Volume 1, Chapter 376 – Doubts

Shi Lan quickly figured out where those two women had come from.

That earlier human trafficking case had already been closed. Of the two in front of her, one had been sentenced to ten years, the other to fifteen.

As for the one who kept staring at Shi Lan, one of the two people who had died before had been her husband.

Looking at the woman’s hate-filled gaze, Shi Lan suddenly smiled. She walked over to the barred window by the door, rose onto her toes to glance at the duty room in the distance, and said softly,

“Teach them the rules.”

Human traffickers were rats everyone wanted to beat, no matter where they were. Even in a prison packed with every kind of criminal, they were just as unwelcome.

Song Run and two of the other old cellmates stood up, shoved the two newcomers into the corner, and began their “boot camp.”

“Squat against the wall!”

…

During the daily exercise period, Shi Lan saw the man with the number 7532 again.

His hands and feet were still shackled, and his wrists and ankles were covered in the thick, coarse calluses the restraints had rubbed raw.

He simply stood there, perfectly still, watching her with calm eyes.

Shi Lan walked up to the wire fence. Looking at the man before her, whose aura was like that of a wolf, she suddenly felt a little puzzled.

“What are you looking at?”

The man did not reply. His deep gaze seemed to pass right through Shi Lan’s body and look into the empty space behind her.

The blazing sun in the sky was dazzling beyond measure. He tilted his head up, opened his eyes slightly wider, and his cracked lips moved, releasing a low murmur like sleep-talk.

“What?”

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His voice was too low, and there was a corridor between them. Shi Lan could not hear a thing.

A prison guard not far away took two steps forward, though he did not go too close to the man. From a distance, he shouted to Shi Lan,

“What did he just say?”

Shi Lan shook her head and slowly stepped back.

Not long after the exercise period ended, a guard came to the cell to ask about 7532, but Shi Lan truly had not heard anything at all.

After that little incident, the guards’ reaction alone was enough to show how sensitive 7532’s identity was. He was clearly tied to something major.

…

In the dim cell, Shi Lan braced herself on her arms, back straight. As her body rose and fell, sweat dripped from her hair, soaking through her prison uniform and wetting the floor.

73…

85…

100…

After silently counting to one hundred, Shi Lan stood up, stretched her upper body, then turned and grabbed the upper bunk’s rail to do pull-ups.

She did not have to do labor. All that overflowing energy could not stay bottled up inside her forever; she had to find some outlet for it.

Otherwise, this place could drive a person mad.

And for some reason, that feeling of her strength increasing bit by bit was strangely addictive.

“Haa…”

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The taut power in her back made Shi Lan unconsciously slow and deepen her breathing. Beneath the thin prison uniform, gleaming sweat rolled down from her neck, slid across the faintly visible lines of her abdomen, and soaked into her waistband.

“Hh…”

After finishing her daily workout, Shi Lan could not help gasping for breath. The cold, damp prison uniform clung tightly to her skin, sticky and uncomfortable.

A gust of frigid wind blew in through the window, making her shiver. Only after changing out of her clothes did she feel much better.

The weather was getting colder and colder now. In the blink of an eye, deep winter was almost here.

…

As the year-end drew near, Qi Pingxia seemed to become especially busy. By the time the New Year was almost upon them, Shi Lan had not seen her for nearly two months.

She tried asking the guards for news, but learned very little. At the end of the year, all sorts of monsters and demons always seemed to crawl out.

The two newcomers in the cell had been dealt with for several months now. On the surface, they had grown much more obedient, but the resentment in their eyes had only deepened.

Shi Lan could not be bothered to care. In five more months, she would be released. She did not want any more unnecessary trouble.

There was obviously no need to extend her sentence over a couple of pieces of trash.

On New Year’s Eve, the prison served dumplings for dinner. There was even an event held between the men’s and women’s blocks, so it counted as celebrating the holiday, with a touch of festivity to it.

During the New Year period, even the prison relaxed its management somewhat, and exercise time was extended quite a bit.

Shi Lan had more time to bask in the sun. Compared with the dark, damp, freezing cell, she liked more and more the feeling of sunlight shining on her body. It let her taste a little of what freedom felt like.

The longer she stayed here, the more hidden things Shi Lan came to know.

Because she was young, some of the guards would come chat with her when they had nothing to do, talking through that iron door about anything and everything under the sun.

By sounding them out bit by bit, she also learned several different rumors about 7532.

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No one knew exactly what crime he had been sentenced for.

Some said he knew martial arts, and because of certain circumstances, he had killed someone by accident. They said he had once taken down dozens of fully armed special police officers head-on before going on the run. If he had not turned himself in, no one would have been able to catch him.

Other rumors claimed he was a notorious master thief, and that there was a fortune in stolen assets hidden behind his silence, one that had not yet been pried out of him.

In some versions of the story, 7532 even had a military background.

In short, it was a complicated tale.

Of course, most of it was only rumor, and whether any of it was true still remained to be seen.

The only thing that could be confirmed was that he had been transferred out of the highest-level prison in Yanjing. He was the worst kind of major offender among major offenders, and nothing could be allowed to happen to him.

As for why he had been transferred from Yanjing to an ordinary prison like this, no one knew.

After arriving here, he had not spoken a single word, which was why the guards had reacted so strongly last time.

…

…

Shi Lan was eating dinner when she learned of Qi Pingxia’s death.

She watched the television host talking nonstop, but a buzzing kept ringing in her ears, and she could not clearly make out what was being said.

All she could really catch were the words “died in the line of duty,” which gave rise to a surreal sense of absurdity in her heart.

After all, this was someone she had seen only a short while ago.

Suddenly, a violent headache hit Shi Lan. It felt as if her brain were being churned into mush by an invisible hand, and a thin sheen of cold sweat broke out across her forehead.

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“What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well somewhere?”

Seeing that something was wrong with Shi Lan’s complexion, Song Run looked worried. She did not know Qi Pingxia and only thought Shi Lan felt unwell.

“Do you want to go to the infirmary?”

As Shi Lan’s face grew paler and paler, Song Run stood up, ready to call a guard.

“No need…”

The splitting pain in her head eased slightly, and Shi Lan, deathly pale, let out a breath. What she had just felt was as if some string deep in her mind had nearly snapped.

“Really no need?” Song Run asked hesitantly.

Tch—

Before Shi Lan could answer, a snicker sounded from not far away.

She turned to look. It was the two human traffickers from the same cell. The pair clearly knew Qi Pingxia, and there was unconcealable delight hidden in their expressions.

By then Shi Lan’s mood had already returned to its usual calm, but a question still rose uncontrollably in her mind.

Why wasn’t it this kind of trash that had died?

…

After dinner ended, all the prisoners returned to their cells.

Shi Lan entered last. Hearing the cell door lock behind her, she slowly frowned, looked at the two women, and asked with clear confusion in her expression,

“Just now… what were you laughing at?”