"I always suspected that scoundrel had issues! Su Xia, right, Su Xia was the first one to suspect that scoundrel!" Ping An said to Gao Xiaofei in disbelief, "Thank goodness I let you handle the drug trafficking case, otherwise where would I have gotten this crucial information!"
"What's next?" Gao Xiaofei asked.
"What next? You do what you need to do, make arrests if you need to," Ping An said.
"But if I make a move, then what about you guys?" Gao Xiaofei gestured towards the task force office.
"What do you mean 'you guys'? Why are you concerned about that now," Ping An said impatiently, waving his hand. "Oh right, no matter what, keep an eye on Su Xia, make sure he's safe."
"Got it! I understand!" Gao Xiaofei rubbed his head, then suddenly pulled an envelope from behind him. "We're only talking about Su Xia, look at me, my memory. He left right after being questioned. He ran into me in the corridor and asked me to give this to you, said it was about Wu An's situation. He wanted to give it to you himself, but said he had something urgent to attend to!"
"Did you tell him about Gao Min?" Ping An asked, tilting his head.
"Yes, Old Su is a good person, didn't he suspect that scoundrel from the start?" Gao Xiaofei said. "Don't worry, he knows we're going to act, he won't mess around."
"You blockhead!" Ping An said, clearly annoyed.
It turned out that a few days prior, during a dinner with Su Xia, Ping An had asked him to inquire about Wu An's situation. He hadn't expected the other party to be so efficient, wrapping it up in just a few days.
After bidding farewell to Gao Xiaofei, Ping An walked out of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, hailed a taxi, told the driver the destination, and then sat in the back seat to open the envelope.
Inside the envelope was a stack of call log sheets. The writing on the sheets was neat and elegant. The content detailed Wu An's reports to the district bureau's anti-narcotics team, dating back the past year.
"The higher-ups recently released a new batch of high-purity drugs. I know there are three groups responsible for distributing them. The first group is a bunch of security guards at the train station, led by someone nicknamed 'Big Tongue'. The second group is those outsiders who drive illegal taxis, led by 'Yellow Hat'. The third group is a kitchen helper at the Municipal Vocational School, named Ah Hui or something, you can find him easily..."
"Lately, the higher-ups haven't asked me for help, and I'm short on cash. I've been feeling the pressure for a while. You guys are arresting too frequently, leave a few more..."
"When are you guys going to make a move? Things have been feeling off lately, I feel like someone's watching me. Has any information I've given you ever been wrong? Why don't you trust me?"
"I haven't been in contact with those people recently. My role really doesn't allow me to interact with the big boss behind the scenes. I genuinely don't know if Chen Nairong is involved in drugs."
"Don't contact me anymore, and don't try to find me. I don't want to cooperate with the police anymore. Arrest me if you want, but stop babbling."
"Do you guys still have any undercover agents in there? I'm telling you, I'm only telling you this once, be extremely careful. If there are any undercover agents, get them out immediately, they're going to kill someone!"
These few pages of records clearly outlined several conversations between Wu An and the Hebian District Bureau's anti-narcotics team. After reading these, Ping An finally understood. It wasn't just since the Niu Jian case that Su Xia and his team at the district bureau had been keeping an eye on Chen Nairong and considered Gao Min a prime suspect. The investigation had been ongoing for some time.
"It seems the police have quite a bit of information. Damn Gao Xiaofei, he never tells me the full story. Damn Su Xia, what is he trying to hide from me?" Ping An muttered to himself.
He tried calling Su Xia multiple times throughout the journey, but his calls went unanswered. Sitting in the taxi, Ping An was filled with anxiety. He desperately needed to find Su Xia to tell him that he had figured out a way to solve the case. However, Su Xia had vanished without a trace after learning about Gao Min's involvement in drugs.
Outside Gao Min and Liu Juan's small supermarket, Ping An stepped over the police tape and entered the ruined crime scene. Since the explosion the previous night, Gao Min and Liu Juan had been sent to the hospital for treatment. However, right under the noses of the police, both of them had disappeared without a trace.
Inside the supermarket's inner room, only a double bed stubbornly remained intact. The small cabinet beside the bed had been smashed to pieces, with seven or eight ceramic bowls scattered on the floor. One of the bowls, with a small chip on its rim, looked particularly familiar to Ping An. He had eaten a bowl of pickled vegetables from it just yesterday at noon. Now, thinking back, that pickled vegetable dish had been truly delicious.
"Pickled vegetables? Cellar!" With this thought, Ping An suddenly conceived a possibility.
He quickly crouched down and began tapping the floor with his hands. This sudden action stirred up the dust. A police officer guarding the crime scene ran over from a distance, shouting, "Don't move! Don't move!" Unfortunately, the officer's shouts came too late. By the time he reached the scene, Ping An had already significantly disturbed the crime scene and was staring in a daze at a wooden plank embedded in the floor.
"Get out, get out! This place is under lockdown. Go find scrap metal elsewhere!" the officer pointed at Ping An.
"Officer, I'm really in a hurry, so I won't argue with you about the honorable labor of collecting scrap metal! Now please call your superior and tell them that a cellar has been discovered here, and it's possible Chen Nairong is hiding in it!" Ping An said, suppressing his temper.
After finally getting the officer to make the call, Ping An turned on his phone's flashlight and carefully examined the cellar.
This appeared to be an old cellar, not very deep, less than a meter high, with its width and length unclear for the moment. Ping An reached into the cellar and his hand first touched a ceramic jar, which was undoubtedly for pickled vegetables. After moving the jar aside, his hand couldn't reach anything else. He estimated the area, and it seemed large enough for a person to lie down in.
"How could that brute Chen Nairong possibly discover this cellar! Unless he knew about it beforehand, or Liu Juan told him," Ping An thought to himself.
"Brother, have these houses been cleaned out by anyone today?" Ping An took out a cigarette and casually handed it to the officer who had just finished his call.
"Because of the explosion, this row of houses became unsafe. The community temporarily moved these families to hotels. Around midnight, just before dawn, residents from a few houses came to collect some belongings. We felt sorry for them and let them rummage through. They left one by one after dawn, saying they needed to rent a temporary place to live," the officer said.
"Oh! Alright, did the couple from that supermarket come back?" Ping An asked.
"I didn't pay attention to that!" the officer looked at Ping An and said, "Someone else asked me these questions just now, but they were a police officer. Who are you?"
"Oh! I'm a reporter!" Ping An said with a smile.
"What?" The officer looked dumbfounded.
Without the time to joke with the cute young officer, Ping An knew that the person who had asked those questions was Su Xia. Su Xia, while seemingly smooth and experienced in handling matters, and not rigid, was fundamentally a person with clear principles. Now, for Chen Nairong, he had sacrificed half his career and would likely face much ridicule in the future. How could he not want to catch Chen Nairong himself to prove his innocence?
"I don't know if Chen Nairong controlled Gao Min and her husband, or if Gao Min and her husband controlled Chen Nairong. Damn it, this case has reached this point, and I'm always a step behind. I don't know if I'm capable of being a bureau chief!" Ping An grumbled. Knowing that time was precious, he stood on the street outside the supermarket, unsure of where to go.
"Ring..." Just then, Ping An's phone suddenly rang.
"Brother Ping An, it's Wanqiu from the Municipal TV station. I was doing an interview in Yantou Town just now and saw one of your interns being surrounded by some villagers. They've been taken to the police station by the local officers..."
"What?"
Without a doubt, the intern mentioned by his television colleague was likely Lin Dang. This girl was usually honest and steady. What kind of news was she interviewing that got her surrounded? Why was she in Yantou Town?
Thinking of these things, Ping An called Lin Dang while waving to hail a taxi and headed towards Yantou Town.
Lin Dang's phone, as expected, went unanswered. For a reporter, encountering such a situation usually meant one of two things: either the phone used for gathering material had been smashed, or it had been temporarily switched off for protection.
According to the newspaper's regulations, after failing to connect with Lin Dang, Ping An immediately called Fei Keqing. However, Fei Keqing stated that she had not assigned Lin Dang any field assignments that day. Without a senior reporter's assignment, Lin Dang's actions would be considered self-initiated reporting. But Fei Keqing also mentioned that she hadn't received any reporting proposals from Lin Dang that morning, which was problematic.
"I hope nothing has happened!" Ping An felt a pang of self-reproach for leaving a bunch of work to Lin Dang, who had no experience in social news reporting, due to the case. If something happened, he, as the chief reporter, wouldn't be able to escape responsibility. However, he was more concerned about Lin Dang's safety.
"This foolish girl, she was fine this morning. She didn't say anything about going to interview anyone. Why was she in Yantou Town?" Ping An worried in the taxi.
What exactly happened to Lin Dang?
It turned out that after visiting the tenant at Niu Jian's former residence, Lin Dang was still not convinced. She had inquired further and found the house where Niu Jian's family was currently living.
After knocking on the door, Niu Daixing opened it. Initially, upon learning of Lin Dang's "intention," Niu Daixing politely expressed some opinions and made some statements. However, when Lin Dang, inexperienced in conversation, inadvertently mentioned the matter between Niu Daixing and the "young woman," Niu Daixing's expression instantly changed. He accused Lin Dang of "slander" and told her to "get out"!
After Lin Dang left the Niu residence, Niu Daixing, who had calmed down, remembered the phone Lin Dang had been desperately protecting during their conversation. A bad feeling arose, and he chased after her, stopping Lin Dang and demanding to see her phone. Lin Dang naturally refused, and they began to struggle on the street.
Niu Daixing, relying on the fact that he was a local, shouted loudly and called several of his brothers for help. Seeing that Lin Dang was about to be at a disadvantage, a patrol officer, alerted by a concerned citizen who had called the police, arrived in the nick of time. Given the tense situation in the entire police system at the moment, he immediately took Niu Daixing and his companions, as well as Lin Dang, to the police station without further ado. This scene was witnessed by a municipal television reporter interviewing a township enterprise, hence the phone call.
At the police station, the police questioned Niu Daixing and Lin Dang separately. Niu Daixing, with something to hide, and Lin Dang, scared, both failed to tell the truth. Niu Daixing alternately accused Lin Dang of being a "fake reporter" who came to his house to "extort," and then claimed she was from the newspaper, sent to be a go-between for her boss who had reported him in person. He said that because they couldn't reach an agreement, she had "threatened" him.
Lin Dang stated that she was an intern reporter from the newspaper and had come to speak on behalf of her supervisor, to see if there had been any misunderstanding.
The police officers at the station, seeing that the conflict had not escalated into further public security issues, merely gave them a verbal warning and let them leave. However, as Niu Daixing left, he quietly threatened Lin Dang from behind, "When you get out! We'll settle this outside."
At this point, Lin Dang couldn't tell the police the truth, nor could she call for help—her phone had been deliberately smashed during the previous scuffle, and it wouldn't even turn on now.
"Officer, could I trouble you to make a phone call to my unit? Or could you give me a ride out of here?" Seeing that Niu Daixing and his group had already left the police station, Lin Dang said to the police officer, a little afraid.
"Take my phone!" the kind officer said.
"Thank you!" Lin Dang said gratefully.
However, a minute later, Lin Dang returned the phone with a dejected expression.
"My phone is broken, and I don't have any phone numbers," Lin Dang said.
"Are you afraid of Niu Daixing and his gang? Don't worry, just sit here and wait. They wouldn't dare cause trouble at the station. I'll take you out when I get off work at noon," the officer said, trying to comfort the agitated young girl.
With the promise of the kind officer, Lin Dang sat quietly and waited. The officer also left the office to attend to some other duties.
About twenty minutes later, a young man in a police uniform suddenly entered the office. He looked at Lin Dang and said, "Let's go. Director Liu has gone out on official business. He's arranged for me to take you."
Unskilled as she was, if it had been Ping An, he would have probably realized at a glance that the young man's uniform was not a police uniform, but an almost identical security guard uniform.
Deceived, Lin Dang stood up and followed the young man out of the police station. Then she got into a van. The moment the door opened, Lin Dang saw the seemingly refined face of Niu Daixing.
"Get in here!" The security guard youth outside the car gave a shove, pushing Lin Dang into the van. Before Lin Dang could even resist, Niu Daixing and the people in the car held her down, and then a strip of tape was used to seal her mouth tightly.
"You dare to cause trouble for me, I'll kill you!" Niu Daixing said fiercely, looking at Lin Dang, who was tied up like a mummy.
The van sped away from the street outside the police station, and happened to cross paths with the taxi Ping An was in.
Tied up like a mummy, Lin Dang was thrown into the back of the van by Niu Daixing. She was currently experiencing the most terrifying moments of her life.
"Sis, I've got the person. Her phone is broken, and I don't know what's on it!"
"I don't know how much this girl knows."
"What should we do? Kill her?"
"What, Nanzhuang? To be buried with Chen Nairong? Okay! I'm on my way!"
Lying in the back of the van, Lin Dang intermittently overheard Niu Daixing on the phone. When she heard that she was to be buried with Chen Nairong, tears streamed down her face uncontrollably.
In fact, Lin Dang was not the only one afraid in the van. The few young men who were helping Niu Daixing were all barely adults. They had only intended to trick Lin Dang out of the police station and then beat her up in the wilderness to vent their anger. Perhaps one or two had other malicious intentions, but Niu Daixing's phone call earlier had been heard not only by Lin Dang but also by them.
Hitting, blackmailing, rape—they were capable of these things, but murder? Sorry, they didn't dare! And they didn't want to be involved!
"Brother Niu, why? She's just a young girl. We can take her to the wilderness, let you vent your anger, and let the brothers have some fun. If that's not enough, I can wear a mask later and film some 'adult films' to disgust her, blackmail her, and ruin her reputation," a young man sitting next to Niu Daixing advised.
"You don't understand. This girl is involved in something big. The person who wants her dead, you can't afford to provoke," Niu Daixing threatened.
"Then, if that's the case, tell us a place. The brothers will leave the person with you, and you can do whatever you want. We won't be involved," the young man conceded.
"No, my good brother, do you know whose person this girl is? She's Ping An's woman. Do you know that Ping An, the great reporter? He's the one who suppressed Brother Heshang at the nightclub a few days ago and made Boss Wan lose face. Now that you're in this car, do you think you can wash your hands of it? I won't say anything, but can you afford to provoke that Ping An?" Niu Daixing said menacingly.
"Grandpa Niu, you're harming us! This, you're putting us in a difficult position..." The young man looked troubled, unsure of what to do.
"Don't worry, I know my brothers have certain preferences. That girl is probably still a virgin. We'll find a secluded spot later, and let the brothers have their fill first." Niu Daixing licked his lips as he looked at the young man before him, seeming unable to restrain himself. He continued lewdly, "You know my brother likes to play with excitement. If it weren't for the fear of causing death, some methods wouldn't have been tried, right? That little bitch we dealt with last time, didn't you not have enough fun because we were afraid of killing her? This time, play as much as you want, until you're completely satisfied with the true essence of love, won't you be free to fly?"
At this moment, although the young man was unwilling to get involved in murder, he couldn't resist Niu Daixing's temptation. He glanced back at Lin Dang in the back of the van, and only felt that the girl, tied with ropes, looked increasingly shapely and alluring. A dryness rose in his throat. Turning back to Niu Daixing, who had a similarly lustful expression, they nodded in unspoken understanding. The other young men in the front seats, also tempted by Niu Daixing, lost their last shred of humanity. No one spoke, and no one cared about human life. They merely exchanged lewd smiles, like jackals dividing prey, emitting greedy growls before a feast.
At the police station, an anxious Ping An searched through every office for Lin Dang. Time ticked by, and although he didn't know Lin Dang's current predicament, his heart was in turmoil.
"Who is Lin Dang's superior?" Director Liu, who had received Lin Dang earlier, finally returned to the station.
"I am the chief reporter of the Social News Department of the Hechuan Daily. This is my reporter's ID. I'm here to pick up my person. I heard just now that you arranged for someone to send her away? Where is she?" Ping An asked anxiously.
"No, I went out to mediate. Before I left, I told the girl to wait patiently, and I would personally take her out when I got off work. Where is she?" Director Liu asked, confused.
"Where is she, I asked you!" Ping An seemed unable to control his temper and asked loudly.
"Watch your attitude, this is our Director Liu..." One of the young police officers showed dissatisfaction with Ping An's attitude.
"Do you want me to call Director Chen Changsheng of your district bureau! What's wrong with my attitude!" Ping An's loud voice instantly turned into a roar.
"Reporter Ping An, please wait a moment, I'll ask others in the station." Director Liu was an old policeman. The grassroots officers might not know, but he did. This person was impatient. He even dared to play tricks on Director Yan Qing of the Municipal Bureau and Vice Mayor Wang greatly admired him. Such a person was indeed qualified to be arrogant—not for anyone else, but because he had successfully solved several major cases!
Immediately, Director Liu wasted no time. After a series of inquiries, he learned that a young man had taken Lin Dang away, and according to the surveillance footage, Lin Dang was last seen getting into a van.
"Not good, this girl has been taken control of." As an old policeman, he could tell at a glance from the surveillance footage that Lin Dang was pushed into the van from behind when she got in.
"Director Liu, this van belongs to Ba Xiong's family," a police officer next to Director Liu said.
"Go to the monitoring cameras at the intersection of the Post and Savings Bank outside and see which direction the van went." Director Liu's head began to ache at the mention of Ba Xiong. This Ba Xiong was a scourge of the town. He was only 28 years old but had been imprisoned twice for rape. If something happened this time, his jurisdiction would be in serious trouble.
"Call the people over. We'll work overtime at noon and take a car to pursue!" Director Liu decisively gave the order, and he and Ping An got into a police car.
"Director Liu, no need to check the surveillance. The security guard at the Post and Savings Bank said the van went towards Dong Village," the police officer who had been sent to check the surveillance ran back to report.
"Get two motorcycles. The roads in the village are not good, and motorcycles are faster than cars," Director Liu thought for a moment and then added to his order.
Soon, two motorcycles were pushed into the police station yard. Just then, Ping An suddenly got out of the car and rode one of them. Despite Director Liu's attempts to stop him, he rode off towards Dong Village without regard.
"Hurry up and follow him! Quickly!" Seeing Ping An leave, Director Liu quickly instructed one of the police officers to chase after him on the other motorcycle.