Yu glanced at her sideways. "You look like an intern on her first field assignment."

"Shut up!" Zhang Luyao glared at him. "I'm worried! Do you even have any idea what kind of place you're walking into?"

"I know, right into a dragon's pool and a tiger's den," Chen Yu shrugged indifferently.

Internally, he thought that if this woman's psychological endurance was this poor, she would probably break down the moment she actually set foot on the island.

"Hey," Chen Yu suddenly turned his head, his expression turning much more serious. "Before someone comes to pick me up, tell me about Li Qing."

Zhang Luyao was taken aback.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything." Chen Yu looked right at her. "Her past, what kind of person she was. I need to know what kind of mess I'm actually going to fish out this time."

It sounded like a bastard thing to say.

Yet from those seemingly unserious eyes, Zhang Luyao saw an intensity she couldn't quite describe.

Silence filled the car.

Only the occasional cry of a distant seagull echoed through the air.

After a long while, Zhang Luyao spoke again, her voice drifting as if recalling something very distant.

"She was a year ahead of Qingzhu and me, and she was an absolute myth in the police academy back then."

"A legend?" Chen Yu raised an eyebrow.

"Not a legend, a myth," Zhang Luyao corrected. "Every single score—physical fitness, marksmanship, combat—she was always number one. Especially in hand-to-hand combat, she could take down male instructors."

"That fierce?" Though he had experienced Li Qing's beatings firsthand, he was still quite surprised.

"She's a lunatic." Zhang Luyao's gaze grew complex. "A lunatic willing to risk her life just to win."

"Then during a live-ammunition drill once, Qingzhu and I were put in the same group. An accident happened, and we got pinned down under a hostile fire position, unable to move at all."

Zhang Luyao's voice dropped lower.

"Everyone else told us to wait for orders, to wait for backup. Only she, acting entirely alone, violated every drill regulation and slipped around the flank like a ghost to drag both of us out."

"After that time, the three of us became friends."

"The Three Musketeers of the Police Force?" Chen Yu supplied the nickname.

A trace of awkwardness flashed across Zhang Luyao's cheeks, but she nodded nonetheless.

"After graduation, she was the first to enter the municipal detective brigade, working under Captain Yan Zheng. Qingzhu and I graduated later; I went to the provincial bureau, and Qingzhu joined Captain Yan's team too."

Chen Yu listened quietly.

A silhouette began to form in his mind.

The image of a powerful, proud, and even somewhat untamable woman.

"And then?"

Zhang Luyao's gaze dimmed; this was the heaviest part of the story.

"Later, during a cross-province secret arrest operation targeting some vicious drug traffickers, Li Qing was the deputy leader of the assault team."

"During the operation, something went wrong."

"One of our colleagues took a bullet to protect her... and made the ultimate sacrifice."

The air inside the car froze.

"Qingzhu always felt that it was Li Qing's unauthorized actions that killed our colleague. She was too reckless, too confident in her own judgment, and ignored the established plan."

"Li Qing refused to admit it."

"She believed that following the original plan would have resulted in their entire team being surrounded and even more deaths. She was trading the minimum cost for victory."

Chen Yu didn't speak.

He could vividly imagine that scene.

There was no right or wrong, only choices.

And consequences that could never be undone.

"After investigating, the higher-ups gave her a disciplinary reprimand. A very heavy one." Fatigue laced Zhang Luyao's voice. "She refused to accept it. Right in front of all the commanding officers, she tore up the disciplinary notice."

"Then, she resigned."

"She took off that police uniform and vanished from everyone's sight."

The story came to an end.

Chen Yu finally understood.

Why Han Li had said the authorities were also curious about Li Qing's identity.

Because in official records, Li Qing had long since become an "ordinary person."

A failure who had departed in disgrace due to a mistake.

He also understood why Su Qingzhu held such deep resentment toward Li Qing.

It wasn't just about a fallen colleague; it was a betrayal of a shared belief.

A former myth, shattered to pieces.

"Heh..." Chen Yu chuckled softly.

"What are you laughing at?" Zhang Luyao asked, puzzled.

"I'm laughing at how foolish she is," Chen Yu waved a hand.

"What a damn foolish woman."

Proud, powerful, stubborn, bending before breaking.

She refused to bow to the rules, so she chose to leave.

She thought she could walk alone through the darkness, never expecting that the outside world was far darker than she had ever imagined.

Until she blundered straight into the true hell known as Emerald Island.

Chen Yu felt as though something in his heart had been ruthlessly yanked.

It wasn't pity, nor was it sympathy.

Instead, it was a... intense impulse to pull this foolish woman out of the abyss and pull her into his arms for a severe scolding.

Right at that moment, an old, dilapidated white van chugged into the pier and came to a halt right in front of Warehouse Number Three.

The side door slid open, and a man as thin as a bamboo pole hopped out, looking around warily.

Chen Yu's expression transformed instantly.

He slipped seamlessly into the nervousness and anticipation expected of "Ah Zhe."

"I'm going," he told Zhang Luyao.

"Chen Yu!" Zhang Luyao grabbed his arm. "You... you have to come back alive!"

Chen Yu looked back at her pretty face, which was painted with undisguised worry, and suddenly smiled.

"Don't worry, I'm still waiting for you to give me psychological counseling."

With that, he pushed open the car door and stepped out.

Facing the chilly morning sea breeze, he slumped his shoulders and affected a listless, floating gait, looking entirely like a gambler thoroughly crushed by life, stepping one pace at a time toward the van that would seal his fate.

Stepping toward the human purgatory known as Emerald Island.