Chapter 396: The Real Closed Loop

The officer handling the interrogation immediately repeated Yu Dazhang's words.

The moment the words "going out to sea" came from the officer's mouth, Yang Jieru's face drained of all color, turning deathly pale in an instant.

She stared wide-eyed, fixing her gaze on the officer as if she couldn't believe what she'd just heard.

"What going out to sea?"

She clenched her fists tight, as if trying to use that gesture to mask the fear and unease inside her.

But the faint tremor in her voice still betrayed her true state of mind:

"I—I don't understand what you're saying."

As she spoke, she didn't dare meet the officer's eyes, clearly evading something.

Any officer sitting here naturally had rich interrogation experience; from the shifts in Yang Jieru's expression alone, it was obvious she had already panicked.

"If we can say it out loud, it means we already have sufficient evidence."

The officer's voice was cold and hard, carrying an unquestionable authority:

"I'll ask you one more time—how many times a year do you go out to sea?"

This time Yang Jieru simply lowered her head and said in a trembling voice:

"I told you, I don't understand what you're saying. Please don't ask me these bizarre questions."

At this moment Yu Dazhang's eyes were fixed tightly on Yang Jieru on the surveillance screen.

He took in every shift of her expression.

First shock, then confusion, finally turning to fear and unease.

Yu Dazhang rapidly translated those expressions into psychological changes in his mind.

At first, the words "going out to sea" had startled her.

But she quickly realized that no one else could possibly know about it, which was why she showed that look of confusion.

But those two words had indeed been spoken by the police, forcing her to believe it—and that was what brought on her fear and unease.

Then the question arose.

Why would the words "going out to sea" make Yang Jieru so wary?

She knew perfectly well that the crimes she'd committed would earn her a firing squad.

If that's the case, what else does she have to fear?

Unless that one thing…

Utterly devoid of conscience!

What could be even more depraved than enslaving intellectually disabled people?

Yu Dazhang's mind raced, considering every possibility.

The problem still came down to people—more specifically, those intellectually disabled individuals.

They must have done something utterly unforgivable to those intellectually disabled people.

Kidnapping, imprisonment, enslavement, destroying bodies to erase evidence…

These were what was already known.

If it's worse than all that, then there must be some link in the chain he hadn't thought of.

What is it?

Yu Dazhang's eyes slowly lost focus, yet his mind grew clearer and clearer…

Starting from the kidnapping, every subsequent step was foreseeable; the only unclear part was the final link in the closed loop.

That's right—the closed loop wasn't complete enough.

Or rather, what the guards had confessed was only part of the closed loop.

The people they'd destroyed to erase evidence were those who had died from accidents or illness.

But there were other people who also needed to be disposed of.

For example, those with such extremely low IQs that no amount of training could make them capable of labor.

People like that really did exist, and there were quite a few of them.

When communicating with others, these people would often only let out a silly "heh-heh" laugh, unable even to manage simple interaction.

For Zhang Chao and his wife, these people had lost all utility.

Since they'd already been abducted, there was no way to send them back—after all, no one could be sure whether they were deliberately playing dumb.

So they had to be guarded against.

Naturally, these people became the ones who needed to be disposed of.

And there were also those who had lost the ability to work for various reasons.

Crippled, injured, sick—but not fatally, just unable to perform heavy physical labor anymore.

Zhang Chao and his wife would certainly not keep feeding them.

Therefore, they too needed to be disposed of.

Yet in the statements of those guards, it was explicitly stated that they had never handled people of this kind.

Then where did these people go?

Or rather, how was the closed loop completed for these people?

Watching Yang Jieru on the surveillance screen, Yu Dazhang suddenly felt a chill run through his entire body.

I think I've figured it out… He picked up the microphone on the desk and said rapidly:

"Ask her—after going out to sea, where did they deliver the people?"

In his thinking, since the closed loop was missing one link, and "going out to sea" was an extra link, then he would merge those two links into one.

Zhang Chao and the others going out to sea was very likely for the purpose of disposing of those who could no longer perform heavy physical labor.

With this, all the clues could finally be linked together.

The officer in charge of the interrogation heard it and immediately relayed it out.

"You, you people…"

This time Yang Jieru did not deny it again; instead, an expression of disbelief appeared on her face:

"Impossible, you couldn't possibly know about this. Did Zhang Chao tell you? No, he wouldn't talk."

"Besides the two of us, no one knows. Where did you get your information?"

Her expression alone said everything.

The officer dared not let up and pressed on:

"Right now I'm the one asking you. Where did you people send the person?"

Yu Dazhang looked at Yang Jieru on the screen, and a sudden bad premonition rose in his heart.

He had once guessed that Zhang Chao and the others had taken the person out to sea and killed them brutally, then dumped the body straight into the ocean.

But doing that was no better than destroying the body on the spot—there was no need for that extra step.

If they were willing to take the risk of hauling them out to sea to deal with them, they must have had something to gain from it.

Could they have sold the person off to another country?

Yu Dazhang knew a thing or two about this kind of human-trafficking business, and knew that many such transactions were carried out at sea.

But the problem was that these mentally disabled people, who had no ability to work, couldn't be sold for much.

The people in the human-trafficking trade weren't taking just anyone either.

But what Yang Jieru said next made everyone present at the interrogation freeze on the spot.

"High-seas medical ship."

When Yang Jieru uttered those few words, her head was almost buried in her chest, and her voice was kept very low.

I really was too naive… At this moment, Yu Dazhang no longer knew what he was feeling.

He realized that compared with Yang Jieru, he was nothing but a little white rabbit.

In her, Yu Dazhang saw the purest evil in human nature.

Some people really would stop at nothing for money, even casually toying with other people's lives.

As a criminal police officer, Yu Dazhang of course knew about high-seas medical ships—not only knew of them, but also had a certain understanding of them.

High-seas medical ships were special vessels that provided medical services in international high-seas waters.

As for their uses, they could be divided into two categories: legal and illegal.

The legal use was to provide free medical services to islands far from the mainland.

The illegal uses, though, were far more extensive.

Organ trafficking, illegal experiments, or colluding with fraud syndicates to commit crimes by exploiting the jurisdictional loopholes of the high seas.

Interpol's description of them was: a hub for the world's organ trade.

Whatever came out of Yang Jieru's mouth was, without a doubt, one of those illegal medical ships disguised as rescue organizations.

"You sold the person?"

Even the officer's tone changed, from which one could see the shock and anger in his heart at that moment.

It wasn't that his nerves weren't strong enough—it was simply that this sort of thing was too inhuman.

He couldn't imagine what kind of inhuman treatment those sold onto the ship would suffer.

"I never saw the medical ship with my own eyes."

Yang Jieru replied:

"We only needed to bring the person out to sea. A ship specially responsible for transport would come to pick them up, so we wouldn't have to take the risk of going to the high seas ourselves."

They still hadn't caught everyone… Yu Dazhang took out his phone and called the top man at the provincial bureau directly.

The moment the call connected, he said straight out:

"Leader, I need coast guard assistance on my end."

(End of chapter)