Anti-gang campaign: Female bureau chief

Jiang Ruolan stood up, walked to the window, and looked at the gray rooftops of the old town outside. "Investigate Zhao Baoshan's pickup truck."

His phone was smashed and left on the seat, but the car was intact.

The car was towed back to the technical department for a comprehensive inspection—including the interior, seats, steering wheel, seatbelt buckles, and trunk, with a focus on extracting fingerprints and DNA.

The person who attacked him fought with him in his car, and that person must have left a mark.

In addition, investigate Zhao Baoshan's network of connections in the provincial capital. His purchase of a ticket to the provincial capital indicates his intention to seek refuge with someone there.

This person is the key to the whole chain—Zhao Baoshan, Cui Changhe, Yu Xiaomei, and Ma Guoqing. The four of them were executed or silenced in the same way, indicating a common mastermind behind it all. This person didn't trust Zhao Baoshan—perhaps from the very beginning, they never intended for Zhao Baoshan to live.

At noon on the first day of the Lunar New Year, Zhou Pei arrived in Yi'an from the provincial capital.

When he entered the task force's meeting room, it was already full of people. Photos of the three crime scenes and preliminary investigation reports were posted on the whiteboard. Photos and basic information of Zhao Baoshan, Yu Xiaomei, and Ma Guoqing were displayed on the projection screen, with the relationships between the three clearly marked with red and blue lines.

The air was thick with the smell of strong tea and instant coffee. Several police officers who had worked through the night had bloodshot eyes, but none of them felt sleepy—three corpses, twelve hours, the same organization, the same method, and everyone knew what that meant.

Zhou Pei took off his coat and hung it on the back of the chair. He stood in front of the whiteboard for a minute and then turned around.

His expression was more serious than usual, but his tone remained as calm as ever: "Last night, the provincial department worked through the night to analyze data on all unsolved cases and public security cases in Yi'an over the past six months."

Guess what I found?

In the past three months, more than a dozen disputes involving the building materials industry have occurred in the three areas of the city's north, west, and east in Yi'an. These disputes include threats against suppliers, interception of trucks, substitution of materials at construction sites, and manipulation of prices.

Individually, these cases are all ordinary public security cases, at most considered as disorderly conduct.

But if you look at them together, the timing, location, objective, and methods all reveal a clear pattern—someone is re-establishing a monopoly in the Yi'an building materials market.

He walked to the projection screen, opened a spreadsheet that listed details of more than a dozen cases.

The rightmost column of the table lists the types of building materials involved in each case—sand, cement, steel bars, and pipes—covering almost all the major materials required for construction projects.

In each case, the victims either withdrew their investment and quit shortly after the incident, transferred the supply contract at a low price, or simply withdrew from the Yi An Market.

The company that took over these contracts was a company called "Yi An Xin Cheng Trading Co., Ltd."

"Who is the legal representative of Xincheng Trading?" Lu Zheng asked.

Zhou Pei clicked on the next slide, which showed the business registration information of Xincheng Trading.

The legal representative's name is Xu Yaozong, 38 years old, a local of Yi'an, with no criminal record. Xincheng Trading Co., Ltd. under his name was registered in the second month after the verdict in the Shen Wangshan case.

According to the business registration information, this company is clean and legitimate, with a business scope covering building materials, logistics, and decoration materials. It has a registered capital of ten million yuan and a paid-in capital of ten million yuan, and there are no problems to be found.

"Xu Yaozong himself has no criminal record, but his social connections are very interesting."

Zhou Pei clicked on the next slide, which showed a diagram of relationships between people.

Xu Yaozong's name is in the middle, surrounded by several lines, each pointing to a different person.

One of the lines points to a man named Geng Changhe—who is Cui Changhe's younger brother.

Another lead points to a man named Luo Bing, 42 years old, a local of Yi'an, who has three prior convictions for intentional assault, the last of which resulted in a three-year sentence. He was just released last year after serving his full sentence.

Another clue points to one of the shareholders of Royal Dynasty KTV, named Cai Yongchang.

"Cui Changhe's younger brother is the vice president of Xu Yaozong's company. Luo Bing is Xu Yaozong's driver and bodyguard—you should be familiar with the setup of someone with three prior convictions for intentional assault serving as a driver for a 'clean businessman.' And Cai Yongchang, a shareholder of Huangchao Shengshi, is Xu Yaozong's childhood friend."

Zhou Pei closed the slides and sat back down in his chair. "So what we are now facing is a network of relationships centered around Xu Yaozong. This network covers three industries: building materials supply, hotel supplies, and entertainment venues, and connects all the elements involved in the case, including Zhao Baoshan, Cui Changhe, Yu Xiaomei, and Huangchao Shengshi."

Zhao Baoshan's building materials business competes with Xincheng Trading; Yu Xiaomei works at Huangchao Shengshi; Cui Changhe's Jiefeng Company supplies Huangchao Shengshi; and Cui Changhe's younger brother is Xu Yaozong's vice president—these are not coincidences; this is a complete network of division of labor and cooperation. Someone is playing a very big game.

"Is there someone behind Xu Yaozong?" Jiang Ruolan's voice wasn't loud, but every word precisely hit the core of the problem. "A thirty-eight-year-old man with no criminal record and no prior presence in the Yi'an building materials industry couldn't possibly have consolidated so many resources in such a short time after Shen Wangshan's downfall. Who is he working for? Or rather, who is controlling this network through him?"

A moment of silence fell over the conference room. Then Zhou Pei slowly uttered a name that made everyone present pause in surprise.

"I investigated the deepest line of Xu Yaozong's social connections—not his business partners, not his employees, but his family relationships. He has a maternal uncle surnamed Nie, named Nie Shichang."

Zhou Pei opened the last slide, and a photo of a man in his sixties with gray hair and a thin face appeared on the screen.

The photo was taken secretly. The background is a private room in a high-end teahouse in the provincial capital. The man is sitting in the main seat with a set of purple clay teaware in front of him. Several people are sitting around him, including Xu Yaozong.

Below the photo is a brief line of information: Nie Shichang, 65 years old, originally from Shiqiao County, Yi'an City, later moved to the provincial capital, nominally runs an investment consulting company in the provincial capital, but has never actually served as a legal representative or shareholder in any business registration.

His "company" had no registered address, no tax records, and no public business dealings, but he had a well-known nickname in the provincial capital's business circles—"Old Nie."

"I feel like I've heard this name somewhere before," Lu Zheng said, frowning.

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