We asked you to solve cases, and here you are sharing your criminal experiences?

At 2 a.m., the interrogation center of Jiangcheng City Public Security Bureau was brightly lit.

Lin Wan had a medical bandage on her forehead and had changed back into her crisp police uniform. Holding a stack of freshly printed backend data, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door to interrogation room number one.

On the specially made iron chair opposite, Huang Mao Zhang Hu had two cotton balls stuffed in his nose to stop the bleeding. The marks from the hot noodles in red oil on his crotch hadn't dried yet. He was restless, but his face showed a kind of brazen, nonchalant attitude.

In the monitoring room behind the one-way glass, Song Qianxia sat cross-legged in a swivel chair, holding a large bag of cucumber-flavored potato chips. Chief Wang of the University Town Police Station stood beside her, shaking his head while holding a thermos.

"This kid's name is Zhang Hu. He's been in jail twice before for theft. He's a tough nut to crack. He was yelling about hiring a lawyer in the car just now, and he's really stubborn."

Song Qianxia crunched on potato chips, mumbling indistinctly, "The 'rolling knife meat' is great! Sister Wanwan was just wondering where to practice, so this is perfect for sharpening the knife~"

In the interrogation room, a bright spotlight shone on Zhang Hu's face.

Lin Wan pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Zhang Hu, tell me about how you used the Qingniao Study Room software and modified desk lamps to illegally film female college students' private videos."

Zhang Hu tilted his head to the side, and because his nose was blocked, his voice was muffled:

"Officer, what do you mean by 'secret filming'? Our business is legitimate! Lao Liu and I opened an online store together, and we had a promotion where you could get a free desk lamp with the purchase of software. Is that illegal?"

Lin Wan sneered.

"Promotional activity? Who sells eye-protection desk lamps with a one-way privacy camera and Bluetooth transmission module soldered inside? Your hard drive contains surveillance videos of hundreds of female students from five universities in the university town! Caught red-handed, and you still want to argue with me here?"

Zhang Hu's eyelids twitched violently, but he quickly straightened his neck and forced himself to stay upright.

"Hey, you can't say that! Those table lamps were leftover stock we bought in bulk from the electronics market in the south, five yuan each! What parts did the manufacturer put in them? How would a rough guy like me, who only graduated from junior high school, know? As for those videos on the computer, we paid to download them from overseas websites for our own enjoyment! At most, it's considered distributing obscene materials, fifteen days in jail at most!"

In the monitoring room, Director Wang gritted his teeth in anger: "That bastard must have coordinated his story beforehand, trying to shift the blame for the serious crimes of manufacturing and illegal wiretapping onto others!"

Song Qianxia brushed the crumbs off her hands and pressed the internal intercom button on the table:

"Sister Wanwan, folder number two, go straight to it."

In the interrogation room, Lin Wan lightly swiped her finger across the tablet computer.

"Did you download it yourself to enjoy?"

Lin Wan leaned forward slightly, her tone calm yet sharp, like a knife cutting to the heart of the matter:

"Zhang Hu, do you need me to read you the chat history of your three-person internal work group? At 9 pm on October 12, you sent a voice message in the group saying, 'This batch of normal university students is pretty good. Quickly send the table lamp over and try to package the videos and sell them to overseas website owners before the end of the month.'"

"And that bank card under your name with the last four digits being 4399, just last month it received 120,000 yuan in illicit funds exchanged from overseas cryptocurrency. The timing of every transaction matches perfectly with the logs of the videos you uploaded to the backend."

Lin Wan stared intently at the changes in his pupils:

"The crimes of illegally producing and selling specialized equipment for eavesdropping and covert photography, plus illegally entering another person's residence, infringing on citizens' personal information, and producing and selling obscene materials for profit—if you are convicted of multiple crimes, you will face at least ten years in prison!"

Zhang Hu's playful smile finally crumbled, and cold sweat began to bead on his forehead.

He didn't expect that in just two hours, the police would not only expose the hard drive's secrets but also thoroughly investigate their supposedly foolproof cryptocurrency network.

"I... I didn't do it all by myself!" Zhang Hu panicked and instinctively started shifting the blame. "The software was written by Old Liu with glasses, and he was the one who contacted the illegal workshop to modify the table lamp. I just contributed some capital to rent the place!"

Lin Wan's eyes sharpened, and her tone rose:

"Confess! Besides selling the videos to overseas websites, which other female victims did you send blackmail emails to? Zhou Xiaoyu from the School of Media Studies, were you the ones who forced her to pay 50,000 yuan in hush money?! Do you know that because of your blackmail emails, that young girl almost lost her life!"

Zhang Hu, who was frantically wiping away sweat, froze.

"What the hell? Extortion?!"

Zhang Hu jumped up from the interrogation chair.

"Officer! I may not be a good person, but you can't just pin this kind of accusation on me!"

Lin Wan's gaze was sharp as a knife:

"Sit down! You still dare to complain about being wronged when you get here?"

"We really didn't do it!"

Zhang Hu was so anxious that his face turned red and his neck bulged.

"Think about it! What we fear most when we're doing this kind of surreptitious filming is alerting them! As long as those female college students don't know they're being filmed, and they keep their desk lights on in their dorms every day, we can keep recording new videos to sell online! If I were to go and blackmail them, wouldn't that just be reminding them that there are cameras in their rooms?!"

"Besides, how much can you squeeze out of a bunch of poor students? Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs for a pittance, and getting yourself into a murder case—I'd have to be out of my mind to do something so stupid!"

Director Wang in the monitoring room snorted:

"That kid never tells a word of truth!"

However, Lin Wan, in the interrogation room, noticed something amiss.

During the confrontation over the sale of the video and transaction records, Zhang Hu's pupils frequently contracted, and his gaze shifted to the left while his shoulders hunched inward—typical lying mechanisms triggered by being hit where it hurts.

But when he heard about the extortion just now, his eyes widened, his brows furrowed, and he leaned forward in protest—an instinctive reaction to a cognitive conflict.

Lin Wan closed the file, stood up, and said coldly:

"Stay put and let the evidence speak for itself."

Just as Director Wang was about to speak, Lin Wan quickly walked into the corridor and pushed open the door to the monitoring room.

"Chika, it's possible that the people who sent the blackmail letter weren't Zhang Hu's group after all."

Director Wang was taken aback:

"Officer Lin, you're so young, don't let this tough nut fool you!"

"Director Wang, please believe me, I have studied professional micro-expression analysis and psychological intervention."

Lin Wan turned to look at Song Qianxia:

"I need technical evidence to support my judgment! I need to check their emails to see if they actually sent any extortionate letters to China!"

Song Qianxia also felt something was wrong, but she didn't expect Lin Wan to be able to pinpoint the suspicious points even faster than the machine, using micro-expressions and psychological analysis.

A hint of appreciation immediately appeared in his eyes: "Understood, the supervising officer has given the order, technicians get to work!"

Song Qianxia jumped off the swivel chair, grabbed her tablet and portable terminal, and headed straight for the technical room, while Lin Wan turned around to assist the police in interrogating the other two accomplices.

Ten minutes later, interrogation rooms number two and three received the same feedback: the bespectacled man and the short-haired henchman confessed everything, but repeatedly denied the extortion emails.

Song Qianxia turned the tablet screen in front of Lin Wan and swiped it rapidly:

"I stripped the bespectacled man's computer of all outbound email logs, port communications, and jump server records. Their technical skills were extremely crude; they only knew how to use packaging tools to transfer data to fixed overseas interfaces, and there were absolutely no records of them sending emails to personal email addresses in China."

Lin Wan frowned deeply:

"It really wasn't them! Who was the person who sent the email asking for 50,000 yuan? Could there be a second group that installed cameras in the girls' dormitory? But we searched Zhou Xiaoyu's dormitory from top to bottom today, and only the desk lamp was the problem."

"uncertain."

A cold smile appeared on Song Qianxia's lips as she pulled up a set of screenshots from the external website and circled the blackmail email attachment that Zhou Xiaoyu had received with a red box.

"In order to make more money, Zhang Hu and his accomplices deliberately added the words 'Jiangcheng University Town' to the title when they packaged and uploaded the secretly filmed videos to overseas pornographic websites."

Lin Wan was taken aback, but immediately realized what was happening.

"Someone else was browsing overseas pornographic websites and accidentally recognized Zhou Xiaoyu in the video!"

"He knew Zhou Xiaoyu was a timid female student with no connections, so he used the video to blackmail her for 50,000 yuan!"

Lin Wan continued her deductions based on her previous psychological profile, speaking at an extremely fast pace:

"There are videos of hundreds of female students from the university town on overseas websites. Why did this person specifically choose Zhou Xiaoyu from the School of Media and Communication? Moreover, he was able to accurately state her home address and even knew that her parents ran a small shop in their hometown, driving her to despair and suicide?"

Song Qianxia closed her laptop and exchanged a glance with Lin Wan.

Lin Wan gritted her teeth and spat out the conclusion:

"Because this extortionist isn't a cyber hacker at all!"

"He's hiding in the university town; he's an acquaintance of Zhou Xiaoyu's!"