"Hello, is this Xu Mo? This is Li Yunfei. We exchanged phone numbers last night."
"Yes, I know. I saved your contact," Xu Mo replied.
"Great. Remember we talked about having a meal together? It was too late last night, so how about today? Do you and Chen Ke have any plans? If not, let's have a meal together. I want to thank you both for your help last night."
"Hold on a moment, let me ask Chen Ke," Xu Mo said, covering the phone's receiver with his hand and looking at Chen Ke, who was sitting up in the hospital bed. He pointed at the phone and said, "It's Li Yunfei. He's asking if we're free. Says he wants to treat us to a meal."
Chen Ke nodded without hesitation: "Of course I'm free! Time is the one thing I have plenty of right now."
Seeing this, Xu Mo uncovered the phone: "We're both free."
"Perfect. Where are you now, at the hospital?"
"Yes, at the hospital."
"Wait there. I'll drive over to pick you up."
After ending the call, Xu Mo put down his phone: "He said he's coming to pick us up now."
Chen Ke sat up in his hospital bed: "Finally something to do. I've been lying here all day, bored out of my mind."
Having spent the entire day in the hospital, Chen Ke was going stir-crazy, especially since Xu Mo hadn't visited during the morning. He had been alone in the hospital room with no one to talk to, and now he finally had something to look forward to.
...
Half an hour later, Li Yunfei arrived at the hospital.
Chen Ke was still technically a patient who needed to stay hospitalized, but that wasn't going to stop him from getting some fresh air and having a chat to relieve his loneliness.
With Li Yunfei and Xu Mo's help, Chen Ke managed to sneak out of the hospital while the nurses and doctors weren't looking.
Despite being three police officers, they were acting more like sneaky thieves...
"Why do we feel like guilty criminals? We're just going out for a meal but have to sneak around. Couldn't we have just walked out normally?" Li Yunfei joked after they left the hospital.
Chen Ke shook his head: "No, no, no. We couldn't. The nurses won't let me leave. This morning I tried to go for a walk and buy some breakfast, but they stopped me, saying I needed bed rest... You know our line of work - bed rest? How could I possibly stay still? I'm used to being busy. Lying around is worse than death for me. Besides, I injured my hand, not my legs. Walking around won't hurt anything."
Li Yunfei nodded: "Haha, that's true. When you're used to being busy, it's hard to suddenly do nothing."
They hadn't driven far from the hospital when they encountered a situation.
At an intersection, an elderly woman spotted Li Yunfei's unmarked police car. She walked to the front of the car before it had completely stopped, peered through the windshield to examine the interior, then moved to the side window and asked, "Young man, does your car have a dashcam?"
"No, it doesn't. Why do you ask, ma'am?"
"No dashcam... that's good..." the woman muttered to herself, ignoring Li Yunfei's question.
Then she walked back to the front of the car, let out an "Ouch!" and slowly lay down beside the car's hood.
Once settled, the woman started shouting at the top of her lungs: "Young man, why weren't you paying attention while driving? You've nearly broken every bone in my old body!"
Xu Mo: "???"
Chen Ke: "???"
Li Yunfei: "???"
Well, well... a scammer!
No wonder she had asked about the dashcam earlier - this was her plan all along.
And she was trying to scam police officers! Talk about asking to be arrested.
The woman's luck couldn't have been worse - out of all the cars she could have chosen, she picked one driven by police officers...
"What the... Is this really happening?" Li Yunfei was dumbfounded.
He had been a police officer for quite some time and had dealt with scammers before, but being the target of a scam himself? This was a first!
The woman probably targeted them because the car wasn't marked as a police vehicle, and since it wasn't working hours, Li Yunfei wasn't in uniform. She had no idea they were police officers, which explained her boldness.
"Looks like lunch will have to wait. I need to handle this first," Li Yunfei said with a wry smile to his companions before getting out of the car.
He didn't plan to arrest her immediately, preferring to give her a chance first. He wanted to try reasoning with her.
If she could understand her mistake and show willingness to change, he would let her off this time.
"Ma'am, please get up. I didn't hit you. The car was already stopped when you came over. I saw you lie down yourself."
The woman ignored him and held up two fingers: "Two hundred."
Seeing this, Li Yunfei's face darkened. Such audacity!
"You're committing fraud, do you understand? This is illegal. Get up now."
The woman smirked and raised another finger: "Three hundred."
Li Yunfei: "???"
Was she really raising the price?
It was two hundred just a moment ago, and now suddenly three hundred!?
"You're not getting a single penny. I didn't hit you. I'm giving you one last chance - get up now and I'll let this go. If you don't, I'll have to take legal action."
At this point, the woman still hadn't realized the gravity of the situation.
In fact, she became even more brazen.
"I'll give you one last chance too. Five hundred, hurry up and pay!"
Seeing Li Yunfei's lack of response, she pointed to the security camera at the intersection: "I disabled that camera last night. It's not recording anything, and you don't have a dashcam... Right now it's five hundred. If you don't pay now, who knows how much it'll cost you later."
This was outright extortion.
The woman was clearly experienced, having pulled this scam many times before. Most people would have given in and paid by now after hearing such threats.
But Li Yunfei wasn't most people - he was a police officer, and there was no way a scammer was going to extort money from him.
"Alright," Li Yunfei nodded.
"I gave you a chance, but you didn't take it."
As he spoke, he instinctively reached for his waist, intending to take out his handcuffs, but then remembered he hadn't brought them today.
Just then, Li Yunfei felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned to see Xu Mo, who had taken out his own handcuffs and was offering them to Li Yunfei...