Chu Huainan had hired several private detectives with excellent reputations in the industry to help him investigate the murder case from fifteen years ago as well as the current one.

But because many of the things to be investigated happened so long ago, even these top-tier private detectives mostly found irrelevant information.
These particularly trivial fragments of information were truly not of much help in uncovering the truth.

Yet this young man, whom he jokingly called his "lucky mascot," had given the investigation a new direction with just a few words.

At this moment, Chu Huainan was certain that the people posting rumor threads online and the ones leaking the fingerprint information to the media were two different groups.
He also knew that next, he needed someone to look into the "already dead" Li Songyuan and the family of Li Guangqiang's cousin who had reported Li Songyuan's death.

He had planned to wait until Shen Ting left before instructing his private detectives to investigate separately. Unexpectedly, a certain detective who hadn't provided any feedback for days actually contacted him proactively at this time. He even sent over a particularly interesting email.

Chu Huainan hadn't planned on hiding it anyway. Seeing Shen Ting leaning over to peer at his screen, he simply and generously turned the computer a bit more toward him.

Shen Ting adjusted his posture and naturally leaned his face closer to the screen. His gaze swept over the sender and recipient's email addresses before officially landing on the email's content.

The sender had simply and crudely pasted dozens of pictures directly into the body of the email. Each picture contained a string of names, numbers, and dates.
These were bank transfer records.
Looking at the [Li Guangqiang] in the account holder column and the date range of [20030101-20050210].

Shen Ting couldn't help but glance at Chu Huainan, who was scrolling the mouse.
He even managed to get bank transfer records from over a decade ago? This guy's connections are incredibly fucking wild!

The details on the pictures were sorted chronologically from most recent to oldest.
Chu Huainan's reading speed was extremely fast. A few minutes later, the mouse pointer stopped on one of the records. This was a transfer that occurred in January 2005, for exactly eighty thousand yuan.

Eighty thousand yuan, in 2020, might indeed no longer be considered a massive sum.
But placed fifteen years ago, even in the economically developed Jianghu City, this was a significantly large transfer.

Chu Huainan observed the other man out of the corner of his eye. This young man, who had been trying to keep his distance from him ever since walking through the door, was now leaning over and sitting particularly close to him. A few stray strands of hair fell across his smooth, full forehead. He pursed his lips in focused concentration, not saying a word.

Chu Huainan felt a slight itch in his heart and particularly wanted to tease him. So he turned his face and winked playfully: "Checking the transfer records was an inspiration I got from the rumors about 'hiring a hitman'."

But this young man, who had been very talkative all along, uncharacteristically didn't take the bait, and his complexion didn't look too good either.

In the indiscriminate murder case back then, because the killer Li Guangqiang and the victim Shen Zhi didn't know each other, and it was impossible for any financial disputes to exist between them, the police never checked Li Guangqiang's transaction history at banks or other financial institutions.

Shen Ting's gaze fell on the recipient corresponding to the eighty-thousand-yuan transfer: [Li Liangzhong].
He had seen this name in the CID's case files before; Li Liangzhong was the cousin who had raised Li Guangqiang.
Shen Ting's heart suddenly sank. For some reason, a bizarre thought arose—perhaps, someone used this money to buy his father's life.
He himself felt that this conjecture was extremely absurd.
But when a victim encounters a reality they cannot accept, they inevitably resort to conspiracy theories.

Back when Shen Zhi died, Shen Ting had also once paranoically believed that the vicious thug, who stabbed every knife directly into a vital spot, must have deliberately targeted his father!

However, the police's final investigation results showed that Li Guangqiang killed people due to hallucinations caused by a drug overdose.
Shen Ting trusted the police, just as he trusted his father, who held fervent beliefs and took pride in being a criminal investigator.

And this time, the reason he proactively offered to analyze the case for Chu Huainan and provided him with clues was because he had previously learned from Lin Huo that Chu Zhentang had some sort of shady, close connection with Song Shi's criminal syndicate.

Although Lin Huo denied any direct business dealings between Song Shi's Tianhui and the Yuannan Group, this didn't stop Shen Ting from suspecting that the Yuannan Group behind Chu Zhentang might not be very clean.

Furthermore, "Zombies" had appeared in the victim Chen Feng's house, and Song Shi was highly suspected of being the mastermind behind the Zombies.

Therefore, although Chu Huainan's active pursuit of the pedestrian street body-dumping case could rule out the possibility that he himself was the killer, this proactiveness added another layer of suspicion—he might be connected to the Zombies and already knew that the police had found Zombies in Chen Feng's house. That would be why he was so anxious to track down who killed and dumped the body, blowing this damn news out of proportion.

After all, the mastermind behind the Zombies didn't know that the Ministry of Public Security had already intervened and set up "Operation Peach Wood" specifically to hunt down the Zombies.

At this moment, this cunning drug lord operating behind the scenes definitely wouldn't want Chen Feng's death to cause a massive uproar, inadvertently exposing the "Zombies"—which hadn't yet been mass-produced or widely circulated—to the police's line of sight prematurely.

Receiving no response, Chu Huainan didn't mind at all. He used the mouse pointer to underline Li Liangzhong's name in the transfer records and said: "Three men make a tiger. It seems the information that Li Guangqiang had long cut ties with his cousin wasn't accurate." The mouse slid, and the pointer nimbly moved to the transfer date column. "January 29, 2005, which is exactly one week before the incident back then. Li Guangqiang also transferred money to Li Liangzhong."

In the time it took to exchange a few sentences, Shen Ting had quickly gathered his emotions. He said calmly: "Eighty thousand yuan fifteen years ago... tsk, that's a lot of money." As he spoke, the corners of his mouth curled up in a teasing manner, "I remember that back then, the average annual salary in Jianghu City was only a little over ten thousand. Shelling out eighty thousand at once—couldn't tell this Li Guangqiang was a rich man!"

Back then, the gambling and drug-addicted Li Guangqiang was destitute, and extreme poverty often leads to extreme evil.
This "rich man" comment was nothing more than mockery.

Moreover, although there was this one considerably large transfer, looking comprehensively at all of Li Guangqiang's bank statements, for the vast majority of the time, the total balance across all his cards combined didn't even exceed three digits.

Chu Huainan quickly scrolled the mouse a few more times.

Shen Ting, being sharp-eyed, caught another sizable transfer from the rapidly flashing text.

"Hey! Wait! This one was also transferred to Li Liangzhong."
Chu Huainan smiled and stopped his scrolling finger: "Is it? I almost missed it."

This transfer, for the amount of ten thousand yuan, occurred at the end of 2004.

Scrolling further back, there were no other transfer transactions between Li Guangqiang and Li Liangzhong.

Although Chu Huainan had considerately tilted the computer screen toward him, in order to see more clearly, Shen Ting still leaned against the armrest of the sofa, leaning nearly half his body over and subconsciously stretching his neck forward even more.

This truly wasn't a comfortable reading posture. After only a short while, he felt his aching neck had seemingly stretched a bit longer.

When the email was scrolled to the very bottom and he confirmed there were no other new clues, Shen Ting withdrew his gaze from the screen and sat back up straight.

Judging from those two transfers, even though Li Guangqiang himself was poor as a church mouse, it seemed that whenever he got his hands on a large sum of money, he would deposit it into his card and immediately remit the funds to Li Liangzhong far away in his hometown.

Depositing cash at a counter and then making a transfer transaction—if this happened in 2020, where electronic transactions boomed and society was nearly cashless, it would be highly suspicious.

But fifteen years ago, when cash operations were still the main business of banks, such actions were very common. Therefore, for a moment, Shen Ting couldn't determine whether Li Guangqiang's money came from clean sources or not.

He massaged his shoulder blade muscles, which were slightly stiff from sitting sideways and craning his neck, and sighed: "Didn't expect a piece of human garbage to have filial piety too! Li Guangqiang treated his uncle pretty well..." The trailing note of this conclusion was dragged out very long.

Intentionally elongating his tone, Shen Ting gave an Oscar-worthy slight frown, turned his face, and asked Chu Huainan sitting nearby: "Hey, do you think Li Liangzhong could be connected to this recent body-dumping case?"
Saying this, he lifted his chin slightly. "Also, I've been meaning to ask you. Since you care so much about the case and know so many details that even the police don't know, why don't you call the police and let them continue the investigation?"
Seeing the other party still not taking the bait, he added a cheerful, teasing remark: "What, ruling the roost in the capital market isn't enough for you? You're actually thinking of smashing the public security bureau's rice bowl and taking their jobs too?"

Chu Huainan instinctively felt that every word from the person in front of him seemed to carry deeper meaning. He smiled and asked in return: "How do you know I haven't called the police?"

Shen Ting's expression didn't change as he skillfully countered with a rhetorical question: "If you already called the police, then why don't the police know about the whistleblower's IP yet?"

Eloquent and articulate. Chu Huainan praised internally, his peach-blossom eyes curving again: "That's because there's a time difference." The underlying implication was that it wasn't that he didn't want to call the police, but merely that he hadn't had the time to report it to them yet.

Don't tell me you going out of your way to inquire about the whistleblower before we did was also due to a time difference? Shen Ting certainly didn't believe it. He let out a "Hah" of a laugh: "What I mean is, you actually don't need to find people to investigate this news yourself. Wouldn't it be much less of a hassle to just feed your thoughts back to the police and let them handle the rest?"

"Investigating it myself is faster." The capitalist, who had given speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos, had a bunch of twisted logic ready: "Criminals committing a crime is just like small business owners diving into entrepreneurship. The police, on the other hand, are just corporate slaves working for the public sector. Normally speaking, entrepreneurs will definitely fight much harder than salaried workers. Therefore, you can't always blame the police for being a beat slower than the criminals."

Those eyes, brimming with laughter, possessed a bewitching magic. Being stared at like this made one feel that no matter how outrageous the words spoken by the owner of those eyes were, they immediately became justified: "By the same logic, my investigating it myself is equivalent to entrepreneurship; the efficiency will definitely be higher than the police's."
Chu Huainan paused, then righteously added: "Of course, me relying on my own efforts is mainly because I don't want to cause trouble for the police comrades. After all, I'm not a professional when it comes to investigating cases. What if I pointed them in the wrong direction? That would be terrible."

So you're saying you're actually an outstanding youth with a highly elevated consciousness? Shen Ting couldn't help but sneer internally. He had never seen anyone who could make "distrusting the police, deliberately concealing facts, and withholding information" sound so noble. But on the surface, he could only submit to the situation, praising with a fake smile: "Wow, such high consciousness. No wonder you can be a role model among outstanding entrepreneurs."

That comrade role model with the ascetic face threw another male-fox-spirit-like wink at him, then picked up his phone and made a call.

Based on the content of the conversation, Shen Ting guessed the person on the other end was likely a private detective hired by Chu Huainan.

Capitalists really were different. Leaving perfectly good, free police unused, insisting on spending this "unnecessary money."

Less than a quarter of an hour after hanging up the phone, a new email arrived in Chu Huainan's inbox.

It seemed the other party had long prepared the materials he had just requested over the phone.

The ultra-high efficiency of sending over a detailed investigation report in fifteen minutes made even Shen Ting, who was used to high efficiency, secretly click his tongue in awe.

This capitalist, who looked quite punchable, actually made a valid point. This group of "entrepreneurs" really was more reliable than some of the "corporate slaves" within the system who occupied positions without doing any actual work.

Mascot of good fortune / Lucky general (福将): A term for someone who naturally brings good luck, stumbles upon crucial clues, or consistently turns bad situations into successes.

Three men make a tiger (三人成虎): A famous Chinese idiom meaning that if a rumor is repeated by enough people, it will eventually be accepted as the truth (used here to say that a widely believed 'fact' was actually false).

Corporate slaves (打工仔): Slang for blue-collar or white-collar workers who work relentlessly for their bosses/companies. Chu Huainan contrasts this with highly motivated "entrepreneurs."

Smash their rice bowl (饭碗一锅端): To "break someone's rice bowl" means to take away their job or livelihood.

Occupying a position without doing actual work (尸位素餐): A classical Chinese idiom describing bureaucrats or employees who take a salary but are incompetent and do no actual work.