Chapter 45: Extremely Bizarre

Tian Miao was in the middle of taking pictures with great enthusiasm when she suddenly turned around and realized Li Qi was gone.

She hurried over to ask Zhou Guodong, and upon hearing that Li Qi had actually taken a few soldiers to pursue and capture the gang leader, she was so startled she almost jumped.

"How could you make such an arrangement?

He's just an ordinary civilian! How can he participate in a military operation, let alone capture the chief culprit?

If he gets hurt or encounters danger because of this, how is that supposed to be accounted for?

This is against the rules!"

Zhou Guodong looked at Tian Miao with a deep gaze.

"An ordinary civilian, my foot! He single-handedly took down four fierce thugs holding lethal weapons in an enclosed space in an instant to save you.

I went to take a special look at those four guys just now.

Three of them were knocked unconscious with a single blow, and the other one was as strong as an ox, yet he was beaten by Li Qi with two bone fractures and is still unconscious.

Even average special forces aren't as ferocious as him."

Hearing Zhou Guodong praise Li Qi, a wave of inexplicable pride welled up in Tian Miao's heart, but she still refused to let the matter rest verbally.

"Even so, he is still a civilian by status! What right does he have to execute such a dangerous mission?

He even had to go into a cave where the other party had guns. If an accident had happened, I definitely would have gone to complain about you to my dad!"

Zhou Guodong sighed helplessly.

It was true that he had not considered this thoroughly at the time, but the situation was urgent. If the owner of the illegal coal mine had managed to escape, tonight's operation would have been tantamount to failing halfway.

For him to mobilize troops for law enforcement was already a violation of standard operating procedures; if he couldn't make it flawless, someone would definitely try to sabotage him behind the scenes afterward.

Of course, that was secondary.

The most serious issue was that if the chief culprit escaped and made contact with his protective umbrella, the other party would likely find a way to suppress this matter and turn a major crisis into a minor incident.

That was a result he could not accept.

Fortunately, however, the walkie-talkie broadcasted the news that Li Qi had successfully captured Four-Dragon.

When Tian Miao saw Li Qi walking over, she immediately noticed that his walking posture was a bit off, with an obvious injury on his leg.

At that moment, her heart shattered. Throwing caution to the wind, she threw herself straight into Li Qi's arms, her voice laced with crying tones.

"What's wrong with your leg?"

With a soft and fragrant embrace suddenly full in his arms, Li Qi's face turned as red as fire all the way to the tips of his ears. He didn't even know where to put his hands, stammering incessantly,

"I'm fine, it's just a scrape, really fine.

Please don't cry..."

Zhou Guodong shook his head and sighed.

Deputy Minister Tian's daughter must have graduated last year; is she twenty-two or twenty-three this year?

An older woman brings unimaginable fortune, and Li Qi was about to hit the jackpot.

Such a tender, pristine cabbage growing in a greenhouse was probably about to be rooted up by a wild little boar from the countryside...

Lu Yan walked up to him, looked at the clingy scene between Tian Miao and Li Qi, and curled his lips.

"Bury one at the South Pole, and the other at the North Pole."

Zhou Guodong nodded.

"Approved, execute immediately."

The two exchanged a smile of mutual appreciation and kindred spirits.

As the ambulance arrived, taking away the injured including Li Shi, various police cars drove into the mountains. Van after van of criminals was directly escorted back to the municipal bureau to enter the interrogation process.

Zhou Guodong walked up close to Li Qi and Tian Miao.

"Have you hugged enough?

If you've hugged enough, let go for now and come back to the municipal bureau with me. I'll arrange a guesthouse for both of you to stay in. Reporter Tian's photos need to be developed and archived for us first.

I just heard Lu Yan say that Li Qi has performed another meritorious service. This case is of major significance, and I'll strive to get a Second-Class Hero and Model Medal for you."

Li Qi wasn't actually very clear about the true value of this medal, but Tian Miao, who was reluctantly pulling herself away from his body, knew very well that for someone outside the system, a second-class medal was already an unimaginably towering honor.

With a second-class medal to his name, if Li Qi wanted to enter the Public Security University now, as long as the city issued a recommendation letter, there was a high probability he could be admitted exempt from the entrance exam.

If not, would a provincial recommendation work?

She could just go back and act like a spoiled child to her old man; was this even an issue?

By the time Li Qi graduated, he could go directly to work at the provincial department, and ten years from now, a substantive division-level position would be as stable as a mountain.

By that time, their child should be able to start elementary school, right? They could send him to the Provincial Experimental School; coincidentally, her second aunt was the principal of the Provincial Experimental School.

Tian Miao was already beginning to daydream about what her life living with Li Qi would look like.

Quietly and without a trace, Li Qi removed Tian Miao's hand from his body.

City girls are truly terrifying, they pounce on you raw!

The urban schemes run too deep, I want to return to the countryside.

If he didn't have to go back to the municipal bureau to retrieve his bicycle, he would have wanted to go straight home. The undisguised fervor in Tian Miao's gaze made him feel as though he were standing there completely naked, shivering with fright.

Arriving at the guesthouse, Li Qi first took a satisfying, piping-hot shower.

Regarding the matter of time-traveling back, the biggest pain point was that flat-roofed houses only had outdoor dry toilets, and going out to take a dump in winter could practically cost him half his life.

The second pain point was not being able to take a proper bath.

Lying on the soft and comfortable large bed, he quickly fell asleep.

The next day, he was woken up by a round of knocking on the door.

Who am I, where am I, where are my glasses?

Oh right, I don't have myopia yet...

"Who is it?"

"Me! Hurry up and get up, it's already noon.

How can you sleep so much?

I'm taking you to the hospital to get your leg bandaged."

Tian Miao's voice came through.

Li Qi let out a sigh—what a debt from a past life.

He got fully dressed and opened the door.

The two of them froze for a moment simultaneously.

Until now, the Tian Miao Li Qi had seen was always disheveled, having rolled around in the snow for a day, looking so battered she barely resembled a human being.

Even so, that Tian Miao still managed to look quite pretty.

Standing before him now was a stunning woman who had retrieved her luggage through the public security system, washed up, dressed her hair, applied light makeup, and put on appropriate attire.

Li Qi was practically mesmerized.

Even having lived two lives, he had never laid eyes on such a breathtaking woman. With near-perfect facial features and a golden-ratio figure, her whole person exuded a vitality that made his heart skip a beat.

Tian Miao's eyes lit up as well.

The shower-fresh Li Qi radiated the unique aura of youthful hormones, and Tian Miao's heart almost stopped for a second.

Li Qi recovered his wits first and spoke with helpless resignation.

"No need to go to the hospital, I'm really fine. If you don't believe me, look."

Li Qi rolled up his trouser leg; the wound was already beginning to fade...

"If you had arrived any later, it would have healed all on its own."

Only then did Tian Miao set her mind at ease, skipping and bouncing as she led Li Qi to the guesthouse's small dining room for a meal.

During the meal, Tian Miao told Li Qi that three people had been arrested at the Niuxin Town Police Station last night, all suspected of engaging in illicit money-and-power transactions with the mine.

Because of the egregious nature of his crimes, Liang Bing would face a cumulative sentence of at least twenty years starting point.

Furthermore, when the case handlers thoroughly investigated his dossier, they discovered that this man wasn't from China at all, but rather a spy planted by the island nation.

It was thanks to his exposure this time; otherwise, there was no telling how much destruction he would have caused in the future.

Taihe City, as China's most vital coal and iron capital, was also a place of special concern for the island nation. For all these years, spies and secret agents had remained like bone-gnawing maggots that were impossible to eradicate completely.

Recalling his various interactions with this person, Li Qi felt a mixture of lingering emotions and sighs.

Police Station Chief Xu Tiejun was proven to have no substantive connections to the mine, but since the incident happened within his jurisdiction, his best-case scenario would be a demotion of half a rank and a transfer to a remote village.

From the five illegal coal mines, a staggering 371 miners were rescued, more than half of whom were intellectually disabled. After all, such individuals were the easiest to bully, and could be made to work obediently through intimidation and beatings.

However, with the development of mining machinery and the increase in extraction volume, disabled individuals were no longer enough, so the owners of the illegal coal mines began using deception, purchase, and various other means to acquire normal people to use as slaves.

The gang Li Qi beat up the day he saved Qiu Shuyun was one of the rings that transported this type of laborer to the illegal coal mines.

And when they returned to the south, they would incidentally kidnap a few children or young women and sell them off to the remote rural areas of the Great Northwest.

Truly, they deserved a thousand deaths.

After waking up, Wang Fuliang confessed regarding Du Ming—the very person who had sent Li Shi back to the mine.

He was indeed Du Li's younger brother, and he had already been arrested and brought to justice.

Back then, due to the beatings and starvation, Li Shi had already grown extremely weak.

When he managed to crawl out of the mountains, he was already down to his last breath, hovering on the verge of death.

Mistaking the very first person he encountered for a savior, he blurted out that he had escaped from an illegal coal mine and begged the other person to help him call the police immediately.

As a result, he ran into Du Ming, and the ruthless Du Ming grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and delivered him right back to Four-Dragon.

All for a hundred yuan...

Li Qi sighed. Both Tian Miao and Li Shi had endured rather bitter fates—one sent back by a heartless villager, and the other by the person he trusted most.

This was also why, in the previous timeline, the crackdown on the illegal coal mine case had been delayed by two years.

And consequently, many more people had died.

Li Qi shoveled a large mouthful of rice into his mouth and broke into a bright smile.

How wonderful it was that everything had changed, and he had done what needed to be done.

After eating and drinking his fill, Li Qi prepared to go home, but Tian Miao refused to have it. She insisted that Li Qi wait for her for a day; after finishing her report and sending it back to the newspaper office, she still needed to return to Niuxin Town to deeply dig into the protective umbrella behind the illegal coal mine.

"Go dig your news then, why are you latching onto me?"

Li Qi attempted to resist, but Tian Miao blinked her large, bright eyes, tears welling up as if they were about to fall.

"I'm a stranger in a strange land in Niuxin Town, what if I run into danger again? Do you have the heart to let me get captured by someone else?"

"Fine, fine, fine, stop crying, I yield to you. Alright, alright, I'll wait for you for a day."

Whenever he saw Tian Miao shed tears, Li Qi's heart felt as uncomfortably empty as if a piece had been hollowed out.

Although he didn't know why this was happening, he unconditionally raised his hands in surrender. Tian Miao smiled triumphantly in her heart.

"Little brat, I thought I couldn't handle you."

Throughout the day, Tian Miao was extremely busy. She selected several photos, wrote her first report, and arranged for someone to send it directly to the provincial level.

The *Ning Province Daily* exploded.

The editor-in-chief simply did not dare to publish such a report; the matter was far too terrifying. Who could have imagined that after so many years since the founding of the nation, such a deranged and frantic case could still emerge?

A single phone call from Tian Dajang allowed the manuscript to pass smoothly.

The next day, as the provincial newspaper was placed on newsstands across the entire province, it was seen by people in various government offices, enterprises, and public institutions.

The whole province was in an uproar.

When Li Qi and Tian Miao were eating breakfast in the guesthouse cafeteria, they also saw the report.

It occupied an entire page, and the photo right at the top was Li Shi's face, ravaged and covered in dense scars after enduring torment.

The visual impact was far too shocking.

Just within the slag pit of Four-Dragon's coal mine, seven sets of nameless skeletal remains had been unearthed.

Li Qi sighed, his emotions complicated.

Tian Miao reached out and took his hand.

"Everything is in the past now. Although justice has arrived late, it will never be absent!"

Li Qi watched as Tian Miao started scratching his palm with her fingers.

"Big sis, I suspect you're taking advantage of me..."

Tian Miao let go of his hand with utmost naturalness.

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

After the meal, Tian Miao borrowed a car from the city, loaded the two of them along with Li Qi's bicycle, and returned to Niuxin Town.

Once they arrived near Li Qi's home, the car from the city headed back.

Li Qi pushed his bicycle, while Tian Miao clung close to his side like a little bird.

Li Qi asked with helpless exasperation,

"Weren't you supposed to go unearth news? Why are you still lingering by my side?"

Tian Miao's eyes lit up brightly once again.

"I'm hungry, my stomach is even growling, didn't you hear it?

Can't you bring me home for a bite to eat?"

She had clearly just finished eating breakfast...

However, Li Qi did not answer Tian Miao. Instead, a look of suspicion crossed his face as he glanced backward quickly.

At the street corner, a small car with out-of-town license plates quietly started its engine.

And further away at the very limit of his vision, enhanced by his post-rebirth eyesight, he spotted an ambulance parked clearly in the shadows.

Niuxin Town was a very small town with just one main street, and his own home was located in a small village in the northern suburbs of the town.

For two such strange vehicles to materialize, and to appear simultaneously, was extremely bizarre.

Could it be...