Rule of Law and Revenge

Rule of Law and Revenge is the moral conflict between punishing wrongdoing through lawful investigation and answering it with private violence. The distinction becomes immediate when Li Yan confronts Cui Feng: Li wants to shoot him, but ultimately presents an arrest warrant instead. The scene makes the choice more than a procedural formality. It is a test of whether justice can be pursued without becoming revenge.

Investigation and restraint

The conflict takes shape before the final confrontation, in the investigators’ effort to understand who could have carried out the killings. When a detective wonders whether the night watchman is drawing attention to himself deliberately, Nien Mei-Ling offers competing explanations: conspicuousness might be a tactic, while the watchman might also have believed the bodies would remain buried beneath concrete. Her reasoning keeps suspicion open rather than treating one interpretation as proof.

Li considers another possibility: that the killer is insane. But Detective Dai points out that the operation could not have been carried out alone; someone else would have needed to administer the drugs and assist with breathing. Li recognizes that this changes the working picture from a solitary perpetrator to a possible collaboration. He does not let the disturbing nature of the crimes settle the question. Instead, he tells the detectives to keep their first priority on identifying the victims. The passage distinguishes moral horror from knowledge: outrage may explain the urge to condemn, but it cannot establish who acted or how many people were involved.

Margaret Campbell’s later reflection on the victims gives that restraint a human dimension. Learning that one woman, Chai Rui, had a young daughter makes it harder for Margaret to think of the victims as anonymous bodies. She recognizes how a name and a family can alter the emotional weight of the investigation. Her reaction does not replace evidence, but it clarifies what the inquiry is meant to serve: the lives and relationships lost, not an abstract appetite for punishment.

The danger of missing what is evident

The novel also connects justice to the quality of attention. Margaret admits that too much information has obscured what should have been obvious. She recalls the bus-driver riddle, in which the answer was present from the start but hidden in plain sight by distracting details such as numbers and bus stops. Looking again at the autopsy evidence, she asks what obvious connection she had failed to notice.

This moment offers a counterweight to snap judgments. The investigators can be misled not only by too little information, but by an accumulation of details that draws their attention away from the decisive one. Margaret’s realization is not itself a verdict against a suspect; it is a correction in how the evidence is being read. In the book’s treatment of justice, arriving at an answer requires intellectual self-correction as well as determination. A case cannot be responsibly resolved simply because a suspect appears conspicuous or a theory seems to fit the horror of the crime.

Institutional pressure and lawful authority

Li’s confrontation with Yue brings the conflict into the institutions responsible for the case. After Huang leaves a meeting, Li remains focused on the urgent search for Xinxin. He tells Yue that he will take detectives and forensic officers to the Shanghai World Clinic, with or without a warrant. If obstructed, he says, he will pursue charges for attempting to pervert the course of justice and initiate corruption investigations.

Li’s threat is forceful, but its stated instrument is legal process. He invokes corruption cases against senior officials in Beijing, noting that he brought charges in two of them, and warns that a connection to a mayoral adviser will not guarantee protection. Yue responds that Li’s career will end if he cannot find evidence against Cui Feng. The exchange exposes the pressure surrounding the investigation: Li must challenge an official who can threaten his future while insisting that suspicion be tested through evidence. The later appearance of an arrest warrant at the confrontation with Cui gives that insistence practical form.

The choice at the confrontation

At the banquet, Director Hu tries to intimidate Li and demands that he put down his gun. Li keeps his attention on Cui Feng and orders him to stand. Cui initially carries himself as though the law cannot reach him, but seeing Li’s trembling hand, he appears to understand that the encounter may no longer be governed by legal procedure. Li, for his part, feels the temptation to fire and imagine that doing so would end the evil represented by Cui. The narration makes clear that this would be an act of personal vengeance, not an arrest.

Detective Dai’s quiet appeal interrupts the moment. Li pauses, reaches into his jacket, and produces official papers: a warrant for Cui’s arrest on suspicion of murder, with the count beginning at fifty-four and expected to rise. Cui’s fleeting expression of satisfaction suggests that he interprets Li’s restraint as a victory for himself. But Li has chosen to let the case proceed through the law rather than kill him. Officers, including Dai and Qian, then move in to handcuff Cui and take him away.

Li’s warning to Director Hu after the arrest extends the scene’s moral argument. He uses a proverb about choosing one’s companions carefully, directing attention to Hu’s association with Cui. The rebuke is pointed, but the decisive act has already occurred: Li did not substitute his own judgment and weapon for the warrant. The ending does not erase his anger or resolve the wider case; it marks a boundary he nearly crossed and then chose to hold.