Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Yanluo Health Care Co., Ltd.
"A... a thousand..."
The moment the words were spoken, one of the men seemed to lose all the fight in him. His legs gave out, and he collapsed to the floor.
Xu Huo sighed.
As for why the hospital hadn’t discovered it...
There’s a category for bodies known as ’unidentified’.
For instance, someone might be hit by a car and pronounced dead at the hospital, but have no identification on them. If no family comes forward and no information can be confirmed, they are classified as an ’unidentified body’.
Normally, these bodies are sent to the morgue. After a few dozen days, if no family claims them, they are taken to a crematorium and incinerated.
"Spit it out. Which company?"
Li Jianye didn’t waste time on moral condemnation. He just sighed and continued to press them.
Once any criminal enterprise becomes an established group, it needs a front to hide behind.
The simplest kind is a limited liability company.
The two men didn’t speak, their bodies trembling even more violently. They stared at the police with vacant, fish-like eyes.
Li Jianye’s brow furrowed as he snapped again, "Speak up!"
Still, the two men said nothing.
"Not talking? You really think we can’t track them down without you?"
"Bank transfers, transport routes, the other people involved, surveillance footage..."
"We can find them with all of this!"
Watching them, Xu Huo spoke slowly. "Let me give you a reminder."
"If you cooperate, maybe the judge will go a little easier on you at sentencing."
’The dead are dead, after all. Human rights are mostly for the living.’
’Once a person dies, they lose nearly all their rights.’
The two men still said nothing, but their trembling intensified.
Everyone stared at them in silence.
Until...
"Yanluo Health Care Co., Ltd...."
As the name hung in the air, the two men completely lost hope. They slumped to the floor, covering their faces with their hands as tears of terror squeezed through their fingers.
And at that very moment.
The police sprang into action!
Xu Huo and Li Jianye rushed out of the morgue.
"Track down Yanluo Health Care Co., Ltd.!"
Li Jianye yelled to the staff back at the station, his voice firm and decisive.
"Split into two teams! One team searches the raw material warehouse, the other finds the person in charge!"
Xu Huo, thinking fast, chimed in from the side, recalling the principle of cutting off the head of the snake.
"The monk can flee, but he can’t take the temple with him!"
"The warehouse doesn’t have legs. It’s not going anywhere!"
"Prioritize finding the person!"
Hearing this, Li Jianye paused, then added two more words.
"Be quick!"
...
...
"I am shameless."
But with this case, that phrase was no longer just a metaphor or an insult. It had become a literal question of whether one wanted their face or not.
They were selling faces.
For six hundred bucks, you could buy two human faces. You could even pick which ones you wanted, and they would peel them right off and hand them to you.
As for the current case...
"Yanluo Health Care Co., Ltd., founded on September 1st, 1998."
"Their main product is a health supplement, but it was never advertised, so not many people know about it."
"Furthermore, according to market data the police pulled, the company has been consistently losing money, but they’ve taken no steps to stop the bleeding. It’s as if they don’t care about the losses at all."
"Focusing our investigation on the company, we found that something is not right with one of their factories!"
Eight-thirty at night.
Scores of police cars sped down the road, their piercing sirens rattling eardrums.
Xu Huo sat in the passenger seat, Li Jianye’s voice in his ear.
Li Jianye was driving, his expression grim.
"The factory has tight internal security. No one knows what they do inside. All we know is that it’s in a remote location on the outskirts of Jiangsan City."
"And whatever the factory produces and processes disappears from all surveillance via a network of routes."
Li Jianye stomped on the accelerator.
’A company that’s constantly losing money might stay afloat for any number of reasons.’
’But making no effort whatsoever to stop the losses? That’s suspicious!’
’But the facts were plain to see. So, you had to work backward from the effect to find the cause—you had to supply a reason for them!’
’The police normally wouldn’t care about the reason, but now that the investigation had led to them...’
’...that reason suddenly mattered a great deal.’
"Was the factory the final destination for the refrigerated truck from the fishing village?" Xu Huo asked.
"That’s right. The truck’s license plate was fake, so we couldn’t get any leads from it. But you can’t just swap out the truck itself over and over."
"According to surveillance footage, that same truck has been spotted multiple times on the roads near the factory."
Li Jianye nodded, his hands never slowing on the steering wheel.
"And the person in charge?"
At this question, Li Jianye paused, then said hesitantly:
"He’s..."
"At the factory."
"At the factory? He didn’t run!?"
"He didn’t run. According to our tracking data, he was at the factory three hours ago and hasn’t left since!"
Li Jianye said with certainty.
Hearing this, Xu Huo frowned.
’He didn’t run...’
’The police had been to the hospital and the crematorium, and one of his so-called ’shipments’ had even gone dark. Xu Huo refused to believe he hadn’t gotten wind of what was happening.’
’For a crime like this, the morgue attendants might get away with their lives, but this guy? He was facing a death sentence for sure!’
Li Jianye couldn’t even imagine how many people had been transported over four years. The death penalty was a certainty!
But even so, he didn’t run...
’What was...’
’...he thinking!?’
Suddenly, his body lurched forward.
"We’re here! Move in!" Li Jianye shouted, stopping the car and unbuckling his seatbelt.
Xu Huo snapped out of his thoughts and got out of the car, the scene before him burning into his mind.
Before him was...
a dark, hulking factory.
Under the cover of night, it looked no different from any other factory!
No one knew what they were really doing inside.
But now...
"MOVE!!!"
Li Jianye’s face was twisted in a snarl. His roar echoed in everyone’s ears as teams of officers moved in systematically to make the arrest.
Xu Huo took a deep breath and followed behind the main group, quickening his pace.
’Now, maybe they would finally find out what was being done with the bodies.’
...
PS: After getting censored three times, I’ve learned my lesson.
I can’t write about this in detail, so I’ve cut the content from the next few Chapter outlines.
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