I slept with my sister's classmate, and she turned out to be my boss.

The next day, the task force obtained the property ownership documents for the office building.

Under the coordination of the Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection.

The retrieval process went more smoothly than expected.

The property registration information of the office building is filed with both the development zone management committee and the housing and construction department.

Although there have been multiple changes, the approval records for each change have been kept.

Chen Dapeng arranged the property ownership change records chronologically and discovered that the property rights of this office building had been transferred three times in the past ten years:

The first time, it was transferred from a local company in the provincial capital to a company in another city.

The second time, they transferred back to a newly registered company in the provincial capital.

The third time, it was transferred to a holding company in Beijing.

He checked the business registration information of that Beijing Holdings company—

The company was registered five years ago, and the legal representative has an uncommon surname. However, one character in the company name is the same as a character in the name of a company that Zeng Guosheng registered in the provincial capital.

He wrote down his discovery in his notebook and then went to explain the situation to Hu Yuheng.

After listening, Hu Yuheng did not immediately express his opinion, but only said:

"Check who signed the lease for that room that's been locked for so long."

That afternoon.

The management committee of the development zone cooperated in retrieving the leasing registration records of that office building.

Records show that the lease for that room was signed eight years ago.

The contracting party is a company located in the provincial capital, and its name has been deregistered in the business registration system.

However, when Chen Dapeng was reviewing the attachments to the lease registration, he saw a power of attorney for the signing representative. The signature column at the end of the power of attorney had a name written on it—Zeng.

The signature is complete and the strokes are clear; the first stroke is a horizontal stroke with a hook.

The last stroke was a vertical hook, which was different from Zeng Zhiyuan's handwriting that he had seen in documents before.

However, they share similarities in terms of character structure and stroke direction.

He did not include a conclusion in the report.

I only took a picture of that page of the authorization letter, archived it separately, and marked it "Signature to be compared".

……

The next morning.

The task force obtained the exploration permit.

Chen Dapeng followed Hu Yuheng and two other members of the task force to the office building.

The office building has twelve floors, and the room that has been locked for a long time is at the end of the corridor on the seventh floor.

The door was an ordinary wooden door with no house number. The lock was old-fashioned and covered with a layer of dust.

You can see the GG paper stuffed in through the crack in the door; the edges are already yellowed and curled.

When the spare key provided by the office building management was inserted into the lock, it made a stiff sound.

The moment the door was pushed open.

A dusty smell wafted out from inside.

The room had no windows and was very dark; the only light coming through the doorway was enough to make out the outlines of things.

Several cardboard boxes, of varying sizes, were stacked against the wall, not very neatly, as if they had been hastily stored away and never touched again.

Chen Dapeng turned on his phone's flashlight and shone it on the ground first—

There were no new footprints, and the dust covered the area evenly.

It's been a long time since anyone last entered.

He first walked to the cardboard box closest to the door and squatted down. The box was not sealed; it was simply folded together.

He opened the box; inside was a stack of documents, the papers yellowed but still relatively well-preserved.

He picked up the first one and flipped through a few pages—it was a photocopy of a project budget, with the project name crossed out, leaving only the amount and date fields.

He put down this one and picked up the second one.

Then the third one.

His fingers stopped when he flipped to the fifth copy.

It was an attachment to meeting minutes, the paper slightly thicker than the others, with a handwritten annotation in the upper right corner, the handwriting neat and in blue-black ink—

"Funding arrangements have been finalized."

Chen Dapeng recognized the words.

This is Zhao Zhengping's handwriting.

He didn't move the document; instead, he steadied the flashlight beam and confirmed the location and content of the annotations.

He squatted there for a while, without immediately going to rummage through the other cardboard boxes.

Then, he stood up, walked to Hu Yuheng's side, and said in a low voice:

"Director Hu, could you come and take a look?"

Hu Yuheng walked over and squatted down, looking at the document in the light of Chen Dapeng's flashlight.

She looked at it for a few seconds without saying anything, took out a pair of gloves from her pocket and put them on, then carefully picked up the meeting minutes attachment, turned to the last page, and confirmed Zhao Zhengping's name and the date in the signature column.

She put down the documents, turned to her colleague next to her, and said:

"Take photos to document and archive."

Chen Dapeng watched as the staff put the document into an evidence bag, affixed a label to the seal, and then continued to search through the other cardboard boxes.

The boxes at the back mainly contained financial documents and copies of project contracts.

Most of them are related to projects in the provincial capital, and some are materials from other projects in the development zone.

He could not find any directly related fund transfer records.

However, these documents correspond to the information provided by Gu Xinming and You Yuanming.

……

After returning to the task force.

Chen Dapeng compiled the investigation records and photos into a document, attached a screenshot of the page with Zhao Zhengping's annotations, and then sent it to Hu Yuheng's desk.

Hu Yuheng flipped through the pages, spending the most time looking at the screenshots of the annotations on the last page.

She didn't look up, nor did she say anything:

He simply said things like, "This is the evidence," and that was all he said.

"Put together You Yuanming's list, Gu Xinming's testimony, and this annotation, and arrange them on a timeline for tomorrow's meeting."

Chen Dapeng replied with an "okay" and turned to leave.

The task force meeting was held the following morning.

Chen Dapeng projected the timeline he had prepared onto the screen in the conference room.

Gu Xinming's testimony, You Yuanming's list, the address of the development zone, and the meeting minutes attachments in the office room—these four clues each occupy a place on the timeline, connecting end to end to form a continuous line.

Hu Yuheng sat on one side of the conference table, waiting for Chen Dapeng to finish speaking before speaking:

"Besides Zhao Zhengping's annotations, are there any other documents in the seventh-floor room of that office building that directly relate to the flow of funds for the provincial capital project?"

Chen Dapeng replied, "Most of what we've found so far are budget sheets and copies of project contracts; there are no direct records of fund transfers."

However, there are quite a few documents in the room, and some have not yet been reviewed, so further investigation may be necessary.

Hu Yuheng nodded:

"A second survey is scheduled for the near future."

After the meeting.

Chen Dapeng returned to his seat and wrote down the location of the room and the contents of the documents he found in his notebook.

Then I saved a screenshot of Zhao Zhengping's annotations in a separate folder.

He only wrote the date and number in the folder name, without writing Zhao Zhengping's name.

The deeper the investigation goes, the clearer things become...

He was thinking to himself:

"If this line of investigation continues, it will eventually lead to Zhao Zhengping himself..."