135: Chapter 135 Unfilial Son? Scumbag? Criminal?

Seeing the old lady's humble demeanor, Su Yun felt as if something were blocking his chest.

He ignored the murky speculations in the chat and directly activated the system function.

"System, activate Tianji Divine Calculation."

"Target: Wu Xiulan's son, Li Xiangyang."

[Ding! Tianji Divine Calculation activated. Deducing target character...]

As the system's prompt sounded, the original live-stream footage before Su Yun's eyes gradually faded.

In its place were scenes flashing by rapidly.

The scene began with a young man.

In his early twenties, he had thick eyebrows and big eyes, and he smiled brightly.

He wore washed-out, old clothes, carried a snake-skin bag, and stood at the village entrance.

Wu Xiulan was not as old back then; she wiped away tears while stuffing hard-boiled eggs into his hands.

"Mom, don't worry. I'm going to the south to make my way. Once I earn money, I'll definitely come back and build you a big tiled house!"

The young man waved his hands, smiled brilliantly, and turned to walk towards the unknown distance with big strides.

The scene shifted.

It was not the scene of glitz, glamour, luxury cars, or beautiful women that the chat had speculated about.

Nor was it any cliché plot of marrying into a wealthy family or being a gold digger.

What Su Yun saw was a dim, damp, and moldy abandoned warehouse.

The once sunny young man was now tied to an iron frame.

He was covered in blood, his clothes had become rags, and there was hardly a piece of intact skin left on his body.

Whipping, branding irons, and even more cruel methods...

Several thugs with fierce faces and vicious eyes were using various torture instruments to inflict inhuman suffering upon him.

"Speak! Who is your handler?"

"Who else in the police force is one of yours?"

"Where is that USB drive hidden?"

The thugs' roars echoed in the warehouse.

Li Xiangyang's head hung powerlessly, and blood dripped onto the ground from his hair tips.

He was already on the verge of death.

Yet, he struggled to lift his head, and on that face beaten beyond recognition, he actually managed to squeeze out a mocking smile.

"Ptooey!"

A mouthful of bloody foam was spat onto the face of the lead thug.

"Want to know? In your next life..."

"I am a Chinese police officer. You scum, you will all die sooner or later..."

...

The scene froze at this moment.

That was fifteen years ago.

That young life had bled out his last drop of blood in this dark, sunless warehouse.

And inside the lining of his tattered jacket, pressed tightly against his chest, was a hidden photograph.

In the photo, a young Wu Xiulan was holding him as an infant, smiling sweetly.

Su Yun suddenly opened his eyes.

The scenes he had just seen were like a heavy hammer, striking his heart fiercely.

Pain.

Piercing pain.

He looked at the old woman on the screen who was still cautiously displaying the remittance slip, and at the malicious comments in the chat still spamming "unfilial son," "scumbag," and "criminal."

A nameless fire surged from the soles of Su Yun's feet straight to the top of his head.

"Shut up, all of you!"

Su Yun suddenly roared into the microphone.

This roar, filled with immense anger, startled the more than two million people in the live-stream.

The originally dense chat became momentarily empty.

"Master, wha... what's wrong?" Wu Xiulan was so startled that her hand shook, and the remittance slip almost fell to the ground. "Did something happen to my son...?"

Su Yun took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing the surge in his heart, and kept his tone as calm as possible.

But his eyes became unprecedentedly serious and solemn.

"Ma'am, I have a question for you."

"When your son, Li Xiangyang, left home all those years ago, what did he tell you he was going to do?"

Wu Xiulan was stunned for a moment, then quickly replied: "He said he was going to a big company in the south to be a salesman, running sales, and that he could make a lot of money."

Su Yun shook his head.

"He lied to you."

As soon as these words were spoken, the chat exploded again.

"See! I told you he was a liar!"

"He must have gone to join a pyramid scheme!"

"Or maybe he went to commit fraud!"

"This old lady is so pitiful, raising a swindler for a son."

Su Yun looked at these comments and sneered.

"He did indeed lie to you."

"He was not a salesman at all."

Speaking of this, Su Yun paused, looking directly into the camera, as if he wanted to pierce through the screen and look into the heart of every viewer.

He said word by word.

"His true identity was a police officer in the Narcotics Control Brigade of the Public Security Bureau."

"Badge number..."

This sentence was like an atomic bomb thrown directly into the live-stream.

Boom!

Everyone was stunned.

The keyboard warriors who had just been mocking him frantically now had their fingers frozen on their keyboards.

Those vicious speculations seemed so ridiculous and so glaring at this moment.

A police officer?

That son who "abandoned his mother," was "a gold digger," and "might be a criminal," was actually a police officer?

Wu Xiulan was also stunned.

She opened her mouth wide, and her murky eyes were filled with confusion.

"Po... police officer?"

"Master, did you calculate wrong? My son has been timid since he was a child; he wouldn't even dare to kill a chicken. How could he be a police officer?"

"Besides, if he were a police officer, that's a government job—a glorious thing that brings honor to the ancestors. Why would he hide it from me?"

Su Yun's eye sockets felt hot.

Yes.

Why hide it?

Because the work he did meant putting his head on the line.

Because he was facing the most vicious criminals in the world.

Because he was afraid of implicating you, afraid that those desperate criminals would find you.

"Ma'am, it was not calculated wrong."

"Your son was not only a police officer, but the most dangerous kind."

Su Yun's voice trembled slightly, but he had to tell the truth.

This truth was fifteen years late.

Heroes should not be allowed to gather dust.

"Fifteen years ago, he didn't go south to run sales."

"He received a top-secret mission to go undercover in a major drug trafficking syndicate."

"To protect your safety and to maintain the confidentiality of the mission, he had to cut off all contact with home and fabricated the lie about going to work."

In the live-stream, there was a deathly silence.

More than two million people, at this very moment, could not even type a punctuation mark.

Those who had been cursing the loudest just now only felt a burning pain on their faces.

Su Yun looked at the old woman who was still dazed, his heart aching like it was being sliced by a knife.

The cruelest part hadn't even been told yet.

"Master, then where is he now?"

Wu Xiulan's voice trembled even more violently; she seemed to have sensed something, and the knuckles of her hand gripping the remittance slip turned white.

"Since he was a police officer, he should be retired by now, right? He should have come back, right?"

"This money... this five hundred yuan every month, isn't it what he sent?"

Su Yun closed his eyes, unable to bear looking into the old woman's eyes.

But some things must be accounted for.

That monthly remittance of five hundred yuan was not sent by Li Xiangyang at all.

It was pooled together by his former comrades, all the brothers from that Narcotics Control Brigade, from their own wages.

Even if they lived hard lives themselves, even if some of them had since sacrificed their lives or become disabled, this money—this money to fulfill filial piety on behalf of a brother—had never stopped for a single day in fifteen years.

They didn't dare tell the old woman the truth, fearing she couldn't bear it.

They could only use this clumsy way to call out "Mom" on behalf of the brother who would never return.