Insights Chapter 143:  Life and Death

Chapter 143:  Life and Death

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

Late at night, the Penang Building, 27th floor. The room was shrouded in shadows, and Mu Yuwei’s peripheral vision caught sight of the door that had been closed just now, not knowing when it had been opened… He realized someone had entered and quickly dodged.

Li Zhongnan finally arrived. He circled behind Mu Yuwei, swinging the baton in his hand directly towards Mu Yuwei.

Mu Yuwei lowered his head to dodge the first strike, then raised his hand to block.

Li Zhongnan followed up with a reverse flick attack from below, and the baton swiftly struck his upper arm. Mu Yuwei, caught off guard, winced in pain.

The two began to fight in the hall.

Ding Yueran couldn’t help much and shouted from the side, “Be careful, Captain Li!”

Although he had known that Li Zhongnan was alive, seeing him now still stirred up excitement. At the same time, he knew Mu Yuwei was a fierce fighter, with ruthless moves, which made him worry for Li Zhongnan.

In the blink of an eye, several moves had passed. It was a fight to the death, with no room for error. Li Zhongnan had a slight advantage, and soon Mu Yuwei’s head and hands were covered in blood.

Although Li Zhongnan hadn’t been a police officer in recent years, his basic skills remained intact. There were no shortcuts in stick techniques, only continuous practice. His movements were agile and flexible, striking at various joints of Mu Yuwei. With chops and thrusts, he made Mu Yuwei very uncomfortable.

Mu Yuwei mainly focused on defense, occasionally attacking. His strength was not weak, and he was more familiar with the environment. He attempted several times to draw his gun but was interrupted by Li Zhongnan.

Yet, Li Zhongnan was always a gentleman, while Mu Yuwei played dirty. He noticed that Li Zhongnan wouldn’t use the baton to kill. Raising his right hand recklessly, he took two hits, risking a broken right arm, and then fiercely kicked Li Zhongnan in the abdomen, retreating to the side of the dining table.

Mu Yuwei grabbed a glass bottle from the table with his left hand and blocked Li Zhongnan’s baton. The bottle shattered upon impact.

Seizing the opportunity, Mu Yuwei took a few steps back and grabbed Ding Yueran.

Ding Yueran, who had been clutching his wound and feeling dizzy, leaned against the wall to steady himself. As he lost more blood, the pain from the wound intensified, and his vision became blurry, as if veiled by a layer of mist. Completely unguarded, he was suddenly used as a hostage by Mu Yuwei.

Mu Yuwei held the bottle against Ding Yieran’s throat, threatening Li Zhongnan, “If you come any closer, I’ll kill him!”

Li Zhongnan’s figure froze.

Mu Yuwei chuckled, “I knew it, Officer Li, you wouldn’t joke with someone’s life. You drop the baton, I won’t make things difficult for you guys.”

Li Zhongnan seemed to hesitate.

Mu Yuwei’s face twisted with a grimace as the bottle in his hand pierced Ding Yueran’s neck, leaving a red streak that flowed into his collar.

Ding Yueran panicked, “Don’t trust him, Captain Li! He has a gun!”

Once Li Zhongnan dropped his weapon and Mu Yuwei reloaded, both of them would end up dead here.

At that moment, Ding Yueran wished he had a weapon. Then he wouldn’t be dragging Li Zhongnan down, trapped in a passive position.

Maybe, he could have a weapon.

Ding Yueran lowered his head and saw the knife lodged in his body…

Mu Yuwei seemed to be saying something, but Ding Yueran heard his smug laughter. He put his hand on the handle of the knife, and with a gentle movement, he broke out in a cold sweat. But he made up his mind and continued to exert force with both hands…

Neither Mu Yuwei nor Li Zhongnan noticed Ding Yueran’s slight movement.

In the deadlock, Li Zhongnan hesitated for a moment but ultimately dropped the baton.

Mu Yuwei laughed, thinking he had the upper hand. He threw away the bottle, lowered his head, and reached for the magazine. If everything went smoothly, in less than half a minute, the two people in front of him would become corpses.

In that moment, Li Zhongnan decisively charged forward.

At the same time, Ding Yueran gritted his teeth, held his breath, exerted force with both hands, and pulled the knife out of his body, blood gushing. Ding Yueran completely disregarded his own injury. Taking advantage of Mu Yuwei’s lack of response, he turned around and stabbed the knife into Mu Yuwei’s body.

All of this happened in an instant. Mu Yuwei had never expected Ding Yueran to do such a thing. Caught off guard, he stared in disbelief, cursed, “Madman…”

Li Zhongnan, witnessing this scene, also exclaimed, “Ding Yueran!”

At this moment, Ding Yueran didn’t think about whether he could survive; he thought about mutual destruction. His face was pale, lips stained with blood. With determination, he pushed Mu Yuwei back a few steps.

Ding Yueran looked at Mu Yuwei’s incredulous expression and smiled, “I won.”

This devil should have died long ago. Only with Mu Yuwei dead would he be free, and only with Mu Yuwei dead would Li Zhongnan be safe.

Mu Yuwei was completely caught off guard by Ding Yueran’s severely injured state and still having such strength. He was pushed back several steps, and his back hit the floor-to-ceiling window behind him with a loud bang. The glass, already riddled with bullet holes, couldn’t bear the force and shattered with a crash. Mu Yuwei fell backward, reaching out to pull Ding Yueran’s body, trying to drag him down.

Ding Yueran was already at his last breath. As he was pulled, his body also leaned forward. They were on the 27th floor of the building. Once they fell, it would be certain death. For a moment, Ding Yueran felt doomed. He even prepared to fall together. But then, Ding Yueran felt himself being grabbed, Li Zhongnan rushing over to hold him back.

Mu Yuwei’s face showed reluctance, and he screamed in despair as he fell out of the broken window. After falling from the 27th floor, it took several seconds before the sound of impact was heard.

After all this, Ding Yueran’s body relaxed and collapsed. Li Zhongnan helped him lie down and checked his injuries. In a short time, Ding Yueran’s clothes were stained red, and he became a figure drenched in blood.

Li Zhongnan took off his shirt and used it to press against Ding Yueran’s wound. “Silly kid, I have other weapons. I was just bluffing him…”

Ding Yueran looked up at him. People used to say he was smart, they said he was crazy, but no one had ever called him silly. Yet his actions today were indeed foolish. He hadn’t thought about much at the time, not even with his brain. He just thought he could die, but Li Zhongnan couldn’t.

But it was too late for such thoughts now.

Ding Yueran reached out with trembling hands and grabbed Li Zhongnan. “Captain Li, it’s good to see you…”

He had never felt so free and happy as he did now. But soon he felt cold, and the wound was painful. He still wanted to say something. He wanted to say that he had encountered Mu Yuwei while looking for Li Zhongnan earlier, that Mu Yuwei had used Li Zhongnan’s life to threaten him into compliance, that he had carefully planned this, deceived Zhen Jiaxu, and that he had gone to the police station as agreed, never having killed any police officers.

But the smell of blood rose, choking his throat. He opened his mouth and spat out another mouthful of blood.

Li Zhongnan was startled and reached out to wipe the blood from the corner of Ding Yueran’s lips.

Ding Yeran swallowed back the words he had so desperately wanted to say. In the end, he just said, “Captain Li, after I came out that year, I actually came to find you. But you weren’t home…”

“I know now… I know…” Li Zhongnan pressed his wound tighter. If only this city didn’t have those villains. Unfortunately, for them, there were no ifs.

Ding Yueran said, “I’m cold, Captain Li… Am I going to be okay?”

His eyelids felt heavy, wanting to sleep. Li Zhongnan held him close; his embrace was warm. In his memory, when he was sick as a child, his mother would hold him like this.

Li Zhongnan’s voice was steady as he reassured him, “You’re still young. You’ll be fine.” He said this, but he felt panicked inside.

Despite his efforts to staunch the bleeding, it didn’t slow down. The blood was dark red, warm, flowing steadily through his fingers, quickly pooling beneath them.

At that moment, all the lights around them suddenly came on. The whole city seemed to come alive in that instant.

Li Zhongnan told him, “Ding Yueran, don’t sleep. The power’s back, the lights are on. I called for an ambulance; you’ll be okay!”

Ding Yueran struggled to open his eyes, staring at Li Zhongnan intently. Even if he died now, it would be worth it. What use were those lights outside when he had Li Zhongnan’s light right here?

Li Zhongnan had Ding Yueran lie on his lap, using one hand to help him press the wound and the other to take out his phone and dial 120. After explaining their location, he hung up and called Shen Junci. His voice trembled as he said, “Where are you right now?”

“Downstairs at Penang Shopping Mall. I saw someone fall…”

Shen Junci’s voice came from the phone. They had parked their car outside Penang Shopping Mall just half a minute before and witnessed the fall.

Li Zhongnan said with a trembling voice, “Mu Yuwei fell. Ding Yueran is injured. We’re on the 27th floor. Please, save him.”

Shen Junci knew Li Zhongnan well, and it was rare for Li to ask for help. In fact, he had heard Li Zhongnan mention Ding Yueran’s name early on, and he sympathized with his plight. During the initial interrogation, he didn’t know that the person who called himself “An Nan” was Ding Yueran as described by Li Zhongnan.

They had discussed Ding Yueran’s case on the phone before.

At that time, Li Zhongnan had said, “It’s my fault for not taking care of that kid. He came to the City Bureau to deliver a message. I told him to inform the police about the cleaning company. If he did something wrong, he should be punished by the law.”

Li Zhongnan had always been a gentle and stubborn person. Once he decided on something, he would stick to it.

Shen Junci said, “I’ll come up right away.”

Gu Yanchen, who was nearby, overheard and made arrangements. “I’ll take people to the top floor to chase after Zhen Jiaxu. We’ll meet up later.”

Shen Junci nodded in acknowledgment. He retrieved an investigation box from the trunk of the police car, containing various autopsy tools.

Several police officers walked downstairs, while Lu Ying made a phone call to the City Bureau to report the situation. Gu Yanchen took the lead, holding a sniper rifle in his hand, and flashed his police badge. The security guards at the door immediately stepped back.

Shen Junci went up to the 27th floor, while Gu Yanchen went directly to the top floor using the elevator.

This building belonged to Penang’s high-rise category, with a height exceeding one hundred meters and each floor area no less than 2,000 square meters. The top floor met the standards for a helicopter landing pad.

Gu Yanchen and his companions reached the top floor, intending to access the rooftop, but were suddenly confronted with a thick door. Gu Yanchen tried to push it, but it didn’t budge. This kind of door lock couldn’t even be penetrated by bullets.

There was a keypad lock on the door. Lu Ying pressed it, and the screen lit up, “An eight-digit password…”

Gu Yanchen said, “Let Bai Meng ask Huo Lei if she knows any information.”

Over the years, Huo Lei had been close to Zhen Jiaxu. Perhaps she knew something.

Bai Meng went to the interrogation room and quickly returned. “Huo Lei said Zhen Jiaxu complained to her that his memory was getting worse, and he changed all his passwords to his birthday. I checked the information, and Zhen Jiaxu’s birthday is…” She then read out a series of numbers.

Lu Ying followed the instructions and entered the code, but the lock didn’t open. Lu Ying looked at the instructions on the lock and wiped his sweat. “This lock has a limited number of attempts. We have nine chances left, otherwise it will temporarily lock.”

Bai Meng panicked, “Could it be that he changed it to someone else’s birthday that he knows? Let me go back and check other possibilities…”

Gu Yanchen pondered for a moment and made a decision. “Lu Ying, you stay here and keep trying if you have any leads. I’ll go to the next floor.”

Lu Ying was a bit puzzled. “Can we reach this rooftop from the neighboring building?”

He suddenly thought of the risky maneuvers done in special forces, like sliding across on a rope. But this was a hundred meters above ground; any mistake could result in serious injury or death. And there was still a corpse lying downstairs.

“No,” Gu Yanchen said, shaking the sniper rifle in his hand, “but we might be able to prevent him from escaping.”

This was Penang’s commercial center, with towering skyscrapers. The neighboring building was similar in height to this one, forming a pair of adjacent twin towers. If they could access the rooftop of the adjacent building, they could snipe from there.

Meanwhile, Shen Junci had entered the banquet hall on the 27th floor. Li Zhongnan held Ding Yueran, trying to make him as comfortable as possible. Ding Yueran had just regained consciousness and heard Li Zhongnan calling for help on the phone. He struggled to open his eyes and saw Shen Junci standing in front of him, holding an investigation box, covered in bloodstains.

He recognized Shen Junci. This medical examiner… seemed to be waiting to collect a body.

Ding Yueran jolted awake and grabbed Li Zhongnan’s hand. “Captain Li, why did you call the medical examiner? I… I think I can still be saved.”

Li Zhongnan held him down. “Don’t be foolish. We’ve finally got him here. The medical examiner is also a doctor. Just bear with it.”

Shen Junci put on gloves. “If I leave now, we’ll probably meet again at the City Bureau’s medical examiner’s room in an hour.”

After saying that, he squatted down to examine Ding Yueran’s condition. Ding Yueran’s face was pale, his lips turning white, completely devoid of color, and he was breathing rapidly. An adult losing more than a liter of blood would lead to hypovolemic shock. Looking at the bloodstains on his clothes, he had probably lost over 800 milliliters of blood.

Shen Junci lifted Ding Yueran’s clothes to inspect the wound, furrowing his brows lightly. “Why was the knife removed?”

Leaving the knife in would have helped stop the bleeding.

Li Zhongnan explained, “He pulled out the knife himself, stabbed Mu Yuwei, and then got pushed off the building.”

Shen Junci nodded at the words and then applied pressure to the wound, causing dark red blood to flow out immediately.

Ding Yueran winced in pain and grunted.

Shen Junci assessed, “The knife has cut a vein in the abdominal cavity. At this rate of blood loss, he has about ten minutes. He definitely won’t make it to the hospital.”

He wasn’t a doctor, but as a medical examiner, he was equally familiar with the human body, perhaps even more so when it came to death.

Li Zhongnan asked, “Can you help stop the bleeding?”

“I can only try. Veins are deep in the body,” Shen Junci said as he picked up a clean tray from the nearby table. He poured some undrunk liquor onto it and then soaked the dissecting knife and hemostatic forceps in it for makeshift disinfection. Holding the tray, he approached Li Zhongnan.

Li Zhongnan looked at him eagerly.

Watching this scene, Shen Junci suddenly remembered his past. Back then, Gu Yanchen also hoped to have someone who could save Lin Luo. The environment here was crude, with limited equipment. Arterial bleeding would be difficult to stop, but if it was a venous injury, there was a chance.

Ding Yueran was almost scared to death, curling up, “Captain Li, please don’t bother. I deserve this punishment. Just let me die…”

“You just said you could still be saved, didn’t you?” Li Zhongnan reached out and pressed his shoulder.

Shen also asked, “What happened to your courage when you pulled out the knife?”

Ding Yueran hesitated. Was it too late for regrets now?

Li Zhongnan said, “I’ll stay with you. I hope you can survive.”

Hearing this, Ding Yueran stopped struggling. He gritted his teeth, like a child, tightly grabbing Li Zhongnan’s sleeve.

“I’ve only dealt with dead bodies before. This is the first time I’m trying to save a life. So, Captain Li, you’ll have to hold him down,” Shen Junci said, swiftly. He used his gloved hand to separate the wound, causing more blood to gush out.

The alcohol touched the wound, foreign objects entering the body, yet there was no anesthesia, keeping him conscious.

Ding Yueran’s hair was already disheveled, his forehead sweating from the pain, the veins on his neck bulging. Even though he had mentally prepared himself, the pain still made him arch his back, clutching onto Li Zhongnan’s clothes.

Watching this scene, Li Zhongnan’s heart fluttered. He reassured him, “It’ll be over soon…”

Shen Junci focused intently, observing the wound, his fingers probing the warm viscera. With so much bleeding, an inexperienced doctor might panic. Most doctors start learning from dissecting corpses. Shen Junci had dissected so many corpses that he was an experienced medical examiner. Through the flesh and blood, he could almost imagine which blood vessel was bleeding.

Relying solely on his sense of touch, Shen Junci could roughly determine the location. He reached in and used his fingers to press the blood vessel, and indeed, the bleeding slowed down. Sometimes, the line between life and death was truly blurred.

Shen Junci picked up a hemostatic forceps and clamped one end of the bleeding vessel. Although these hemostatic forceps were typically used by medical examiners, they were also effective surgical instruments for live patients, capable of effectively blocking blood flow. Then Shen Junci clamped the other end, and the bleeding slowed even more.

Shen Junci breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. “Don’t move the hemostatic forceps. He should be able to hold out until he’s on the operating table.”

At this point, it was a last resort. With everything that had happened, Ding Yueran’s tense body finally relaxed, gasping for breath, tears of pain welling up in his eyes. He could feel that the bleeding had slowed down.

It seemed that Medical Examiner Shen was reliable.

Li Zhongnan spoke up, “Thank you.”

The whole process felt long, but it had only been three minutes.

Shen Junci took off his gloves. “I’ll go upstairs first to see what’s happening. Call me if there’s any change.”

.

At this moment, at the rooftop, Zhen Jiaxu gazed out over the entire Penang. With the arrival of electricity, the city under the night sky became brightly illuminated again, the distant urban skyline a magnificent sight.

This had been his home for decades. As the entrepreneur Zhen Jiaxu, and as the chairman behind the Hetu Trading Association, he had once wielded great influence and power here. But now, it was all dispersed.

Zhen Jiaxu heard the buzzing sound coming from afar, the noise of helicopter propellers. The helicopter to pick him up had finally arrived. The aircraft approached from a distance, starting as a small dot and gradually enlarging until it hovered in front of him.

Zhen Jiaxu felt the gust of wind from the propellers, blowing his hair. His heart raced with excitement. Once he boarded the helicopter, it would fly over the sea, and when he woke up, he would be overseas. Though there had been some hiccups in the plan, ultimately, he would manage to escape successfully.

Watching the helicopter prepare to land, Zhen Jiaxu smiled on the rooftop. He was just a stone’s throw away from victory.