Immediately following——
"Come quick! There's a thief! A robber!" Su Changshun's full-chested, lung-bursting, air-raid-siren-like shrill voice erupted without reservation!
Carrying an exaggerated scream of extreme panic mixed with a sense of "I've finally caught you," the sound waves vibrated the old paper pasted on the windows, causing them to hum. In an instant, the sound pierced through both the front and back courtyards, echoing across the entire Quadrangle Courtyard!
This voice had an exceptionally effective result!
"Waa—!" Banggeng in the Jia Family in the back courtyard was startled into loud crying!
"Damn his grandmother's! Which blind bastard is that?" Xu Damao's curses carried the irritability of being woken up!
"Oh my god! We're dead, we're dead for sure!" Mrs. Jia shrieked—she was genuinely terrified of thieves.
All sorts of chaotic screams, scoldings, and door-opening sounds instantly burst forth!
Limping Liu's face instantly twisted and deformed in the darkness! The scene before him was a hundred thousand miles away from the silent, swift strike followed by a breezy retreat that he had imagined in his mind!
This damn thing was simply poking a hornet's nest! With this ghost-like howling, let alone breaking a leg, in the next second the Joint Defense Team and the Public Security Bureau from the entire neighborhood would swarm over like sharks smelling blood!
"Your grandmother's!" In his heart, Limping Liu cursed all eighteen generations of Yi Zhonghai's ancestors!
How could he dare to linger any longer? Never mind crippling Su Changshun's leg; if he were trapped in the courtyard now, he would be beaten into a cripple on the spot and dragged to the police station!
He couldn't even spare a fierce parting threat—what if his voice was remembered? And he couldn't care about keeping quiet anymore; saving his life was paramount!
He abruptly pulled back his tool and bolted toward the outside of the courtyard for dear life! His running posture made his limping left leg even more obvious, but his right leg moved as if fitted with a spring, at an extremely fast speed—truly resembling a chased, limping stray dog!
Inside the room, Su Changshun had his ear pressed against the door panel, listening clearly.
Outside, those chaotic, stumbling, yet extremely rapid footsteps were fleeing at high speed!
"It's in the bag!" Su Changshun let out a long sigh of relief inwardly, his palms covered in cold sweat, while the corners of his mouth couldn't help curving into an expression of lingering fear mixed with triumph, "Damn it! That scared the hell out of me!"
He secretly rejoiced that the meager modern self-defense awareness of a time-traveler like himself had truly saved his life today!
The front courtyard had completely blown up by this time! Several dim flashlight beams swept wildly about the courtyard.
"Who! Who shouted thief?"
"Catch the thief! Catch the thief!"
"Where's the thief?"
From the back courtyard came a deep, powerful shout carrying the steady authority unique to a soldier: "Nobody panic! I am Li Qingxiang! What's the situation? Which way did the thief run?!" The demobilized soldier Li Qingxiang, draped in an overcoat and holding a fire poker, strode across from the back courtyard straight toward the source of the noise—Su Changshun's house!
The lights in Yan Bugui's house opposite also turned on. Old Yan, draped in an old cotton-padded jacket full of patches, his glasses slipped to the tip of his nose, wore an expression of lingering shock and extreme annoyance at being woken up.
He also pushed his door open and shouted, "Su Changshun, what are you yelling blindly about in the middle of the night? What thief or robber? Making such a ruckus and scaring people to death! This courtyard is completely peaceful! I think you just had a nightmare and went crazy! Affecting everyone's rest, and disturbing the elderly and children from sleeping—can you take responsibility for that? Huh?"
Quite a few neighbors in the courtyard came out draped in clothes, discussing animatedly, startled and suspicious, their flashlight beams intersecting haphazardly.
Only then did Su Changshun steady his nerves and yank open his own door.
With an expression of sudden shock and lingering fear perfectly plastered on his face, he pointed at the inside door-latch position of his front door and shouted loudly toward the approaching Li Qingxiang.
"Brother Qingxiang! Teacher Yan! And all the neighbors! I really wasn't shouting blindly!" Su Changshun's voice carried grievance and lingering fear, but his pointing was extremely precise, "Have a look, everyone! Take a good look at this door latch!"
Several flashlight beams instantly focused on the old wooden door latch of the Su family!
They saw that the bowl-thick wooden door latch had a sharp, deep, and brand-new slash about three inches long cut diagonally across it near the slot for the bolt by the ground!
That mark cut deep into the wood, its edges rolled back with fresh wood splinters, startlingly vivid in the dim light!
Clearly, an extremely thin sharp tool had been forcibly thrust in to cut open the gap used to slide and pull the door latch! There were also obvious signs of the joint between the door latch and the door frame having been pried!
"Hiss—!" The bustle in the courtyard quieted down a fraction instantly.
Yan Bugui, who had just been muttering about Su Changshun stirring up trouble, had the second half of his complaint stuck hard in his throat, his small eyes behind his spectacle lenses widened into circles.
"This is... a notch left from picking a lock and sliding a bolt?" Someone exclaimed in shock!
"There really is a thief prying the door!" Xu Damao's voice changed pitch.
Li Qingxiang stepped forward two paces, carefully touched that brand-new slash with his rough fingers, and checked the deformation marks on the door latch and door frame.
His normally calm and resolute face instantly tightened, his brow knitted into a deeply carved vertical crease.
An aura of murderous, iron-blooded intensity unconsciously permeated the air!
"That's right! It's a freshly cut knife mark! Someone poked a knife into the door crack from the outside to slice the latch!" Li Qingxiang's voice was resolute, carrying a soldier's unique indisputable nature and a high degree of vigilance against crime.
"Su Changshun wasn't shouting blindly! There really was a villain prying the door! Fortunately his door..." Li Qingxiang noticed the swinging makeshift sheet-metal alarm, his gaze narrowing, and the look he cast at Su Changshun gained a different trace of surprise, "Fortunately the family was fully prepared and scared the thief away!"
Li Qingxiang abruptly straightened up, strode out to the main gate of the compound, his gaze sweeping the surroundings like a knife. Vaguely seeing a figure limping and running in the darkness, he shouted sternly: "The villain ran toward the ceremonial gate! His legs and feet aren't nimble, his left leg should have a problem, and he's not very tall!"
"Those in the front courtyard, guard the courtyard gate! Those in the back courtyard, a few nimble young fellows come with me! Go to the neighborhood police station to report the case! Tell the Joint Defense Team to search!"
"Teacher Yan! You're familiar with everyone, go to the middle courtyard and the back courtyard to do a headcount in every household, and see if anyone is acting abnormal or if anything is missing!" His arrangements were clear in logic and indisputable.
The entire Quadrangle Courtyard instantly shifted from chaos and astonishment to a state of high tension and coordinated criminal apprehension, flashlight beams shaking hurriedly, footsteps chaotic and noisy.
Yan Bugui was also shaken by Li Qingxiang's imposing manner and the ironclad evidence before him. Not daring to complain another half-word, he hurried off to carry out his investigation duties.
A thief who dared to pry doors in this day and age? The nature of the offense was extremely serious!
—————————————
Inside Yi Zhonghai's room.
Dead silence.
In the icy darkness, the two clearly heard Su Changshun's exaggerated roar, heard the commotion of the whole courtyard blowing up, heard the limping, sprinting footsteps, heard Li Qingxiang's commands, and heard Yan Bugui's dramatic 180-degree attitude shift from dissatisfied complaining to frightened execution.
Chen Guihua's teeth chattered rhythmically as she tightly covered her mouth, scared almost to the point of collapsing onto the floor.
Yi Zhonghai leaned his back against the cold wall, his body trembling violently and uncontrollably, even more severely than before.
His face, hidden in the darkness, was as pale as a corpse just climbed out of a coffin, completely distorted out of shape.
His eyes stared like those of a dying fish, filled with endless fear, failure, absurdity, and... disbelief!
His savings! His last little gold bar! Everything he had wagered! The desperate criminal he had hired!
And the result?
Just because Su Changshun hung a broken piece of iron behind his door?! Because that little bastard let out a ghost-like howl?
That shout of "There's a thief!" not only tore apart all his hopes, but was like a resounding slap, fiercely striking Yi Zhonghai's self-proclaimed foolproof plan and his old face!
It was all over!
The money was gone!
The man had fled!
The case was reported!
Li Qingxiang took people in pursuit!
That kid Su Changshun didn't lose a single hair, but instead became a hero of "vigilant defense and defeating villains"? And he even had the nerve to point at his broken door latch so everyone could see the ironclad evidence!
A few strange, rattling sounds escaped his throat as everything went black before his eyes, and a chilling despair completely overwhelmed him.
He knew that if Limping Liu was caught, after dawn tomorrow, what awaited him would no longer be the trouble of Shazhu going to the post office... but a massive legal net descending from the sky, covering the heavens and earth for himself!
And this net... was very likely woven by his own hands, using those hundreds of silver dollars and gold bars to hire that damned Limping Liu.
Su Changshun stood rooted at the doorway, his eyeballs sweeping back and forth through the messy crowd like a searchlight.
Hey! Where was Moral Paragon Yi Zhonghai's old face? In the past, during such big courtyard scenes, this old dog would definitely be the first to rush out, holding an enamel mug and putting on the posture of "presiding over justice," yet today not even a shadow appeared? This defied science!
The corners of Su Changshun's mouth split into a grin, his small abacus clicking loudly in his heart: "Done for! It's guaranteed that this old dog is behind the mischief, no doubt about it! Did his calves cramp up so he couldn't come out?"
He stretched his neck again to look for Shazhu: "Hey, where's that big blockhead? Oh—!" He slapped his forehead in sudden realization: "He must be snoring the house down inside, playing chess with the God of Dreams! It's good that he's missing such a scene, saves him from making trouble."
His gaze fell back to the fresh, hot knife mark on his own door latch, and he smacked his lips, shaking his head and muttering.
"Tsk tsk! Old Dog Yi, this dog-blood drama was spilled so unprofessionally! Just this level? It wastes all those crooked schemes in your belly! Next time—"
He suddenly gave a start, the wave of lingering fear finally washing over him. "No, no! Next time? I'm afraid he'll be crouching in a brick jail singing 'Window of Iron Bars', where would there be a next time? Damn, that was really close just now! Just thinking about it makes my bladder contract!"
As for the broken sheet-metal alarm hanging inside his room, Li Qingxiang, that veteran of the battlefield, had squatted there studying that string of hanging scrap metal for half a day, and when he raised his head to look at Su Changshun, that look... tsk tsk, it was very complicated! Three parts surprise, three parts doubt of "is this kid crazy?", and also carrying four parts of the mystical feeling of "this actually works?"
You couldn't really blame Li Qingxiang for looking at him like he was a monster.
In this day and age, in Nanluoguxiang and even Sijiu City, how many families at night used just a small broken stick symbolically plugged into their doors? Some didn't even have a door latch at all.
Locking the door? What kind of high-end operation was that? There really were no locks for sale; all iron was prioritized for national infrastructure construction.
The prevailing theme was essentially "nothing left on the road, doors left unbolted at night," with neighbors looking at everyone as if they were blood brothers!
As for a freak like Su Changshun, he actually had to hang a string of jangling "anti-espionage alarms" behind his door?
Ha! He simply lived like a spirit—in the entire capital, you couldn't find a second household!