Chapter 371: There Is No Sea Here

How could she laugh? Yu Dazhang really couldn't imagine it.

Those two were childhood sweethearts—they already had a child together.

By all rights, the two of them being together should be like the left hand touching the right—no feeling left at all.

Could it be that both of them were hopelessly devoted lovers?

One couldn't rule out that possibility either—after all, couples who remained loving for a lifetime did exist.

Yu Dazhang then thought over the two sentences Zheng Ting had mentioned.

The first sentence sounded like a joke, even carrying a hint of flirtation between husband and wife.

"Next time we go out to sea I'll throw you into the ocean…" Yu Dazhang repeated the line over and over in his mind.

The "throw you into the ocean" part of that sentence was most likely a joke.

But the preceding "next time we go out to sea" revealed a piece of information: they had gone out to sea before.

And going out to sea and going to the seaside to play were two entirely different concepts.

The literal meaning of "going out to sea" was sailing on the ocean, and combined with the later "throw you into the ocean," it also proved that was indeed the literal meaning.

On second thought, Yu Dazhang felt there was nothing particularly noteworthy about that sentence.

It was an obvious joke—why would Zheng Ting be surprised by it?

"Is there anything special about the first sentence?"

If you don't understand, just ask—Yu Dazhang tossed the question straight to Zheng Ting.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

Zheng Ting looked at Yu Dazhang and said:

"Although you speak Mandarin very well, you still have a bit of an out-of-town accent. And if you were a local, you wouldn't have asked a question like that."

What does that have to do with whether I'm from out of town or not… Yu Dazhang couldn't help but glance at the provincial bureau officer beside him who was in charge of taking notes.

That officer was a local. Seeing Yu Dazhang look his way, he reminded him in a low voice:

"There is no sea around here."

Province N has no sea? Yu Dazhang immediately realized where the problem lay.

Mentioning going out to sea in a landlocked province would indeed strike people as odd—at least in the eyes of locals.

Unlike coastal provinces, bringing up the sea in Province N was bound to give people a sense of unfamiliarity.

This indicated that the other party's going out to sea had been done with a specific purpose.

Yu Dazhang silently recited that sentence in full once more in his mind:

【If you keep being so careless and reckless, next time we go out to sea I'll throw you into the ocean】

So they really had thrown someone in before…

As for who they had thrown, the answer was obvious—it had to be those intellectually disabled individuals who had lost their ability to work.

Could it be that they all closed the loop this way?

What a hassle.

Yu Dazhang simulated the criminal process in his head.

First, the person or the corpse had to be transported to a designated seaport.

Just this one step alone would be very hard to pull off.

Smuggling living people was easy, but transporting the dead was far more difficult by comparison—the moment it was discovered, it would immediately draw serious police attention.

Even if they managed to get the body onto a ship, the coast guard patrolled the seas too—discovering a corpse would lead to a full investigation just the same.

Rather than going through all that, it would be better to find a hidden place and bury the body.

The person was already dead, yet they were still parading the corpse around everywhere—were they afraid the police couldn't catch them?

So then…

It didn't add up.

He had too little information to work with… Yu Dazhang sighed.

It was hard to deduce the other party's true intent from that single sentence alone.

"Can you recall the entire content of that day's phone call?"

Yu Dazhang wanted to obtain more information:

"Tell us as much as you can remember."

Hearing this, Zheng Ting began recalling again, but this time everything she said was normal small talk.

In Yu Dazhang's view, there was nothing worth noting—no wonder Zheng Ting had overlooked this content earlier.

Going through the entire call, there really were only those two sentences worth suspicion.

The reason Zhang Chao's wife had dared to take that call in front of Zheng Ting was probably because she assumed Zheng Ting wouldn't understand the specific meaning behind her words.

This was a slip-up despite all the careful planning.

No one could avoid making a single mistake, nor could anyone maintain perfect rigor at all times.

It was perfectly normal to be occasionally careless.

Moreover, in Zhang Chao's wife's mind, this wasn't considered any kind of loophole at all.

After asking a few more questions about that organization and confirming that Zheng Ting had told them everything she knew, the interrogation was temporarily wrapped up.

Leaving the interrogation room, Yu Dazhang went to the office the city bureau had arranged exclusively for the task force.

After sitting down, he immediately took out the notebook he carried with him and wrote down the two sentences Zheng Ting had given.

Afterwards, his attention settled on the second sentence.

【Don't trust the people on the mountain too much—occasionally you need to swap out some blood too】

On the mountain?

Yu Dazhang quickly found the key point.

Could this "up the mountain" actually be a coded reference to that underground prison?

Is it just a code name, or is the underground prison actually built on a mountain?

His mind spun rapidly, and various hypotheses popped up one after another.

Both possibilities exist.

Only if it were built on a mountain would it be called that.

If they wanted to mislead people, they should have used something like "in the sea."

Don't trust the people up the mountain too much... Yu Dazhang savored that half-sentence in his heart.

If "up the mountain" is a code name for the underground prison, then "the people up the mountain" refers to those prison guards.

Just like with the hidden sentries and the legs, there must surely be a manager among those prison guards as well.

Following this line of reasoning, Zhang Chao's wife's words become very easy to understand.

Just as they were wary of Wang Hao and Zheng Ting, they were equally wary of the prison guards' manager.

The latter half of the sentence is even easier to explain.

"Changing blood" means swapping people — it means they plan to replace some prison guards who have grown disloyal, or simply swap out that manager.

If this hypothesis holds, it can pin down the general direction of that underground prison.

"Go find me a map of N Province." Yu Dazhang ordered the provincial bureau officer in the office.

This was the municipal bureau, and many offices had maps of the province hung on the walls — he had seen one on the wall of the meeting room earlier.

The officer acknowledged and went out.

Before long, he walked back in with a map and placed it on Yu Dazhang's desk.

Yu Dazhang didn't ask where it came from, but opened the map directly.

"Yancheng's cheap labor was transported in from the direction of Jianning."

He muttered, then quickly located Yancheng on the map and drew a circle on it.

He then found Jianning's location and drew an arrow between the two cities.

The arrow pointed toward Jianning.

"This is the place in all of N Province that uses the most cheap labor."

Saying so, he drew another circle on Jianning's location.

"According to Wang Hao's account, Jianning's cheap labor came from the direction of Liancheng, and Zhang Chao and his wife had also lived in Liancheng."

As he spoke, he located Liancheng on the map, then likewise drew an arrow between the two cities.

The arrow pointed toward Liancheng.

Finally, he drew a question mark above Liancheng.

In just this short while, he had drawn a line on the map — and a clearly directional one, a route with an arrow.

"The geographic location of this city is rather interesting."

He shifted his gaze to look at all of N Province, and at this point one would notice that the question mark's position sat right in the east-central part of N Province.

The officer who had gone out to borrow the map was already breaking out in sweat.

How could he just go ahead and make marks directly on the map?

How on earth is he supposed to return it like this?

(End of chapter)