Chapter 746 — The Husband-and-Wife Thieves

Anxious as he was, he could only force himself to appear calm. "It's likely that An Jianwen and his men mistook someone else for Wei Zhao. They couldn't have just grabbed some random person off the street and swapped his kidney into you, could they? A kidney is worth a good deal of money—they wouldn't do something so thankless!"

Hearing his father's words, Zhong Yongliang was somewhat reassured. Indeed, An Jianwen would never do something so thankless! To give him a random kidney would be worse than giving him a matching one! Kidneys were valuable—even a random one fetched money. Why on earth would he do that?

The only possibility was that An Jianwen had seized someone who closely resembled Wei Zhao, taken him for Wei Zhao, and then transplanted his kidney into Zhong Yongliang.

"All right! Then let's have the examination done first and talk afterward!" Zhong Yongliang nodded.

Zhong Fabai did not dare delay either; he went straight off to find a doctor. Zhong Yongliang's kidney transplant had not been performed at the First People's Hospital, so the hospital had no relevant data on him and would not carry out any follow-up treatment—only some routine post-operative recovery care.

And because Zhong Fabai feared that Zhong Yongliang's kidney would draw the police's notice, he had not made a great show of arranging follow-up care with the doctors. He had great faith in An Jianwen: since An Jianwen said the kidney source was a perfect match, there should be no problem. Zhong Fabai meant to wait until Zhong Yongliang had recovered a little, then give him a thorough examination.

But now he could not afford to worry about all that. Zhong Fabai went straight to a doctor, and very soon Zhong Yongliang was wheeled out of the ward for a full examination...

Meanwhile, in another room of the hospital...

Liu Bojia did indeed wake in the afternoon, with little deviation from Wei Zhao's prediction. The doctors marveled when they examined him—a man kept alive by a ventilator, and he had actually woken up? What was more, every one of his bodily indicators had clearly improved; apart from some physical trauma, there was nothing else wrong with him.

Did that count as a miracle in the history of medicine?

Qiu Lingshan, however, did not describe the course of treatment. She merely told the hospital that experts had been brought in to save him, and that the specific process was confidential.

The hospital had no choice. If the police said confidential, then confidential it was; they could only cooperate with the police in arranging Liu Bojia's follow-up treatment.

This time, when Liu Bojia woke, he was no longer as obstinate as before. Perhaps he knew he had narrowly escaped death—whether any blessing would follow, he could not say; it all depended on what choice he made.

It had never occurred to Liu Bojia that after he was admitted to the hospital, that madman, that homicidal maniac, could still track him down, slip into his ward right under the police's guard, and very nearly kill him! He had not died this time; whether he would die the next, that was hard to say.

Liu Bojia knew well how ruthless that lot were. Though the mad killer had said nothing at all, he must have been sent by them to finish him off and shut his mouth—of that there was no doubt, and Liu Bojia knew it perfectly well.

Either way he was a dead man; better to cooperate with the police, and there might still be a chance to live. He knew that so long as he drew breath, those people would never let the matter rest. Better, then, to take a sentence—prison, at least, was safer.

Once Liu Bojia's injuries had stabilized, Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yutian came in and sat down a short distance from his bed.

"Liu Bojia, even now, is there still nothing you want to say?" Qiu Lingshan looked at the man in the bed. She had once taken him for a victim, but now it seemed it was merely a falling-out among thieves. "If not for your good luck in running into a miracle doctor, do you think you would still be alive?"

Qiu Lingshan's words were blunt, but with a man like Liu Bojia there was no need for courtesy. He had not only cost Wei Zhao so much true qi, but had earlier caused the police enormous trouble and confusion.

After waking, Liu Bojia had heard from the doctors how long he had been unconscious and what his condition had been during that time—kept alive entirely by a ventilator, and the moment it was removed, he would die.

In short, the hospital had been utterly powerless over his injuries; who knew where the police had found a master to treat Liu Bojia, and only thus had he been pulled back from the brink.

"How much... do you know?" When Liu Bojia asked this, he was still nursing a certain hope. He did not know how much the police knew, and so could pick and choose what to confess.

"The tomb-robbing organization code-named the Husband-and-Wife Thieves has been captured." Chen Yutian did not say that the two ringleaders had been shot dead, but that they had been taken—a remark meant to put psychological pressure on Liu Bojia, implying that the police already had the evidence of his crimes. "According to their confession, you were one of the tomb-robbing members, and you also had a hand in their next plan. And this time your whole family was wiped out because you were silenced by another tomb-robbing gang, isn't that so?"

Chen Yutian had not gone into much detail, but he had essentially laid out a fact. Yet the more he put it that way, the more Liu Bojia believed the police already knew most of it. After all, the Husband-and-Wife Thieves had been captured; whatever little he had done, the police would probably uncover with a single investigation.

"The Husband-and-Wife Thieves? What do they do? Tomb robbing? What does that have to do with me?" Liu Bojia probed. He did not believe that the Thieves, the moment they were captured, would give him up—that made no sense; he had no conflict of interest with them! The tomb-robbing trade had its rules: once you were inside, if you started biting people wildly, you would very likely bring down the vengeance of your colleagues.

You're inside, but you have family, don't you? If they cannot get at you, they will get at your family.

So many tomb robbers, once captured, confess only their own affairs. As for the other tomb-robbing organizations they know of, and the sales channels, they say nothing more—otherwise the families they left behind outside would very likely face frenzied revenge.

"Heh heh, you're thinking that it's rather unrealistic for the Husband-and-Wife Thieves to confess nothing else yet single you out, isn't that right?" Qiu Lingshan had been a criminal investigator for many years and had learned to read people; one glance at Liu Bojia's expression told her what was going through his mind.

"It's true that I'm an archaeologist, and I do have connections with some tomb-robbing gangs, but I don't take part in tomb robbing. I only appraise, privately, certain antiques they've gotten from their digs..." Liu Bojia began making excuses for himself.

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