Chapter 154: A Number That Shatters Worldviews

Yu Dazhang counted the days.

He realized that a full five days had already passed since Li Mingzhao had reminded him to be more careful.

It seemed the other party could no longer hold back and was about to make a move.

He drove back to the Hongkou sub-bureau.

After the car slowly came to a stop, he did not get out right away, but sat in the driver's seat hesitating for a moment.

Then he pushed open the car door and stepped out, but did not hurry into the sub-bureau building.

Instead, he deliberately lingered at the entrance for a while.

He stood there quietly, sensing the atmosphere around him, trying to catch that once heart-palpitating feeling.

But after quite a while, that strange sense of unease never appeared again.

Probably not a tail... Yu Dazhang quickly made a preliminary judgment.

He frowned slightly and began to consider what tactics the other party might employ.

The most likely scenario was that the other party had done some kind of disguise at the entrance of the municipal bureau, then carried out observation and reconnaissance.

He must have spotted the other party inadvertently.

Then his subconscious mind linked them to those desperadoes on the mountain, prompting his body to instinctively produce a vigilant reaction.

"Who could it be?"

Yu Dazhang muttered to himself while trying hard to recall every single person he had seen at the municipal bureau entrance.

He closed his eyes, and unfamiliar faces kept surfacing in his mind.

But after only a moment, he helplessly shook his head.

The municipal bureau was located in one of the most bustling sections of the city, with people constantly coming and going at its entrance.

Even with just a casual glance, what met the eye was a dense sea of people.

Among such a large crowd, it was truly too difficult to accurately identify any one person with distinctive features.

Arriving at the detachment, Yu Dazhang opened the statement records and quickly skimmed through the contents regarding the handover of the corpses.

Just as he had anticipated.

Every time before setting out, the driver would receive instructions from the deputy director, telling him to stop at a designated road section.

The vehicle meeting him would wait at the designated location in advance.

After the two sides met, there was basically no interaction; they would transfer the corpses between vehicles and then each drive away.

It was worth noting that the vehicles on the other side were not fixed, but were frequently changed, and the drivers were also frequently swapped.

"They interrogated in pretty thorough detail."

Yu Dazhang could not help but feel a bit of admiration for the people at the municipal bureau.

Everything he wanted to know was in the statements.

Even things he had not thought of were also recorded.

It was evident that the interrogators were very professional and had a thorough grasp of the case's developments.

The other side frequently changing vehicles...

This point caught Yu Dazhang's attention.

If the other side were a fixed trading partner, there would be no frequent changing of vehicles and drivers.

Could the funeral home be dealing with multiple buyers?

Is the corpse trading market really that big?

No wonder that deputy director refused to talk; it seemed the number of corpses traded was far greater than imagined.

The more Yu Dazhang thought about it, the smoother his reasoning became, and he also applied some perspective-taking.

"If I were the deputy director..."

"The crime of stealing corpses carries a maximum sentence of three years, but it also depends on the specific quantity."

"If the quantity is excessively large and the impact is particularly egregious, the sentencing will be heavier, possibly even the death penalty."

"If the downstream buyers escape, this quantity cannot be defined."

"Right, I have to hold out, and I have to take precautions before the case breaks."

"Once the police start investigating the trading partners, I must cut off the trail here."

It's just like the crime of theft.

A relatively large amount starts at one thousand to three thousand.

A huge amount starts at thirty thousand to one hundred thousand.

A particularly huge amount starts at three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. The sentencing differs at each stage.

The maximum can be life imprisonment.

If someone is injured during the theft, the nature changes, and one might directly eat a peanut—【Author's note: slang for being executed by firing squad】.

This case is the same; the final sentencing depends on the quantity of corpses trafficked and their specific use.

According to Yu Dazhang's estimate, the quantity must be enough to shatter people's worldviews.

He continued flipping further down...

Sure enough, due to the frequent vehicle changes, the hearse driver did not remember the license plate of the other vehicle.

The hearse also did not have a dashcam installed, presumably arranged that way deliberately by the deputy director.

But it wasn't entirely without loopholes.

The hearse driver's statement said that the other vehicle had not deliberately obscured its license plate.

Please... save... 6... 9... book.... bar....!

Moreover, according to his many years of driving experience, the other vehicle's license plate was not a fake one.

As for whether it was a cloned plate, he couldn't judge.

Yu Dazhang saw this and paused.

"The possibility of a cloned plate isn't high," he muttered.

If they ran into traffic police checking vehicles, before they even got to the cloned plate, they'd already discovered the body in the car.

So using a cloned plate would actually increase the risk of exposure.

What followed was simple.

Use the most straightforward method to investigate—lock down the hearse's route through surveillance footage, and find the time window during which the body was traded.

Then filter every vehicle that passed through the trade section, and finally have the hearse driver identify it.

Once a suspicious vehicle was confirmed, immediately trace the vehicle's information.

The method was somewhat tedious, but it was the simplest and most effective.

With the hearse driver's identification, the accuracy rate would also be greatly improved.

Afterward, Yu Dazhang reported his thoughts to Li Jun.

He had to admit, that deputy director was very smart and very thorough in his considerations.

If one were to talk about IQ alone, perhaps many criminal police officers were no match for him.

But solving a case doesn't rely on IQ alone.

Just like now—Yu Dazhang had found a lead and didn't need to investigate it himself; he just had to report the situation.

Behind him were numerous colleagues working the case together.

No matter how clever you are, once a case breaks, leaning on the resources of the state is enough to crush you.

"The city bureau is about to take over completely," Li Jun said after hearing Yu Dazhang's report, sighing:

"We can only do our best to cooperate now."

He had originally thought this case would be investigated to the end by the branch bureau.

He hadn't expected the case to grow more and more complex, the impact more and more severe—it had already exceeded the scope of their branch bureau's capabilities.

Just the public opinion aspect alone was not something their branch bureau could suppress.

The crematorium secretly keeping part of the ashes after cremation… just this one point, if it got out, would be enough to make the news headlines.

This was no different from dying without an intact corpse.

And our people value this kind of thing most—in the traditional sense, this all amounts to digging up ancestral graves.

"That's normal," Yu Dazhang consoled:

"Whenever it involves birth, aging, sickness, and death, without exception, it's all a major case. We've already done our best."

He understood Captain Li's feelings.

No one wants to hand over a ready-made case, especially when the main suspects have already been arrested and brought in.

"Right," Li Jun shifted the topic:

"Speaking of business, in the next day or two I'll have someone protect you in secret—just giving you a heads-up."

Yu Dazhang reacted for a moment, then replied:

"Didn't we already say it wasn't necessary? And the team is already short on manpower right now…"

"I'm not discussing this with you," Li Jun's face hardened as he cut in:

"After the city bureau takes over, the pressure on the team has eased a bit, and besides, these are two separate matters."

"In my view, the safety of officers' lives comes first."

(End of this chapter)