A madman in France? How come he's always at crime scenes!

Footsteps echoed along the corridor floor.

The rubber-soled shoes trotted on the ground, one step at a time, steady and resounding.

It was as if the Grim Reaper's death warrant was closing in on Wu Liang.

Wu Liang pressed his back tightly against the wall inside the conference room door, not daring to utter a sound.

The light that had seeped through the crack in the door gradually disappeared.

Footsteps approached the door.

Wu Liang gripped the pen in his pocket tightly; it was the only thing he could call a weapon.

boom.

bang bang.

Wu Liang could hear his own heartbeat, pounding against his ribs through the fabric of his shirt.

Close at hand.

His breathing was almost audible, and a faint sound of metal rubbing against leather reached Wu Liang's ears.

At the very instant the metal piece hit the door panel, a woman's voice rang out from the east end of the corridor!

"Don't move! Put your hands up!"

The person outside the door suddenly turned around, their rubber-soled shoes screeching rapidly on the ground.

boom!

The gunshot rang out almost seamlessly after Li Mu's shout; the roar of the bullet, accompanied by the smell of gunpowder, instantly came from outside the door.

A muffled groan could be clearly heard in the empty corridor, followed by a rapid three-shot barrage!

Bang bang bang!

Wu Liang heard the muffled sound of a bullet hitting the wall, and a deep male voice outside the door, his voice choked with pain.

The man outside the door stopped arguing, quickly ran a few steps, and rushed in the opposite direction from Li Mu.

Wu Liang rushed out of the conference room and just in time to see the man disappear into the ventilation duct.

"How are you?!"

Li Mu lay down at the entrance to the fire escape on the east side of the corridor, the right half of his uniform was completely red.

Blood flowed down from her shoulder blade, soaking her entire sleeve and staining the floor tiles with large patches of blood.

"I hit him," Li Mu's voice seemed to be squeezed out from between his teeth, "Damn... a little off."

"Don't speak."

Wu Liang squatted down, pulled down the sleeve of his shirt again, knelt on one knee beside Li Mu, folded the torn cloth into a thick pad, and pressed it on the bleeding point below her collarbone.

Li Mu gasped. The fabric of the wound was soaked through in seconds, and warm liquid seeped from between Wu Liang's fingers.

Wu Liang used his other hand to reach for the walkie-talkie hanging on Li Mu's waist and pressed the call button.

"Captain Meng, the assassin has entered the surgical building's ventilation system. Li Mu is injured, come quick!"

The walkie-talkie was filled with the sounds of large numbers of people running and the panic of the crowd; clearly, the gunshots had attracted enough attention.

Meng Jiang's voice boomed, "Damn it, we're almost there! Zhang Ze, seal off all exits! All ventilation shafts!"

Li Mu twitched the corner of his mouth while Wu Liang was pressing on the wound.

"Attorney Wu..." Her voice was a notch softer than before, her eyelids drooping, "You owe me a life."

"I'll give you a discount if you need anything, don't fall asleep!"

Wu Liang saw Li Mu's expression change from cold and stern to gentle and felt a sense of foreboding.

He silently apologized, then tightened his grip. The intense pain elicited a soft groan from Li Mu, but thankfully, the confusion in his eyes lessened somewhat.

"you……"

A flurry of footsteps echoed down the corridor.

Meng Jiang led his men in, and the entire corridor shook.

He glanced at Wu Liang, who was kneeling on the ground stopping Li Mu's bleeding, and then at the louvered window of the ventilation shaft that had been opened. His face instantly darkened.

"Call a stretcher! Quickly!"

Zhang Ze behind him turned and ran.

Soon after, three nurses rushed forward carrying a stretcher.

Watching Li Mu being carried away, Wu Liang finally breathed a sigh of relief, stood up from the ground, his knees still stained with Li Mu's blood.

He stared at the louvered window of the vent that had been opened; there was a fresh scratch on the aluminum blades.

"He knows this building well."

Meng Jiang's voice was muffled in his throat, as if he were talking to himself.

Wu Liang walked to the bottom of the ventilation shaft. The dark pipe smelled of dust mixed with disinfectant. The pipe wasn't very large; an adult man could just squeeze inside.

"More than just familiar," Wu Liang said.

Meng Jiang turned to look at him.

"He was very calm when he removed the window."

Wu Liang wiped his blood-stained hand on his pants.

"Have you ever seen someone whose plans have been interrupted still have the mind to check the threads of a screw?"

Zhang Ze's voice came through the walkie-talkie: "Team Leader Meng, all the ventilation openings from the third to the seventh floor have been guarded, the fire escape has been cleared, and the elevators have been locked."

"We'll dig this person out of the ground, even if it means digging three feet into the ground!"

Meng Jiang pressed the intercom button hard.

Wu Liang quickly gave Meng Jiang the report he had just come up with.

"Captain Meng, what kind of patients are staying on the third floor of the surgical building?"

Meng Jiang was stunned for a moment.

"General surgery, postoperative observation. What's wrong?"

Wu Liang walked into the conference room, picked up the map, and stopped his finger on the area on the third floor of the floor plan.

From the ventilation duct of the medicine cold storage, a branch pipe bypasses the elevator shaft and leads directly to the ceiling vent at the end of the third-floor corridor.

"This person never intended to go to the ICU from the beginning."

Meng Jiang walked to Wu Liang's side, looked down at the dotted line on the floor plan, and then looked up.

How can you be so sure?

"He was calm and collected. He wasn't running away; he was proceeding according to plan. He had intended to go down to the third floor through the ventilation duct anyway."

Wu Liang turned the floor plan around so that Meng Jiang could clearly see the direction of the pipeline branch.

"If his target was Shen Xuejun, he should have gone to the east end of the seventh floor. If he wanted to escape, he could have left after succeeding in the archives without having to return to the surgical building."

"If there is a mole, I am the biggest variable. He did not expect that there was someone waiting in the conference room, so he returned here with confidence after you left. The most dangerous place is the safest place."

"But his target was someone else from the very beginning!"

Startled, Meng Jiang quickly took the laptop from the criminal investigator beside him, opened the hospital's HIS system query page, and entered "third floor of the surgical building, inpatient".

The page is loading.

Wu Liang stared at the screen, his mind still replaying the scene from just now.

Tool kit. Screwdriver. Unscrew the four screws one by one, check the threads, and put them in your pocket. The whole process should take no more than ninety seconds.

He didn't come to kill Shen Xuejun.

Everyone's assessment was consistent with the police's prediction:

A man lay in the ICU, still in critical condition. The killer knew he was alive. The information released by the police had worked. The killer returned to confirm.

But in reality, coming to see Shen Xuejun was just a pretext.

The killer's reason for coming to the hospital today was never for Shen Xuejun. He repeatedly appeared in the seventh-floor corridor to confirm that the police's surveillance focus was on the seventh floor.

When the police surrounded the seventh floor like an iron barrel, he crawled into the ventilation duct and went down from the seventh floor to the third floor.

Then push open the door to a ward on the third floor.

The progress bar has reached the end.

Page refreshed.

Meng Jiang's finger slid down the touchpad. Patient information scrolled past: post-appendectomy, post-gallstone surgery, gastric polyp removal, thyroid...

"stop."

Wu Liang frowned, because he suddenly saw a name that reminded him of one—

Ma Desheng.