False evidence

Chapter 452 Painted Skin (2)

I was taken aback when I saw the contents of the text message.

In his mind's eye, Liang Kaiyuan exclaimed, "Something's happened to Meizhi!"

I told Zhao Qi to release Liang Yuan and tell her that the person who sent the distress text was our friend.

“I know, it’s Li Meizhi. She’s my client.”

Zhao Qisong opened Liangyuan and said, "I came to find you because of her. She must be in trouble now, but you two alone will definitely not be able to find her."

"What do you mean by 'can't find'?" I sensed something fishy in his words.

"Anyway, she's not in any immediate danger." Zhao Qi patted Liang Yuan on the shoulder. "Let's talk about it at my place."

The firm Zhao Qi mentioned was located on the seventh floor of an old office building.

The sign hanging at the entrance reads: Zhao Dake Legal Consulting.

As soon as I entered, a woman behind the reception desk asked without looking up, "Are you a friend or a client?"

“He’s a friend of the client.” Zhao Qi turned to us and said, “He’s my firm’s receptionist, accountant, and personal assistant.”

He then raised an eyebrow: "She's still my wife!"

Erpang said "Oh," and then added, "Hello, sister-in-law. Zhao Qi said you're ugly in the car just now."

I glared at him and said, "If you can't speak properly, then don't speak."

"It's okay, I'm not good-looking. He just wanted to prepare you in advance so you wouldn't be scared by me."

The woman raised her head as she spoke.

Erpang, Liang Yuan, and I all gasped at the same time.

Zhao Qi was not lying; this woman really was ugly.

It's certain that she wasn't disfigured, but she looks worse than if she were.

Although it was impolite, I still thought to myself: With that kind of appearance, you absolutely shouldn't go out at night, or you'll scare people to death.

"Hello, my name is Xiao Yu."

"Hello."

"Uh... hello." Erpang turned his head and whispered to me, "I suddenly feel that dead people aren't so scary anymore."

"you shut up!"

"Alright, let's talk in my office," Zhao Qi said with a smile. "Assistant Xiao, could you please make me a pot of green tea? I just went to Gao He's place, and his jasmine tea was really awful."

Liang Yuan has been calling Li Meizhi since just now.

I also tried calling, but I couldn't get through.

Upon entering the office, Liang Yuan anxiously asked Zhao Qi what had happened to Li Meizhi.
Zhao Qi sat down behind the desk, propped his legs up on it, and asked, "Don't you want to know why I know her?"

I gestured for Liang Yuan to calm down and asked Zhao Qi, "What does she want to know from you?"

"You, and him."

Zhao Qi pointed at me, then at Liang Yuan, and rubbed his hands together, saying, "This matter is quite interesting. She asked me to investigate you two because she suspects... heh, suspects that you two are her deceased husbands."

"When did she find you?" I asked.

"To be precise, I was the one who found her."

Zhao Qi said "thank you" to Xiao Yu who brought in the tea, and took a big gulp of the freshly brewed tea.

Erpang tried to imitate him, but he shrieked from the heat and almost threw the teacup away.

Zhao Qi chuckled, "Consider this a small punishment to teach a lesson. Brother, you'd better watch your words in the future." "Aren't you afraid of getting burned?" Erpang stuck out his tongue and glared at him.

Zhao Qi pointed to his face, "I've been burned twice by two kinds of fire that don't belong to this world, so I can withstand temperatures that ordinary people can't."

As he spoke, he took out a lighter, lit it, and held the flame to his palm for a full minute.

He showed us his palm, and apart from a small blackened area, there were no obvious signs of burns.

"It seems that Li Meizhi is really in big trouble," I said.

“That’s right, but there’s no immediate danger to her life.” Zhao Qi said to me while wiping his hands. “Now that you know I’m not an ordinary person, you should be able to guess that Li Meizhi’s situation is also unusual.”

"I think you should start from the beginning."

Zhao Qi nodded: "Let's talk about Yue Rong first. I was entrusted by Zhang Xueli and Ji Jiabao to find out that the will was kept by her law firm. Out of professional ethics, I told my clients the result. You should have heard that I used to be a policeman. So after that, I have been secretly protecting Yue Rong."

Erpang couldn't help but say, "But she was still tied up and beaten until her head looked like a pig's."

Zhao Qi smiled and said, "If it weren't for that, how could Gao He have brought the two kidnappers to justice? Zhang Xueli and her husband must have guessed that their father wouldn't leave them the property... at least not all of it."

Their ultimate goal was to force Yue Rong to amend the will before it was made public. Therefore, Yue Rong wouldn't have been in mortal danger at that time. The only thing I didn't expect was that car accident would happen.

"If I hadn't run into you, I would have notified the police and arrested them all the night the kidnappers handed Yue Rong over to Ji Jiabao and Zhang Xueli."

I shook my head: "The police force was right to dismiss you."

Given Zhao Qi's current status, this wouldn't be considered entrapment, but a police officer like Gao He would never gamble with the lives of innocent people just to arrest someone.

Zhao Qi shrugged. "The reason I know Li Meizhi is because I'm investigating another case. After she learned my identity, she asked me to help her investigate you and Liang Yuan. I agreed, but the reward I received wasn't money; it was for her to do something for me."

I said with a stern face, "Don't tell me she's in trouble because she was working for you!"

"I'm sorry, that's really how it is. I want her to be my informant, what you'd call an undercover agent."

"Fuck you!"

Liang Yuan suddenly stood up and punched him hard in the face.

Zhao Qi did not dodge and took the punch squarely.

Liang Yuan was about to make a move, but I stopped him: "Let's try to save them first!"

I asked Zhao Qi, "Who did you ask her to investigate for you?"

“The property owner of Siyuan Kindergarten, that is, her landlord.” Zhao Qi rubbed his chin. “The other party’s name is Zhu Yunwen, the ‘Wen’ in ‘civilized’.”

Liang Yuan forced herself to calm down and asked with a sullen face, "I've seen him. What happened to him?"

Zhao Qi raised one eyebrow at Liang Yuan, "Looks like I can get my promise to Li Meizhi done. You're the real dead husband of hers."

"I'm asking you, what exactly did Zhu Yunwen do?" Liang Yuan raised her voice.

In my mind's eye, Liang Kaiyuan sighed.

He didn't say anything, but I immediately understood why he sighed.

In return, he left me with the mindset of a businessman, which inevitably included shrewdness and rationality.

The Liang Garden of today is certainly lacking in both of these aspects.

Seeing Liang Yuan's aggressive attitude, Zhao Qi couldn't help but frown: "If you weren't such a reckless driver, I really wouldn't want to come looking for you!"

I said coldly, "If something happened to your loved one, can you guarantee you wouldn't act impulsively?"

Zhao Qi sighed and said, "I don't want to use innocent people's lives as bargaining chips, but Zhu Yunwen is no ordinary person."

Suddenly, in his mind's eye, Eunuch Sun shrieked, "If this were back then, and he had called out that name repeatedly, he probably wouldn't have been spared even if he had died a hundred times over!"

(End of this chapter)