Chapter 398: Human Nature Is the Least Able to Withstand a Test

This was Lu Zhongxin's first time speaking up at a meeting.

Although he was usually not very active, no one dared look down on him.

Because everyone in the task force knew that Officer Lu was that fatty's master.

To be able to teach such an apprentice, the master's own abilities were naturally beyond doubt.

Look at the way this man spoke — silent until he opened his mouth, and the moment he did, he drew everyone's attention at once.

Yu Dazhang grew interested too, and said, looking at Lu Zhongxin:

"Master, go on."

Even though his mind was now unusually sharp these days, he had never once held Lu Zhongxin in the slightest contempt.

The reason was simple: his case-solving skills had indeed been taught to him, hand by hand, by his master in his previous life.

It was just that in this life, Yu Dazhang had learned to apply them flexibly.

"As of now, the stolen money still hasn't been traced."

Lu Zhongxin nodded and continued:

"Yang Jieru and Zhang Chao clearly have no intention of revealing where the money went, which means someone else is managing that sum for them behind the scenes."

He paused, then went on thoughtfully:

"When the police were searching the mountain, they must have notified that person, telling them something had gone wrong on their end."

"After that, the two sides very likely held an urgent phone discussion, jointly planning how to deal with the police investigation."

Lu Zhongxin's gaze sharpened, as if it could pierce through the fog and see the truth:

"Without a doubt, what they care about most is how to make sure that money can be safely moved."

"However, that's no easy task — it takes a certain amount of time to pull off."

"So if Yang Jieru and the others were caught by the police, they had to buy that person enough time to finish moving the money."

His tone grew more certain:

"That's exactly why Yang Jieru gritted her teeth and held out for those five days — in reality, she was protecting that money from being seized by the police."

After Lu Zhongxin finished, the sound of lighters flicking on cigarettes went off one after another in the meeting room.

Even Yu Dazhang felt his scalp itch a little.

A master is a master — he really can spin a yarn… he sighed inwardly in admiration.

Other people's hypotheses all target a single point of doubt.

His own master, meanwhile, just hypothesizes an entire story.

And a damn convincing one at that.

What was most admirable was that it was also, damn it, perfectly logical.

Right now, the most urgent thing to resolve was the stolen money.

Catch the thief, catch the loot; catch the adulterer, catch both lovers.

Only catching the people without finding the money was undoubtedly a flaw in the case as a whole.

Since he had taken on this case, Yu Dazhang naturally didn't want to leave that handle for others to criticize.

Money — that thing is the most sensitive no matter where you are.

"I suggest we get colleagues from the economic-crimes unit to help with the investigation."

A police officer chimed in, echoing Lu Zhongxin's words:

"That way we can not only investigate Zhang Chao and his wife's domestic accounts more thoroughly, but also track down their overseas accounts."

"Their relatives and friends can't be let off either — we might pick up some leads that way."

Another officer added:

"I hear it's trendy now to run money through casinos and then transfer it overseas — we could look into that angle too."

"To keep digging deeper, we'll need the economic-crimes colleagues — after all, they're the professionals."

For a moment the meeting room livened up, with everyone putting forward their own opinions and suggestions.

But the core point always circled back to recovering the stolen money.

In the end, Yu Dazhang spoke up:

"Pause the interrogations for now. According to the earlier groupings, each group will go investigate the family and relatives of Zhang Chao and Yang Jieru."

He ruled out the layer of friends.

That large a sum of money — whoever it was, they wouldn't entrust it to a friend.

Human nature is the least able to withstand a test; no matter how deep the bond, it's hard to resist temptation in the face of profit.

Let alone when it's a fortune of this size.

Then Yu Dazhang looked at Captain Hua again:

"The economic-crimes side will need you to reach out. We'll provide the target persons, and they'll track down the account information to make sure nothing slips through."

Same old principle: professional matters should be left to the professionals.

When it comes to verifying illegal gains and tracking fund flows, the economic-crimes unit is undoubtedly the best at it.

Another day passed.

The rescue operation on the N-province side finally wrapped up; next came tracking down the fugitives who had fled.

There are no walls without cracks.

An operation of this scale was bound to leak some rumors.

What the police hadn't expected was that among those fugitives, quite a few were actually serving officers within the system.

It was clear that over the years Zhang Chao and the others had also cultivated quite a few "umbrellas" with money.

All these years of going undetected, these people had played a part in that with their covert help.

Yet Yang Jieru had never reported a single one of these people.

At this moment, Yu Dazhang was sitting in his office, unable to settle down.

"What on earth are they up to?"

He was increasingly feeling that he was being led by the nose by Yang Jieru and her people.

Clearly, the couple had both been caught, yet the case had ground to a halt.

The person in charge of transporting things at sea had not been caught, and the stolen money's whereabouts were unknown.

Today he learned that quite a few people inside the system were in collusion with them, and Yang Jieru had kept her lips tightly sealed, not revealing a single word of any of it.

"Money can talk to the gods…" Yu Dazhang muttered to himself.

Obviously, Yang Jieru and her people were different from ordinary criminal suspects — they had enough money to lay the groundwork for certain things.

But so far, Yu Dazhang still couldn't figure out what exactly they were trying to do.

One thing was certain, though: there were absolutely more of their accomplices out there.

That same afternoon.

Captain Hua brought news.

After the economic-crimes division conducted an in-depth investigation of Yang Jieru's cousin, they discovered anomalies in his account transactions.

According to the investigation, Yang Jieru's cousin had set up a trading company as early as ten years ago.

Over the years, that company had fabricated non-existent business dealings, forged contracts, invoices, and other documents, mixing large amounts of illegal funds into normal cash flow to disguise them as legitimate income.

This method not only successfully concealed the true source of the funds.

It also blurred the nature of the funds, making them hard to distinguish.

To thoroughly sever the money trail, the company had also employed extremely complex methods such as multi-layered account transfers, cross-border remittances, and sham investments.

"On the very second day after Yang Jieru and her people were caught, her cousin's company transferred out one hundred and twenty million."

At this moment, Captain Hua was briefing Yu Dazhang on the situation:

"The economic-crimes side locked onto his account through this lead and obtained all of his information."

Yu Dazhang nodded after hearing this.

A large transfer, and on the second day after the incident — that was indeed worth suspicion.

But then again…

It felt a little too deliberate.

Yang Jieru's cousin had been doing things carefully for so many years; even if things were urgent, he shouldn't have transferred such a huge sum all at once.

At the very least, he should have moved it out in batches to effectively reduce the risk.

The reason it happened this way was most likely that Yang Jieru had instructed him to do so.

There was another layer to it: wishful thinking.

Presumably Yang Jieru's cousin hadn't expected the police to track him down so quickly.

"Has the stolen money been found?" Yu Dazhang asked.

That was what he cared about most.

"All accounts involved in the case have already been frozen to prevent the funds from flowing out."

Captain Hua replied:

"The amount expected to be recovered this time is two hundred and sixty million."

(End of this chapter)