Chapter 413: Chapter 300: Xu Liang: Not Good, There’s Killing Intent!
Communicate, communicate...
In that instant, everyone in the conference room subconsciously shifted their gaze to Zhao Yi.
Some looked puzzled, others remained calm.
But with most of the Supreme Court judges’ eyes all landing on him at once, no matter what kind of look it was, Zhao Yi felt immense pressure.
What experience could he possibly have?
Tell them to lie flat and slack off!?
Zhao Yi was roasting wildly in his head. Last year he wasn’t busy quelling public opinion at all; he just wanted to find a way to get the case adjudicated.
Wait.
Last year’s case in Hanhai City!?
Zhao Yi suddenly thought of something, his brows furrowed, and he spoke up instinctively:
"Something’s off."
So... something’s off?
Everyone paused for a moment, then raised their brows. "What’s off?"
"The way this guy came here is very off."
Zhao Yi said something that sounded completely inexplicable.
He felt that Liu Jinshui was very off, mainly because... why were this guy’s methods so similar to Liu Mingbo’s!?
One dragged a corpse to court to file a complaint.
The other took a corpse out of the funeral home, also to file a case at court.
Just a coincidence?
Honestly, based on his understanding of a certain someone’s temperament, Zhao Yi was more than extremely suspicious of that person, all the way until...
"Judge Wang, how about... we first find someone to assign a public prosecutor to Liu Jinshui and see what happens?"
Zhao Yi probed cautiously.
"Public prosecutor?"
"We... haven’t even确定 the case’s jurisdiction yet." Wang Yao and the others hesitated.
"No, I don’t mean really assign one, just casually mention it to test him!" Zhao Yi said.
Hearing this, although Wang Yao and the others didn’t understand what was going on, they still nodded. After all, there was no harm in trying.
Wang Yao quietly gave a few people some instructions.
They immediately headed toward the lounge where Liu Jinshui was.
Not long after, those people came back, wearing very odd expressions.
"What happened?" Wang Yao frowned.
"Uh... he said... he doesn’t want a prosecutor, he wants a lawyer." The man hesitated.
A lawyer!?
Everyone was stunned. He was passing up the most elite legal representatives in the country and insisting on choosing a mere lawyer?
If he lost the case, wouldn’t this whole trip to Upper City be for nothing!?
Zhao Yi’s heart skipped a beat, and he asked:
"Which lawyer!?"
The man thought for a moment, then said:
"Seems like... a lawyer called Xu Liang? I think that’s the name."
The moment his voice fell.
Everyone in the room who understood the situation instantly fell silent; Zhao Yi was one of them.
Zhao Yi’s face went blank, his features stiff.
To be honest, even before the name came up, the moment he heard that Liu Jinshui wanted a lawyer... he was already one hundred percent sure of a certain person.
No wonder. No wonder Liu Jinshui skipped the province and came straight to the Supreme Court in Upper City...
No wonder the guy didn’t know much, yet somehow knew he had to produce the police’s Notice of Non-acceptance and the court’s receipt to get a case filed in Upper City.
All those layers of doubt...
Instantly got answered in front of those two words.
"Has to be that bastard’s doing!"
Zhao Yi’s teeth itched with anger, but he also secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
First of all, Liu Jinshui is from Zhengyang City in Nanshan Province. If the case is handled by where the crime occurred, it has nothing to do with Qingshi City in Lanshan Province!
Second, Xu Liang never takes on a case he’s not confident about. If he’s coming to Upper City to file, he most likely has evidence strong enough to get it registered here!
And a case in Upper City... what does that have to do with a judge from a High Court in some province!?
It’s just that...
"Listening to you, Judge Zhao, you seem to know this Xu Liang quite well..."
In a daze, the person in the main seat spoke with a squinting smile.
He of course knew who Xu Liang was; given the cases of the past year, it’d be hard not to!
It’s just... this guy here seemed to know him even better!
Zhao Yi had been wondering why he said that, until the next sentence came...
"Judge Zhao."
"Interested in being seconded to Upper City for some ’learning’?"
...
...
The next day.
June 17.
Upper City, inside a siheyuan courtyard house.
"Sigh, Teacher, I gotta say it, your living conditions are really awful!"
"Other people’s teachers live in big flats, in luxury communities. And you? You live in a courtyard house. I’m scared the bathroom’s going to be a dry pit latrine every time I go."
"And it looks so darn rustic. Living in a place like this, do you think it matches my public image out there?"
Six in the morning.
At a breakfast table in the yard, Xu Liang stared very discontentedly at Wu Chengjun sitting across from him.
Su Yu was also at the table. Hearing this, her expression turned quite strange.
"Do you have any idea how much this will hurt your student’s reputation!?"
"I risked my life to earn this reputation, Teacher. How can you not cherish it? I finally make a trip to Upper City, and this is where I’m staying!?"
"Teacher, have you even tried to improve your life these past years!?"
Xu Liang scolded the old man while eating the breakfast Wu Chengjun had bought.
He’d arrived in Upper City yesterday and immediately moved into Wu Chengjun’s siheyuan, and hadn’t contacted Liu Jinshui at all.
As if the two didn’t know each other at all, and the whole filing at the Supreme Court in Upper City had nothing to do with him—he was just here to visit Wu Chengjun!
As for Wu Chengjun...
Hearing his student’s reproach, his face indeed showed a hint of shame.
He’d been living in this courtyard house decades ago.
Decades later, he was still living in a courtyard house.
After being called out by Xu Liang like this... he suddenly felt he hadn’t made a single inch of progress in all these years!
Thinking of this, Wu Chengjun gritted his teeth and said:
"Sigh, your teacher is already working on it. This year I’ll grit my teeth and take the lead on a few more projects."
He was only fifty, after all.
As long as he didn’t embarrass his student, he was willing to do anything!
Hearing this, Xu Liang’s face showed relief. "Teacher, you’ve grown up."
Su Yu: ...
To be honest, this meal was very hard for Su Yu to swallow. She kept wanting to say something but couldn’t, the words stuck in her throat.
Until...
"Knock, knock, knock~"
The gate of the courtyard house was knocked on.
Xu Liang got up, walked to the front door, and pulled it open.
No one was at the door.
He looked left and right, then reached into the mailbox; his hand immediately brushed against a rough sheet of paper.
This is...
"Should be the morning paper I subscribed to." Wu Chengjun said from the dining table.
Xu Liang nodded, too lazy to read the paper, and handed it straight over to the other man.
Wu Chengjun stopped eating, wiped his hands, and unfolded the folded newspaper, speaking solemnly as he did:
"Yesterday the Supreme Court held a press conference about the human experimentation case in Qingshi City."
"Going by the timing, today’s paper should be covering that."
He still cared a lot about this matter.
After all, what Han Chengguang did was practically unforgivable by heaven and earth!
Except...
The Eastern Country’s legal provisions on human experimentation might actually end up being circumvented by the guy.
After all, improving the law requires countless cases as precedent, and human experimentation cases are extremely rare; there’s a high chance the other side found a loophole to get around it and escape legal judgment!
The press conference was probably going to reveal some of this.
Except...
[A Severed Head Appears at the Supreme Court! A giant "Injustice" that strikes straight at the heart!]
A... severed head?
The human experimentation case is tied to a severed head now? He’d never heard that before...
Wu Chengjun’s eyes turned a bit blank. He scanned the page and found only a handful of people had reported anything about the Medical Security Bureau; if not for that, he’d almost have thought the press conference never happened!
What replaced it was...
[Breaking! A sky-defying case at the Upper City Supreme Court—someone actually brought a head to court in public to file a case!]
[Upper City sees a 2004 Hanhai City case resurface—crossing hundreds of kilometers, carrying a corpse into the Supreme Court, with countless people witnessing his filing process!]
[Sensational stunt or a real miscarriage of justice? Tune in to today’s...]
[Reconstructing the entire incident at the Supreme Court!!!]
[...]
Report after report appeared.
The puzzled furrow on Wu Chengjun’s brow relaxed.
Then tightened again, finally knotting into one solid lump, until...
"B-bringing a head to file a case!?"
Wu Chengjun’s hand trembled; on that face of his which, apart from Xu Liang, had been almost unchanged for ten thousand years, there was actually a flicker of shock.
What did the paper say?
Someone went to file a case carrying a head!!!
And he went to the Supreme Court, in front of dozens of reporters at that!
The lines were short, but somehow managed to fill people with horror and awe. His emotions were surging like a stormy sea, unable to settle for a long time.
Until...
"No, he went alone?"
Wu Chengjun suddenly noticed a suspicious point, frowned again, and looked back at the newspaper, scrutinizing the photos.
The photos clearly showed only Liu Jinshui alone.
And for something this crazy...
"You’d need more than one person constantly reinforcing that idea; judged purely as an individual... he wouldn’t end up choosing this path."
Wu Chengjun muttered.
That was indeed the case.
In his last life, for a similar case, the ones who went to Upper City weren’t just the victim’s mother, but the whole family!
Having more people doesn’t necessarily keep thinking rational; it can actually make things even crazier!
But Liu Jinshui...
"How come he went alone?" Wu Chengjun was a little confused.
Su Yu was feeling restless, like sitting on a bed of needles.
Xu Liang calmly ate his breakfast and said:
"No idea, maybe he’s just got guts."
He really knew nothing about this case.
None of it had anything to do with him!
Of course, people like Wang Yao might come looking to hold someone responsible, but... if they had something to say, they could talk to his evidence first!
The way Zhengyang City had behaved was enough to divert the anger away from him and onto Zhengyang City.
At the same time... Xu Liang had always felt this case wasn’t simple.
Maybe what Zhu Haoyi wanted in that mine-grab wasn’t the mineral itself!
But as for the details—what exactly he wanted that rare earth mine for... that Xu Liang didn’t know.
"Guts, huh..." Wu Chengjun muttered.
He still felt the guy probably had accomplices, but he had no idea where they were or what they were doing.
Until...
"Beep-beep-beep~"
A piercing ringtone rang out.
Wu Chengjun snapped back to himself, instinctively picked up the phone on the table and answered. As soon as he spoke, a familiar voice came through.
"Hello?"
This was... Wang Yao’s voice.
Wu Chengjun paused, instinctively about to ask about the case, but the other man spoke first:
"Is your student there with you?"
Student?
Which student?
Before he could ask, Wang Yao continued:
"That prized student of yours, your closed-door disciple!!!"
Only this time, Wu Chengjun seemed to hear... clenched teeth!?
"Yeah, Xu is here with me. What do you want with him?" Wu Chengjun asked, puzzled.
"Put him on the phone!" Wang Yao said.
How odd.
Wu Chengjun handed the phone to Xu Liang.
"Hello?" Xu Liang said flatly.
As soon as the word left his mouth, a voice came blasting out of the speaker.
"So it’s you, huh!?"
Wang Yao spoke through gritted teeth, the words squeezed out like they were coming from between his molars; his mood was clearly anything but good.
"I’m Xu Liang, what’s going on?" Xu Liang asked, confused.
"Drop the act!"
"What act? Judge Wang, I have no idea what you’re talking about."
Hearing that, Wang Yao almost laughed from sheer anger.
He glanced around his desk at over a dozen judges with ugly expressions, and at his superior, then took a deep breath, forcing a twisted smile and using the warmest tone he could muster.
Never mind anything else for now.
Get this brat to the Supreme Court first, then they’d talk!
He heard Wang Yao say gently:
"Xu, right? Got time to come over to the Supreme Court for a bit?"
Xu Liang raised an eyebrow.
Nope, that’s killing intent!
