Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

This person is now dead, but all the physical evidence he left behind is still there, enough to form a complete chain of evidence.

"Take photos as evidence and bring everything from the scene back with you."

Jiang Ruolan turned and walked out of the blood-soaked house, stood by the dirt road, and took a deep breath of the cold air outside.

Her phone rang.

It was Lu Zheng calling—he had found a travel bag hidden under a chicken coop in another dilapidated house behind the chicken farm where Tang Yuanqing was hiding.

The bag contained a claw hammer with dark stains, a pair of mud-covered leather shoes, an old cell phone, and a wad of cash.

The marks on the claw hammer tested positive for blood in a rapid blood test; the shoes were size 42, a perfect match for the shoe found in the reeds.

Most importantly, although the old phone could no longer be turned on, the technician said the SIM card was still in the slot and the data could be recovered.

"He left behind all the evidence."

Jiang Ruolan spoke into the phone, her voice tinged with an indescribable emotion, "He took everything with him, but left all the evidence behind. He didn't intend to destroy it, nor did he intend to continue his escape. He had already decided—once surrounded, he would end his own life. This evidence was his last will and testament."

It was already evening when we got back to Yi'an.

The excavation at the back of Qingshipu Mountain continues—technicians have discovered another unusual signal near Meng Zhaoyang's remains and are expanding the excavation area.

The reed marshes along the Qinglong River have been fully surveyed. In addition to the leather shoe and the bloody handprint, the technicians also found a button that had been stepped into the mud near the area where the fight took place.

The button was made of metal and had a small letter logo engraved on it. After comparison, it matched perfectly with the second missing button on the dark gray jacket that Sun Guangli was wearing on the day he went missing.

Forensic pathologist Lao Zheng worked overtime overnight to conduct a full autopsy on Sun Guangli's body.

He found a large amount of undigested rice, vegetables and pork in Sun Guangli's stomach contents—indicating that Sun Guangli had eaten dinner about two hours before his death.

Wu Xiulan said that Sun Guangli received a phone call that afternoon and went out without eating at home.

So who did he have that meal with? The answer is obvious—Tang Yuanqing used that phone call to arrange a meeting with him, treated him to a meal, and then took him to the reeds by the Qinglong River after the meal.

"He knows Tang Yuanqing and trusts him."

At the case analysis meeting, Jiang Ruolan said, "An honest motorcycle repairman wouldn't go to a secluded riverbank at night with a stranger. Tang Yuanqing must have said something to make him lower his guard."

"Sun Guangli witnessed the scene when Meng Zhaoyang was buried thirteen years ago. Tang Yuanqing should also have noticed that someone else saw it."

But he didn't kill him—perhaps because Sun Guangli didn't make a fuss, perhaps because other people were passing by, or perhaps because Shen Wangshan thought a mechanic couldn't cause any trouble.

Lu Zheng continued his analysis, "But for the past thirteen years, Sun Guangli has been a thorn in Tang Yuanqing's side. After Shen Wangshan's downfall, the task force began investigating Meng Zhaoyang's whereabouts, and Tang Yuanqing's throbbing nerve, which had been stretched for thirteen years, finally snapped."

He invited Sun Guangli out for dinner, trying to get information out of him—how much he had seen back then, and to whom he had told him—and then—to silence him.

That meal was a trap.

Jiang Ruolan said, "Old Zheng also found something else in Sun Guangli's stomach—a trace amount of tranquilizers. Tang Yuanqing put drugs in his food or wine and took him to the reed marshes while he was unconscious."

However, Sun Guangli was in good physical condition, and the drug's effects weren't fully realized. By the time he reached the riverbank, he had regained consciousness and began to struggle. This explains the intense fighting marks found in the reed marshes.

The full picture of the case was gradually pieced together.

Tang Yuanqing's mobile phone SIM card data was also recovered by the technical department that night - although most of the call records had been manually deleted by him, the technicians retrieved his call base station location data for nearly a month through the operator's backend.

Data shows that Tang Yuanqing made the phone call at 4:10 pm on the day Sun Guangli went missing, within the coverage area of ​​a base station in the west of Yi'an City; between 5:30 pm and 7 pm, his mobile phone signal appeared near a small restaurant in the west of the city and in the coverage area of ​​a base station upstream of the Qinglong River; after 9 pm, his signal began to move towards Shiqiao.

These data perfectly match the time it took for Sun Guangli's stomach contents to be digested, the signs of a struggle, and the location where the body was disposed of, forming an undeniable chain of temporal evidence.

At 10 p.m., Zhou Pei arrived in Yi'an from the provincial capital.

He brought the latest decision from the provincial department—although Tang Yuanqing is dead, the evidence chain for the murders of Meng Zhaoyang and Sun Guangli is complete. The provincial department has decided to handle these two murder cases together as supplementary cases to the Shen Wangshan organized crime case and transfer them to the procuratorate for review and prosecution.

Meanwhile, the provincial intelligence center, through Tang Yuanqing's mobile phone data, traced his network of hiding places in Shiqiao County—two men who had previously worked as foremen at the Fengmao Sand and Gravel Plant had been secretly sending him food and cash.

The two individuals have been apprehended by the Shiqiao County Public Security Bureau and are currently under interrogation.

"One sentence Tang Yuanqing said before he died has been on my mind ever since."

Jiang Ruolan stood by the office window, her back to Zhou Pei. "He said he had two lives on his hands, and he only admitted to killing Meng Zhaoyang and Sun Guangli. But I always felt that he had worked for Shen Wangshan for more than ten years, and he couldn't have only killed these two people."

We need to continue searching the ravine behind the chicken farm and the area behind the bluestone pavement tomorrow. I suspect that more than just Meng Zhaoyang is buried there.

Zhou Pei was silent for a while:

"You mean, there might be other victims?"

"Shen Wangshan has been in Yi'an for thirty years. Those who blocked his path, knew his secrets, and wanted to report him were not just Meng Zhaoyang and Xu Guangfa."

Zhao Biao confessed that Shen Wangshan had at least three or four lives on his hands. Ren Pengfei also said that he had personally handled several "troublesome matters." Tang Yuanqing was a professional dirty worker; he knew of more than one mass grave.

Zhou Pei's expression grew increasingly serious.

He walked to the table, picked up the search report for the area behind the bluestone pavement, flipped through it, and then said:

"Tomorrow I will request the department to send an additional search team to cover the entire mountainous area behind Qingshipu and around the Shiqiao chicken farm. If there are any other victims there, no matter how many years they have been buried, they must be dug up."

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