Good and Evil Chapter 140: Feng Liang's Confession

Attacking a city is a strategy of the lower order; attacking the heart is the supreme strategy.

After entering Interrogation Room Number One and taking their respective seats, Xu Lang looked at Feng Liang, who had kept his head lowered the entire time, and said, "Raise your head and look at me."

Feng Liang, who had previously been dismissive and indifferent to everything, froze the moment he lifted his head and caught sight of that familiar face. A look of disbelief and confusion flashed across his eyes, soon replaced by a profound, unmistakable sense of unease and fear hidden deep within his gaze.

"You—how—how are you here?" Feng Liang stammered, his voice trembling slightly.

"If I'm not here, where else would I be, Brother Liang?" Xu Lang asked with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Weren't you supposed to be in the operating room?" Feng Liang asked in utter astonishment.

"Surprised, aren't you?" Xu Lang chuckled.

Feng Liang stared intently at Xu Lang, sweeping his gaze across Xu Lang's face and then down to his abdomen. Once he confirmed that Xu Lang appeared to be completely normal and healthy, he let out a long sigh and lowered his head once more.

Without breaking eye contact, Xu Lang began reciting Feng Liang's background information from memory.

"Feng Liang, thirty-nine years old this year, one hundred and seventy-two centimeters tall, weighing one hundred and forty catties. Seven fingers remaining, with the other three mercilessly hacked off a decade ago by creditors after he defaulted on loan shark debts. Married once, currently divorced, with a twelve-year-old son who is currently a seventh-grader at Experimental Middle School in City Y. The child's name is—"

"Enough, stop reading! Xu Minghao, what on earth do you want? Who the hell are you?" Feng Liang finally snapped. He jerked his head up, glaring at Xu Lang with the ferocious gaze of a wild wolf, as if he wanted to tear Xu Lang to shreds. He tried to leap to his feet, but restrained by the handcuffs on his wrists, the moment he stood up, he was forced right back down into his seat by the police officer standing behind him.

"You're asking me who I am?" Xu Lang gave Feng Liang a wicked smile.

Then, he said calmly, "Oh, I almost forgot to tell you—my name isn't Xu Minghao. It's Xu Lang. I used to be a police officer, and now? I'm a private detective. Of course, you don't really need to know all that. You just need to know that I have absolute clarity on every single detail of your life. For instance, your son's name, where he lives right now... If you refuse to make a clean breast of things, then—hehe—"

Xu Lang left the sentence unfinished. His words were laden with a crude, undisguised threat, causing Gu Hongsheng, who had accompanied him into the interrogation room, to furrow his brow. Gu Hongsheng suddenly regretted letting Xu Lang participate in the interrogation. After all, police interrogations of criminal suspects are recorded on video and audio from start to finish, and Xu Lang's remarks violated protocol in the extreme. If this case went to trial in the future, Feng Liang's defense attorney could easily use those statements to file a lawsuit alleging coerced confessions under duress. Of course, Gu Hongsheng had to admit that Xu Lang's psychological tactic was undeniably effective.

"Leave my son alone! He's just a child, he's only twelve years old!" Feng Liang screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking with desperation.

The smile on Xu Lang's face vanished instantly. He slammed his hand hard onto the table and shouted back at Feng Liang, "You care about your son because he's only twelve years old? What about Dong Gan'en? He was only sixteen this year! What about Zhou Hongwen? He's only eighteen! You're thinking of your own son, but what about *their* parents?"

A strange, heavy silence fell over Interrogation Room Number One. Xu Lang said nothing more. His eyes remained locked onto Feng Liang, while Feng Liang stared down at the gleaming, silvery handcuffs shackled to his wrists. After about ten minutes of agonizing quiet, Feng Liang finally spoke.

"I'll confess. I'll tell you everything. Just... please don't touch my son."

Xu Lang looked down at Feng Liang and said quietly, "Go ahead."

From that moment on, Feng Liang began detailing all the criminal activities he, Zheng Lei, and the others had committed.

In truth, Feng Liang had once been a victim himself. Years ago, unable to repay a crushing burden of high-interest debt, he had resorted to selling his blood to scrape together funds. His wife and son had left him as a result, reducing him to a lonely, isolated man.

The first time he ever encountered the illegal underground industry of human kidney trafficking, he had run out of all other options. By sheer coincidence, he spotted a newspaper advertisement seeking kidney donors. Desperate, he latched onto it like a drowning man grasping at a straw, lured by the promise of an extraordinarily generous payout: three hundred thousand yuan.

Ten years ago, three hundred thousand yuan was an astronomical sum of wealth. At that time, even households with ten thousand yuan in savings were rare. The moment he saw the ad, Feng Liang contacted the listed party without hesitation. And that person was none other than Wen Xuelan—who was now the director of that private hospital. The patient in urgent need of the kidney transplant was none other than Wen Xuelan's father, Wen Mingde.

Once the two sides met, everything proceeded systematically. First came the medical examinations. After he passed every screening with flying colors, he was wheeled into the operating room, where the kidney extraction and transplantation to Wen Mingde were performed. The surgery was an overwhelming success. Though Feng Liang suffered immense physical agony in the aftermath, the moment he saw the suitcase Wen Xuelan handed him, stuffed to the brim with stacks of crisp, brand-new banknotes, he felt that everything he had endured was worth it.

With that thirty thousand yuan—[Note: keeping the financial progression consistent with narrative logic, the text previously mentioned 300,000]—Feng Liang first paid off his loan shark debts, kept a small portion for himself, and gave the remainder to his ex-wife as child support.

If the story had ended there, none of the subsequent horrors would have transpired, nor would the disappearance of Zhou Hongwen and the subsequent forcible removal of sixty percent of his kidney have ever occurred.

Anyone with children knows that the developmental years require vast amounts of financial resources, material goods, and parental effort. Even though Feng Liang and his wife had divorced, and Feng Liang was left with a permanently impaired body, the ordeal had successfully cured him of his gambling addiction. However, as his child grew day by day, the demands multiplied. Feng Liang's ex-wife worked merely as a waitress in a small restaurant, earning a meager salary. Juggling that low income with the daily care of a toddler meant her earnings fell woefully short. Meanwhile, the thirty thousand yuan Feng Liang had received from selling his kidney had been nearly exhausted by his debts, leaving him with only slightly over twenty thousand yuan to pass along to his ex-wife.

That paltry sum was a drop in the bucket for a growing child whose needs changed by the day. Forced to find work, Feng Liang—who had once been in stellar physical condition and even won athletic championships in school—found his body ruined. Having lost one kidney, his health had plummeted. He was no longer capable of heavy manual labor; demanding jobs like hauling bricks on construction sites were entirely beyond him. Coupled with the fact that he possessed only a junior high school education, lacking both refined skills and higher learning, finding a steady job became an insurmountable challenge.

Just as Feng Liang was at his wits' end over his son's upbringing expenses, he crossed paths with Wen Xuelan once again. Nearly two years had passed since their last encounter. By then, Wen Mingde had already passed away after emergency treatment failed due to severe rejection of the transplanted organ.

When the two met, they had little to say. Initially, Feng Liang assumed Wen Xuelan had sought him out merely to catch up. To his surprise, Wen Xuelan asked him to help source kidney donors. At first, Feng Liang assumed her hospital needed them for legitimate medical purposes. Though uneducated, he vaguely knew that viable kidneys were desperately scarce nationwide, so he didn't think much of it.

就这样,他稀里糊涂地... [Translating narrative seamlessly:]

Just like that, in a daze, he began helping Wen Xuelan track down individuals willing to sell their kidneys. Whenever such a person was found, Feng Liang would bring them to Wen Xuelan's hospital for medical examinations. At first, the candidates Feng Liang brought in were either drug addicts or had underlying health issues, all of whom failed the screenings—a streak that left Wen Xuelan deeply disappointed.

Eventually, Feng Liang managed to source a donor who passed every medical criterion. He brought the person in, and after a battery of tests, Wen Xuelan was thoroughly satisfied. She handed Feng Liang two hundred thousand yuan, out of which Feng Liang gave thirty thousand yuan to the donor.

The moment Feng Liang laid eyes on those crisp, crimson stacks of hundred-yuan bills once again, any lingering hesitation vanished. He spiraled completely out of control, stepping irrevocably onto the path of crime and lawlessness.

If everything Feng Liang claimed was true, one might argue that his initial descent into crime—driven to desperation as a gambler cornered by loan sharks, forced to sell his blood and kidney—was at least somewhat understandable. At that stage, he was still a figure worthy of some pity. Granted, he was hateful, but he had harmed no one else; the only person he damaged was himself and his own family.

However, when Wen Xuelan later approached him to hunt down donors, any excuse of ignorance evaporated. Even if he could claim he didn't realize it was a crime at the very beginning, over the subsequent years, as he dragged one innocent victim after another into the abyss, it was impossible for him not to know it was illicit and criminal. From the moment Feng Liang personally shoved his first victim into the fire pit, he transformed from a victim into a perpetrator.

Once the first threshold was crossed, the second followed effortlessly. After the successful transplant operation using that first victim, the temptation of massive wealth completely stripped Feng Liang of his basic moral compass. In his eyes, every qualified donor ceased to be a human being and became nothing more than a stack of fresh banknotes—cattle and sheep waiting to be slaughtered in an abattoir.

Zheng Lei was someone Feng Liang met by chance while searching for donors. Zheng Lei had just been released from prison, lacked employment, and possessed no specialized skills. Initially, Feng Liang intended to use Zheng Lei as a donor, but noticing the man's quick wits, he kept him around instead. The two formed a small-scale criminal syndicate—or rather, partners in crime. Zheng Lei was responsible for scouting and abducting donors, while Feng Liang supplied them to Wen Xuelan. The profits were split evenly down the middle.

As their operation expanded and Wen Xuelan's demand for donors surged, the duo found themselves short-handed. Zheng Lei brought in his cousin Zheng Maocai, who also possessed a criminal record. As for Wang Yiming, he was neither recruited by the criminal cousins nor found by Feng Liang; he was directly introduced to them by Wen Xuelan. At first, Zheng Lei felt deeply unnerved by Wang Yiming's presence.

Wang Yiming was a habitually taciturn man with a permanent poker face. His gaze was icy, devoid of the slightest trace of human emotion. Both Feng Liang and Zheng Lei felt a deep, instinctive dread toward him. Though Feng Liang hadn't served time in prison and couldn't fully articulate why, Zheng Lei and Zheng Maocai—who had criminal records—knew all too well. They had encountered violent murderers inside prison walls, and Wang Yiming's cold, bloodthirsty stare carried that exact same chilling aura.

Over time, however, they grew accustomed to it. Thus, a criminal network took its final shape, headed by Wen Xuelan, fronted by Feng Liang, with Zheng Lei and Zheng Maocai acting as operatives.

According to Feng Liang's confession, starting from that very first victim, he had pushed over thirty people into the fiery pit of organ trafficking over the years. The majority of them survived the surgeries. A few, however, died from various post-operative complications shortly after receiving their payouts. Because they were not actively murdered but succumbed to medical complications, post-mortem examinations consistently ruled their deaths as accidental.

When Gu Hongsheng asked for the names of those victims, Feng Liang shook his head, claiming he couldn't remember them all. Xu Lang and Gu Hongsheng had anticipated this; the criminal syndicate had operated for a long time across a vast span of years. Tracing the early donors Feng Liang had provided to Wen Xuelan was akin to finding a needle in a haystack.

However, Feng Liang did provide one crucial piece of intelligence: after teaming up with Zheng Lei, at Zheng Lei's suggestion, Feng Liang had started keeping a ledger. Every single time he supplied a donor to Wen Xuelan, he meticulously recorded the donor's name, the payment received from Wen Xuelan, and the distribution breakdown. He kept detailed notes as an insurance policy. By then, fully aware that his actions constituted grave felonies, he knew that if the police ever caught up to him, he faced execution—or at best, a life sentence behind bars.

His calculation was simple: if things went south, he could use the ledger to blackmail Wen Xuelan and force her to help him evade justice.

Hearing Feng Liang's account, Xu Lang felt a complex swirl of emotions. He had never expected this dark, vicious syndicate to have formed purely over the pursuit of money. Feng Liang sold organs for money; Zheng Lei and Zheng Maocai did the same. But what about Wen Xuelan? What was her motivation? Was it money? Xu Lang shook his head, dismissing the thought. Not only was Wen Xuelan the director of a private hospital and an elite graduate, but she had also inherited her father's entire estate—she was a textbook wealthy second-generation heir. While organ trafficking yielded astronomical profits, given Wen Xuelan's net worth, she had no financial need to take such risks.

During his background checks on Wen Xuelan, Xu Lang had reviewed her medical files. She was physically healthy, an avid outdoor adventurer who went traveling every few weeks. Being a physician herself, she undoubtedly knew how to maintain her well-being. If her body was entirely healthy, why would she hoard so many kidneys? Surely she wasn't eating them.

Pondering the puzzle, Xu Lang concluded that the answer likely pointed back to her deceased father, Wen Mingde. After all, Wen Mingde had died after his health deteriorated due to severe organ rejection following his kidney transplant. Whether the truth mirrored this hypothesis would have to wait until Ning嫣然 [Ning Yanran] hauled Wen Xuelan back from the airport.

In truth, what worried Xu Lang most at that moment was Wang Yiming. According to Feng Liang's confession, Wang Yiming was neither recruited by him nor by the Zheng cousins, but introduced entirely by Wen Xuelan. Where Wang Yiming was currently hiding remained a complete mystery to them.

Feng Liang recounted that the moment Xu Lang was wheeled into the operating room, Wang Yiming had vanished without a sound. Where he went, none of them knew. Although Wang Yiming appeared to serve as Zheng Lei's bodyguard on the surface, the only person he truly took orders from was Wen Xuelan. None of the others, including Feng Liang, possessed the authority to command him. Consequently, they neither knew nor dared to ask where Wang Yiming had fled.

When the police abruptly surrounded and descended upon the hospital without warning, not only Feng Liang, but Zheng Lei and Zheng Maocai as well, were completely blindsided. They had always operated with extreme caution, never anticipating that the police would suddenly materialize before them. Furthermore, upon arrival, the police immediately breached the operating room and rescued Xu Lang, who lay unconscious on the surgical table. The operation had been executed with such precise target-locking that it caught them entirely off guard.

As Xu Lang remained lost in thought, Gu Hongsheng broke the silence, asking, "Where is your ledger located?"

Hanging his head, Feng Liang whispered, "It's in Apartment 501, Building One, Donglin Residential Community."

"Where exactly inside the apartment?" Gu Hongsheng pressed.

"There's a safe in my bedroom. Open the safe and you'll find it," Feng Liang answered obediently.

"What's the combination to the safe?" Gu Hongsheng asked.

"970418. It's my son's birthday," Feng Liang muttered, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

Gu Hongsheng followed up with several more detailed questions. Once satisfied that Feng Liang was telling the truth, Xu Lang and Gu Hongsheng finally stepped out of Interrogation Room Number One.

As they emerged from the interrogation area, they saw that Ning Yanran had already returned. Xu Lang immediately approached her and learned that her team had successfully intercepted Wen Xuelan at the airport. Wen Xuelan had disguised herself in an attempt to board an international flight, but was nabbed on the spot. A massive amount of cash and relevant emigration documents were seized from her carry-on luggage. Had Ning Yanran and her team arrived even a fraction later, once Wen Xuelan slipped across national borders, apprehending her would have become an infinitely harder battle.