Zhou Jin stared straight at him. “Why would it be you?” she asked.
Zhao Ping hadn’t noticed her reddened eyes or the glimmer of tears gathering there. Assuming she was looking down on him, he shot back with a sneer: “Why couldn’t it be me? Because I’m too ordinary? None of you ever gave me a second thought.”
“Come back with me and tell me everything, clearly and honestly!” Zhou Jin said.
“I’m not going back with you, Senior Sister. Do you dare to shoot me?”
Zhao Ping seemed to have long since seen through Zhou Jin’s nature. He grinned and suddenly spread his arms wide, walking briskly toward her.
As he drew closer and closer, Zhou Jin still couldn’t bring herself to pull the trigger.
She gritted her teeth, dropped the gun, and threw a punch straight at Zhao Ping’s face. His head snapped to the side from the impact. He pressed his tongue against his cheek, tasted blood, spat a mouthful of it out, and twisted away from the second punch Zhou Jin swung at him.
He lifted his foot and drove a heavy kick into her abdomen. The violent pain hit her like something had been pulped inside her, forcing a wave of nausea surging up toward her throat.
She came at him with another punch. Zhao Ping caught it — but Zhou Jin didn’t stop. She twisted her body, circling around behind him, and drove her elbow hard into his back.
The sharp, heavy blow sent Zhao Ping stumbling forward. While Zhou Jin hadn’t turned back around, he shot his hand out and seized a fistful of her hair.
The searing pain from her scalp made Zhou Jin let out a low grunt. She tilted her head back in the direction of Zhao Ping’s force, lips trembling from the pain, breath coming in sharp, rapid bursts.
Zhao Ping’s eyes were dark and sunken. “Senior Sister,” he said, “will you just let me go?”
Zhou Jin gritted her teeth, drew a small knife from her waist, and slashed it backward toward his face.
Zhao Ping had no time to dodge. The tip of the blade carved a line across his cheek, and blood welled freely from the cut.
He backed away from Zhou Jin, his gaze flicking toward the folding knife he had dropped on the floor. Zhou Jin caught his intention immediately, moved first, and kicked the folding knife away — then slashed at his arm again.
Zhao Ping pressed his hand over his arm with a flicker of surprise. “How did you—”
“You call me Senior Sister,” Zhou Jin said coldly, “and you didn’t know I took second place in the combat competition at Jingzhou Police Academy?”
Zhao Ping burst out laughing. “You don’t actually think I ever attended Jingzhou Police Academy, do you? Zhou Jin, I’m four years older than you — you’ve been calling me junior for nothing all this time.”
Backup had already arrived. Zhao Ping feinted toward the knife again, drawing Zhou Jin’s attention — then, in the moment she moved to intercept, he shot through the darkness like a leopard.
Zhou Jin gave chase without hesitation.
His original path had been downstairs, but the police had already evacuated civilians on the lower floors and were closing in from below. Left with no other option, he ran upward — all the way to the rooftop terrace. It was truly the end of the road.
He knew there was no walking away today. He turned around to find Zhou Jin and Tan Shiming already closing in with their team behind them.
Zhou Jin leveled her gun at him again. Her eyes were visibly redder now. “Zhao Ping — final warning. If you resist arrest again, I will actually shoot!”
She raised her hand and fired a warning shot into the air.
Though the night was dim, the lighting on the rooftop was somewhat better. Zhao Ping could at least make out Zhou Jin’s expression clearly — and he found it almost funny.
“Why are you looking at me like that, Senior Sister?” Zhao Ping said. “You want to take me back for questioning. What would you even ask? Whether I had some deep, unavoidable reason for all of this?”
“Zhao Ping, come back with us and let’s talk properly,” Zhou Jin said. “If something was weighing on you, you could have told me. We’re colleagues — we’re friends. No one looked down on you. No one ever thought you were ordinary.”
“Senior Sister, spare me the performance. What is there for you and me to talk about?” Zhao Ping smiled slightly. “I just wanted money. That so-called idealism of yours, those beliefs, that justice, that fairness — none of it has anything to do with me.”
He grew less and less calm, jabbing a finger at his own chest, his voice taking on a quality of accusation: “I came out of a village — a mountain village so poor it couldn’t get any poorer. Over decades, the whole village produced only one college graduate, and that was me.
I came to this city carrying my parents’ hopes and their pride, wanting to make something of myself.
I always believed I was someone special — why else would it have been me, and not anyone else, who made it out of that village?
I felt like the protagonist in so many stories — like I was stepping into a whole new life. But once I entered society and started working, I understood very quickly: the bottom-feeders are always bottom-feeders. There is no such thing as a rags-to-riches story.
In this world, without money, you are nothing.
Con artists, brawlers, rapists, drunk drivers who cause accidents — what haven’t those people done? But as long as they have money, they can make anything go away. One minute they’re being hauled into the station, the next they’re being seen off with the utmost respect, and they walk out laughing and chatting, making plans — whether to take a yacht out next, or fly to Europe for a holiday.
And me? I was just a junior auxiliary officer. What did I do wrong, that I had to endure their attitudes — take their slaps across the face?
Senior Sister, have you never once stopped to ask yourself — what gives? What gives, that some people are born wanting for nothing, while someone like me might work their entire life and still never earn enough to buy a single car in their garage?
I refused to accept it.
I only have this one life. I wanted it to be full and rich — everything they have, I wanted too.”
When all was said and done, it came down to money. How could anyone make real money by being an honest, law-abiding police officer?
Zhou Jin’s expression twisted with something painful. She could no longer hold back. “So you sold out your colleagues? You sold out your friends?!” she snapped at him.
“What do I care whether they live or die!” Zhao Ping’s voice rose above hers. He declared it as if it were perfectly reasonable: “Yao Weihai and Meng Junfeng — their mistake was refusing to let it go, insisting on provoking those people. All I did was pass along a little information about the police. If it hadn’t been me, they would have found someone else. Yao Weihai and Meng Junfeng would have ended up dead either way!”
Tan Shiming was stricken with grief and fury. “Beyond all hope of redemption,” he said through clenched teeth.
He signaled his officers to move in and flank Zhao Ping from both sides for an immediate arrest.
Zhou Jin cut them off, turning to confront Zhao Ping: “I only have one question, Zhao Ping.”
Zhao Ping stared at her in silence.
“When my mentor and I were going through the records of every Major Crimes Unit member,” Zhou Jin said, “I saw that you once served as an auxiliary officer with the Special Forces unit. I’m asking you — on ‘8·17,’ five years ago, when the Special Forces were ambushed, was it you who betrayed them? Was it you who leaked the weapons transport route to Qi Yan?”
Zhao Ping seemed to find her ridiculous. “You’re giving me far too much credit,” he said with a laugh. “I was just a low-level auxiliary officer back then.”
Zhou Jin did not believe his denial. Her voice sharpened: “My brother — Zhou Chuan. Do you know him? Did you have a hand in his death? Did you?!”
Zhao Ping stared at her with an expression of disbelief. “Why do you still think your brother was killed by those criminals? He wasn’t, Senior Sister. That’s just the surface of it. Zhou Chuan did die from a gunshot — but do you know why he died?”
He laughed again, his teeth white and bare, his smile mocking Zhou Jin — and mocking Zhou Chuan.