Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Heresy to Delude the Masses
The interrogation room was on the first floor. Xu Huo and Li Jianye walked toward it in silence.
Sun Jian was giving them a headache, but it was a different kind of headache—not the type caused by an uncooperative, shameless suspect.
How to describe it exactly...
Zhao Shui didn’t know either.
But you could feel it as soon as you got close to the man.
"He hasn’t been taken back to the holding cell yet."
Zhao Shui, walking in the lead, stood at the door and peeked inside through a narrow crack.
He reached out and pulled the door open.
"CREAK~"
An old, grating sound echoed as the door opened, the gap widening little by little.
The sound was piercing, enough to make most people uncomfortable. Any normal person would have fixed it long ago.
After all, it wouldn’t cost much to replace a part, and the squad had the money. But this was intentional.
A certain amount of noise puts an interrogated suspect’s psyche in a highly sensitive state, making it easier to apply psychological pressure during questioning later on.
The same went for the interrogation room’s environment.
Take the yellow desk lamp, for instance. It gave off little light and easily strained the eyes. The squad had the money to replace it, but in reality, a dim environment was more effective at making people feel oppressed.
However, none of this worked on Sun Jian.
In the darkness, a blinding beam of light cut across Sun Jian’s face as he sat in the interrogation chair, making him instinctively furrow his brow.
It was the sun, shining through the crack in the door and onto his face.
"SLAM!"
The door shut.
Xu Huo and Li Jianye entered and sat down in their chairs.
"You still refuse to confess your guilt?"
Li Jianye’s brow darkened as he stared intently at the man.
That was right. The man was being very cooperative with the police.
When the police asked what he had done, he confessed truthfully. When they asked who else was involved, he named them.
But...
He wouldn’t admit his guilt.
In fact, he even seemed to think...
"Me? Let’s talk about my so-called crimes."
Sun Jian laughed, a look of utter disdain on his face.
"Organ trafficking, illegal organ transplants."
Li Jianye began, listing off the man’s crimes one by one.
"Murder. Looking at your past, fifteen years ago you killed your wife, a coworker, and a childhood friend from your village. All four of them died by your hand."
"Countless bodies in Jiangsan City were desecrated because of you, denied peace even in death."
"Illegally profiting, involvement with shady organizations, murdering to seize territory in your early years..."
The crimes Sun Jian had committed were monstrous, enough to give anyone a headache just by looking at the list.
But Li Jianye already knew them by heart.
And yet...
"Do those even count as crimes?"
Listening to the policeman, Sun Jian’s expression remained placid. He simply posed the question calmly.
"Heh. In the end, it was just one wrong move. I misjudged people. I lost, that’s all."
"Since it’s a loss, then it’s just a loss."
Lost?
Could that one word erase so many crimes!?
Li Jianye suppressed his anger. "’Lost’... What a way to put it."
"What do you think your crimes are? Experience points for killing monsters in a game?"
"What do you think the law is? It’s the order of society!"
"You defy the law, murder others, profit from living, breathing human beings, and you don’t even spare the dead—and in the end, you just casually dismiss it all as ’a loss’?"
Indeed, these were crimes that any police officer...
any police officer with a shred of integrity would never tolerate!
But the man spoke of it as if it were all just a game.
Xu Huo watched Sun Jian, his eyes narrowing.
"What else?"
Sun Jian let out a sneer before his expression cooled, his eyes turning grim.
He showed none of the fear a criminal ought to have.
"This world is just a game."
"What did I do? I was just playing the game, that’s all."
Sun Jian’s voice was sharp and severe, his expression slightly menacing.
"If I hadn’t lost, if those two idiots hadn’t been tempted by such petty gains..."
"Then you’d be calling me President Sun!"
If it weren’t for the two men who killed each other in the refrigerated truck, he would have made enough money to go clean and escape.
He could have moved to another province, changed his identity, maybe even fled the country... He would have been a successful man who had lived a full life!
And anyone who met him would have had to respectfully call him President Sun.
The line between ’Sun the criminal’ and ’President Sun’ is as thin as the one between victory and defeat.
"As for now..."
Sun Jian smirked. "This is just the price to pay."
"Justifying murder so brazenly, talking about your ruthless exploitation as if it’s some noble cause..."
Li Jianye sneered. "If everyone were like you, we might as well regress to the primitive age and live like savages, eating raw flesh and drinking blood."
"Like me?"
Sun Jian raised his hands, revealing the handcuffs, yet he seemed to feel no pressure from them at all.
"Which foreign businessman isn’t just like me?"
"The only difference is our methods."
"Oh, right. I make my money from the dead..."
As he spoke, Sun Jian leaned forward, looking at Li Jianye.
"They make theirs from the living."
"Like the foreigners’ real estate market—a terrifying monster that devours everyone in the world, devours the future. Now *that’s* being truly ruthless, eating people without even spitting out the bones."
Countries like Gaul and Ukia were already starting to speculate on real estate around this time.
But the foreigners’ real estate market was a fraudulent economic bubble.
"The things they’ve created..."
"Manipulating the stock market—how many people has that devoured?"
"Economic bubbles—how many lives have they crushed?"
Sun Jian was smiling.
"What do I even amount to in comparison?"
"And as for my current situation..."
"I’m simply willing to pay the price I owe."
Li Jianye could no longer contain his fury. He shot to his feet.
"BANG!!!"
He slammed both hands on the table and roared, "You’re spouting vicious lies!"
Sun Jian was unfazed, leaning back in his chair.
"Take him away!"
Li Jianye ordered in a low voice, then paid him no more mind and turned to leave.
Xu Huo glanced at Sun Jian and left as well.
"THUD."
The interrogation room door closed.
Li Jianye took several deep breaths to calm himself.
"That man..."
Before he could finish, Xu Huo shook his head. "He has a different perspective, a different understanding of the world."
"Captain Li, don’t waste your breath."
"Sun Jian is a dead man walking. It’s just his attitude that’s so detestable."
And it was truly detestable.
People care a lot about attitude, and his was infuriating the police.
Li Jianye was silent for a long while before finally speaking.
"Sun Jian..."
"Logically speaking, he shouldn’t have that kind of perspective!"
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