Fengcheng Jewelry Store

Captain Zhang turned his gaze to Wang Donghe.

Wang Donghe gently shook his head. "From my analysis, Sister Feng should be the number three figure among the Five Tiger Generals. Her position couldn't possibly be higher than Brother Hu's!"

"Then that's puzzling. Could there be a missing piece in Brother Hu's spending ledger?" Lin Xiaosu said.

Wang Donghe frowned slightly, unsure how to answer for the moment.

In modern society, income and status were closely tied. Within any organization, higher rank meant higher pay as a matter of course.

Criminal organizations were even more so. Higher status meant higher income.

There was no reason Brother Hu should have had less money than Sister Feng. Where was the problem?

Zhou Mei said, "Brother Hu's assets are all laid out here, clear as day. The valuation should be more or less accurate, and his account balances are here too. I believe those are precise. Only one thing isn't transparent: the mistress he kept. No one knows how much he spent on her. The other three male Tigers among the Five Tiger Generals were the same, and we don't know how much they spent keeping mistresses. Only Sister Feng didn't keep a lover... Could that be why Sister Feng spent more personally?"

Could that really have been the reason?

Under normal circumstances, it really was!

Men grew poorer when they dated!

Women didn't need to contribute much in a relationship, aside from their bodies, so their money was freer...

Even in a criminal organization, keeping mistresses would divert part of a man's assets.

Lin Xiaosu smiled faintly. "Officer Zhou may have just hit on the key point. We need to find out how much money those four mistresses received from the four Tigers, and where they spent it."

Sun Yang was dumbfounded.

After going in a huge circle, the topic had returned to its original track.

He had initially thought this Lin guy deserved a spanking for proposing such an enormous, difficult investigation. If Captain Zhang took an interest and assigned it to him, he would be doomed.

Then things had taken a turn. Captain Zhang had assigned Wang Donghe to handle it three years ago.

The work had already been done, and the crushing pressure on him was gone. Just when he had been congratulating himself, this kid had started up again.

If Captain Zhang handed this job to him, he would lose another layer of skin. Was this kid here specifically to torment him? He admitted that he had been somewhat rude when they first met, but this kid couldn't be that petty, could he...

Wang Donghe's brows knitted together as well. "Captain Zhang, while investigations need to be thorough, too many side branches will ultimately interfere with progress on the main line. Do you really think it's necessary to expand the scope further?"

Captain Zhang turned his thick brows, finding it hard to decide for a moment.

They had spent three years investigating the Five Tigers.

And now they had to investigate four mistresses...

Lin Xiaosu said, "How about this? You don't need to thoroughly investigate every aspect of these mistresses' personal lives. Just focus on the main line and find out where they mainly spent their money. That'll be enough."

"If that's all, it should be feasible! Donghe, Sun Yang, get moving immediately!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

The two accepted the order in unison.

Lin Xiaosu also stood up. "It's gotten late tonight. I'll head back first!"

"Alright, you've worked hard! Once we have news, I'll have Zhou Mei contact you." Captain Zhang stood to see him out.

Zhou Mei wanted to walk him out, but Lin Xiaosu refused. "No need. You didn't sleep at all yesterday, so get some proper rest today. I can go back on my own."

He left.

In the reception room, Captain Zhang smiled. "Heh heh... What a considerate little warm-hearted guy!"

"Warm-hearted?" Zhou Mei burst out laughing. "With one sentence from him, Wang Donghe and Sun Yang have to work overtime all night. I doubt those two think there's anything warm about him..."

Three days later, the endless drizzle was finally replaced by clear skies stretching for miles.

As soon as the rain stopped, the breath of summer came rushing in.

Early that morning, just as the Fengcheng Detective Agency opened, Zhou Mei's black car pulled up by the roadside.

She got out and entered the detective agency.

With mixed feelings, Miao Ruolan went to pour her tea.

Those feelings mainly stemmed from that night three days ago. When she had been settling the final payment with Sister Zhuang, Lin Xiaosu had gone shopping with Zhou Mei. They had shopped until they returned at dawn.

She couldn't bring herself to ask him anything. She simply felt a little disappointed inside...

So much so that she had been depressed these past two days, inexplicably depressed...

Now Zhou Mei had come again, and she wasn't wearing her police uniform. She looked just like an ordinary woman meeting her boyfriend for a date...

Had they really taken that step?

Zhou Mei took the teacup Miao Ruolan handed her and looked up. "The task you set with Captain Zhang the night before last has been preliminarily completed. Here are the investigation results."

She handed a sheet of paper to Lin Xiaosu.

At those words, Miao Ruolan's heart suddenly raced. The night before last?

That was the night he had gone shopping with her!

The task he had set with Captain Zhang?

They hadn't been shopping as a couple that night? They had been working a case?

Was that really true?

It would be wonderful if it was.

Miao Ruolan didn't know why, but the disappointment filling her heart suddenly eased by half.

Lin Xiaosu took the sheet of paper and scanned it once. His eyes suddenly lit up...

"What did you find?" Zhou Mei asked.

Lin Xiaosu said, "Let me ask you something. If someone gave you ten million, what would you do with it?"

Zhou Mei said, "I'd probably save five million, then buy a house and a nice car. With whatever was left, I'd buy luxury goods I liked and experience the life of a rich person."

"So buying luxury goods would only be third in your order of financial allocation."

"Yes!"

"What about you, Ruolan?" Lin Xiaosu turned his gaze toward Miao Ruolan.

Miao Ruolan shook her head. "I could never have ten million, so I've never thought about that question."

"It's not too late to think about it now!"

"I'd save all of it... Oh, I'd keep half for my brother to get married, and live off the interest from the rest," Miao Ruolan said.

"In other words, you definitely wouldn't spend all your money on jewelry?"

Miao Ruolan's eyes widened. "Jewelry is just decoration. You can't eat it or wear it. If you have the means, buying one or two pieces is fine, but spending your entire fortune on it... Isn't that sick?"

Lin Xiaosu smiled. "Sister Feng used nearly all her money to buy jewelry. These four mistresses were the same type as her and also used nearly all their money to buy jewelry. Ruolan calls that sick! One person being sick is understandable, but five women being sick at the same time isn't sickness. It's a suspicious point!"

Zhou Mei's eyes lit up. "You think this is the chain of profit transfers?"

"Yes! There are two kinds of black-market funding chains: horizontal and vertical. A horizontal chain opens another channel directly at the source. A vertical chain is more subtle. It transforms the chain to some degree, using legal forms to conceal illegal transactions."

"You suspect they were laundering money through jade and gemstones..." Zhou Mei let out a soft breath.

"Yes! Do you know why? Because jade and gemstones can't be priced objectively. They're just things dug out of the ground. A worthless stone and a top-grade jade piece worth hundreds of millions have the same cost. Their value is determined by the market, not by cost."

Zhou Mei held up her teacup and pondered for a long time. "Normal women may like jewelry and jade, but jewelry and jade are only third-tier consumer purchases. One person can be crazily obsessed with jewelry and jade, but if five people tied to the same case are all crazily obsessed with them, it is indeed suspicious. Still, even if this is money laundering, it would be hard to obtain evidence. Their transactions are out in the open and appear reasonable. Everyone knows jade prices are absurd, but everyone accepts that. You might say what they bought isn't worth that price, but they think it is. If they sell it, someone might even buy it at a high price."

Lin Xiaosu said, "That is true, but you shouldn't overlook another chain!"

"What?"

"The profit transfer itself isn't the goal. It's a transaction!" Lin Xiaosu said. "And since it's a transaction, there must naturally be a flow of 'goods'!"

"Goods?" Zhou Mei's heart began pounding wildly. Those so-called goods were naturally drugs...

"Have you been unable to find out where the goods circulating through Fengcheng's black market actually come from?"

"Yes!"

Lin Xiaosu said, "A little reminder: Fengcheng Jewelry Store handles everything from raw stone processing to sales. Its raw stones come from Qingmian Country!"

The teacup in Zhou Mei's hand suddenly trembled...

A moment later, a closed loop formed in her mind.

Fengcheng sat at the border of three provinces, with convenient transportation.

That was why it had become a gathering and distribution point for the black market.

But where did all that illicit merchandise actually come from?

No one had been able to find out.

Now, she seemed to have touched upon a clear route...

Fengcheng Jewelry Store dealt in cutting raw stones, processing them, and making jade jewelry.

The greatest advantage of this model was that it gave customers tremendous confidence: its goods were genuine, with no possibility of acid washing or forgery. If customers had doubts, they could even visit the jade processing workshop and personally watch the whole process of stone cutting, extracting the material, crafting the piece, polishing, and finishing.

This had made its business extremely prosperous.

Not only had Fengcheng's wealthy women fallen for it, even wealthy women from Jiangcheng came in droves to buy from it.

As a business, it was highly successful.

But what if it was another kind of business?

It was convenient for that too.

Its raw stones came from Qingmian Country, which itself was a drug kingdom.

It was a legitimate business, and its trucks transporting raw stones traveled openly across the country.

What if they carried a little private cargo?

As long as their methods were sophisticated enough, who could discover it?

That solved the most difficult problem of transporting illicit goods...

And the funds from selling those illicit goods were another problem. Here, that too formed a logical closed loop...

They didn't use ordinary bank transfers or conspicuous cash transactions. They introduced money-laundering elements and used perfectly legitimate jade and gemstone sales to complete the transfer of profits.

Originally, anyone wanting to obtain every last cent in this black market had to take enormous risks.

Ghost Eye Lao Qi was no exception.

But what if he was the owner of a jewelry store?

Wouldn't he be able to easily acquire the largest share of the funds?

And Sister Feng and the four mistresses served to legally funnel the money into his accounts...

Based on the amounts confirmed so far, the five women had already accounted for nearly one hundred million!

Who knew how many others were engaged in the same business?

Lin Xiaosu slowly raised his gaze. "Check when it received shipments."

Zhou Mei said, "We just checked. A batch of raw stones was delivered to the processing plant the day before yesterday... You mean..."

"I mean, perhaps the two of us should pay a visit to this jewelry store that's famous throughout Fengcheng!"

"Just the two of us?" Zhou Mei asked.

"Ruolan is coming too!" Lin Xiaosu said. "This has been one of my dreams for years: when I finally had money, I'd take two beautiful women jewelry shopping..."