Chapter 200 - 122: Confidence? That’s Arrogance

"According to the investigation, it has been determined that the victim, Wang Xiaoyu, was repeatedly forced to take excessive doses of sleeping pills, resulting in irreversible physical damage that will require long-term care..."

The consequences of overdosing on sleeping pills are severe.

People use this stuff to commit suicide. Take a bunch at once, and while it’s a painful way to die, it’s also a quiet one.

Generally speaking, taking a small amount is fine. It can help you sleep.

But it’s different for a child!

Their bodies are still developing, their organs and brains not yet fully mature. Under the intense stimulation of such drugs, it’s tantamount to murder!

Wang Xiaoyu’s body has already suffered irreversible damage. Her cognitive functions have declined, her memory has worsened...

While it might not have a noticeable impact on her daily life, there’s a catch.

Daily life doesn’t actually require much brainpower.

Even someone with a mild intellectual disability can live independently. Most people wouldn’t even be able to tell; they seem completely normal.

But can you deny they have a mild intellectual disability?

You can’t.

Therefore.

The physical damage to Wang Xiaoyu from the drugs is very real!

This...

At the defendant’s table.

Sun Li’s face suddenly turned pale with horror, her eyes filled with utter shock.

She looked back at Yang Chunping in disbelief, then whipped her head around to look at Xu De, her mind already in turmoil.

’Sleeping pills?’

’The child was given an adult dose of sleeping pills?’

’And it caused permanent, irreversible damage to her body?!’

’This...’

’How is this possible?!’

’Before this, no one said anything about it. Not even Yang Chunping. How could it suddenly be brought up in court and even be part of the investigation?!’

"Counsel for the defendant, do you have any objections to this information provided by the police?!"

Xu De stopped speaking and stared intently at Sun Li.

"No... that’s not right..."

Sun Li blurted out instinctively, her voice already laced with panic.

’When did they submit this evidence? I clearly checked the court records before, and there was absolutely nothing about this...’

"What’s not right?"

Xu De pressed on, "Counsel for the defendant, are you questioning the impartiality of the Public Security Bureau?!"

He was slapping a label on her with his first words.

On Sun Li’s round face, beads of sweat started to form on her forehead, and her breathing grew a little faster.

’The police... this evidence came from the police?!’

’She knew that in criminal cases, people like Xu De and the prosecutor only debate the applicability of the evidence, never questioning the evidence itself...’

’What right did she, Sun Li, have to question it?!’

"I... I’m not..."

Sun Li was at a loss for words. She looked at Yang Chunping again, her voice low and anxious.

"What in the world is going on?"

"Are you hiding something from me?!"

Yang Chunping averted her gaze, stammering frantically, "I... I don’t know."

She felt a pang of guilt but still didn’t dare to admit it.

"Do you really not know, or are you pretending not to know?!" Sun Li was fuming internally.

She and Yang Chunping were cut from the same cloth.

Sun Li recognized Yang Chunping’s reaction all too well and was a hundred percent certain she knew the whole story!

"I... I don’t know..."

Yang Chunping gritted her teeth and stubbornly refused to admit it.

She truly didn’t know the details, but... that didn’t mean she hadn’t had her suspicions.

When she bathed the child, could she have missed the bruises? When the child fell asleep right after crying every time, could she not have been suspicious? It was nothing more than self-deception, coupled with a complete disregard for the child!

"You!" Sun Li felt her chest constrict with rage.

But the case was still ongoing; there was no time for her to assign blame.

She could only brace herself, look up at the judge’s bench, and rack her brain to say:

"Your Honor, perhaps... it’s possible the sleeping pills weren’t given to the child by my client or the third party, Guo Tu. It could have been accidental ingestion..."

Before the judge could speak, Xu De cut in.

"Heh."

"Counsel for the defendant, I haven’t yet mentioned that the child was fed sleeping pills at the Home Like a Hotel."

Xu De sneered.

Sun Li froze, then her heart leaped into her throat as she cursed him internally.

With those words, she had dug her own grave, directly revealing that even the defense knew the child’s situation was inseparable from Guo Tu.

And Guo Tu... had an inextricably close connection to Yang Chunping!

"What I meant was..." Sun Li tried to salvage the situation.

"Perhaps the child ingested them by mistake, not because of an outsider."

"This has nothing to do with the current case. The lab report can, at most, only show..."

It was genuinely possible for a child to accidentally ingest pure medication.

Some pills have a sugar coating, and some kids with a sweet tooth might think they’re candy and pop them in their mouths.

Countless children ended up in the hospital every year because of this.

The same was true for sleeping pills, perhaps even more so!

Among sleeping aids, there’s one called ’melatonin’. And what form did melatonin take in the year 2026?

Gummies!

There was a very tasty gummy candy called Wang Zai QQ Gummy Candy that most people had probably eaten.

The form that melatonin sleeping aids took looked similar to these gummies, and they even had a better texture and taste.

Without the packaging, even some illiterate adults would chew them by the handful, mistaking them for snacks.

Let alone a child without a fully developed sense of self-awareness; accidental ingestion was a common occurrence.

Forget about tasty sleeping pills; there were massive numbers of cases of children accidentally swallowing things they shouldn’t eat at all, like magnets, steel balls, batteries, and plastic.

So, Sun Li’s quick-witted argument was actually quite clever, but that was as far as it went.

"My side believes this matter has little to do with our client. It should be..."

Sun Li tried to continue speaking.

Unfortunately.

Interrupting people was what Xu De did best.

"In addition!"

Those two words landed with such force that even passersby outside the door were startled.

Inside the courtroom, Sun Li instinctively shut her mouth and looked at Xu De.

"The aforementioned was a physical drug test conducted by the police on the victim, who was rescued during the arrest."

"And aside from the drug test..."

"The victim, Wang Xiaoyu, had as many as seven bruises visible to the naked eye!"

"Furthermore, there were also tiny puncture marks on areas like the base of her thigh."

"The evidence is conclusive, all of it confirmed by the police. I ask you... defendant, during the numerous times you bathed the child, did you ever notice this?"

Xu De’s expression grew increasingly grave, his voice low.

He pulled out photographs, holding them up as he scanned the room.

The photos clearly showed Wang Xiaoyu. The bruises on her arms, elbows, abdomen, and several other places were impossible to hide.

If it weren’t winter now—if it were summer and she were wearing lighter clothes—any ordinary neighbor would have likely called the police immediately upon seeing her!

This kind of visible...

"Defendant, were you aware of this?!"

"Regarding your third point—the claim that the plaintiff, Wang Yu, showed no love for his family simply because he worked overtime, leading to an emotional void that justified cheating..."

"I’d like to ask, do these obvious external injuries suffered by the victim, Wang Xiaoyu... fall under what you would call ’love for the family’?!"

"Does this prove that the defendant, Yang Chunping, loved Wang Xiaoyu so much? So much that she didn’t say a single word about it?!"

Xu De was like a manufacturer of fine blades.

Every word became a knife, precisely striking its target and twisting in Sun Li’s gut, making her squirm.

He even inflicted some friendly fire.

Looking at those photos, Wang Yu instantly lost control. His eyes turned red, and his fists clenched tightly.

No parent could ever tolerate a situation like this!

"I..."

"I..."

Sun Li racked her brain, muttering to herself, but for a long moment, she couldn’t utter a single word of rebuttal.

At that moment, she absolutely despised Yang Chunping.

’I just wanted to help her get a divorce, but... I didn’t tell her to do something like this!’

And she was starting to hate Xu De, too.

’How in the world did he get his hands on a criminal case file like this?!’

’And even after he presented it, I couldn’t even see this so-called evidence!!!’

"My side believes that this might..."

Sun Li was just about to try and gloss over it with words like "didn’t notice."

But the next second...

"Don’t you speak!"

Xu De showed no courtesy, shutting her down.

In criminal court, when he got worked up, he wouldn’t even give the prosecutor face. In a civil case, he wasn’t about to play nice with someone of Sun Li’s caliber.

And then, Xu De’s gaze bored into Yang Chunping.

"I’m questioning the defendant!"

"Defendant ’Yang Chunping,’ I am asking you, did you..."

"...know or not that your child’s body was covered in so many externally inflicted injuries?!"

The moment he finished speaking, a flicker of fear appeared in Yang Chunping’s eyes. She looked as if she were sitting on pins and needles.