Chapter 24: I Am Confused

Li Qi struck Diao Xiaojiao down with a single swing of his wooden staff.

At this, the rest of the Gao family turned bloodshot with rage. Diao Xiaojiao's old man and several of their children charged forward, howling like banshees. Many of the Gao clan members were armed with tools—shovels, pickaxes, crowbars, fireplace pokers—or at the very least, heavy clubs.

However, because so many were crowded together, only three or four could actually reach Li Qi at once. Li Qi swung his wooden pole, aiming for their faces, necks, wrists, and groins. He suddenly felt as if the Gao family members were moving in slow motion.

The fellow wielding a crowbar lacked the strength to control it; once he swung it up, he lost his balance and stumbled toward Li Qi, carried by the momentum of his own weapon. Li Qi sidestepped and delivered a swift kick to the man's rear. The man lunged forward, slamming the crowbar directly into the head of one of his own kin.

*Clang!*

"Gao Ping, you idiot! Why are you hitting your second uncle? You've cracked his skull open!"

"Ah!"

"You little brat! How dare you kick someone in the crotch? Dear, are you alright? Speak to me! Don't scare me like this!"

The watching neighbors found the scene increasingly bizarre. The Gao family had arrived with aggressive momentum, fully armed, and no one wanted to end up splattered with blood, so they mostly stood by, offering half-hearted attempts at mediation. Their original assumption was that once the Li family had been beaten into submission, they would step in to ensure no lives were lost—that would be enough to fulfill their neighborly duty.

But once the initial verbal sparring gave way to the actual brawl, the nature of the fight had shifted into something else entirely. In just over ten minutes, seven or eight Gao family members were down, and the rest were nursing various injuries. Furthermore, many of these wounds were self-inflicted accidents caused by their own lack of coordination. Even worse, two shifty-eyed younger members, seeing the tide turn, stopped advancing altogether and hid by the wall, screaming at the top of their lungs, "Hit him! Beat that little brat to death!" yet their feet remained rooted to the spot, clearly terrified.

Li San, meanwhile, stood at the doorway like a temple guardian. Far from being injured, it seemed to many that he hadn't even been struck once.

Li Qi confirmed it: since his rebirth, his physical prowess had increased significantly. While his childhood training in Tongbei and Tai Chi had given him a solid foundation, it was nothing like this. Many of the Gao relatives were miners—men who spent their lives digging coal and possessed the raw strength of small tanks—yet Li Qi could send them flying with a single kick. So, this was the benefit of being a reincarnated soul? He never would have known if he hadn't experienced it himself.

The pressure on Li Qi began to ease, though his ears remained tuned to the street. When the faint wail of a police siren finally drifted into the air, he calculated the timing and suddenly threw open the front door, letting Old Man Li out. He had already neutralized those carrying "heavy weapons" like crowbars and shovels; the rest were left with nothing more than pokers and rolling pins, which posed no real threat.

Thinking fast, Li Qi dropped his wooden staff and grabbed Old Man Li, pulling him directly into the fray. He needed to sustain some light injuries to properly frame the Gao family. Suddenly, he saw Gao Jianwei, the younger brother of Gao Jianye, grab a brick from somewhere and bring it down toward the old man's head.

"You wretches!"

He shielded Old Man Li just as the brick caught him on the side of the skull. A warm sensation began to trickle down. Li Qi felt a faint sense of irony; he hadn't intended for the injury to be this severe, just a scrape or a bleed to extort the Gaos. Given the scale of this mob brawl and the current era of strict crackdowns, if the Gao family wanted to settle, they would be stripped of everything they owned.

"Murder! The Gao family is killing people!"

Seeing his son's head cracked open, Old Man Li howled and charged into the crowd, only to be quickly pinned down. The Gao family, blinded by rage, began kicking the old man. Li Qi lunged into the pile, shoving people aside to shield his father with his own body. While he was down, he didn't stay idle; he found a small stone on the ground and gave his own head a sharp scrape. *Swoosh*—blood welled up. *Good, that's enough.*

Li Li, seeing her father and brother being beaten to the brink of death, wailed and charged out, clawing at anyone in reach. Li Qi lay on the ground holding his father, watching his sister's crazed performance, and sighed. *This blockhead, why couldn't we have been on the same page? Why is the gap between people's minds so wide? Why couldn't she just take a few hits and lie there waiting for the police?*

The neighbors finally couldn't stand by any longer; if someone died, they would all be dragged to the station for questioning. They began to intervene, pulling the Gao family members away. The Gaos were having none of it; men and women alike were whipped into a frenzy. The third Li son had fought too dirty—several of them had been kicked in the groin, and who knew if they were still intact. The one with the crowbar had cracked his own kin's skull, blood staining the ground, while those with pickaxes and shovels had ended up hitting their own people. The fight had been so one-sided that it looked as if the twenty-plus Gao members had been mobbed by Li Qi alone.

Diao Xiaojiao, having been dazed by Li Qi's staff, had been crouching on the ground in a fog. Now, having recovered, she watched her twenty-some people being humiliated by a half-grown boy, and her heart burned with resentment. In all her years, she had never suffered such an indignity! Seeing Li Qi finally pinned to the ground, she grabbed a heavy club and marched over, screaming at the top of her lungs:

"Beat him! Beat him to death! If he dies, I'll take the blame! Today, I'll make sure the Li family line is cut short!"

No sooner had she finished speaking than Liang Bing burst in with five or six police officers. Hearing Diao Xiaojiao's deranged declaration, Liang Bing displayed the standard of a true officer of the people, lunging like a hungry tiger and tackling the old woman to the ground. *Thud*—Diao Xiaojiao landed face-first in the dirt.

"Nobody move!"

Liang Bing sighed internally. Diao Xiaojiao and the Gao family were notorious troublemakers in the village, but they had always kept their offenses small enough to avoid detention. Today, however, he could bag them all at once. Seeing the number of wounded, he immediately ordered an ambulance.

Seeing the police, Diao Xiaojiao looked at the pathetic state of her clan and sat on the ground, flailing her arms and wailing, "Oh, my honorable judges! You've finally come. You must seek justice for me! The Li family's eldest girl is out there sleeping with other men, and we just came to demand justice, but their third son beat us all like this. This boy is a tyrant, a hooligan! Arrest him! Send him to the firing squad!"

Only then did Liang Bing reach Li Qi. Seeing the blood covering the boy's head, his heart skipped a beat. If something happened to this young man, how would he explain it to Commissar Zhou Guodong or the elderly Madam Qiu Shuyun? But as he helped Li Qi up, the boy gave his arm a light tap and offered a subtle wink. Liang Bing instantly relaxed.

He ordered the seriously injured to be sent to the hospital and the rest to be handcuffed and taken to the station. He also requested several neighbors to serve as witnesses, and Auntie Wu and the others eagerly agreed.

As the silver bracelets were snapped onto Diao Xiaojiao's wrists, she shrieked like a hog tied for slaughter: "Why are you arresting us? We are the victims! Arrest the Li family! You honorable judges can't bully us poor folk like this! I'm going to the city to report you!"

Liang Bing wore a cold expression. "You brought over twenty people here with weapons from the mining district to engage in a mob brawl and caused injuries, and now you claim to be the victims? Save it for the station. If you don't start being honest, none of you are going home!"

Diao Xiaojiao looked at Liang Bing's dark, stern face, her eyes darting around. Today's events had completely exceeded her expectations. In her plan, the Gao family would use their numbers to pin the Li family down, seize the photos and the agreement, and give them a good beating to vent their anger. As long as they insisted that Li Li had been caught cheating by her son, they would have the moral high ground. Besides, the law rarely punished a crowd; this was just a family dispute that would likely end in a simple mediation by two officers. Who could have imagined that the third Li son would be such a fighter, throwing the entire situation off course?

Still, there was room to maneuver. She tilted her body and slumped to the ground. "Oh, Officer, I'm dizzy, I can't breathe, I'm dying! I'm in pain, don't drag me!"

Usually, this little performance would have been enough to make the police back off. Unfortunately, Liang Bing just watched her act and gave a cold laugh.

"Today's events mean the ringleaders are definitely going to jail. If you don't go to the station, your sons, your husband, and all the men from your relatives' families involved in the assault won't be escaping either. Once they're in prison, they'll lose their jobs, and your Gao family will be nothing but vagrants. Now, I'll ask you one more time: are you still feeling dizzy?"