Chapter 1314 — The Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell

This sudden turn of events left Qiu Lingshan stunned — how did this boxer know her?

And no sooner had the green-masked boxer shouted than the white-masked boxer facing him began to shout as well: "What? The police are here? Thank heaven! Save me too, I regret it, I don't want to fight, I don't want the money, I want my life!"

"You two keep watch on the spectator seats and call the Second Squad in to search the arena for the organizers. As for these two boxers, I'll go and have a look myself!" The voice of the green-masked boxer, the first to cry for help, sounded strangely familiar to Qiu Lingshan.

"Yes, Captain Song!" Liu Wangli answered with a nod. During the earlier case analysis, everyone's opinion had already converged: the underground fight ring used illegal means — luring, abducting, kidnapping — to find men to fight, so the two boxers on the stage had to be victims as well, not dangerous, and he had no worry that Qiu Lingshan would come to any harm going alone.

Besides, Qiu Lingshan was a formidable fighter at the very peak of the late Yellow Rank; there was nothing for her to fear.

Qiu Lingshan stepped forward and, looking at the two boxers on the stage, asked, "Who might you two be? Why are you fighting here?"

"Officer Song, it's me!" The green-masked boxer tore the mask from his head and revealed his true face — An Jianwen! His face was a mask of misery, tears on the verge of spilling: "It's me, An Jianwen!"

"An Jianwen? How is it you? How did you end up here?" An Jianwen was hardly a stranger to Qiu Lingshan — he had been one of the victims of the kidney-harvesting ring earlier. Only, how had he been dragged off to fight again? How wretched could one man's fate be?

"I went to the hospital to have my kidney looked at, and a man told me he knew a folk healer of rare skill who could cure my kidney deficiency and restore my manly vigor — so I came..." An Jianwen said, his face twisted with pain. "But once I got here I found I had been deceived. They jabbed me with a shot of stimulant and put me up on the stage to fight, and told me that if I didn't want to die I had to fight for my life, or I would simply be beaten to death by my opponent... Mother of god, I was frightened out of my wits!"

"..." Qiu Lingshan looked at An Jianwen with a touch of pity. What rotten luck this young man had — going in for a kidney check and getting himself kidnapped? Only, all that talk of kidney deficiency and manly vigor made her face darken.

"All right, it's over now. Come with me to the station later and give a statement." Qiu Lingshan had no doubt of An Jianwen's words; after all, he was a fighter, standing there on the stage, and as far as she knew, a rich young master like An Jianwen would not climb onto a fight stage for any sum of money — it was nothing short of wagering his life.

"And me, officer? I was tricked here as well. Some little blond punk told me I'd be paid two hundred thousand just to go up and give a bodybuilding demonstration, but it turned out to be fighting. I won't fight another round; one more and my old life is gone..." The speaker was the white-masked man — in truth, none other than Dr. Yin!

He and An Jianwen had gone straight up onto the stage to replace the two boxers who had been fighting before, and because the police burst into the underground arena the instant they stepped up, the audience never noticed that the men on the stage had changed — nor was their attention on any such thing, each of them hard-pressed to save his own skin, with no thought to spare for studying who stood on the platform.

And in any case, everyone on the stage wore a mask, and at such a distance no one could possibly make out whether the fighters had been swapped.

It was by precisely this means that An Jianwen and Dr. Yin, each with a shot of stimulant in him, mounted the stage and played out a fine show of the golden cicada shedding its shell.

"Fine, you will come along to the station later and give a statement too!" Qiu Lingshan said with a nod.

At her words, An Jianwen and Dr. Yin breathed a sigh of relief at the same time. Still, Qiu Lingshan was hardly to blame: in the whole underground arena, apart from the dead Boxer Li, only Little Mule knew the identities of An Jianwen and Dr. Yin — and Little Mule would never in a thousand years breathe a word of it.

By this time Little Mule had been brought out without the slightest resistance, his face perfectly calm. This moment had been bound to come sooner or later.

The once-notorious underground arena was utterly wiped out overnight. In the interrogation room Little Mule put up no resistance whatever, confessing every crime he had committed; and as to where the arena's money had gone, he bluntly named an international syndicate — a rival of the Fire Wolf Gang — so he was quite content to seize the chance to make a little trouble for them.

As for the particulars, of course, the Fire Wolf Gang had long since arranged everything; not a flaw could be found in the bank records either. For a criminal syndicate as vast as the Fire Wolf Gang, fabricating such false evidence was simplicity itself, no difficult matter at all.

Therefore, even after the most rigorous investigation by Qiu Lingshan and her people, nothing would ever be traced back to An Jianwen, Dr. Yin, or the Fire Wolf Gang.

The fall of the underground arena had no effect on most people; only those who had once gone there to gamble received punishments of varying severity.

Life went on, but Feng Xiaoxiao grew ever more languid, seeming unable to sleep her fill each day. She no longer wished to go to school, moping about the house and unwilling to go out. In her bedroom she kept the electric heater running, wrapped herself in a thick quilt, and still sneezed without cease.

Wei Zhao, the Eldest Miss, Little Shu, and Tang Yun were all deeply worried to see it — yet there was nothing at all they could do.

The cold yin energy inside Feng Xiaoxiao had grown more and more overbearing, invading her whole body; that was why she felt frozen through and through in such heat.

Knowing that her days were likely numbered, Wei Zhao, the Eldest Miss, Little Shu, and Tang Yun stopped going to school as well, staying in the villa to keep Feng Xiaoxiao company and see her through the final years of her life...

In any case, they had long since finished the high school curriculum and were now in the review stage; with the self-study ability of the Eldest Miss, Little Shu, and Tang Yun, missing school was no problem at all — and since each of the three excelled in her own field, they could make up for one another's weaknesses.

"Xiaoxiao, what are you doing?" Tang Yun asked, watching Feng Xiaoxiao rather curiously as she fiddled with the yarn.

"I want to knit Brother Arrow a sweater," Feng Xiaoxiao said. "I want to leave him something as a keepsake. But it seems I won't hold out that long — I'll surely die before I finish it, so I've decided to knit a scarf instead... only, I'm afraid I won't finish the scarf either..."

"Oh, wonderful — don't worry, I'll knit it together with you," Shen Yushu said.

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