Chapter 2792: Confession

Cai Liyuan fell silent for a moment, then said: "Yu Zhengyi is a department leader, but I only met him twice when he came down to inspect work, and we only had a brief exchange. I really didn't know him at all, let alone know anything about his affairs. The reason he chose me to enter Yuxi Real Estate was because of my work experience and seniority, plus the fact that I wasn't in Jingcheng, so I wouldn't raise suspicion."

Zhao Hong asked: "Did Yu Zhengyi have you enter Yuxi Real Estate just for today?"

"No!" Cai Liyuan shook his head: "Yu Zhengyi arranged for me to enter Yuxi Real Estate so that I could cooperate with Jingqi to take a piece of the Yuxi Huangting project."

"But later, Yu Zhengyi felt that the piece of meat he took wasn't enough to fill his stomach, so he decided to take the whole project directly and put all that fat meat into his own pot. In that case, I became useless, but he still promised me 100,000 in 'dividends'. In the end, I didn't get a single cent, while they all took it."

Zhao Hong continued: "You didn't get any money, and you didn't harm Yuxi Real Estate's interests, so you could have simply left. Why didn't you go?"

Cai Liyuan gave a bitter laugh: "I wanted to leave, but Yu Zhengyi has already been arrested, so the conditions he promised me can't be fulfilled, and I can't go back to my original unit. So if I leave Yuxi Real Estate, I really have nowhere to go. Besides, the salary and benefits at Yuxi Real Estate are very high—more than double what I had before—so I stayed."

"Keep going!" Zhao Hong stared at Cai Liyuan's eyes: "Who found you and got you to cooperate in setting up Yuxi Real Estate to destroy it?"

Cai Liyuan hesitated for a moment, then finally gritted his teeth and said: "It was Wang Hongxi, deputy director of the department office. He knows of my existence—I guess Yu Zhengyi told him about me."

"During this year's Spring Festival, on the third day of the lunar new year, I was still on vacation when Gao Zhipeng suddenly invited me out. When we met, besides Wang Hongxi, there was also Li Honghai."

Saying this, Cai Liyuan's face suddenly flushed red, and his expression became very agitated: "Wang Hongxi asked me to cooperate with Li Honghai to set a trap, to bring down Yuxi Real Estate, to ruin Zhou Andong and the Gonggong Group."

"If Yu Zhengyi had arranged for me to enter Yuxi Real Estate just to take a piece of meat from the Yuxi Huangting project, even if it was exposed later, I would at most be fired. But what Wang Hongxi asked me to do might get me killed—I could never agree to that."

Cai Liyuan became more and more agitated as he spoke, his eyes filled with hatred: "I refused, so Wang Hongxi threatened me and my family. I know that with Wang Hongxi's influence, if I don't agree, my whole family won't have a good life."

"Then Wang Hongxi started tempting me again, saying that if I agreed, he would give me 500,000. After the project is completed, he would arrange for me to go abroad and work for a foreign company..."

Since he had already confessed, Cai Liyuan naturally had nothing left to hide. He also knew very well that at this point, only confessing, only making merit, could give him a way out; otherwise, facing a bullet was certain.

Zhao Hong laughed and continued: "For the Yuxi Huangting project, which buildings used inferior materials?"

Cai Liyuan took a deep breath, calming his agitated emotions: "All residential buildings used inferior materials."

Zhao Hong's eyes narrowed: "What about the apartments, office buildings, and hotels?"

"None!" Cai Liyuan shook his head: "Because the apartments, office buildings, and hotels are all over thirty stories high, they couldn't possibly be completed this year—there's plenty of time—so we planned to start work on them next year."

"What about the shopping mall?" Zhao Hong's eyes turned sharp: "It's only five stories—didn't you touch it?"

"No!" Cai Liyuan said: "The shopping mall is closely watched by Qi Dongfang's side, and they have their own quality supervision department—we wouldn't dare to mess with it."

Zhao Hong turned to a criminal investigator and asked: "Has the head of the quality inspection team, Feng Li, and other involved personnel been arrested?"

"They have been arrested." The investigator said: "They're right next door."

"What about Xue Wei?" Zhao Hong said: "Has he confessed everything?"

"He has confessed!" The investigator laughed and said: "We didn't even interrogate him—he spilled everything like pouring beans from a bamboo tube. Then I arranged for Officer Liu to take him to the detention center."

Zhao Hong arranged: "You stay here and keep digging deeper. I'll go back to report to the leadership, issue the arrest warrant, and proceed with the arrest of Li Honghai."

……………………

Night fell silently, as a convoy consisting of two Mercedes-Benz vehicles and one Land Cruiser drove quietly along National Highway 107. At eleven o'clock that evening, the three vehicles drove into Diaowoxiang, Zhuozhou. Then, following the rural road, they drove slowly. After about twenty minutes or so, a village appeared ahead, and then the vehicles came to a stop.

Zhou Andong softly asked the person beside him, Yu Miao: "Little Fish, do you see if this is the place?"

Little Fish turned her head and looked out the car window for a moment: "It's too dark—I can't see clearly."

Zhou Andong opened the car door and got out, and Little Fish followed him out. Looking at the outline of the village in the night, she remained silent for a while before saying: "It looks like my home."

"Wentian!" Zhou Andong asked: "Is this Taiping Zhuang, or did we take a wrong turn?"

"No mistake!" Wang Wentian said firmly: "As long as Little Fish hasn't remembered wrong, I won't take a wrong turn."

"Good!" Zhou Andong then asked Little Fish: "Where is your grandfather buried?"

Little Fish looked around, then raised her hand and pointed to the distance: "My grandfather is buried in a grove of trees behind the village."

Zhou Andong picked up Little Fish and put her in the car: "Come on, don't go through the village—find a detour."

Wang Wentian drove the car carefully, and then heard a scraping sound—the undercarriage scraped the ground. It wasn't that his driving skills were poor, but rather that there were fields on both sides, and the dirt road was full of potholes and rough patches, making it difficult to drive.

As the vehicle bounced up and down, the headlights swayed back and forth. As they got closer and closer to the village, and the scene became clearer and clearer, Little Fish, who had been staring intently at the car window, suddenly became very excited after the headlights swept past and said:

"The road ahead leads home."

Before Wang Wentian could even give an order, he turned the steering wheel and drove into that even more difficult dirt road. Scrape, scrape, the sound of the undercarriage being scraped came from time to time.

Seeing Jian Qiu laughed and said: "After this trip, the car will be sent to the repair shop tomorrow for inspection."

Zhou Andong said softly: "As long as it's not a stone, just scraping the road surface twice isn't a big deal—especially since it's a dirt road."

This road isn't long, but after driving slowly and unevenly for about ten or twenty minutes, we went around the village and got onto a relatively flat gravel road.

"Little Fish!" Seeing Jian Qiu held the little girl and asked softly: "How do we get there?"

Little Fish raised her hand and pointed: "Go straight ahead—I'm almost home."

Zhou Andong asked curiously: "Isn't your home in the village?"

"No!" Little Fish shook her head: "It's on that hillside."

Wang Wentian lightly pressed the accelerator, and the car sped up. As the road kept rising higher, after driving about three or four li, Little Fish excitedly pointed to the right side and said: "My home!"

Wang Wentian stepped on the brake, Zhou Andong opened the car door and got out. Here the terrain is relatively high—if one stands in the village and looks toward this place, it is indeed a hillside. And not far to the right, there stands a building that looks nothing like a civilian residence at all, but rather like a Daoist temple.