Chapter 604: Ordinary People Have No Crime of Unexplained Assets

"Nothing?"

Yu Dazhang frowned and swept his gaze around the supermarket.

Before Tan Rui was put into the police car, he had asked him where the gold had gone.

But Tan Rui's answer was: I don't know.

That's right—crude and simple like that, without even a pretense.

Yu Dazhang knew perfectly well he was lying, but in this situation there wasn't much he could do.

Think as he might, he still felt the most likely place Tan Rui had hidden the gold was this supermarket.

"Searched the whole place?" Yu Dazhang asked.

"Every spot that could hide something has been searched," the officer replied:

"Even the tank of the toilet was pried open."

That really was thorough enough… Yu Dazhang looked up again.

This supermarket had no drop ceiling—just a concrete floor slab above—nowhere to hide anything at all.

He'd been down to the basement earlier too; the space wasn't large, and if the gold were hidden there, it would have been found in no time.

Truly miraculous.

Could it be he never brought the gold back?

Very possible… Only now did Yu Dazhang realize that the Tan brothers' plan went beyond how to carry out the crime.

Their ultimate goal was very likely how to dispose of this ransom.

Perhaps exchanging it for gold was only their first step.

And this first step, he himself had helped them complete… Thinking of this, Yu Dazhang immediately said to Lu Zhongxin beside him:

"Master, hurry and take people to the village. They very likely brought the gold back to the village."

Earlier, in the basement, Tan Rui had said with his own lips that he had come to release the hostage.

Under what premise would he do that?

The answer was simple: after the ransom had been dealt with.

That was 168.5 jin of gold—handled that quickly?

Unless a place to hide the gold had been prepared in advance, there simply wasn't enough time.

Arriving at the village.

Master and disciple immediately arranged for officers to search the suspects' home.

Don't need a search warrant?

Look up "flagrant offender."

When a suspect has already been arrested, searching for hidden criminal evidence can be carried out without a search warrant.

After the arrangements were made, the master and disciple went to the Tan house and broke straight in.

Afterward, the two conducted a careful search both inside and outside the house.

Ten minutes later.

"Nothing inside."

"Nothing outside either."

Master and disciple exchanged glances, falling silent for a moment.

After a while, Yu Dazhang said, unwilling to give up:

"Search it again."

He refused to believe the Tan brothers would dare hide that much gold outside.

This time the two spent a full fifteen minutes.

"Nothing," Lu Zhongxin said with a heavy, solemn expression:

"I even knocked on every wall inside the house one by one—I'm certain they're all solid."

Yu Dazhang, meanwhile, shook his head in disappointment:

"I didn't find anything either. No freshly turned-up new soil in the yard, and I scraped along the base of the walls with a shovel—didn't find any sign of anything being hidden."

Now it could basically be confirmed: Tan Rui had not hidden the gold at home.

At that moment, Lu Zhongxin's phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Sure there's nothing?"

"Alright, got it."

After hanging up, he looked at his apprentice and said:

"Our people searched Tan Rui's place in town too—didn't find any gold either."

Nothing there either? Yu Dazhang sorted it through in his mind.

The supermarket, the village, the house in town—these were the places Tan Rui knew best, and the most likely places to hide something.

Ruling those out, where else could he have hidden the gold?