Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 239: A Glass of Water Left Untouched

The long table was cleared of papers.

That morning, He Xiufen had carried the case files stack by stack into the steel cabinet, locked it, and pocketed the key. The tabletop had been wiped down twice. Everything that had been piled there—the bank records, the notarized web pages, the photocopies of the registered volume—was gone. All that remained: a white porcelain cup, a pitcher of cooled water, and a stack of neatly cut blank record sheets.

"When he comes to talk, we take notes." He Xiufen set a pen beside the paper. "Phones on the table, screens lit. Not in your pocket, not behind your back. If he asks, show him—everything said here gets kept on record."

"What if he turns around and leaves?"

"Then that's even simpler."

He Xiufen walked over to the old chair beneath the window and sat down, cradling her enamel mug. She didn't move toward the long table. She'd said it earlier: the person coming wasn't coming to look at papers, and today she didn't intend to look at his face either. She was sitting there for one reason only—she was a witness to whatever happened.

Shen Zhixia placed her phone face-up in the center of the table, set the screen to stay on, the red recording dot waiting. She'd press it when he came through the door. The record sheet was open to the first page. The three header lines had been written that morning: time, place, persons present. Everything after was blank.

Lu Jibai came in without knocking. He wasn't carrying any files—just set a pen down by her hand and took a seat on the inner side of the long table. Not beside her, not across from her, but at a diagonal—both of them at the same end of the table, both with a clear view of the stairway.

"Three o'clock." He glanced at the wall clock. "He booked a table."

"Coming alone, or bringing someone?"

"Depends on whether he wants to talk money or talk about something else." Lu Jibai rolled his sleeves up to his forearms. "If he brings a lawyer, he's here to deliver papers. If he comes alone, he's here to talk."

At two minutes to three, a car stopped out front.

Black. Big. It slanted across the steps in front of the noodle shop, blocking half the doorway. A door thunked open, and a man got out—around twenty-seven, short-sleeved white shirt tucked into his waistband, a watch on his wrist. A smile on his face that looked like he'd rehearsed it twice before coming upstairs. He didn't glance into the noodle shop. He went straight up the stairs. Behind him walked a younger man in a black T-shirt, hands in his pockets, who stopped at the foot of the stairs and didn't come up.

The visitor reached the table and stood there, sweeping his eyes over the tabletop. It was empty. The smile dimmed a fraction, then returned. Shen Zhixia's thumb pressed down. The red dot went solid.

"Lawyer Shen." He pulled out a chair and sat, speaking first. "You told me to come here, so here I am."

"Water's there." Shen Zhixia pushed the cup toward him.

He didn't pick it up. First he looked at He Xiufen. He Xiufen kept her eyes on her enamel mug and didn't acknowledge him. Then he looked at Lu Jibai, who was spinning his pen, watching him.

Only then did he nudge the cup aside. The faint steam at the rim slowly faded, the water still full.

[Thud. This person is not in the Ledger.]

Shen Zhixia's expression didn't change. The System recognized wrongs, not people. This one hadn't been in the Ledger since he walked in—there wasn't a single wrong recorded on him.

"My surname's Qin." He rested both hands on the table. "You've probably heard the name. My father is Qin Yueshan."

"Who do you represent?" Shen Zhixia uncapped her pen. "Xingyao, or Hengyue Capital?"

"Write it down however you like." He smiled. "Just write 'the Qin guy.' You'll know who it means."

"When I record the people present, I write a name and an affiliation." She turned the record sheet toward him, showing him the three blank lines. "You tell me. I write it."

He glanced at the three lines, didn't answer, and changed tack.

"Miss Tang's matter—I don't want to make it big," he said. "She withdraws, and it's like it never happened. The video gets deleted. She posts a statement saying both sides have reached an understanding and won't pursue it further. Xingyao pays, starting at three hundred thousand—if that's too little, name your price."

"Whose money?"

"Doesn't matter." He picked up the cup, looked at it, and set it down again. "It's not coming out of Miss Tang's pocket either way."

"Xingyao offered three hundred last time too." Shen Zhixia said. "Adding more every time—it's not money you're adding. It's asking us to write one sentence."

"One sentence is nothing." He leaned back in his chair. "Write it and it's done."

"Then you write it." She pushed the record sheet toward his hand. "Who's paying, who the money goes to, exactly what the statement says, whose seal goes on it. You write it down, and I'll follow it."

He laughed once and didn't touch the paper. "I'll say it. You take the notes."

"Then I'll note that down too." Shen Zhixia put pen to paper.

[Thud. The money, he's willing to pay. The words, you have to write yourself.]

"Why not have Miss Tang come down and join us?" Qin Lang said abruptly. "We talk face to face. Once we've talked, everyone's familiar."

"She's not here." Shen Zhixia didn't look up.

"She's upstairs." He glanced up toward the ceiling. "One more pair of chopsticks, that's all."

"You're here about her case, not her person." Shen Zhixia set her pen down. "Whether she sees you is her choice. You talk to me."

He stared at her for two seconds, then smiled. This time the smile didn't pull back.

"Jiangzhou's only so big," he said, shifting in his seat. "One firm, two people. All small cases. If you're willing, Hengyue's work can come through your firm from now on. Case flow like that is worth more than three hundred thousand."

"I can find my own cases."

"Then what do you want?" He drew his hands back and spread them open. "What are you getting out of sitting here with me? If this goes to trial and there's a judgment, that money doesn't go into your card."

"If there's a judgment, then that page is judged," Shen Zhixia said. "You've come three times, and each time the terms pile up—first drop it, then three hundred thousand, now case flow on top. The terms keep going up. That means what you're afraid of isn't the money."

The smile on his face stalled.

"Your father's case," he said suddenly. "My father mentioned it once."

The pen tip stopped. From under the window, the enamel mug gave a faint clink. She didn't look up.

"Shen Qian's daughter." He picked up the water again, looked at it, and set it down without drinking. "A shame."

"That has nothing to do with what you're here to discuss." She finished writing a line.

"Good if it doesn't." He straightened up. "I was just saying. The person sitting across from me has seen more paper than I have."

He pressed a hand to the table and leaned forward half an inch.

"You just got your practice certificate," he said. "How much effort it took to keep the Bar Association matter down, you know better than anyone. If you insist on going to trial, there's plenty of paper that can get delivered to your home—to your house, to your brother's school. All polite little pieces of paper."

"What kind of paper?"

"Any kind." He said. "The kind you've never seen."

Lu Jibai set his pen down.

"Mr. Qin," he said. "Hengyue Capital changed its legal representative on June twentieth. The registration is with the Market Regulation Bureau. In that field, the name used to be yours. It's been replaced."

Qin Lang turned to look at him.

"You're not on that piece of paper anymore," Lu Jibai said. "But that day, you were."

"Lawyer Lu." The edge came into Qin Lang's voice for the first time. "You're not a partner at Hengzheng anymore. Hengzheng's business is none of yours."

"I'm with Zhengping Firm," Lu Jibai said. "Her case is set for August twelfth. I'll be walking into court with her."

Qin Lang looked at him for a long moment and said nothing. He turned back to Shen Zhixia.

"Withdrawing the lawsuit," Shen Zhixia picked up, "is Tang Guo's call. If she signs, I won't sign for her. There'll be no statement. The video won't be deleted."

"Think it through."

"Three things. I can answer all of them today. If you want to add money, put it on paper. If you want me to write something I don't believe—no amount is enough."

Qin Lang stood and smoothed the front of his shirt. He glanced at the cup of water but didn't pick it up.

At the top of the stairs he stopped and half-turned.

"You want a trial, then we'll have a trial," he said. "What happens outside the courtroom—the court can't touch."

The man in the black T-shirt at the foot of the stairs stepped aside and followed him down. The car outside rumbled twice, backed out halfway, and merged into the traffic.

Shen Zhixia stopped the recording and checked the time: twenty-one minutes.

She walked to the window and watched the car turn the corner.

"Plate ending seven-three-one." Lu Jibai stood behind her. "I just took a photo."

"July twenty-fifth, the man who came to deliver Qin's message stood at that same stairway," she said. "He said if we insisted on trial, there was another account to settle, outside the case."

Today Qin Lang had come up himself and rephrased "another account" as "what happens outside the courtroom."

He Xiufen rose from the window and slid the blank paper over, setting it on top of the half-filled record sheet.

"Write it from memory," she said. "His exact words, word for word. He said 'withdraw.' He said 'understanding.' That's what he said—not what you wrote."

Shen Zhixia wrote it out from the beginning. At the third line she paused—that sentence, "What happens outside the courtroom—the court can't touch," she put down exactly as spoken, even the pause in the middle, marked with a comma.

The final three lines: One visitor, self-identified as surnamed Qin, no name left, no affiliation, nothing in writing; one companion, did not come upstairs; stayed twenty-one minutes; left in a black sedan, plate ending seven-three-one.

"I know what you want to add." He Xiufen glanced at the page.

"Coercion."

"Not allowed." He Xiufen said. "He sat there and every word was his own. If you write 'coercion,' it becomes your interpretation of him. Don't write it—anyone who reads it will understand on their own."

Before heading back to the inner room, He Xiufen added one more line: "Put the date on it when you're done."

She wrote the last line: July 30, 2026, 3:00 p.m., Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm.

Tang Guo came out from the inner room after Qin Lang was long gone. She stood beside the long table and read the record sheet from top to bottom without asking a single question. Then she turned and went back in, tracing over the sticky note under the lamp—the one yellowed by the bulb—one more time. When she finished, she added a new half-line beside the original three:

"He came upstairs. I didn't withdraw."

The table was cleared. The cup of water was still full.

From the moment he walked in to the moment he left, twenty-one minutes. He never took a sip. Shen Zhixia picked it up and carried it to the windowsill, where she set it down.

"Not drinking was the right move." Lu Jibai pulled the photo up on his phone to show her—the plate was clear. "He didn't come up today for the water."

"Then what was he here for?"

"To make sure you remember his face." He put the photo away. "When this case reaches the end, if their side says 'this has nothing to do with Hengyue' or 'no one ever came to see you,' you'll have a photograph, a page of notes, and Director He sitting under the window."

"The intermediary called three times. We sent two reply letters," she said. "They tried that first, then came themselves."

"Exactly." Lu Jibai said. "Everything before can be blamed on 'outside people,' on 'legal affairs,' on some guy named Zhao. Today he sat here himself. That can't be pushed away anymore."

Shen Zhixia said nothing. She looked at the cup on the windowsill, a tiny speck of dust floating on the water's surface.

"The car, plate ending seven-three-one," she said. "Can we run it?"

"You can look up the registration. You can't look up why he came today." Lu Jibai said. "What can be found is on paper. What he said today—that's on paper too."

Downstairs, the sign light flickered on, and the smell of scallion oil drifted up through the window. She stood by the window and silently repeated the last line to herself: What happens outside the courtroom—the court can't touch.