"It's just that they told me during the chat this morning that they already have a suspect in mind. However, there isn't any solid evidence yet, and they're still in the investigation and interview phase. The specific suspect can only be confirmed once the victim wakes up."

Du Heng felt a flare of anger in his heart. He couldn't imagine what kind of despicable bastard would rob a disabled person; it was utterly disgusting.

Taking a light breath, Du Heng turned and walked out of the kitchen. He wanted to offer some help to this victim.

Walking into the living room, Du Heng took out his mobile phone and dialed Gong Daoyang's number. "Gong, are you busy?"

Gong Daoyang, on the other end of the line, sounded a bit breathless, his tone weary. The sounds around him were also very noisy. "Xiao Heng, I just finished up. What's up?"

Du Heng steadied his emotions and asked softly, "Has lame Qi from Heigou Village woken up yet?"

"You already know?" Gong Daoyang asked, though his tone didn't betray much surprise.

Du Heng hummed softly in acknowledgment. "What's the situation now?"

On the other end of the phone, Gong Daoyang took two deep breaths. Instead of answering Du Heng's question, however, he asked back, "Do you know what I'm doing right now?"

Du Heng paused for a moment. "What are you doing?"

Gong Daoyang said angrily, "Of course, I'm catching the bastard who robbed him! That son of a gun, he's so damn fast! If I hadn't spent the last month recuperating, I might not have caught up with this child."

As he spoke, Gong Daoyang took another heavy breath. "Lame Qi woke up this afternoon. He told us who the suspect is."

Du Heng hurriedly asked, "Who is it?"

Gong Daoyang gritted his teeth and said, "You'll never guess."

Hearing Gong Daoyang still trying to build suspense, Du Heng grew impatient. "Gong, stop beating around the bush and just tell me."

"Your village party secretary's son."

"Du Yide?" Du Heng was instantly shocked and shot up from the sofa. "You guys must have made a mistake, right? Their family isn't short of money. Besides, isn't this child in his senior third grade? He couldn't possibly do something like this."

Du Heng's tone was filled with disbelief. Du Yide... He was quite a familiar junior from his own village. In the past, this child had been the epitome of 'other people's children' in the village, the one who always had really good academic performance.

Gong Daoyang gritted his teeth. "Even though our initial investigation, through visits and inquiries, showed that this child's presence in Heigou Village highly coincided with the time of the crime, we also didn't think this child was capable of such a thing.

"But lame Qi was very clear: it was him."

Du Heng quickly asked, "Then there has to be a reason, right? This child wouldn't do something like this for no reason."

At this point, Du Heng still found it hard to believe. He hoped Gong Daoyang and his team had made a mistake. However, Gong Daoyang's subsequent words made him completely abandon this illusion.

"Sigh, we didn't believe it either. But since lame Qi said so, we had to investigate." Gong Daoyang's tone suddenly softened. "After learning it was this child, we interviewed your village party secretary again.

"Your village party secretary said that ever since this child started school in the city, he became obsessed with his mobile phone and gaming. His grades have plummeted to the bottom.

"Before this incident, the child pestered him for money, saying he needed it for tutoring. Your village party secretary offered to go with him and give the money directly to the tutor, but the child refused, accused his father of not trusting him, and then ran away from home.

"Do you know where we just found him? An internet cafe. If someone left a computer without logging off, he'd sneak on. If he couldn't do that, he'd just sit in an empty chair in the cafe playing on his mobile phone."

Du Heng let out a long breath. He no longer wanted to hear the reasons; he only wanted to know the outcome. "So, what will happen to this child now?"

Hearing Du Heng's question, Gong Daoyang sighed. "It's hard to say. If lame Qi is willing to forgive him, and your village party secretary can pull some strings, spend some money, and provide lame Qi with sufficient compensation, this child might only be detained for about half a month.

"But if lame Qi doesn't forgive him, then considering the child is already seventeen, he'll face charges for both burglary and intentional injury. Furthermore, the victim is disabled, which makes the nature of the crime extremely severe. He could be looking at a sentence starting from ten years."

After a moment of silence, Du Heng said, "Alright, I understand. No matter the outcome, lame Qi must receive satisfactory compensation."

With that, Du Heng hung up the phone.

It wasn't surprising to Du Heng that they had caught the culprit so quickly. A robbery involving a mere 30 yuan wouldn't escalate into a complex case like the ones Wu Shengnan handled.

However, the identity of the person caught was entirely unexpected for Du Heng. Although he and the village party secretary shared the same surname, Du, they were beyond the fifth degree of kinship, so their family ties weren't particularly close. Yet, due to their work interactions, Du Heng was quite familiar with him. They had chatted several times, and on each occasion, the village party secretary would invariably speak of his son, his voice brimming with pride. That was why Du Heng felt he knew the child, at least by reputation.

He just never imagined that attending school in the city for a mere two years could completely transform a child.

Was it the allure of the city's flashy world that had dazzled him? Or was it the material scarcity and lack of worldliness in the village? Or was gaming itself to blame?

Du Heng believed all these factors might have played a role, but none of them were the primary cause. He himself had also moved from a village to the city, attended high school and university, and had possessed even less material wealth than this child. Yet, he had never done such things; such thoughts had never even crossed his mind.

If there truly was one overriding reason, it had to be parental indulgence and a failure to instill proper character and habits. That must be what led to this outcome.

Because the child achieved good grades, he became his parents' pride, their bragging rights. Good academic performance became their sole criterion for judging whether their child was a good child or not. Measured by this standard, other minor flaws were dismissed as insignificant, perhaps even seen as cute and adorable. As long as his grades were good, they stopped raising him as a child and instead indulged him as if he were an ancestor, practically reversing roles as if he were their own parent. By the time they realized something was amiss, they were powerless to intervene.

Ultimately, they would have to pay the price for their own actions.