S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 3 Chapter 82

Lucky Murderer 12 – Similar Coincidences

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"What do you think that car is trying to do by following us?" Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao beside him with a smile.

Zhan Zhao held the handle above the car door with one hand, "Maybe it wants to take a picture with your car."

Bai Yutang smiled, "Let's speed up and see if it follows." With that, he stepped on the gas.

Bai Yutang's car has a powerful engine, its speed first-class. With a foot down... on this kind of open road, it immediately pulled away from the car behind.

Zhan Zhao looked at the rearview mirror, "He picked up speed, it shouldn't be a coincidence, right?"

"It's very fast." Bai Yutang deliberately slowed down, wanting to see just who was following them.

They slowed down and the car actually sped up, as if it was chasing them.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao both looked at each other and looked out... and saw a car coming up behind them, driven by a young man in a jacket. Bai Yutang turned his face to look.

"Cat, get down!" Bai Yutang slammed his foot on the brake – he saw the young man holding a pistol in his hand.

Bai Yutang slammed on the breaks, pulling out a gun from his pocket while the car flew past.

Bai Yutang raised his eyebrows slightly, got out of the car and raised his hand to rest his gun… following the car with his eyes.

When that car was about to turn a corner, Bai Yutang fired a shot at the right front tire...

Zhan Zhao opened the door and got out at the same time, and saw that the front tire of the car blew up. The car rushed towards the barrier at once, and because of the speed, the car veered sideways and lost its balance, scraping the guardrail.

Bai Yutang got into the car, "Cat."

Zhan Zhao hurried back, "Will it rush off?"

"It's fine, the guardrail is long enough." Bai Yutang drove and turned on the radio to call the police officers, stopping when he reached the vicinity of the car.

He grabbed Zhan Zhao, who was about to run out, and pinned him to the car seat before he opened the door himself, his gun perched on the door. He turned on the miniature microphone in the car with one hand, and said to the man in the white Honda, "Police, throw out the gun."

A moment later, the man was seen throwing a gun out.

"Open the car door, come out, and let me see your hands." Bai Yutang finished speaking, raised his gun, and waited for him to come out.

After a moment, the man opened the car, but he didn't step out, he fell out.

"Cat, call an ambulance." Bai Yutang hurried over to him

"Don't move."

When he reached the car door, Bai Yutang helped him fix his loose shoulder. The man's mouth was broken at the corner, he was holding his chest with one hand, his ribs probably hit the steering wheel and one broke, and he probably wasn't wearing his seatbelt.

After glancing at the gun on the ground, Bai Yutang couldn't help but frown, "Fake? You're not looking for death in this way, are you? What if I had just shot you in the head?"

The young man gasped, "I didn't... know... you were... a cop."

"It hurts so bad." 

Zhan Zhao also ran over.

"Cat, set up the warning sign in the back and have the vehicles passing be careful." Bai Yutang flipped open the wallet in the man's pocket and took the ID card out, "Lian Qianyi?!"

Bai Yutang was startled and asked the man on the ground, "Are you Lian Qianyi? Lian Tongli's son?"

“En." Lian Qianyi nodded and coughed.

Zhan Zhao took out a small warning sign from the trunk and placed it ten metres back, then quickly ran back and was also surprised to see Lian Qianyi's ID card.

At this time, the police car and ambulance also came. Bai Yutang had someone tow Lian Qianyi's car back, while he and Zhan Zhao followed the ambulance to the hospital.

Zhan Zhao sat in the car and looked at a book that he had just taken from the back seat of Lian Qianyi's car.

"What does this Lian Qianyi mean?" Bai Yutang was a bit puzzled, "Is he the one who called?"

"I don't think so." Zhan Zhao said, "It's impossible for someone who would call to give us a heads up to not even know who we are." He said, shaking the book in his hand, "It's almost all torn up, my new book, 《The Hidden Personality》."

Bai Yutang picked up the corner of his mouth, "Well… he is a fan of yours, Dr. Zhan, maybe he even went to your class."

"It's quite possible, oh!" Zhan Zhao flipped to one of the pages, "There's a corner folded here with a sentence highlighted."

Saying that, Zhan Zhao read:

"Rebellion, the best method teenagers use to arm themselves, is also a resistance to parental dictatorship and a burden for being ignored. Parents will focus too much on his appearance and quirks, while ignoring those parts of him that are normal and are undergoing a qualitative change. If you want to change a child who is different, don't start with his otherness, but rather explore what the real change is that he is masking with superficial illusionary silence."

Zhan Zhao finished reading and raised an eyebrow.

The corners of Bai Yutang's mouth twitched, "You're still insisting on writing in non-Chinese, huh?"

Zhan Zhao gave him a blank look, "Didn't I tell you that I've recently been involved in a non-mainstream juvenile research project and a juvenile delinquent rescue project? In fact, the words 'non-mainstream' and ‘rescue' are inherently leading and discriminatory. ‘Non-mainstream' isolates the child from normalcy and doesn't leave a way back. 'Rescue' presumes that his past is completely denied and his future is not expected by anyone, and that everyone is wanting him to change. Entering with this kind of emotion, there is absolutely no way a small child will accept you. They are nervous and sensitive little hedgehogs."

Bai Yutang found this amusing and asked, "So what do you do?"

"I asked Zhao Hu, Bai Chi, Ma Han, and Lu Fang to participate in supplementary therapy, you know that right?" Zhan Zhao smiled, "I gave them a simulated diverse family background."

"Seems like a lot of fun."

"That's right, I had Zhao Hu pretend to be a prison inmate, a prisoner who had transitioned over from being a juvenile and was about to be released from prison. Zhao Hu's own sense of righteousness and the gangsterism he developed from his years of living undercover quickly allowed him to blend in with the juvenile inmates." Zhan Zhao said, "I used Zhao Hu as the centrepiece and showed his life to the children. A very paternalistic big brother, played by Ma Han. An incompetent and cowardly dad, played by Lu Fang in a friendly role. A nerdy younger brother who gets all the pampering and is better than them, played by Xiao Bai Chi."

The corner of Bai Yutang's mouth twitched, "It's pretty dogged.” (Angel: Dogged is used when talking about common TV plots.)

"But there's a total conflict!" Zhan Zhao closed the book, "The world feels that lost teenagers need to be cared for, but if you think someone has a problem, they won't feel they do, so instead of probing their heart, you should let them probe yours. When you are trying to enlighten someone who is troubled, you often use your own example at the same time, which is another process of self-opening. In opening up to each other, find some common ground... this common ground is the basis of their friendship."

"Is that the proverbial brother in distress?" Bai Yutang still has a good ability to summarise, "Good method."

"So Zhao Hu reached out to most of the teenagers and pried into many of their heartfelt secrets so that I could prescribe the right medicine. "

"How do you prescribe the right medicine?" Bai Yutang wondered.

“For vulnerable and sensitive little hedgehogs, make him think you're a god and he'll worship you, he'll trust you if you can show him the solution to his problems. A person who trusts you is your friend. A friend is someone you can just talk to – Hey! My friend, as a normal person, run away from your past, it's no big deal, there are more important things in this world. So... there's bound to be a shift."

“En," Bai Yutang nodded, "a very special approach indeed."

"Then I had Zhao Hu and the others act out a few episodes where Bai Chi was bullied and Zhao Hu stood up for him as the older brother. After Zhao Hu and his older brother, Ma Han, trusted each other, his older brother was willing to throw away his family's money to get him out. His father waited all night at the detention centre just to see him." Zhan Zhao said with a shrug, "Humans are emotional creatures, and it's more useful to move a person than to educate them."

"The result has been an unprecedented success." Bai Yutang laughed, "Once again, Dr. Zhan's name has been associated with a godly man."

"That's right." Zhan Zhao nodded once, "Many thanks for the compliment."

Bai Yutang was curious again, "So is there anyone who never changed from the beginning to the end?"

"Of course there is."

"What about those people?"

Zhan Zhao smiled, "Not everyone in this world needs to be saved. Generally speaking, if more than fifty percent of a person cannot be saved, then I would prefer to save those who might be harmed by them in the future. Anyone who would change their ways would not need the words punishment and despair."

Bai Yutang naturally agreed with Zhan Zhao, "So what can be seen by Lian Qianyi underlining this paragraph?"

"Well... I think Lian Qianyi might be redeeming himself." Zhan Zhao tapped his fingertips on his chin, "It's strange for someone of his age to be so keen on self-salvation."

"Indeed." Bai Yutang also did not understand.

Zhan Zhao took out his phone to call Jiang Ping, "Jiang Ping, help me check if Lian Qianyi has ever changed his name."

Jiang Ping looked it up and was surprised, "Yes! His original name was Lian Qianyi." (Angel: The name used before was 廉浅义, and this one is 廉浅易, both have the same pinyin, but the second one had the meaning of 'cheap and easy'.)

"Oh?" Zhan Zhao turned his face and asked Bai Yutang, "Are you interested in hearing my analysis of the different mindset of Lian Tongli when he named the two brothers?"

Bai Yutang looked at the sky and rolled his eyes, "Cat... focus!"

Before Zhan Zhao could say anything, Jiang Ping's voice came from the other end of the phone, "Hey! Dr. Zhan, Lian Qianyi was in a mental hospital until he was sixteen! It says that he has delusions of grandeur and that he is not a modern man but an ancient man."

Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang froze.

Bai Yutang took a long time before saying, "He..."

"That would explain why Lian Tongli wanted him back so badly." Zhan Zhao found the entry point and got a little excited, "Lian Qianyi might really have intergenerational genetic memories."

"Intergenerational..." Bai Yutang's eyes lit up, "The person who he inherited it from is bound to be..."

Zhan Zhao shook his head in admiration, "The real Boss Lian! Even his father's memories may have been passed on to him."

"All the things he did back then, if the son has personally experienced them..." Bai Yutang shook his head, "It really gives you goosebumps."

"Ah Jiang Ping, who was the attending physician for Lian Qianyi back then?" Zhan Zhao then asked.

"Oh, it was a doctor called Fan Guohua."

Zhan Zhao frowned and asked Bai Yutang, "Ah Mao’s attending physician, Old Fan, is also surnamed Fan, could there be some sort of coincidence involved?"

Bai Yutang didn't say anything, thinking it was possible.

"Is that person still around now?" Zhan Zhao asked afterwards.

Jiang Ping called the hospital to ask about it, and checked again...

"He happened to die in a car accident when Lian Qianyi was discharged from the hospital." Jiang Ping tsked twice, "I got his picture, should l send it to you?"

"OK~" Zhan Zhao waited, and at this time, the car also stopped at the entrance of the hospital.

The photo soon came through and it was an old man in his fifties.

Zhan Zhao looked left and right and thought that the facial features did not resemble that old man Fan, so it should not be the same person... Coincidence?!

"Just go ask Lian Qianyi." Bai Yutang got out of the car and stepped into the hospital with Zhan Zhao.

After entering the elevator, Zhan Zhao made an aiming motion, imitating the motion of Bai Yutang just now when he put his hands on the gun and shot the car tire, "Handsome!"

Bai Yutang laughed, then leaned over and whispered, "Cat, you can hit it too."

"Really?"

"Yes." Bai Yutang nodded, "My tires."

......

Zhan Zhao lifted his leg to kick Bai Yutang and even did a mock flying kick, but his ankle collapsed... ouch.

"Cat..." Bai Yutang rushed to help.

"Oops, twisted, twisted."

“Stupid, ah you, three-legged cat!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: May 10, 2022 by Angel