DSMIS CH55

Chapter 55: You Just Love Bringing Strays Home Anyway

The moment Shen Xing stepped into the emergency trauma room and saw the child’s condition, his expression darkened. The boy not only had a fractured arm and broken ribs, but the corners of his mouth and eyes were heavily bruised and lacerated. It was glaringly obvious he had been beaten.

The doctor on duty tonight was from obstetrics and gynecology. She looked at Shen Xing and whispered:

“The child’s situation isn’t right. The two people who brought him in aren’t family members either. When we asked how he got hurt, he wouldn’t say a word. When we asked for his parents’ phone numbers, he gave no reaction. Under these circumstances, there’s no one to sign the surgical consent forms.”

Shen Xing walked over. The boy on the examination table looked in terrible shape, yet his expression was fiercely stubborn. Even though he was clearly in agony, he gritted his teeth tightly, refusing to let out so much as a whimper. Shen Xing remembered the noodle shop owner calling him Xiao Niu:

“Xiao Niu, you recognize me, right? I’m an orthopedic surgeon here. Your current condition requires immediate surgery, and surgery requires a family member’s signature. Can you tell me your parents’ phone numbers? I’ll contact them.”

The boy turned his head slightly. Shen Xing was a regular at the rice noodle shop, so the boy certainly recognized him. In the end, he was still just a child, and his eyes reddened with tears. Shen Xing leaned in closer:

“It’s alright. If something happened, you can tell me. I saw that the rice noodle shop owner brought you in. Would it be okay to let him contact your parents?”

The child on the bed suddenly became agitated:

“No! Don’t look for him!”

Shen Xing saw sheer terror flood the boy’s eyes. For a moment, he couldn’t tell whether “him” referred to the noodle shop owner outside or his father.

“Doctor, c-can I sign for myself? But… I don’t have any money.”

He tried to sit up as he spoke, but Shen Xing quickly pressed him back down. His intuition told him this child’s situation was extremely complicated. For some reason, he suddenly recalled the conversation he had overheard between the owner and the young man that morning when he went to the noodle shop:

“Fuxing Street? How much will that cost? Don’t waste your money.”

“I’ve already signed the contract. If you don’t go, I won’t get the money back.”

“Xiao Shuo, you bought a car and took over a storefront. Where did you get all that money? Did you take out an online loan? Huh? I’m telling you, you absolutely must not touch those things…”

“I know, I know. I didn’t take out a loan…”

He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but the more he reflected on it now, the more suspicious it seemed. The young man at the noodle shop looked barely a couple of years out of college. Logically speaking, there was no way he could have earned that much money so quickly—certainly not enough to buy a car and take over a prime commercial storefront.

So, what kind of business brings in fast cash? Perhaps his nerves had been oversensitized lately, but his mind instantly leaped to drug trafficking. He looked at the child on the bed. Could this boy’s injuries be connected to something like that?

The more Shen Xing thought, the more suspicious it seemed, his brain instantly concocting an entire undercover police thriller:

“Lie still for now.”

Outside the trauma room, Jiang Lin sat on a bench opposite the door. He remembered seeing marks on the boy’s arms when he visited the rice noodle shop before—stripes that looked like he’d been whipped by something, distinct signs of deliberate physical abuse.

His gaze rested inconspicuously on the two men opposite him. The noodle shop owner kept glancing anxiously toward the emergency room, his brow tightly furrowed, his distress tinged with profound unease and internal conflict.

After a moment, he called the young man aside. The usually gentle and mild-tempered owner was currently pale with rage:

“Xiao Shuo, Xiao Niu’s injuries are too severe this time. His father will never change. If we call the police, can his father’s custody rights be stripped?”

He had very little formal education, and he looked at the young man with eyes full of desperate hope. The young man gazed steadily at him, a possessive, unyielding edge in his eyes:

“So, you want to raise him?”

Seeing his reaction, Shi Xu sighed with helpless fondness:

“Xiao Niu already helps out at the shop all the time anyway, and he eats all three meals with me. It would just be one more person living at home.”

Fang Shuo let out a soft huff:

“Anyway, you just love picking up strays to bring home. Where do you plan to have him sleep? My old room?”

Wasn’t I just a stray he took home back then, too? Even though Fang Shuo wanted to help Xiao Niu as well, an irrational petulance twisted in his chest.

Watching him get petty with a child, Shi Xu found it both exasperating and amusing:

“Xiao Niu is just a little kid. Why are you competing with a child? Besides, since you came back, I haven’t seen you sleep in your own room more than a handful of times anyway.”

This guy always had a million excuses to sleep in my room.

“Furthermore, are you really planning to stay in this tiny county town for good? You studied for so many years, and your previous job was so promising. Coming back like this, isn’t it…”

Seeing that Tang Seng was about to launch into another sermon, Fang Shuo promptly raised a hand and clamped it over Shi Xu’s mouth:

“Do you still want to foster Xiao Niu?”

Shi Xu nodded. He didn’t understand the law or legal lawsuits, but Fang Shuo did.

Seeing how obedient Shi Xu looked when he nodded, Fang Shuo muttered:

“I’ll help you get custody of Xiao Niu. But on one condition: from now on, you’re never allowed to bring up making me leave to work elsewhere again.”

Shi Xu knew Fang Shuo had always been fiercely headstrong since childhood. If he truly refused to leave, Shi Xu couldn’t drive him away even if he tried. He had no choice but to nod.

When Shen Xing emerged from the trauma room, the owner and the young man were nowhere in sight. Only Jiang Lin was sitting on the bench, standing up the moment he saw him walk out.

Shen Xing asked:

“Where did the owner and the other guy go?”

“They stepped out for a moment. How’s the child inside?”

“The child was beaten. A fractured arm, broken ribs, and suspicious external contusions all over. He’s very agitated and refuses to let us contact his family. Something feels completely wrong. I need to call the police.”

Saying “I need to call the police” to an actual police officer felt rather surreal.

Hearing that the boy was beaten, Jiang Lin frowned slightly:

“Once at the noodle shop, I noticed what looked like whip marks on his arms.”

Shen Xing’s eyes widened. He immediately grabbed Jiang Lin and pulled him to the side, his movements oddly stealthy and furtive, radiating total undercover agent energy. Jiang Lin let himself be yanked around the corner.

Shen Xing began spilling everything he had overheard at the noodle shop like pouring beans from a bamboo tube. Jiang Lin’s eyes widened slightly:

“You suspect the young man at the shop might be a drug trafficker? And you think the kid’s injuries are connected to him?”

Shen Xing nodded with utter conviction:

“Think about it! He looks refined and gentle, not at all like someone who’d do dirty work, but modern crimes are high-IQ operations! The cartel kingpins are often these harmless-looking scholars. The more educated they look, the more likely they are to be the big boss.”

Jiang Lin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he listened to Director Shen lay out his criminal profiling. Needless to say, this theory was definitely derived entirely from crime dramas.

Before he could respond, Shi Xu and Fang Shuo rounded the corner. Shen Xing instantly looked as if he were facing a mortal enemy.

Shen Xing was about to report the incident and file an emergency hospital record to proceed with the surgery, but Shi Xu stepped forward and spoke directly:

“Doctor, Xiao Niu’s injuries were inflicted by his father. His mother is missing, and he has no other immediate relatives. Can I sign for his surgery? I will take full legal responsibility.”

Shen Xing was stunned, subconsciously glancing at Jiang Lin. Although Jiang Lin worked in narcotics, he was well-versed in general criminal law and understood the owner’s dilemma at a glance.

The abuser was the child’s biological father, while the owner was an outsider. In matters like this, if the abuse wasn’t legally severe enough to warrant criminal charges, reporting it recklessly would at most result in a lecture and administrative mediation. In the end, the child would be the one to suffer the retaliatory consequences. Jiang Lin spoke up directly:

“Xiao Niu’s injuries likely constitute a ‘minor injury’ under criminal law, which carries criminal liability for the perpetrator. Call the police first. The child can go straight into surgery, and the county bureau’s forensic medical examiner can document the injuries.”

Shi Xu asked:

“Criminal liability… does that mean he can be sentenced to prison?”

If the father was actually imprisoned, Xiao Niu could truly escape his clutches.

Before Jiang Lin could answer, Fang Shuo interjected:

“Yes. A minor injury under the penal code can result in a sentence of up to three years’ imprisonment. Furthermore, this constitutes violent domestic abuse by a guardian, which is sufficient legal grounds to revoke his parental custody rights.”

Sure enough, upon hearing this, Shi Xu immediately pulled out his phone:

“Report it. I’ll report it right now.”

Due to the small geographic scale of the county town, the response time of the county bureau was blindingly fast—fast enough to win an award. The officers who arrived were none other than Du Binbin and another officer, Yang Xue. Seeing Jiang Lin, Yang Xue was surprised:

“Captain Jiang, what are you doing here?”

Today is the Lantern Festival. Our Captain Jiang finally got a day off without overtime—didn’t he go out to celebrate?

Jiang Lin tilted his chin toward Shen Xing:

“Doctor Shen has an emergency surgery. I accompanied him over.”

Du Binbin immediately tugged at his tactless colleague, quickly bypassing the subject to get straight to business.

The case was straightforward enough to proceed directly to an arrest.

As Shen Xing headed into the operating room, Jiang Lin turned to the noodle shop owner:

“Shi Xu, right? I’d like to ask how Xiao Niu’s mother went missing.”

Shi Xu knew Jiang Lin was an officer because he had seen him in uniform, but hearing the two officers address him as “Captain Jiang,” he gathered that this man held substantial rank. He answered:

“Actually, I’m not entirely clear on the details either. Xiao Niu’s father claimed that she… that she ran off with a previous partner. Before marrying Xiao Niu’s father, she had two prior marriages, neither of them local.

“It’s been over half a year now. Xiao Niu has been looking for his mother, but there’s been no news. She doesn’t have any family left in her hometown either, so the matter was simply shelved.”

Standing beside them, Du Binbin couldn’t help but ask:

“Did no one think to call the police?”

“We thought about it, and we did. But Xiao Niu’s mother isn’t a local; a missing person’s report had to be filed at her official household registration location by an immediate family member. As far as we know, her only immediate family member was Xiao Niu. Xiao Niu could only report it over the phone. He provided the information, but there was never any follow-up.”

Jiang Lin fell silent. On the surface, sunlight seemed to reach every corner of the world, but in reality, there were always blind spots where the light never penetrated. Across the country, massive numbers of people went missing every year, and only a tiny fraction were ever found.

Some people simply vanished—you might have seen them yesterday, but by tomorrow, all trace of them was gone. No matter how you searched, reported, or investigated, not a single clue remained. No body, no person, living or dead.

Jiang Lin nodded and said nothing more.

The police acted swiftly. In a small county, tracking someone down was simple. Before Xiao Niu was even out of surgery, his father, Niu Gui, had already been arrested at his residence.

Jiang Lin sent Shen Xing a message and returned to the county bureau to personally interrogate Niu Gui. He had a strong suspicion that the mother’s disappearance was far from simple.

By the time Shen Xing emerged from the operating room, it was well past midnight. Shi Xu and Fang Shuo were still waiting outside. Remembering how he had gossiped with Jiang Lin earlier, Shen Xing felt a twinge of private embarrassment. Of course, the embarrassment was purely one-sided; Fang Shuo had no idea he had been cast as a ruthless cartel kingpin in Director Shen’s mind.

Maintaining an impassive, professional expression, Shen Xing explained the post-operative care instructions, pulled out his phone, saw Jiang Lin’s message, and immediately changed his clothes to head to the county bureau.

Jiang Lin was still in the interrogation room. Shen Xing was about to wait in his office when he bumped into Du Binbin, who had come out to fetch hot water:

“Oh, Doctor Shen! Are you here to see Captain Jiang?”

“Ah, yes.”

“His office is locked. Why don’t you wait in the room next to the interrogation room?”

“Oh, alright.”

When he arrived in the adjacent room, he realized it truly was right next door. Separating the two rooms was a single pane of one-way observation glass, fitted with horizontal blinds on the interrogation side.

However, the blinds weren’t drawn entirely shut. By simply ducking his head slightly and glancing upward, Shen Xing could see inside.

After a brief internal struggle, he ducked down and peered through. From this angle, he couldn’t see the suspect’s chair, but he had a clear view of the interrogation bench.

Seated behind the bench were two officers: Jiang Lin and Yang Xue. Jiang Lin wasn’t wearing his police uniform, just the casual hoodie he had worn when they went out earlier, leaning back against his chair in a relaxed posture.

Yet, his sharp brows and piercing gaze carried an edge Shen Xing had never witnessed before. An innate, crushing aura of absolute authority radiated from him—under that kind of pressure, lying felt almost impossible.

His speech was measured and deliberate, yet relentlessly pursued every opening, linking logical deductions tightly together like an unbroken chain. Within two hours, cracks began to show in Niu Gui’s testimony. Beside him, Yang Xue, clad in uniform, was diligently taking notes, his eyes shining with awe.

Shen Xing couldn’t hear the dialogue through the glass, but he found himself utterly transfixed by the sight of Captain Jiang in command. Suddenly, the door to the observation room swung open.

It was Du Binbin bringing him a cup of tea. Shen Xing immediately snapped upright like a caught criminal.

He didn’t know if it was because they had officially defined their relationship, but Shen Xing felt far less brazen than before. Right now, he felt an exhilarating, guilty thrill—as if they were secretly carrying on an affair right under everyone’s noses.