The Highest Bounty

Chapter 18: Start of the Hearing

The hearing in the Federal Court started at nine o’clock sharp.

Before the hearing started, Pearson waddled in, just as Gu Ding guessed. Gu Ding also finally saw the face of this person named Pearson.

Gu Ding nearly broke out laughing when he saw this person. The most appropriate adjective to describe his body was ‘spherical’. His pole-like legs were a jarring contrast with the rest of his body and were only half the length of a normal adult human’s legs. By comparison, his arms looked incredibly long. That was not the only weird part of his appearance. His face was hard to look at.

His face was wide and flabby, and the folds of fat on his chin made him look like he had three chin. His mouth was extremely small, and the color of his lips were bright red as though he wore lipstick. ‘Cherry lips’ was a good description. His nose was exaggeratedly big, about the size of three normal human noses, and the tip of his nose was red as though he was perpetually drunk. Going further up, his eyes were the size of mung beans. His eyebrows were nowhere to be seen, one would not know if he shaved them himself or he never grew eyebrows. In any case, any single one of his facial features were a horrific sight. Putting them together only made it worse.

Gu Ding could not look at his face directly after glancing at it once. He could only marvel at God’s creativity.

“It’s time. Let’s start, “Pearson said impatiently while looking at the clock. His voice was jarringly feminine and raised goosebumps.

Gu Ding nodded at the judge. “Don’t worry. Let’s begin.”

Gu Ding was not worried that Reid was not there yet. Even though Reid was usually a chatterbox, a gossip and looked like he never took anything seriously, he knew he could rely on him when there was trouble.

The judge struck the gavel and announced the start of the hearing. Pearson, as the prosecution, read aloud the prosecution statement.

Gu Ding listened quietly. Pearson’s prosecution statement not only said that he was the one who released Cain, but also the one who caused a system collapse in the Skyriver Prison Headquarters and more than eighty branches. He emphasized that this was a high-level crime that caused unrest in the entire sector, and recommended that he should be immediately executed.

Gu Ding knew that he was indeed guilty of all those allegations. However, he looked at Pearson’s expression and knew that he did not know who was actually guilty. He must have wanted to frame someone so that he could close the case.

Gu Ding was brought to the court on very short notice and did not have time to prepare a defense statement.

‘If you don’t have a statement, then just say something for yourself. The prosecution said quite a lot and you should have differing opinions,” the judge told Gu Ding.

Gu Ding nodded. “I’ll just say one thing. If you think I did all that, then show me the evidence!”

The presiding judge briefly recorded the statements from both sides, then called for evidence to be presented.

Gu Ding did not have anything to present. On the other hand, Pearson did not have much to present as well. He did not have any concrete evidence anyway.

All the pieces of evidence were submitted electronically. Neptune read everything in less than a second. “The ‘evidence’ he’s providing is just the system logs during the collapse and the security feeds. The submitted statement is highly speculative.” Neptune said.

The judge raised an objection to Pearson. “Mr. Pearson, you don’t have any material evidence in the files you submitted. If you missed out something, please submit them as soon as you can.”

Pearson’s face turned green. He was about to say something but his attorney stopped him.

“We are still preparing the material evidence. We will submit them soon.” After saying that, he whispered in Pearson’s ear.

After listening to what his attorney had to say, Pearson shot Gu Ding a dangerous glance and smiled maliciously. He did not know that Neptune had heard everything that the attorney said.

“The attorney told him that getting material evidence would be easy. If the court cannot reach a verdict today, the prison can apply to remand the suspect for 72 hours until the investigation is complete. He can then use the authority of his position to force a confession out of you and also use your fingerprints and retina scans to fabricate the evidence.” Neptune told Gu Ding what he heard.

“Don’t fingerprint and retina scans have timestamps?” Gu Ding typed his question into his wristwatch. The other people thought that he was using a normal civilian wristwatch and did not say anything.

“It’s easy to tamper with the timestamps,” Neptune explained. “If you don’t want to suffer, you’d better win this case today.”

Witnesses were about to be called, and Reid had not made his appearance yet. This had caused Gu Ding to worry about his safety. Reid said that he would come over right after breakfast, and he should be expected in forty minutes. An hour had already passed, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Gu Ding did not expect that Reid was caught up in another incident.

After Reid ended the call with Gu Ding, he immediately dressed up and rushed out of the door. Even though he assured Gu Ding not to worry, he was still a little worried about what might have happened. His breakfast was a donut and carton of milk from a roadside stall. He ate his breakfast while walking toward the parking lot.

He had finished half of his donut and had arrived at the entrance to the parking lot when his communicator beeped. He saw that it was an unknown number and immediately hung up. Two seconds later, his communicator beeped again. He hesitated for a while. He did not know who it was calling him but it seemed like an emergency, and so he picked up the call.

“Hello, who is this?” Reid shoved the donut into his mouth and mumbled incoherently into the receiver.

“Am I talking to Reid?” A female voice was heard from the other end of the call. She sounded pretty cute.

“Yes, I am. Is something the matter? I’m a little busy right now.” Reid tossed the remaining half carton of milk into the trash can and walked into the parking lot.

“Do you know where Gu Ding is?” The female’s question caused Reid to be shocked.

“Who are you?” Reid immediately kept his guard up.

“I am Parma, professor of pharmacology from the Cerulean Military Academy. I have something about pharmacology that I want to ask him.” The reply from the female voice caused Reid to be ever warier.

“I’m sorry, I think you might have found the wrong person. Gu Ding doesn’t know anything about brewing medicine.” Reid hung up the call after leaving that remark. He thought that Gu Ding must have really gotten himself into some complicated business.

His communicator beeped again in less than three seconds. It was still that woman’s number. He hesitated for a while, then answered the call again. He would like to listen to what kind of stories this woman would make up.

“Why did you hang up my call?” The woman sounded interrogative.

“Hey, Big Sis, I’m really busy now. Can’t you at least make your stories sound more plausible? At least know who your subject is and not make up a story that’s so easily taken apart…”

The woman interjected before Reid could finish. “Reid, if you would like to graduate without incident and enroll in the Advanced Military Academy, then I would advise you to not hang up and listen to what I have to say.”

The woman’s voice on the other end made Reid shiver. Reid, who was usually brave, was somewhat intimidated by this statement. “Who the hell are you?”

“I told you that I am Parma, a pharmacology professor from the Academy. I’m actually surprised that Gu Ding didn’t tell his best friend that he was a pharmacologist.” Parma’s voice sounded a little more relaxed.

“Parma… why does your name sound familiar…” Reid finally realized who he was talking to. “You’re the pharmacology professor? The professor that achieved rank B in pharmacology when she was twenty-two? The genius woman who is an Elder in the Skyriver Sector division of the Hermean Alliance?”

“That’s right! So, are you now interested in telling me about what happened to Gu Ding?” The woman sounded arrogant when she heard the surprise in Reid’s voice.