A Different Path

"What do you mean by a logical closed loop?" Zhou Mei asked.

"My judgment is completely different from yours!" Lin Xiaosu said. "Qi Hongzhong is not Ghost-Eyed Old Seven. And the flaws he left behind before fleeing this time were not flaws at all, but smoke screens deliberately planted!"

"Tell me your reasons!" Zhou Mei's heart gave a violent leap...

A moment ago, a flash of Spirit Essence had struck her. She believed she had tapped into inspiration accumulated over many years, and even she had been excited after saying it aloud.

But before three seconds had passed, Lin Xiaosu poured a bucket of cold water over her.

Lin Xiaosu raised a finger. "I'll make two points! First, as a big shot capable of holding the Phoenix City Underground Syndicate in the palm of his hand, if he wanted to eliminate someone who threatened them, he had a hundred ways to keep himself out of it. There was no way he would force himself into never being able to enter Daxia again for the sake of an unknown nobody like me!"

Zhou Mei's brows furrowed slightly. With just that one sentence, she found herself speechless.

That was right. This operation was essentially a trade: Lin Xiaosu's death in exchange for his lifelong inability to enter Daxia.

If he really was Ghost-Eyed Old Seven, was that all the courage he had?

Trading one-for-one with an unknown nobody?

"Second, the drug trade is inherently a sensitive business. Anyone who can survive in this line of work is a shrewd old fox. If they wanted to hide themselves, there was no way two police officers could uncover so many flaws in just two hours."

The two reasons were highly convincing.

Yet no one knew that these were not the real reasons.

The real reason was that the words Lin Xiaosu had heard through the Lip-Reading Technique formed a logical closed loop here.

The bespectacled man he had tracked through Temporal Reversal from inside the car was Qi Hongzhong. He had said something utterly inconceivable to that assassin: "If you're caught, confess that I'm behind it!"

At first, Lin Xiaosu had been a little baffled by those words.

Now, he understood completely.

It had been deliberate!

Qi Hongzhong had deliberately exposed flaws, deliberately created misdirection, deliberately drawn the police's attention onto himself, so he could flee abroad under the name of "Ghost-Eyed Old Seven" and relieve the pressure on Phoenix City's drug organization.

Captain Zhang's eyes lit up...

He had also thought of another suspicious point. When they interrogated the two suspects, they had barely needed to do anything before prying "Ghost-Eyed Old Seven" out of their mouths. It had gone a little too smoothly.

Only if it had been deliberately arranged by the other side did it make sense.

Zhou Mei asked, "Then why would he do that?"

"It's simple. He used himself to draw our attention and bought temporary safety for the Phoenix City Underground Syndicate. In chess, that's called sacrificing the chariot to save the king!"

Captain Zhang's heart pounded...

He understood Lin Xiaosu's second point now.

If the police identified Ghost-Eyed Old Seven as Qi Hongzhong, then as long as Qi Hongzhong had left the country, every operation to close the net around Phoenix City would have to stop.

That was exactly what they wanted: for the police to stop.

Perhaps they had already sensed the danger, so they used one Qi Hongzhong to buy themselves time to relocate.

Without Lin Xiaosu's reminder, Captain Zhang truly would have fallen for this scheme.

Even their superiors would have fallen for it as well.

Because this was the most basic rule of handling a case.

Captain Zhang's gaze flickered. "Say everything you want to say!"

Lin Xiaosu said, "If solving a case is treated as a war, then we must step off the track the enemy has laid out for us. We must seize control of the war's tempo and direction ourselves! I suggest you put some effort into another angle."

"What angle?"

"The flow of funds!"

The flow of funds?

Every evil transaction in the world ultimately came down to money. Their objective was money, which meant the flow of funds was the most truthful chain of all...

"Of course we've been watching the flow of funds!" Zhou Mei said. "The funds previously out in the open led to the Five Tiger Generals. Their wealth grew too quickly, which was what aroused our suspicion. But after we realized that the Five Tiger Generals were not the organization's true leaders, we concluded that there had to be another, more secretive and far larger chain of funds. Unfortunately, we searched for a long time but never found such a chain."

This was common knowledge when it came to criminal organizations.

Criminal organizations were not founded for "universal love."

They existed for profit!

If the Five Tiger Generals were the group's actual controllers, then once the flow of money ended with them, the loop would be complete.

However, they were not!

There was another true controller!

That person should have received even greater benefits.

How were those benefits obtained, and who received them?

That was the question giving the police the biggest headache...

Lin Xiaosu lifted his teacup, his eyes glinting faintly. "Let's first follow the visible lines and see where they lead. The Five Tiger Generals' money also moved around. Where did those funds go?"

"Squandered!" Sun Yang spoke up. "All five of them are the very embodiment of extravagance and debauchery. They obtained enormous wealth through means no one knew were legitimate or illegitimate, then spent it lavishly."

"How did they squander it?"

Sun Yang said, "Well... if we went into detail, we could talk for three days and three nights without finishing. In any case, every way of spending lavishly you can think of, they've done it: keeping mistresses, drowning themselves in wine and women, buying luxury cars, renovating mansions, and so on..."

"A general description won't do!" Lin Xiaosu said. "Perhaps you can make a list. Who did what, how much they spent, where they spent it, exactly what they bought, whom they kept as a mistress, how much they gave during the arrangement, and how that kept woman spent the money... organize it all into a table."

Sun Yang was dumbfounded. "That... isn't a simple task."

"Officer Sun, do you think battling wits and courage with a criminal organization is simple?" Lin Xiaosu asked.

"Of course it isn't simple, but this matter itself isn't the main direction of the case... Is it necessary?"

"It is!"

The conference room fell silent.

Zhou Mei and Sun Yang looked at each other, both seeing helplessness in the other's eyes.

This kid was getting a little carried away by favor.

Relying on Captain Zhang's trust, he had started assigning tasks to the people below him.

And did he think this assignment was so simple?

The five of them squandered money every day, and he wanted a detailed list of exactly how they spent it? Their identities were sensitive. It was already difficult for the police to get close to them, so where was Sun Yang supposed to find those details?

He even wanted to identify the people they kept. Heaven and earth bear witness, no matter who kept whom, it was an extremely private matter. He wanted them to investigate how much money the kept person had received and what they did with it. Did he know how massive the workload would be once they started looking into it?

Captain Zhang slowly raised his head. "Xiao Su, why do you think this is necessary?"

"Because I once saw a case similar to this one. There's nothing new under the sun. Many crimes are simply repetitions."

That was the truth. The case he had seen was recorded in the Unit 101 Case Archive.

That case archive was not a paper book, but an electronic edition. Just hearing its file size would show how terrifying it was: a total of 8,000 gigabytes, containing nearly every representative criminal case.

It included not only cases since the founding of the nation, but also cases from ancient and modern times, both Chinese and foreign.

An ordinary person could not finish reading that case archive even in years. Even with Humanity Orchidheart and a photographic memory, it had taken him two full days and nights to finish it.

This was probably the true foundation that gave him the confidence to open a detective agency. This was the depth of his research reserves.

"Nothing new under the sun. Many things are repetitions! I like that!" Captain Zhang raised his hand and dialed a number. "Come over!"

About five minutes later, the elevator chimed, and a lean police officer with streaks of gray in his hair walked in.

His name was Wang Donghe. Back in the day, he had been a vigorous member of the Criminal Investigation Brigade. Later, he had been stabbed three times in an operation, his lung had been injured, and he had entered a semi-retired state.

Yet tonight, with a single phone call from Captain Zhang, he had appeared in less than five minutes. What did that mean?

It meant he had actually been working overtime in this very building!

He was not nearly as leisurely as everyone believed.

"Donghe, the task you voluntarily applied for when you left the front lines due to injury three years ago may be meaningful after all!" Captain Zhang said. "Because this Phoenix City Detective has proposed the same line of thought as you!"

A flush suddenly appeared on Wang Donghe's pale face. "Captain Zhang, what are your department's circumstances?"

"Come! Show us the results of your past three years of work."

"Yes!"

Wang Donghe walked over to the computer...

He opened his phone case, revealing a tiny USB drive inside.

The USB drive was inserted into the computer, and all kinds of information appeared on the screen.

Tiger Brother's flow of funds...

Crane Brother's flow of funds...

Phoenix Sister's flow of funds...

Beneath the fund flows were lists, photographs, amounts, and the people who had accepted bribes. Naturally, the photographs of those bribed people were blank, with code names listed beneath them.

The photographs of the women they kept were blank as well, with code names beneath them too.

Zhou Mei's eyes lit up...

Sun Yang's expression shifted like storm clouds...

He was an outstanding graduate of the police academy. Just moments ago, he had thought Lin Xiaosu's suggestion was foolish. Yet in the blink of an eye, an old criminal investigator had come in and displayed the results of three years of work—results that matched Lin Xiaosu's suggestion perfectly.

What did that mean?

At the very least, it meant Lin Xiaosu's suggestion was not foolish.

Because this old criminal investigator, who had spent a full thirty years fighting in the trenches of criminal investigations, had used his injury as cover three years ago—retiring in name while continuing to work in secret—to do exactly what Lin Xiaosu had suggested.

Only Captain Zhang in the Criminal Investigation Brigade knew about this matter.

You could call Lin Xiaosu foolish, but could you also say that someone else's thirty years of criminal investigation experience was worth less than a penny?

If he had been willing to spend three years on this task, how could it possibly have no value?

"I'm impressed!" Lin Xiaosu said. "So Captain Zhang had already made arrangements."

Captain Zhang said, "The Five Tiger Generals have sensitive identities. If the police get close, we'll alert the enemy. So on the surface, we haven't approached them too closely, but that doesn't mean we haven't gained an in-depth understanding of them. This information is extremely important and involves many people. You don't need to know the specific individuals. You only need to understand the general flow of funds."

"This information is already very detailed!" Lin Xiaosu said.

"Good. Then what do you see?"

Lin Xiaosu said, "One conclusion and one suspicious point!"

"Oh? Go on!"

Lin Xiaosu said, "The conclusion is this: the Five Tiger Generals must be involved in underground dealings!"

How could he tell?

Their income from their main businesses was far from enough to keep up with the growth of their actual wealth. In other words, their legitimate business income was fundamentally insufficient to support their enormous spending.

There had to be another hidden source of income.

"And the suspicious point?"

"The suspicious point is Phoenix Sister!" Lin Xiaosu said. "The wealth she squandered far exceeds that of the other four Tigers. Does she hold a higher position in the organization? Does she receive more illicit income?"

Phoenix Sister alone had spent forty million at the Phoenix City Jewelry Store on jewelry. The other four Tigers might have luxury cars and mansions everywhere, but in a small place like Phoenix City, luxury cars and mansions were not actually worth that much. Added together, they might not even equal forty million.