Qiming Chapter 53

Chapter 53

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"You can open your eyes now," she repeated once more. But after waiting for nearly a minute, Jiang Hai showed no reaction, no change in expression. Even the EEG beside him continued its previous pattern, showing no fluctuation.

His eyes remained tightly shut, unable to hear her words.

"Ai, let's just wait for the surgery," Lin Xiangrong consoled herself regretfully. She pressed her slightly stiff calf, stood up, packed the things she had brought, and prepared to leave the hospital with her handbag.

While she was checking the materials left from the transfer procedures in her handbag, she suddenly heard a cold, familiar voice call out to her from behind.

She turned around to see Xu Chengyue standing at the ward door, one hand holding the door handle. He wore a dark shirt under a khaki trench coat and stared at her coldly.

"Ms Lin, I need you to come with me."

"What is it?"

"This morning, Jiang Quan took nearly a hundred sleeping pills in his apartment," he said impassively. "The apartment manager noticed something was wrong, called the police, and he was taken to the hospital."

"But don't worry, the rescue was timely, and he is now out of danger."

She was stunned for a moment, her eyelids drooping. Staring at her own faint reflection on the floor, she murmured, "What a foolish child."

Then she nodded, took a difficult step forward, and followed him into the elevator.

Xu Chengyue had been teaching a class when he received the news from Gu Yunfeng about Jiang Quan's suicide attempt. It was the start of the new term, and he had many classes, but he still took a taxi immediately to Ruihe Hospital. Gu Yunfeng had said over the phone that they would meet at the hospital entrance, but after waiting for twenty minutes with no sign of him, Xu Chengyue guessed he was stuck in traffic.

—————

In the elevator of the inpatient department, you could encounter patients from various departments.

A middle-aged man with both legs in casts sitting in a wheelchair, a young girl with a bandaged neck who seemed to have recently undergone thyroid surgery, and a weary-looking man in the corner holding a little boy.

In just a few short minutes, one could see all kinds of misfortune and luck.

Xu Chengyue immediately noticed the smooth head of the little boy. The man holding him was likely his father, though he looked old enough to be his grandfather. The boy seemed only five or six years old, wearing a blue and white hospital gown, touching his head with a puzzled expression as he asked where his hair had gone.

Then his father touched his face and, smiling, said that the summer heat made the hair fall out, but it would grow back in winter. The boy's eyes were bright, and he gratefully accepted his father's lie, then lay on his father's shoulder, eyes wide open, observing everyone in the elevator.

After about half a minute, the elevator reached the first floor. The boy's gaze finally rested on Xu Chengyue. His father went to the queue to pay the bill, leaving the child standing alone in the bustling crowd. The boy tiptoed and tugged lightly on the waist belt of Xu Chengyue's trench coat, blushing as he asked, "Uncle, are you sick too?"

His clear eyes gazed at the world, his smooth head and innocent face inexplicably casting a sense of despair over the surrounding crowd.

Xu Chengyue halted, feeling a bit at a loss. Beside him, Lin Xiangrong squatted down, holding the boy's soft hand, and said, "Uncle is here to visit a friend."

"And what about Auntie? Is Auntie that friend?" the boy asked.

"Yes," she replied with a smile, patting the boy's head. "Listen to your father, and by winter, your hair will grow back."

"The doctor said I'm sick and won't get better," the boy said as he sat on a chair in the lobby, holding onto Xu Chengyue, preventing them from leaving.

"Of course you'll get better," Lin Xiangrong reassured him, squatting down and looking at him with a gentle smile. "It's just that the blood in your body is sick. Once you get healthy blood, you'll be fine."

"Don't worry, you're still so young, you'll get better."

"But I overheard the doctor saying that neither Mom or Dad can donate bone marrow to me. What is bone marrow?"

"That's called hematopoietic stem cells," Lin Xiangrong explained naturally. She glanced back at Xu Chengyue, who stood tall in the sunlight, and continued her heartfelt explanation to the boy.

The smell of disinfectant lingered in the air, and the registration and payment window had a long queue. In the corner, there were faint sounds of crying.

For some reason, Xu Chengyue felt that when Lin Xiangrong turned to look at him, she seemed to be deliberately trying to catch his attention.

"That's called hematopoietic stem cells, your life will be closely connected to another person's."

Closely connected.

That phrase felt like a spell, making the world gradually shift.

Standing in the bustling crowd, Xu Chengyue suddenly thought of the drop of blood at the crime scene that didn't belong there. It was clearly the murderer's but matched Lin Xiangrong's blood exactly.

In the sunlight, Lin Xiangrong's skin was very fair, and the blue-green veins on her wrists, the backs of her hands, and the insides of her arms were clearly visible. As she spoke, she occasionally glanced at him with a smile.

"What's wrong, Professor Xu?" It took about ten minutes for him to snap out of his enormous shock. When he came to, he realised the little boy had been taken away by his father. Lin Xiangrong waved her hand in front of him, calmly asking where they were heading next.

Where were they supposed to go? Oh, they were supposed to visit Jiang Quan. At this moment, he even forgot his original purpose. Every pore was trembling, every brain cell about to explode, with veins bulging and nerves entangling, finally unravelling the complex mystery.

"Have you... donated hematopoietic stem cells before?"

—————

Xu Chengyue ran all the way back to the team. He pushed open the office door, his shirt soaked with sweat, leaning his arm against the wall, bending over, and taking deep breaths.

"What's got you in such a hurry? Have you eaten?" Gu Yunfeng asked, holding a lunch box. He picked up a bite of green pepper and shredded potatoes, thought for a moment, and then stuffed it into Xu Chengyue's mouth, patting a chair for him to sit down.

"No, I haven't eaten."

"I figured," Gu Yunfeng said, handing him a lunch box. Xu Chengyue opened it, took one look, closed it in disdain, and placed it back in front of Gu Yunfeng.

"Ai, you can't be so picky, I'm not cooking dinner tonight."

Hearing this, Xu Chengyue reluctantly took back the lunch box, opened a box of fish-flavoured eggplant, and started eating with difficulty. "I know why things turned out this way."

"Huh? Know what?" Gu Yunfeng was baffled by his incoherent speech. "Are you talking about that drop of blood?"

Gu Yunfeng had finished the food in his disposable lunch box. He had visited the local police station responsible for the area where the Jiang family lived that morning and discovered that Lin Xiangrong had reported domestic violence by Jiang Yang two months ago.

That was her most recent report. He saw Lin Xiangrong's detailed account in the record. On that day, Jiang Yang got drunk and, without any reason, grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head against the bathroom's glass door. She struggled desperately, blocking with her arm to avoid a head injury. The bathroom door ended up with several cracks, and Jiang Yang continued to grab nearby objects to beat her, causing soft tissue injuries all over her body and breaking one of her ribs. He also saw a medical appraisal attached, which classified her injuries as minor, enough to warrant a criminal case.

For some reason, Lin Xiangrong later withdrew the case and went abroad to rest for over a month, only returning after the incident.

Regardless of who the killer was, their biggest problem now was the blood found at the crime scene, which linked Lin Xiangrong to the crime.

"You know the origin of that blood?"

"Yes." Xu Chengyue sat at his desk, finishing the lunch box rapidly. He calmed himself and took the water Gu Yunfeng handed him, looking directly into his warm eyes.

"I suspect Lin Xiangrong donated hematopoietic stem cells to a leukaemia patient."

He continued, "Although she didn't admit it when I asked her."

"Huh?" Gu Yunfeng sat on the desk, straightening his back and widening his eyes, unable to react immediately. "What do you mean?"

"Years ago, Lin Xiangrong provided a sample to the China Marrow Donor Program. I suspect she donated her hematopoietic stem cells to a leukaemia patient."

After a pause, Xu Chengyue added, "This person now shares her blood. The blood at the scene isn't Lin Xiangrong's but belongs to someone hiding in the shadows."

"We need to check if her hematopoietic stem cells are in the China Marrow Donor Program. If they are, we need to see if there was a successful match and transplant."

Gu Yunfeng was silent for a long time, propping his chin as he sorted through the complex relationship. Suddenly, he recalled that Lin Xiangrong had mentioned this to him a few days ago.

She had said–

In the end, my contribution to blood diseases was just registering my information in the China Marrow Donor Program.

Unfortunately, he had completely overlooked this.

Gu Yunfeng looked out at the high-rise buildings, shaking his head in self-reproach. He then called the China Marrow Donor Program, detailing their request once they agreed to cooperate.

"Fourteen years ago, a child who successfully matched with Lin Xiangrong received a bone marrow transplant. The child was fourteen at the time, suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia, and had been holding on with chemotherapy for almost a year before finding a match," the staff on the other end of the line said.

"We don't know what happened to the child afterwards. You can contact the hospital from back then, they should have archived medical records."

"What's his name?" Gu Yunfeng asked, holding the phone between his ear and shoulder, a notebook in his left hand and a pen in his right.

"Let me check..." After about ten seconds, the staff member replied, "Wang Kun. That's quite a common name, do you need his ID number?"

– Five minutes later

"Isn't this the doctor from Ruihe Hospital?" Gu Yunfeng slapped the table, pointing at the registered information on the screen. The young man in the photo had pale, bloodless skin and a thin, shy smile, instantly recognisable.

"Call Ruihe Hospital."

Wen Xin dialled the hospital's number, turned around after a few seconds, and looked at him with a complicated expression. "The hospital said Dr. Wang submitted his resignation yesterday and already left today."

—————

The author has something to say:

Why does he resign and run away every time he finds the murderer? Can't he just let Captain Gu catch him?

‿︵‿︵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: August 2, 2024 by Angel

Edited: October 3, 2024 by Angel