Read Novel Full Chapter 274: The Written Warning
Chapter 274: The Written Warning
October 16, 9:15 a.m.
The window at Wenmiao Police Station opened at nine. Behind the glass sat a long desk, two stacks of kraft paper boxes weighed down at the corner, months written on the lids in marker. Five people stood in line outside the window, the queue bending diagonally from the glass down past the steps.
He Lan stood at the very end. The collar of her dark gray hoodie was still pulled high, a white plastic bag folded in thirds clutched in her hand, the fold at the bag's mouth pressed into a white crease.
"Dropped her off at the school gate at 8:20, then came straight here," she said, her voice steadier than yesterday. "The security guard recognized me. Asked why I was so early today."
"And he just let you go after asking?"
"He did."
Shen Zhixia held her practice certificate and power of attorney in hand, flipped open to the signature page, facing outward. "I'll do the talking. You sign your own name when it's time, and check the date after you sign."
The line moved forward. At 9:15, one person's space opened in front of the glass.
Behind the duty desk sat the same officer from yesterday, around fifty, hair half gray, that chipped enamel mug on the desk. He looked up, glanced at the practice certificate in Shen Zhixia's hand.
"Here yesterday."
"Applied yesterday, here to pick up today." Shen Zhixia slid the power of attorney across the counter. "She's here in person."
"In person." The officer looked at He Lan. "ID. The same one?"
He Lan fished her ID card out of the plastic bag, held it up with both hands, and passed it over. The officer typed in each digit, then pulled out a form and pushed it toward her. "Sign here. Put today's date."
He Lan signed, set the pen back on the counter, nib facing outward, squared neatly.
The officer bent down, pulled a thin plastic folder from the cabinet below, slid the papers out, and pushed them across the counter. The edges were perfectly aligned, the stack squared corner to corner.
"Four of them."
"Yesterday you said the count didn't matter."
"Today the papers are on the counter. The count's plain to see." He moved the enamel mug aside. "Every page has a stamp. Verify it yourself."
Shen Zhixia went through them one by one. Upper right corner of each bore a red stamp pressing into the paper's edge, with a line of small print beneath it: Verified against original.
First one, June 9, 20:40. The reporting person column read He Lan; the report content column read "spousal argument over family matters, requesting officer presence"; arrival notes read "no physical altercation observed, both parties emotionally agitated"; disposition read "on-site mediation, both parties agreed to work it out themselves."
Second one, August 3, 21:12. She turned this one face up and read it twice. The three characters in the reporting person column were: Feng Xiaotian. Relationship column: "daughter." Age column: "nine."
"Nine years old," she said aloud.
"The kid made the call," the officer said. "Spoke clearly on the phone."
Report content read "stated her father was beating her mother"; arrival notes read "mother stated no serious injury, father stated it was a marital argument"; disposition read "criticism and education, both parties advised to properly handle family conflict."
Third one, September 17, 20:05. Reporting person: Feng Guoming. Report content: "stated wife was crying and making a scene at home, requesting officer presence"; arrival notes: "no assault observed"; disposition: "counseling."
Fourth one, October 12, 23:26. Reporting person again Feng Xiaotian. Report content: "stated her father was beating her mother"; arrival notes: "upon arrival the mother had already left with the daughter, father at home, stated it was a marital argument"; the disposition column ran longer than the others: "Domestic Violence Warning Notice issued to Feng Guoming."
Shen Zhixia pulled a pencil from her bag and circled the name "Feng Xiaotian," very lightly—just one pass of the pencil tip over the paper, no pressure. Two of them.
"Four call-outs," she looked up. "Not one resulted in a penalty for him?"
"None."
"Why not."
"Didn't meet the threshold." The officer rotated his mug. "Public security penalties have a bar. When it doesn't clear that bar, the best we can do here is issue the notice."
"And this one is that notice?"
The officer pulled another page from the folder, thinner than the records, stamped as well.
"Family Violence Warning Notice. Duplicate. Issued October 14."
One page. The heading read "Family Violence Warning Notice" in seven bold characters. Below, a body of text: Upon investigation, Feng Guoming, male, thirty-seven, on the night of October 12, 2026, at Room 302, Building 7, Liuhe Community, Wenmiao Street, struck and choked his wife He Lan over family matters. The circumstances were relatively minor and did not warrant public security penalties. He is hereby warned: he shall not again commit family violence...
Signature block: Wenmiao Police Station. Date: October 14, 2026. A red stamp pressed into the lower half of the page.
Below that, one more section, in smaller print: Service of process. On the signature line, a name, three characters, written in a flowing connected hand, larger than the printed text above: "Feng Guoming."
"This signature is—?"
"His."
"You watched him write it?"
"I watched him write it," the officer said. "On the afternoon of the fourteenth, I had him come in. We talked for half the day. Afterward, I issued this. That day he asked me—would it matter if he signed it or not."
"What did you tell him."
"I said, whether it matters isn't up to my mouth." The officer picked up his mug and took a sip. "I've answered everything you asked. Anything else?"
Shen Zhixia flipped the page over and checked the back—blank—then flipped it back.
"What if he'd refused to sign."
"He signed."
"Could I ask you to add a line to the duplicate, noting it's been verified against the original."
"The stamp already means it's verified. I don't add anything here." The officer closed the folder, gestured toward the door. "Out the door, turn left, there's a copy place."
[Thud. Four sheets of paper, two bearing a child's name.]
Outside the station, second shop on the left after the turn—a typing and copying store. Five pages copied for 2.50 yuan. Shen Zhixia folded her own set into a document envelope and tucked the other back into He Lan's plastic bag.
"Keep this on you."
"What for."
"If he shows up downstairs, you'll have something in your hand."
11 a.m., second floor of Zhengping Firm.
He Xiufen came up still holding a rag, set it on the corner of the desk, and spread the four records out, arranging them by date. When she was done, she pressed her hand flat on the papers.
"Four," she said, looking at the second one. "Two of them the child called in."
"Yeah."
"This one—September 17—he called in himself." Her finger tapped the third sheet. "You see it?"
"He wanted the record to show 'marital argument' before anything else."
"Right." He Xiufen pushed the sheet toward Shen Zhixia. "He made that one call, and now he can tell anyone that this household keeps calling the police, but it's always just bickering—never once has he hit anyone."
Shen Zhixia opened her notebook and wrote this down under the notes on that page.
He Xiufen picked up the warning notice, studied it closely for a long moment, her brows lifting when her eyes reached the flowing signature in the service section.
"Notice issued two days after the call-out. That's normal. He spent those two days in talks, and only then did they issue it." She set the paper down, her finger on the name. "What matters is that it carries his name—and his own handwriting. When he put his name on this, he probably thought the paper was for his own eyes."
"Director He, I've thought about the order," Shen Zhixia said. "The protection order and the divorce—which one to file first."
"Protection order first, divorce after. Two separate filings."
"Could we file them together?"
"Don't bundle them. The protection order stands on its own—it doesn't lean on the divorce." He Xiufen folded the rag in half. "It's fast. Filed, you get a response within three days. But the moment the divorce complaint goes in, a copy gets served on him. That's like banging the gong for him. Once the gong sounds, he comes."
"The three-day window—he'll still be out here."
"So the injury has to be handled fast." He Xiufen said. "That bruise on your body—go to the hospital tomorrow morning. You need to watch what they write in the chart."
Shen Zhixia turned to a fresh page in her ledger, rotated the A4 sheet sideways, and ruled a line with her ruler. Left column: "Item." Then columns for "Date," "Pages/Copies," "In Whose Possession."
First row, she wrote "Police," then filled the cells: four records, June 9, August 3, September 17, October 12—in hand.
Second row, "Warning"—one page, October 14, in hand.
Third row, "Injury." Fourth, "Imaging." Fifth, "Words." Sixth, "Contact." The rest blank.
"Six items," she said, laying the pen back in its slot. "Police, Warning, Injury, Imaging, Words, Contact. Only when all six are in place do we have grounds to ask for a piece of paper."
"You can file with one missing," He Xiufen said, heading toward the stairs. Two steps down, she looked back. "It's just that what you submit will carry a different weight."
[Thud. Two in hand, four on someone else's desk.]
Noon, the noodle shop downstairs.
The downstairs tables were seventy percent full, the exhaust fan roaring, white steam slanting from the pots toward the door. He Xiufen brought two bowls over, pushed one to He Lan.
"Eat. You've been eating less than a bird these past days."
He Lan didn't touch the chopsticks. She opened the plastic bag, took out the warning notice, spread it flat on the table, and smoothed it with both palms. Then she read it character by character. At the words "upon investigation," her finger stopped on the paper.
"What do these two words mean?"
"Means they actually looked into it." Shen Zhixia said. "They didn't just take your word or his. They asked questions, then they wrote."
"'Relatively minor.'" He Lan read slowly. "Does that mean the beating wasn't severe?"
"That's the threshold for the police to issue this notice. 'Relatively minor' was determined by what they had that day: by the time the officers arrived, you'd already left—they never saw your injuries." Shen Zhixia put the chopsticks into her hand. "What it speaks to is whether it met the standard for public security penalties. How badly that blow hurt you—it doesn't address that."
He Lan stared at that line for a long time.
"This is the first time he's ever been written down on one of these," she said.
"Yeah."
"Ten years of marriage." She moved her hand to the service section, pressed her fingertip against that flowing signature—once, then lifted it. "He wrote it himself."
"He wrote it himself." Shen Zhixia said. "That one stroke of ink is heavier than ten sentences from you."
The door creaked as someone came in from outside. Lu Jibai came down from upstairs, stopped at the stove, said, "Extra scallions," and carried his noodles to the table by the door without coming over.
He Lan lowered her head and ate. Three bites in, she suddenly set down the chopsticks, took her phone out of the plastic bag, and laid it on the table, screen facing up. A corner of the screen was shattered, the crack running from the upper right diagonally toward the center, like a line that never finished.
She swiped at it—it took two tries to register.
12:07 p.m. A WeChat message came through. The profile picture was half of his own face, the name below it: Guoming.
That line of text sat beneath the crack in the screen:
You dare go to the police station, I'll come pick up the kid tonight.
He Lan's hand hovered above the screen, not touching it.
Shen Zhixia wiped her hands with a napkin first, then took out her own phone. She photographed He Lan's entire screen with the clock showing, then had He Lan open the message and photographed it from the top down, and only then took a screenshot on He Lan's phone.
"Don't delete it," she said. "And don't reply."
"He also sent—"
"If he sends more, you don't reply either. And don't block him." She pushed the phone back a little. "Every message he sends is one more page for us."
At the table by the door, Lu Jibai set his chopsticks down.
"He didn't ask where she is," he said.
"He knows she won't say," Shen Zhixia said.
"He says he'll pick up the kid tonight." He pushed the bowl aside. "He knows which school the kid attends."
Another ladle of noodles dropped into the pot by the stove, and a burst of white steam shot up.
He Xiufen poked her head out from behind the stove and looked at the phone on the table. "When school lets out today, you walk with her."
"4:30. I'll meet you at the school gate." Shen Zhixia opened her notebook, uncapped her pen. "What time did this one come through today?"
"12:07," He Lan said.
Shen Zhixia wrote it down. She wrote: October 16, 12:07 p.m., one WeChat message, exact text one line. When she finished, she didn't turn the page—she set her pen in the empty space below, on that line where yesterday she'd written only the word "paper," everything after it blank.
The penpoint moved down the lines: four records, one page, 2.50 yuan, six items. At the very end, she wrote: He knows.
He Lan watched her pen and suddenly asked, "How could he know we went to the police station today."
Shen Zhixia's pen stopped mid-line.
"I don't know."
She read the sentence aloud, as if to herself: "I don't know." Then she wrote those four words into the notebook, leaving the space after them empty.
[Thud. On this page, one more line written in his hand.]
He Lan reached over to flip the phone face down on the table. Shen Zhixia picked it up, turned it back over, and set it in the middle of the table, squarely between the two bowls of noodles and the warning notice spread flat.
"Don't cover it," she said. "This message earns its place by staying lit."