Gong Jin stiffly encircled the waist of the person before him. He felt the gun pressing against his lower abdomen slowly move upwards before stopping right below his heart.
At the other end of the large dance floor lit by gently swaying lights, a tall and straight figure came to a stop at the entrance to the club. The moment the doorman stationed at the entrance saw that the visitor was a familiar VIP customer, he hurriedly stepped forward to take the customer’s coat, but was stopped with a wave of a hand.
Seeing that the Third Young Master was simply standing at the entrance without going in, the bodyguard behind couldn’t bear it and went forward to enquire, “Director He?”
There was an exceedingly odd expression on He Guanyu’s face. He had a death grip on his phone and an expression akin to having swallowed a housefly.
“The first question,” The young man asked Gong Jin softly. “Are you the only investor for the hotel David Beaudoin opened in Fan City?”
“…”
Gong Jin wanted to scan his surroundings from the corner of his eyes, but realized that the young man had long caught onto his actions. The gun concealed by his sleeves continued to move upwards, pressing firmly against his vest.
Gong Jin deliberated over his next words before slowly replying, “Me and David were university classmates when I was studying abroad. He wanted to start a venture in the country and asked me for the initial capital.”
At that time, he had not transacted directly with David but had instead transferred the funds through a fake bank account set up by an intermediary in Switzerland. He didn’t know how this person had caught wind of this matter.
“Mr Gong was in such a hurry to transfer assets overseas that anyone who doesn’t know better would think you want to make a run for it.”
The sound of shallow breathing entered Gong Jin’s ears. The gray-haired youth’s lips curved. He gently leaned his head against Gong Jin’s left shoulder. From the perspective of bystanders, they appeared to be sharing an intimate moment.
“Is He Guanyu aware of this?” The gray-haired youth asked.
Gong Jin’s throat moved. “…He’s not aware of it.”
He was telling the truth. Guanyu only knew that he was currently in the midst of transferring his assets overseas in batches, but didn’t know that he’d secretly invested in David’s project.
He Guanyu stared at the situation on the opposite end of the dance floor for a few seconds. Then, he turned and left.
The two bodyguards behind him glanced at each other in dismay before hurriedly following him.
“There is a slip of notepaper in your left pocket,” Ying Wan saw from the corner of his eyes that the person at the entrance was leaving. “Take it out and look at it.”
In accordance with the gray-haired youth’s instructions, Gong Jin slowly stretched his hand, palm face-up, into his vest’s left pocket. He touched the slip of paper nestled in his pocket. The expression on his face was not very pretty.
He had no idea how the slip of paper had magically appeared in his pocket. The only plausible explanation was that the youth had seized a chance during their conversation to secretly stuff the slip of paper into his pocket.
Gong Jin unfolded the slip of paper in his palm, looking down at the picture drawn on it.
It was a half-length image of a woman. The woman’s upper limbs were chopped off. Two snakes with their tongues flicking out coiled around her naked torso. Her face was without eyes, nose, or ears. There was only a mouth split open malevolently in what seemed like a pained scream.
There was something uncanny about the ugliness that couldn’t be put into words. All it took was a single glance to give rise to a sense of discomfort in his heart.
“The second question,” Ying Wan scrutinized the changes in the man’s expression. “This is the sticker that David dispatched people to give out at the entrance to the hotel. Do you know the meaning behind the image on it?”
Observing Gong Jin’s furrowed brows and the bewilderment that emerged in his eyes, Ying Wan considered the situation internally and felt that Gong Jin probably wouldn’t lie.
If surnamed Gong really didn’t know what the ‘screaming faceless woman’ represented, then he might not have anything to do with what had happened that year. At best, he could only be considered a character who had been utilized as an instrument of harm.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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He let out a slow breath. Reason was gradually restored.
This gray-haired youth had likely dared to appear in this place alone because he was certain that his and He Guanyu’s marriage was imminent. In order not to let slip that He Guanyu was having an affair, he would definitely come alone.
But this person didn’t know that the business world was akin to a battlefield. He had secured the position of CFO at a young age and naturally wouldn’t be led by the nose so easily.
He hadn’t come here empty-handed without any preparations.
“What else do you want to know?” Steeling himself, Gong Jin’s heart rate gradually calmed. He relaxed his tone of voice as well. “As long as it won’t harm Guanyu, I will definitely tell you whatever I know.”
Ying Wan sensed the subtle changes in Gong Jin. His eyes narrowed slightly.
After answering his questions, any normal person would surely want to know when he would put the gun down and release them. After all, eliminating any threat to life was the most important.
Only after leaving this place could Gong Jin think of ways to find out his true identity or make a police report.
Unlike their initial meeting, Gong Jin was becoming increasingly calm.
Something wasn’t right.
Ying Wan made a swift decision. “I have one last question.”
He took a sip of the lukewarm Hot Toddy on the counter. His eyes stared straight at Gong Jin’s face. “You and He Guanyu know who killed the two construction workers.”
This statement was not phrased as a question. His tone was confident.
Gong Jin’s expression finally changed upon hearing the youth’s words. Without care for the gun pressed against him, his gaze abruptly sank. “I am only responsible for the company’s financial affairs. I don’t know anything about the accident at the construction site.”
Just then, he was cut off by a buzzing sound from the handphone in the youth’s pocket.
Ying Wan maintained a firm grip on the gun with one hand while extending the other hand into his pocket to retrieve his phone. He had just pressed the button to answer the call when he heard Ah Bu’s anxious voice.
“Boss, there’s an unexpected situation.”
Ah Bu’s voice wasn’t stable. He seemed to be running while talking on the phone. “Yu-dage just left the bureau in his car. Grayback hacked into his navigation system on short notice and found that he’s heading towards Bar Street!”
–
Yu Baiqing’s right eyelid was constantly twitching tonight.
The technical reconnaissance team had just furnished the latest handwriting evaluation report. As such, he’d gone with Guan Xingwen and several technical reconnaissance officers to the meeting room to discuss the latest developments in the case.
Guan Xingwen had projected on the big screen the two deceased’s signatures on their contracts. Picking up the pointer lying on the table, Guan Xingwen indicated Sang Xingwen’s signature on the left. “Based on the initial evaluation of his handwriting that was done last week, we took a step further to perform a second evaluation. The person who signed is left-handed; we can be ninety-nine percent certain of this at this juncture.”
“What about the remaining one percent?”
Yu Baiqing looked up from his notebook.
“That…”
Guan Xingwen gestured at his colleague responsible for the handwriting evaluations with the pointer. “If a professional evaluator like Little Liang practiced hard for a few years, he would be able to reach a level where he could pretend to be left-handed and nobody would be able to tell. But as long as the deceased was not born left-handed, it’s certain that there would be loopholes if he were to write with his left hand. However, there are completely no traces that the signature is a deliberate imitation. That’s why there is a ninety-nine percent chance of him being left-handed.”
There was no trace of surprise on Yu Baiqing’s face upon hearing the eventual conclusion by the technical reconnaissance team.
Guan Xingwen once again played the surveillance recording on the screen. The recording had undergone processing to maximize its resolution. In the video, Sang Xingwen was looking down at his phone. He held an unlit cigarette in his right hand while his left hand tapped at his phone continuously. His typing was exceedingly quick.
Before he was crushed to death by the loader, he held up his phone to take a picture of the moon. He used his left hand to press the button for the camera.
“Sang Xingwen is a very typical lefty. This is consistent with the result of the handwriting evaluation,” Guan Xingwen stated. “But–”
“He is faking it,” Yu Baiqing interjected. “He is that one percent.”
Yu Baiqing rewound the surveillance recording that had previously been analyzed a few hundred times, setting the playback speed to 0.2. At the two-third mark, he paused the video.
“Take note of Sang Xingwen’s hand,” Yu Baiqing pointed at the deceased on the screen. “When Cui Shengde passed him the cigarette, his right ring finger curled up. He had probably subconsciously wanted to accept it with his right hand, but had to swap to his left hand at the last moment.”
The technical reconnaissance team didn’t smoke much. Without a long history of smoking like him, the majority of people wouldn’t pick up on this sort of detail.
Guan Xingwen’s eyes gradually widened. “Captain Yu, you mean…he was deliberately putting on a show for the camera, no, putting on a show for us?”
Yu Baiqing exercised his wrist joints. He offered the conclusion he’d arrived at. “He’s accustomed to using his right hand. He’s right-handed.”
The entire technical reconnaissance team sank into silence upon hearing Yu Baiqing’s analysis.
The person who signed was definitely a lefty, however the person in the video was a right-hander intentionally pretending to be a left-hander. All the clues pointed at a possibility, which just happened to align with their previous conjecture.
“The Sang Xingwen who signed and the deceased Sang Xingwen are not the same person?” Guan Xingwen’s brows furrowed in thought for a while before he volunteered his thoughts. “But that doesn’t make sense either. Sang Xingwen’s parents even came to the bureau to identify his corpse and his colleagues at the construction site also testified that he was the deceased. There’s little chance of any mistake happening at the forensic side either. How can such a matter be concealed from everyone?”
“Maybe this is exactly what the murderer was aiming for,” Yu Baiqing’s gaze was focused fixedly on the deceased’s figure on the screen. “For Sang Xingwen to be dead in everyone’s eyes. Everybody will be the witness to his death. This will form a complete chain of logic.”
“But the murderer overlooked a crucial factor,” Yu Baiqing circled the two words ‘Sang Xingwen’. He looked up from his notebook. “The autopsy revealed that Sang Xingwen had already been dead for twelve hours before he was even crushed by the loader.”
The deceased might not be able to speak, but had in his own way broken this hopeless situation.
He lay all alone in the mortuary, using his rotten, putrid corpse to tell everyone who saw him: I am handing my body to you. You can slice my skin, cut open my flesh, dig out my organs. You can examine my everything, till you are done utilizing whatever value I can provide.
At the end, please close my eyes and help me find the truth.
“If the person in the recording isn’t Sang Xingwen,” Yu Baiqing asked everyone present. “What if the real Sang Xingwen has long passed away?”
–
At the same time, at the criminal investigation unit’s office.
Ruan Tianjie and Zhang Yu were seated at the meeting table, eating supper while waiting for new information from the police station at the port.
Just now, their unit had received a police report from someone claiming to be a senior executive in Heyu Real Estate.
Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t need to attend to an ordinary police report. But because the police report involved He Guanyu, and He Guanyu was also one of the main targets of investigation in the ‘construction site murder case’, the call was transferred to the municipal bureau’s team.
Heyu Real Estate’s senior executive informed the police that they suspected the He Family’s Third Young Master was currently being blackmailed. They requested for the cooperation of the police force to arrest the criminal suspect for an investigation.
“This person surnamed Gong is the company’s CFO. He got wind of some information regarding the other party through his own means. He Guanyu had once lavishly spent millions on this person, in addition to purchasing property, cars, and other real estate. The suspected monetary value is immense. Subsequently, this person sold off all the assets gifted by He Guanyu and vanished from Fan City without a trace.” The criminal investigator on duty wrote a string of zeros on the whiteboard while providing his report to his two superiors. “The other party arranged to meet He Guanyu tonight. This Mr Gong is worried that He Guanyu will run into trouble, which is why he chose to seek the police’s assistance.”
“…Why does it sound like Third Young Master He fell into a honey trap?” Zhang Yu raised a brow. “There was mutual consent. He dared to give gifts and the other person dared to accept his gifts. Can this even be considered blackmail?”
He continued questioning, “What time and where are they meeting?”
“8.40pm tonight, at Club LEON, number 19 Bar Street along the port, “The criminal investigator on duty answered.
“Cough cough–”
Ruan Tianjie, who was in the middle of drinking water, suddenly erupted into a coughing fit that was so intense he nearly teared up.
Putting down the thermos in his hands, he covered his mouth, casting his gaze at the Octopus with creased brows. “Isn’t this–”
On second thought, he eventually still forced the latter half of his sentence back down his throat.
He hadn’t thought much of it when they first received the report. But after hearing several key words like ‘He Guanyu’, ‘LEON’, ‘lavishly spent millions’…
Apart from Yu Baiqing’s di, who else could simultaneously fit all these conditions?
Ruan Tianjie hastily took another sip of hot water to suppress his shock.
He seriously sympathized too much with Old Yu.
After listening to his subordinate’s detailed report of the situation, Zhang Yu nodded. “Tell this Mr Gong that this doesn’t reach the level for us to dispatch officers to the scene. We will get the station at the port to dispatch a few plain clothes officers to the scene to keep an eye on things. If they establish that blackmail is indeed going on, they will carry out the arrest on the spot.”
The sky outside the municipal bureau gradually darkened. It was nearing 9pm.
Someone from the police station at the port called to inform them that their plain clothes officers were already keeping watch outside the club. As the club practiced a membership system, their people had no way of entering.
At this point, Ruan Tianjie finally couldn’t take it any longer. He stood up. “Old Zhang…I’m going downstairs to look for Old Yu.”
It hadn’t been long since the Octopus was transferred to their unit; it was normal for him to be unaware of the inside story. No matter what, Ruan Tianjie still had to quickly give Old Yu a heads-up, otherwise the moment the police officers at the scene took action, it would be difficult to say what kind of situation it would be.
Ruan Tianjie had only taken a single step out of the office when he was caught by surprise. The lift doors at the end of the corridor slowly opened and Yu Baiqing strode out with a dark face.
Yu Baiqing’s expression was rather unkind. His originally stern face had chilled even further till it resembled ice.
“Old Yu, you returned at the right time,” Ruan Tianjie hurriedly went forward. “Quickly ask Little Wan where he is tonight. We received a report just now about He–”
“He Guanyu called me too,” Yu Baiqing took out his car keys from his pocket and walked with large steps towards the office. “He said his fiancé is currently being blackmailed. He sent me the address and a photo.”
LMAO this just got messier~~ aii, what does ‘N’ do? Like did he actually sold his body while making transactions etc? Ying wan you’re such a little devil 😭