Chapter 406: It Was Deliberate, Not a Coincidence

"This wall must be two meters thick, and it can be dug through?"

"Not two meters, it's 1.8 meters," the manager said, glancing at the wall with the hole.

Chen Ke glanced again at the cut on the wall.

"1.8 meters, that's about my height... What could have been used to make this opening? The thief who could rob here isn't ordinary."

Han Fei beside him rolled his eyes involuntarily, "Are you really 1.8 meters tall?"

Chen Ke fell silent immediately.

He wanted to argue, but lacked the confidence.

His height could be described as "about" 1.8 meters, but if you were precise, it's far off.

"What could make a hole like this in a wall 1.8 meters thick?" a police officer asked, unable to hide his doubt.

"A heavy-duty drill, but that would take a long time."

"Heavy-duty drill... Han Team, we could start there, check who recently bought a heavy-duty drill and narrow down the suspects, right?"

Before Han Fei could speak, Xu Mo shook his head.

"A theft case with such a huge amount must have been planned long in advance; we don't know exactly how long. Relying solely on the heavy-duty drill clue... we can't narrow the suspect pool."

At those words, the officer immediately felt deflated.

Xu Mo's point was reasonable.

In this theft case, the amount involved reached one billion; the thief must have planned for a long period before acting—perhaps months, perhaps years, but certainly not a short time.

Starting from the tool angle is useless; who knows when the thief bought the equipment? They might have prepared it long beforehand.

Xu Mo walked to the hole in the wall, leapt onto the cut, and looked outward from the edge.

Outside this wall lay the city's main sewage conduit, spacious, exuding a foul odor.

He shone his phone's built‑in flashlight and saw a layer of sewage at the bottom of the conduit.

After a moment, Xu Mo returned to the vault.

"Outside the wall is the city's sewage pipe, quite spacious. The thief must have left through it; the bottom is all water, so any footprints would have been erased,"

This is the main sewage conduit, connecting all surface manholes; the thief could have opened any manhole cover to exit.

Trying to track the thief's route via footprints is like searching for a needle in the ocean.

"No footprints... Could a police dog be useful? Let it follow the scent and it should find the suspect," Wang Dachuan thought up.

Xu Mo glanced at him but said nothing.

As the new Team Leader of Team Seven, Chen Ke reached out and lightly tapped Wang Dachuan on the head.

"We've already said it's a sewage outlet, yet you want a police dog to sniff... How did you come up with that?"

A police dog can't function here; the sewage stench overwhelms any human scent.

The three police officers who came to learn merely observed Xu Mo in silence, offering no opinions.

Their task is to learn, not to investigate; they need to see how Xu Mo handles the case.

They will faithfully record every word and action of Xu Mo—indeed, they won't miss a single thing he does!

"Footprints lead nowhere, and the sewage pipe connects to every surface manhole. So the thief's exit path is irrelevant; let's start elsewhere," Han Fei mused.

After speaking, he looked at the several surveillance cameras in the vault.

Cameras in places like this are usually closed‑circuit, using a LAN with physical isolation; hackers can't breach them, so the footage can't be altered.

"Is there any clue in the surveillance?"

"No," the manager shook his head like a rattle: "There was a line fault at noon, a power outage, so the cameras captured nothing. By the time repairs were done, the wall had a hole and the vault was empty."

If the cameras had recorded anything, he would have told the police long ago; he wouldn't keep it hidden.

"Line fault? Was it intentional?" Han Fei seized the point.

"No, it was chewed by mice, causing a short and fire that burned a bunch of wires," the manager answered truthfully.

Hearing that, Han Fei instinctively scratched his hair.

The fault being caused by mice rather than humans shows it was purely a coincidence.

He was at a loss.

The thief tunneled in from outside; the line fault caused a blackout, so the cameras caught nothing. The power was only restored after the thief left the vault.

The footage captured nothing useful; the other side of the wall is still the sewage pipe, giving no leads at all.

Not only Han Fei, all the officers frowned, unable to know where to start.

Without surveillance footage, and no direction or footprints of the thief, everyone fell into silence.

The three learning officers also sensed the case's difficulty.

Yet the more this happened, the more they hoped Xu Mo would find the breakthrough.

At that moment, Xu Mo spoke up.

He looked at the manager: "Does your insurance company not have a backup generator?"

"We do."

"Why wasn't the generator used during the blackout?"

"We considered it right after the outage, but the generator had been idle too long... it broke."

Xu Mo wore a thoughtful expression.

When the thief acted, the insurance company's lines were chewed by mice, short‑circuiting and causing a blackout, and the backup generator also failed.

That's too coincidental—so much so that it doesn't seem like a coincidence but a deliberate setup.

"That's really too coincidental... Take me to see the Power Supply Room," Xu Mo said.

"Alright!"

The manager said nothing else and immediately led the group to the Power Supply Room.

After Xu Mo asked that, the police officers also realized things were a bit too coincidental.

Why did the wires get chewed through just when the thieves struck, and why did the generator happen to break down at that very moment?

Power Supply Room.

The manager pointed to a bundle of wires near a scorched wall and said: "The wires that were gnawed through by mice were right here; that dead mouse was also electrocuted, and these wires are all newly replaced."

"Where were the burned wires thrown?" Xu Mo asked.

"They were thrown away, in the trash can outside." The manager pointed to the door outside, apparently realizing something, and continued: "I'll go get that trash can."

Moments later, the manager came back holding a trash can.

Inside the trash can was a pile of burned wires, plus a mouse that had died from electrocution.

"This is a striped mouse." Xu Mo immediately noticed the electrocuted mouse in the trash can; it was a pet mouse, not a common mouse.

He could now be more certain that this was man-made, not a coincidence…