Nominal: Hou Liangping blocking the door? He was slapped away!

"What about him?" Chen Hai asked.

Without needing to hear his name, Liang Lu knew who "he" was.

"I haven't been home for half a month." Liang Lu's voice trailed off. "She doesn't answer my calls or reply to my messages. Last time she came back, she only took two changes of clothes and stayed for less than twenty minutes."

Chen Hai didn't respond.

"He's working on some kind of special task force with Zhao Donglai now. I asked him what case it was, and he said, 'Don't worry about it.'" Liang Lu lowered her head, looking at her hands. Her nails were neatly manicured and unpainted. "Hai Zi, sometimes I feel like this marriage was a mistake from day one."

Chen Hai knew the origins of this marriage.

In his quest for advancement, Qi Tongwei married Liang Lu, who was ten years his senior. Liang Lu's father was a former secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, and this marriage paved the way for Qi Tongwei's rise. But once the path was paved, the relationship cooled. Qi Tongwei was having an affair with Gao Xiaoqin, while Liang Lu stayed home alone in an empty house.

The relationship between Chen Hai and Liang Lu is absurd.

Three years ago, at the annual meeting of the procuratorate system, Liang Lu drank too much, and Chen Hai drove her home. The car stopped downstairs at her apartment building, and she leaned against the passenger seat and cried for half an hour.

That was the first time.

Then came the second and the third time.

Chen Hai couldn't quite define it. Love? Maybe. But he understood the loneliness Liang Lu felt, the loneliness of being abandoned in a corner.

He was also the one who was abandoned. Hou Liangping was the one who was abandoned.

"Hai Zi." Liang Lu leaned closer, resting her head on his shoulder. "When you were locked up inside, I thought about you every day. But there was nothing I could do."

Chen Hai raised his arm and put it around her shoulder.

Liang Lu has very narrow shoulders; you can feel her shoulder blades through her sweater.

"What will we do in the future?" Liang Lu's voice was muffled in the crook of his shoulder.

Chen Hai did not answer.

He looked at the streetlight shining through the gap in the curtains. A narrow beam of orange light shone onto the carpet.

He didn't know what to do next.

All he knew was that Qi Tongwei was now one of Shen Zhong's men. And he, Chen Hai, was also released by Shen Zhong.

Two chess pieces on the same line, each with their own thoughts.

Liang Lu looked up at him.

Chen Hai lowered his head and kissed her.

The bedside lamp in the room was touched and went out.

Only a sliver of orange light remained through the gap in the curtains.

That same evening, in the conference room on the fifth floor of the Jingzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau.

The light bulbs were white fluorescent lights, which made everyone's faces turn pale.

Twelve people sat on either side of the long conference table. At the head of the table, on the left sat Meng He, the director of the Provincial Public Security Department, and on the right sat Zhao Donglai, the director of the Jingzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Meng He was fifty-three years old, with a buzz cut, a fleshy face, and spoke with a heavy northeastern accent. He was the new director of the department, recommended by Liu Changchun and appointed by the provincial party committee after Shen Zhong's purge of the Zhao faction. He had shallow connections, but his advantage lay in his obedience.

Zhao Donglai was in much better shape than a month ago. After experiencing the military's interception of civilian flights and the disarming of special police, he finally understood one thing—in Handong, whatever Shen Zhong said went, nothing else mattered.

"The first plenary meeting of the Shanshui Manor Special Task Force is now beginning." Zhao Donglai opened the file in front of him. "The task force leader is Director Meng He, and I will serve as the deputy leader. The list of task force members has been submitted to the Provincial Party Committee and the Military Region for record."

His gaze swept across the conference table, pausing briefly on one person.

Qi Tongwei sat in the third seat on the left.

The head of the Guangming branch was dressed impeccably in his uniform, the top button fastened to the very top. The police badge on his chest was new and gleaming. A year ago, he was the deputy director of the provincial public security department, in charge of public order throughout the province. Now, sitting here, he had two people above him—one was his former subordinate, Zhao Donglai, and the other was Meng He, whom he used to be beneath.

But Qi Tongwei's face showed no emotion.

The first lesson Shen Zhong taught him was: your face is for others to see, but your mind is for yourself.

"The first item on the agenda is the progress of the asset verification of Shanshui Manor and related industries." Zhao Donglai turned on the projector. A densely packed equity structure diagram appeared on the screen. "To date, the audit team has completed the accounting verification of six first-tier subsidiaries of Shanshui Group. There are still fourteen second- and third-tier subsidiaries that have not been fully verified."

Meng He frowned. "Fourteen companies? At this rate, how much longer?"

Zhao Donglai's lips twitched slightly. "The audit team's opinion is that at least—"

"Three months."

The sound came from the third position on the left.

Everyone looked at Qi Tongwei.

Qi Tongwei didn't stand up, nor did he look up at anyone. He flipped through a document he had brought, speaking at a moderate pace.

"Shanshui Group has seven second-tier subsidiaries registered in Jingzhou, three in Luzhou, and four in Lincheng. The four in Lincheng are the most troublesome, as two of them have cross-shareholdings with the local mining group, with at least five layers of nominee shareholding relationships. According to the normal audit process, it would take six to eight weeks just to clarify the shareholding structure. Including account verification and fund flow tracking, three months is the most optimistic estimate."

The meeting room was silent for two seconds.

Meng He's brow furrowed even more. He had only been in Handong for a little over a month and didn't have a deep understanding of the Shanshui Group's inner workings. The amount of information in Qi Tongwei's words exceeded all the briefings he had read in the past two weeks.

Zhao Donglai tapped his fingers lightly twice on the table.

He had worked with Qi Tongwei for many years and knew the man's capabilities well. Qi Tongwei's rise from a narcotics officer to deputy director was not only due to the Liang family's connections, but also to his genuine professional skills. He was proficient in narcotics enforcement, economic crime investigation, and criminal investigation.

"Comrade Qi Tongwei is quite familiar with the situation of the Shanshui Group," Zhao Donglai said after carefully choosing his words. "He has dealt with Gao Xiaoqin before."

This statement has two meanings. Everyone present understood it.

Qi Tongwei remained unfazed. "Director Zhao is right, we have indeed dealt with each other before. So I know their methods for hiding money."

He pulled a piece of paper from the documents and pushed it to the center of the table.

"This is a summary of the main channels through which the Shanshui Group transfers funds across borders. There are four in total. The first goes through Hong Kong, transiting through three offshore companies, and finally ending up in an account in the Cayman Islands. The second goes through Macau casinos, exchanging chips for cash, and then flowing back through underground banks. The third is the most covert; they set up a cultural industry fund in Handong, ostensibly investing in film and television projects, but actually using it as a money laundering channel. The fourth..."

Qi Tongwei's finger touched the last line on the paper.

"The fourth route involves rare earth elements."

Meng He leaned forward slightly.

"The rare earth smuggling route worth tens of billions of yuan that Ding Yizhen revealed ended in Lincheng. Shanshui Group transferred profits to shell companies in Lincheng by inflating rare earth processing costs, and then laundered the money out of the country through the overseas business of these shell companies. This route involves the largest amount of money, conservatively estimated to be over four billion yuan."

No one spoke in the meeting room.

The twelve people stared at the piece of paper on the table.

Zhao Donglai stopped tapping his fingers on the table. He picked up the paper and looked at it for half a minute.

"When did you obtain this information?"

Qi Tongwei finally raised his head and glanced at Zhao Donglai.

"What I knew before."

Those four words lowered the temperature in the conference room by two degrees.

He knew about it before – meaning he knew about the illegal activities of the Shanshui Group when he was the deputy director of the department, but he never investigated it.

If he had said that in a different context, it would have been enough to convict him of dereliction of duty.

But now is not the time to dwell on the past. Shen Zhong needs results, not settling old scores. Qi Tongwei understood this perfectly.

Meng He and Zhao Donglai exchanged a glance.

Zhao Donglai put the paper down. "Regarding the investigation of those four subsidiaries in Lincheng, Comrade Qi Tongwei, please give me the specific investigation plan after the meeting."

"It's all written." Qi Tongwei pulled three more pages from the file bag and placed them on the table.

Meng He looked at the three pages of paper, opened his mouth slightly, but couldn't say anything.

Zhao Donglai poured himself a glass of water and took a sip.

Qi Tongwei lowered his head and organized his documents, his expression indifferent.

The meeting continued. However, the rest of the agenda essentially became Qi Tongwei's personal report.

From asset verification to evidence collection, from cross-border fugitive repatriation to witness protection, he thought about every aspect more deeply and meticulously than anyone else present.

Meng He's expression grew increasingly complicated as he listened.

He is the director of the department. Qi Tongwei is the director of the Guangming branch bureau. They are three ranks apart.

But sitting in this conference room, everyone knows who is truly in charge of the case.