Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

This woman was an accomplice to Feng Mao, using her profession and position to provide information to criminals and knowingly committing perjury in a murder case. Her crimes cannot be denied.

But she was also a victim who had been threatened with her brother's life by Zhou Wenxuan for nearly six years. She spent more than 1,900 days and nights in a dark cellar, and her daily range of movement was only four steps from the bedside to the corner of the wall. She survived on the biscuits and mineral water that Song Zhigang secretly brought down in the middle of the night.

"Do you know that there are more than just Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan buried under the foundation of the construction site in the east of the city?" Jiang Ruolan asked.

Song Ya was stunned for a moment.

For the first time, her expression showed a clear change—not fear, but surprise, the kind of unprepared, instinctive surprise.

She opened her mouth, her voice even softer than before: "Who else?"

"We dug out a third set of remains from the same foundation pit. The time of death was close to that of Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan, but they were not buried in the same year."

The shroud of the third set of remains had a row of numbers on it—your phone number. Spectral reconstruction confirmed it was the number you used back then.

Someone wrote your phone number on a shroud and buried it next to the foundation pit where you gave false testimony, along with the body of an unidentified woman.

Song Ya fell silent, and remained silent for a long time.

Then she suddenly covered her mouth with her hand, and her shoulders shook violently.

She cried, tears welling up in her dry eyes and streaming down her thin cheekbones.

She said, "She knew my number... She must have wanted to ask me for help before she died."

She must have heard that I work at a TV station and know the police, and she wanted me to help her report that construction site.

But she couldn't get through to me. Because I was already in the cellar. My brother flushed my phone into the Qinglong River.

The last person she thought of before she died was me, but there was nothing I could do.

I lay on that tattered bed, less than five kilometers from her, and couldn't hear anything.

That night, Song Ya recounted more details in fits and starts.

She said Zhou Wenxuan had a "list" that she had seen with her own eyes—a list of all the people who had been "dealt with" since the establishment of Fengmao Group, including the names of the deceased, the time of disposal, the method of disposal, the person in charge of the execution, and the approximate location where the bodies were buried.

This list was requested by Shen Wangshan, and its purpose was exactly the same as Qian Shouyi's internal accounts—to serve as a lifeline, binding all those involved in the crime to the same boat.

She said Zhou Wenxuan stored the list on an encrypted external hard drive. The hard drive was dark blue and a little thicker than a regular hard drive. There was a white label on the back with two letters written in black marker: "FM".

This hard drive is not the one that Zhou Wenxuan threw into the Qinglong River when he was arrested—that hard drive was Qian Shouyi's financial data disk, which contained Feng Mao's accounts and bribery records.

This list exists on a separate, physically isolated device; Zhou Wenxuan never puts the two things in the same place.

"After Zhou Wenxuan was arrested, you searched his residence and the office at the Golden Coast Club, but you didn't find this blue hard drive," Song Ya said, her voice carrying a calm certainty. "Because he would never put it in a place where he could be directly associated with it."

He has a habit—keeping the most important things in the most inconspicuous places. Have you searched for Song Zhigang's chicken farm? In the main room, on the third row of chicken coops on the left as you enter, the second one from the top, has a removable partition at the bottom.

Jiang Ruolan did not answer the question.

She stood up and walked to the door of the ward, whispering a few words to Lu Zheng, who was guarding in the corridor.

Lu Zheng's expression changed drastically, and he turned and ran out of the hospital.

Two hours later, Lu Zheng sent a message with only four words: "Found it. Blue."

The task force worked through the night to decrypt the hard drive.

This dark blue portable hard drive was encrypted with seven layers of security, one of which was a combination of Zhou Wenxuan's mother's name in pinyin and his elementary school student ID number.

After nearly four hours of painstakingly cracking the code, the technician finally opened the only folder inside.

The folder contained an Excel spreadsheet with a bold, fourteen-character title in boldface: "Summary Table of Special Event Handling Records of Fengmao Group".

The table has 37 rows, and each row represents a person who is "processed".

From the first holdout to be killed during the demolition of the Chengdong shantytown in 1998, to the last couple—Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan—in November 2018.

Thirty-seven lives lost, spanning a full twenty years.

Of the thirty-seven lines, twenty-three have the option to "bury" in the "Disposal Method" column, followed by a brief description of the burial location.

The task force members remained silent for a long time when faced with the list.

Of the 23 burial sites, four have been confirmed: one behind Qingshipu Mountain – Meng Zhaoyang, Liu Zhenguo, He Dayong, and Lin Xiaomei; one abandoned mine tunnel in Chenjiagou mining area – Xu Guangfa; one demolition site in the east of the city – Chen Xiufang and Wu Guilan; and the third woman whose identity has not yet been confirmed.

At least sixteen locations remain undiscovered.

Sixteen victims, whose bodies have yet to be unearthed, remain buried somewhere in the city of Nghe An.

Jiang Ruolan printed out the list and spread it on the conference table.

The names of the thirty-seven lines are like thirty-seven scars, densely etched beneath the skin of this city.

She traced the names and burial locations line by line with her finger, stopping at the twenty-sixth line.

The "Remarks" column of that record read: "Song Ya, under house arrest, location arranged by Zhou Wenxuan. Executor: Song Zhigang. Monitor: Tang Yuanqing."

This passage indicates that Song Ya's house arrest was approved by Shen Wangshan, with Tang Yuanqing conducting regular checks and Song Zhigang carrying out daily guard duties. Zhou Wenxuan was the person in charge of this matter.

The executor, Song Zhigang, a man forced to become a prison guard to protect his sister, has been tormented by guilt and fear every day for the past six years—he knows that if he releases his sister, they will both die; if he continues to keep her locked up, he will never be able to forgive himself.

He chose to lock the door, and then every night he would squat at the door of the main room, listening to his sister turning over in bed through the wooden planks of the cellar.

"This list, along with Qian Shouyi's internal accounts and Liao Guangcheng's mining log, has irrefutably proven the criminal facts of Fengmao Group."

The remaining tasks are to locate every burial site, identify every victim, and return their names to them.

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