Xia Xin couldn’t help but look towards Jiangli sitting opposite and mouthed, "Ancestor, the Qi Family has called."
Jiangli’s brow rose slightly, and he raised his hand, signaling for Xia Xin to answer the call himself.
Xia Xin didn’t know what to say to Gu Min, so he tactically cleared his throat and said, "Ms. Gu? I’m not the Abbot. The Abbot is not by my side at the moment. Are you calling at this time because your son has had an accident?"
"Yes, yes, yes, our Changhong has had an accident, please, Abbot, save him!"
Gu Min’s crying voice trembled, revealing her near collapse.
"Ms. Gu, you’re speaking unclearly, we don’t know what’s happened," Xia Xin said helplessly.
Upon hearing this, Gu Min sobbed and said, "Our Changhong, he’s caused a death! We only found out about it after receiving a call from the police this morning..."
Qi Changhong hadn’t come home at all the night before.
Gu Min and Qi Guowei were both worried.
The couple took turns calling Qi Changhong, but he didn’t answer any of their calls, rejecting them all.
They called Qi Changhong’s friends, not knowing whether he was with them or if they were forbidding him from taking calls.
All the friends of Qi Changhong they knew didn’t answer their calls.
The group seemed to have vanished into thin air.
It was only this morning that Gu Min and Qi Guowei received a call from the police and found out what had happened.
It turned out that last night, after leaving the ancestral grave site, Qi Changhong went to a bar he had prearranged to meet friends at, planning to drink to oblivion.
But after an unknown amount of time and alcohol, a man suddenly rushed over and, without a word, punched one of Qi Changhong’s friends.
As the man fought and cursed, he said something about Qi Changhong’s friend stealing his woman and declared he’d kill him to vent his anger.
Qi Changhong, already furious from leaving the gravesite and having drunk alcohol, joined the brawl impulsively. In a fit of rage, he smashed a bottle and used a shard to slit the man’s throat.
Everyone at the scene was terrified.
By the time everyone reacted, called the police, and summoned an ambulance, it was too late.
When the ambulance arrived, the man was already dead.
Qi Changhong was taken to the police station, where he was interrogated all night. The bar had surveillance cameras that recorded everything, leaving no room for Qi Changhong to deny the incident, which he admitted to have done in a drunken, unclear state of mind.
But whether it was intentional or accidental, causing death was a serious crime.
Qi Changhong, in the police station, was crying so hard he was gasping for breath, begging the police to let him contact his family and to get him a lawyer.
This was, after all, a citizen’s right.
The police did not refuse and fulfilled Qi Changhong’s request by calling Gu Min and Qi Guowei.
It was then that Guowei and Gu Min found out about their son’s mishap.
But such a grave incident was inevitably beyond their power to help.
Without hesitation, the couple went to Qi Guowen’s home, hoping for his assistance.
Qi Guowen, already harboring resentment towards Qi Changhong’s family for their malicious speculations, faced an issue far too great to handle, with a human life at stake.
There was nothing Qi Guowen could do about the situation.
All Qi Guowen could suggest was that they find a lawyer and get the alcohol test report from Qi Changhong the night before; perhaps they could plead for a lighter sentence.
Acquittal was out of the question.
Upon hearing this, Gu Min nearly fainted right there and then.
It was Qi Mingyue’s mother who said, "If you ask me, it’s also Changhong’s fault. The master warned him explicitly yesterday, yet he insisted on going out. When advised not to let his sense of loyalty lead him astray, he still... ended up causing such an incident. What can we ordinary folks do?"