CM | Chapter 8

Jiang City, a storm was about to break.

The sky outside was gray and heavy, and the weather forecast reminded residents to prepare flood-control measures.

After reading the morning news, Gu Yao’s heart gave a jolt. She immediately called Zhu Shengxi.

But just as the call connected, she hung up.

At a time like this, Jiangcheng Gene was certainly in an uproar. A supervisor and a law firm assistant had taken part in testing a drug, and one of them had died. Rumors had already been flying outside, saying that what “Jiangcheng Gene” was researching wasn’t some good medicine to cure people, save lives, and rewrite genes, but □□ and drugs. At a time like this, Zhu Shengxi, as general manager, was certainly obliged to shoulder the responsibility. How could he possibly have time to answer the phone?

Thinking of that, Gu Yao switched to WeChat.

But before she had even finished typing a single sentence, Zhu Shengxi called back.

Gu Yao answered on the first ring. “Hello, how are you?”

Zhu Shengxi’s voice carried fatigue, and there was even a faint rasp to it. “I’m so busy I don’t even have time to drink water.”

Gu Yao softened at once. “You still need to rest. Something this big can’t be handled well overnight anyway. Take it step by step.”

Zhu Shengxi laughed. “Okay.”

After a beat, Gu Yao asked again, “So what are you planning to do now?”

“The PR department and the legal department are already handling things, and I reached an agreement with that law firm as well. This morning, both sides sent people over together to talk to the female assistant. We’ll cover all legal expenses ourselves, but she doesn’t seem to trust us. She refused to let us hire any lawyer for her, and said she wants to defend herself.”

The situation was obvious now. The deceased was a senior executive at Jiangcheng Gene, and the woman with him was a female assistant from the law firm. Whether alive or dead, the two of them were grasshoppers on the same rope, and so were Jiangcheng Gene and the law firm behind them. Everyone was in the same boat, and they absolutely could not afford to split apart at a time like this. They had to stand on the same side and get through the crisis together.

But at this critical moment, that law firm assistant, for reasons unknown, had apparently listened to someone and was trying to draw a clear line between herself, “Jiangcheng Gene,” and the firm she worked for.

Zhu Shengxi sighed. “My guess is that she thinks we’re going to frame her for murder, just to tell the outside world that the new drug we developed has no problems and that this incident wasn’t an accident, but deliberate.”

Gu Yao frowned. “I keep feeling like someone is stirring things up behind the scenes… But things have already blown up this far. Have you thought of any other way to handle it?”

“Everything that needed thinking about has already been thought through. Someone stirring things up behind the scenes is a certainty. Jiangcheng Gene has grown too fast these past few years, and there are plenty of people itching to see us fail. This time they’ll definitely seize the chance to kick us while we’re down. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how big the splash, as long as we do things by the book and let the evidence speak, there’s nothing to fear. I’ve already had someone arrange a time. This afternoon I’ll talk to that female assistant in person. I believe she’ll change her mind.”

Hearing Zhu Shengxi’s calm, confident tone, Gu Yao finally relaxed little by little. His work ability was there for everyone to see, and Jiangcheng Gene had not achieved what it had today on luck alone.

Gu Yao let out a soft sigh. “I hope there’ll be good news this afternoon.”

Zhu Shengxi said, “There will be.”

In the blink of an eye, it was noon, and the pressure outside felt even heavier.

Gu Yao had two classes in the afternoon, so she quickly got herself ready and left the house.

There was just over a month left until the high school entrance exam and the college entrance exam. Right now, third-year students at junior high schools and high schools everywhere were in intensive exam prep, and all the experienced psychological counselors were busy too, traveling all over the country to schools and giving pre-exam psychological guidance.

With the association’s affairs out of the way, Gu Yao suddenly had more time to deal with her own work. Qin Song had originally been sighing over how unfortunate it was for her, saying that before her accident she had taken the association very seriously and had donated quite a lot of money through it.

Gu Yao found that strange, but she did know about it. She had the transfer records. She just found it odd, why would she have valued such a money-grubbing association so highly?

It wasn’t until Qin Song said, “Don’t you remember? After your accident, you hardly ever went to the association anymore. Those sponsorships you used to give them stopped too.”

Ah.

Gu Yao said, “It’s fine. Once I’m done with this stretch, I’ll just spend some money and set up another one. Then I’ll throw it to you to play with.”

Qin Song: “…”

After the Chen Feiyu incident, Gu Yao spent several days writing a fifty-thousand-word psychological analysis report, and also attached some photos and news reports from the media. But she didn’t show it to anyone. She just filed it with all the other psychological analyses she had done, and also pulled out a few key points to use as lecture notes.

This afternoon, Gu Yao had an elective in criminal psychology at a certain university. She had guest lectured for two sessions in the previous months, and the response had been good, so this semester the school had specifically hired her to teach a standalone course.

At first, not many students signed up for the class. The course gave too few credits, and very few students were willing to waste the time.

Only after Gu Yao gave three consecutive lectures did the class become the semester’s hot ticket. The small classroom, which could originally fit only thirty people, was suddenly crammed with fifty. Even the aisles were full. Students who couldn’t squeeze in dragged chairs to block the doorway and listen, and many people recorded the lectures, only for the recordings to be borrowed by students from other classes as soon as they walked out.

Even the school administration hadn’t expected Gu Yao to be this popular.

That noon, when Gu Yao arrived at school, the administration office first called her in to discuss something. They said they hoped she would help draft a psychological analysis exam paper to serve as one of their school’s future admissions thresholds.

Gu Yao thought that was odd, so she asked why.

People from the administration office said that a year ago, a psychology student had climbed up to the sixth floor because of mental stress and threatened to kill themselves. It took six hours of coaxing and persuasion before they finally came down. Later, the student was sent to the hospital for an examination, and the experts assessed it as a psychological issue.

The school administration didn’t want anything like that to happen again, and was even more afraid that someone would lose their life, so they simply decided to set a psychological analysis questionnaire. Anyone whose mental health score failed to meet the standard would not be admitted, to avoid bringing them in only for them to end up mentally unraveling before they’d even properly learned psychology.

After hearing that, Gu Yao was speechless for a moment. Then she said to the school administration, “If this were an ordinary major, your method might work. But for psychology, that creates a contradiction. Any student with even a little talent in psychology can’t be measured by the kind of mental health standard ordinary people think of. As the saying goes, there is only a thin line between genius and madman. In our line of work, healthy mediocrity is completely worthless. On the contrary, minor psychological issues can be managed through scientific methods and knowledge. If those talented children really are troubled in that way, then even more reason not to shut them out. Instead, they should be guided with systematic education. Look at the Chen Feiyu incident that just happened. That’s a classic case.”

By the time Gu Yao got to the classroom, the projector was already set up.

The back door was packed with people, and the tiny classroom was jammed so full there was no room to move.

The moment Gu Yao stepped in through the front door, the murmuring in the classroom died down instantly. As soon as Gu Yao walked up to the podium, the room burst into applause on its own.

Gu Yao smiled slightly, and a bunch of young boys below stared blankly at her.

Only when her expression tightened a little did she get straight to the point. “When I came in just now, I heard people discussing the Chen Feiyu incident. Fine. Then today’s first question is this, among the five categories of criminals, which one does Chen Feiyu belong to?”

The five categories were, in order: born criminals, mentally ill criminals, passion-crime offenders, habitual offenders, and occasional offenders.

Very quickly, a student answered, “I think it’s passion crime.”

Another student added, “It could also be classified as a mentally ill criminal, or a born criminal.”

Gu Yao put up the slideshow she’d prepared and then said, “First of all, there’s no doubt that Chen Feiyu had the potential of a born criminal. The experiences he went through later also traumatized him mentally a second, third, and even fourth time. As for passion crime, I don’t deny that either. Then let’s look at the latter two, habitual offenders and occasional offenders. Before this hostage-taking incident, Chen Feiyu had already committed several other crimes, so habitual offender also fits. What about occasional offender?”

The students fell silent.

Gu Yao looked quietly at the serious faces below, but what she was really thinking was that in a room with more than fifty students, statistically speaking, there was a chance that a few criminals of varying degrees would emerge from among them in the future.

Then a student answered, “An occasional offender is also called an opportunistic offender. People like that usually don’t have a clear motive before they commit a crime, their subjective malice isn’t strong, and their criminal psychological structure is unstable. I don’t think Chen Feiyu belongs to that category.”

Gu Yao asked back, “Then how should Chen Feiyu’s act of suicide be defined?”

The classmates all froze, looking at one another in bewilderment, and the room quickly filled with discussion.

“Is suicide considered breaking the law too?”

Gu Yao smiled and switched to the next slide. “In some Western countries, ‘the crime of suicide’ is clearly defined. It refers to the act of a person who has legal capacity and has reached the age of responsibility deliberately destroying their own life. Under English common law, suicide was a form of murder and a felony, usually punished with shame penalties and property penalties. In our country, although there is no explicit regulation, related provisions do exist, for example, the right to life is a citizen’s right, but citizens do not have the right to suicide.”

The students quieted down again and listened intently.

Gu Yao said, “So here’s the question. Why do we always say that a criminal’s suicide carries a certain amount of chance and contingency? Think about it. If Chen Feiyu had not found Liu Yu, that hostage with severe acrophobia, would his use of Liu Yu as a threat still have worked? If Chen Feiyu, because of the sudden circumstances at the time, had not made the opportunistic choice to end his own life, would he now be in prison, or undergoing treatment in a psychiatric hospital? In fact, the nature of criminals can be very diverse, and it is constantly changing. You absolutely cannot study them with a single classification. That would lead you into a misunderstanding at the theory stage itself.”

The students looked different from one another, and soon they were whispering to each other. Only when someone raised a hand did the room quiet down. “Teacher Gu, everyone online is cursing Chen Feiyu, but the few of us read the reports on his incident and feel like he was pretty pitiful…”

Gu Yao lifted a brow and braced both hands on the podium. “Oh? Tell me about it.”

“If his situation had been taken seriously earlier, it actually could have been avoided. At the very least, it wouldn’t have gotten to this point, and it wouldn’t have killed so many people… and after that, the media even exploited it a second time.”

Gu Yao smiled.

“Do you sympathize with him?”

Someone said, “Actually, he was also a victim.”

Someone else said, “What’s there to sympathize with about someone like that? He just forced his own pain onto other people.”

Someone said, “Sigh, this really is a tragedy of society!”

And someone else said, “Come on, things have already improved a lot. Look, criminal psychology is being taken seriously now, and our country’s crime rate is universally recognized as one of the lowest in the world. This kind of probability can never be brought down to zero.”

The answers came in all shapes and forms, with everything under the sun.

After the students finished speaking, Gu Yao asked again, “Then do you sympathize with the victims in Chen Feiyu’s case?”

This time the opinions were more unified. Most of them believed that the victims were at least human lives, and no one else had the right to take that away. Even if they really hadn’t played the role of a mother well, they still shouldn’t have been sentenced through vigilante justice.

Only when a student threw the question back at her did the room shift. “Teacher Gu, what do you think?”

Gu Yao was silent for a few seconds, then looked around the room once more. Her expression was utterly calm.

“This is the first thing I want to teach you today. It isn’t written in any textbook, but it is a principle that anyone in this profession must follow. That principle is this: whether it’s Chen Feiyu or those victims, from the public’s perspective you can speak your mind, state your opinions, and freely use your compassion and social concern. But if the person standing on the rooftop negotiating that day were one of you, or if you ever had the chance in the future to provide psychological counseling for Chen Feiyu or some other criminal, remember this. Compassion is absolutely a stumbling block that can affect your professional judgment. Being misled by compassion and making the wrong judgment will only turn you into an accomplice to this tragedy. That is far more lethal than wrongly classifying the type of criminal.”

Outside, a thunderclap boomed. In the flash of lightning, heavy rain came pouring down. The heavens had worn a grim face all day, and now at last they lashed out.

Gu Yao’s class in the afternoon ended. Some students ran to the podium to ask questions, some ran back to the dorms in the rain, some went to other empty classrooms to study on their own, and some crouched in the classroom smoking.

Ten minutes later, all the students had gone, leaving only Gu Yao behind.

While Gu Yao was tidying up her lesson plan, the phone placed beside her lit up once.

She picked it up and smiled.

It was a message from Zhu Shengxi. “I already met with that law firm assistant. She has agreed to accept the team of lawyers provided by us and the firm.”

Gu Yao let out a breath. Finally, there was some good news.

Gu Yao: “Then we’re about to face a hard battle.”

Zhu Shengxi: “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”

Gu Yao closed her phone and picked up her lesson plan, ready to leave the classroom. Before leaving, she checked the projector equipment again. It was already shut off, and the automatic door on the equipment box had also closed.

But just as Gu Yao reached the doorway, the projector hanging from the ceiling flickered twice.

Gu Yao caught it out of the corner of her eye and stopped in her tracks. She turned her head and looked again.

This time, the light on the equipment didn’t just flicker. It switched from red to green.

Gu Yao froze, then subconsciously walked back to the podium to check the projector.

Who would have thought that just as she raised her hand, the automatic door on the equipment box opened by itself…

Author’s note:

Starting from this chapter, someone’s already dug the pit with a shovel, waiting for Gu Yao to step into it.