Chapter 280

"How long have you been storing those cardboard boxes in your shop?" Qi Fei continued to ask.

"Uh, it must have been over a month." Zhang Yingdi said.

"Do you store your waste for so long before recycling it?" Qi Fei asked with suspicion.

"It was Tianbao who said he saw the news that the price of cardboard would rise in the next few months, so he told us to store it and not sell it yet."

"During this time, didn't you feel that the room was particularly smelly?"

Zhang Yingdi shook her head: "In our line of work, our noses are duller than others. We are in a garbage dump every day, so what's smelly or not? It was our Old Mother who, not long after coming here, complained that the station was getting smellier day by day. Her filial son even persuaded her, saying that if she wanted to make money, she had to endure it."

"Filial?" Zhong Kui on the side repeated with irony.

Qi Fei remembered that Sheng Dazhi, for the sake of his son, delayed the injury of their Old Mother together with Zhang Yingdi. He really didn't understand how Zhang Yingdi could say the word "filial."

However, no matter how much he disliked Zhang Yingdi, judging from the current situation, she indeed seemed not to know about these rotting meats, and naturally, there was no way to know the reason why Sheng Tianbao did this from her.

However, the investigation into the cause of Sheng Tianbao's death could come to an end.

It's just that Zhang Yingdi in front of him was still ignorant, asking blankly: "Police Officer, why are you asking us if the shop is smelly? The doctor said we were poisoned. Was it because we received toxic waste?"

"Sheng Tianbao was poisoned to death by himself." Qi Fei said to Zhang Yingdi word by word.

But Zhang Yingdi didn't seem to understand: "What is Tianbao?"

"Let's put it this way. We discovered that Sheng Tianbao hid a lot of pig viscera in the cardboard boxes you collected. What you froze in the refrigerator was only a very small part of these viscera. These viscera rotted rapidly in the high temperature of summer, and the stench emitted contained a large amount of hydrogen sulfide, which is the toxic gas you mentioned. Previously, because you were always opening the door for business, the shop was relatively ventilated, and these stenches didn't accumulate. Coupled with long-term contact with smelly garbage, your sense of smell had become accustomed to these stenches, so you were fine for a long time."

"However, that day you closed the door and turned on the air conditioner. The concentration of hydrogen sulfide released by these rotting viscera in the closed shop suddenly increased. Sheng Tianbao had been drinking and was emotionally agitated from arguing with Sheng Dazhi, making him the one most severely poisoned."

"This is not a murder, and it can't even be defined as an accident. It can only be said that Sheng Tianbao killed himself by mistake, but he didn't subjectively want to kill himself, so it's hard to say whether it counts as suicide."

These words sounded confusing to Zhang Yingdi, but she understood one point, muttering: "Are you saying my Tianbao was smoked to death by the stench?"

"You could say that." Qi Fei nodded.

"Just now, what did you say? You said Tianbao stuffed a lot of pig viscera into those cardboard boxes. Why?" Zhang Yingdi didn't even cry or make a scene, just looked at Qi Fei blankly, as if everything she learned from short videos couldn't help her understand all this.

"To cover up something more terrible." Zhong Kui said coldly from the side.

"According to the receipt left in the refrigerator, we checked the supermarket's purchase records. The purchaser was Sheng Tianbao." Wu Shanqiu said.

"The date of purchase was the date Huang Ruifen and her child went missing." Qi Fei frowned while looking at the receipt.

"Brother Fei, I have another piece of bad news. The investigation of all residents on Sister Wang's side has ended, and no suspicious situation has been found." Wu Shanqiu said with a sad face, "And I took Zhong Kui to check it. She said only Sister Wang on the first floor could smell that kind of corpse stench, and no other rooms on other floors had it."

"The property management also helped to check. Only the damper of the exhaust pipe in Sister Wang's home was broken, which means there is still no way to find the source of this stench. As for the crying, we took turns squatting at Sister Wang's house at night, and we didn't hear anything."

Qi Fei touched the stubble on his chin and said: "It is very likely that Sheng Tianbao used pig viscera to cover up the smell of a corpse. So..." As he spoke, he stood up from his chair, grabbed a marker, walked to the whiteboard, drew a square, and tapped it with the pen, "The scope of his discarding viscera was the recycling station's shop, which means he knew the place that needed to cover up the stench was here."

"Which means the place where he hid the corpse was in this shop."

"But Sister Wang could also smell the corpse stench there." He said and drew another circle behind the square, connecting the two shapes with lines, "Is it possible that there is a connected space between this recycling station and Sister Wang's house?"

"You can contact a pipeline company. They now have those robots that investigate pipeline problems. Maybe you can find something in the exhaust pipe of Sister Wang's house." Zhong Kui suddenly said from the side.

"Eh? How do you know about such trendy things?" Qi Fei was slightly surprised. After all, the Zhong Kui he knew was a spirit medium who couldn't even use a smartphone.

Zhong Kui curled her lips: "I swiped it on short videos."

"Don't you not even have a phone?" Qi Fei was puzzled.

Wu Shanqiu stuck out her tongue on the side: "I gave Zhong Kui an old phone. Isn't this for investigating Dr. Li's matter... Look, there's an extra harvest."

"Don't worry, I'm looking at this content with a critical eye. As long as they are human, no matter what carrier they are expressed through, the human nature after peeling away the illusions is the same." Zhong Kui lifted her long hair and glanced at Qi Fei, "Instead of guessing here, why not let the robot crawl into the pipeline of Sister Wang's house to see? I am sure what I smelled was not the smell of pig viscera."

"What are you doing here?" When a group of people with complete equipment appeared at the door, Sister Wang seemed a bit at a loss.

Zhong Kui patted her arm lightly: "They are here to help you catch the 'ghost,' that ghost hiding in the exhaust pipe."

The technician from the pipeline company skillfully opened the pipeline of Sister Wang's house, and a detection robot with a probe and a telescopic arm was sent into the pitch-black pipeline.

On the computer screen, one could see the real-time image of the robot detecting the pipeline.

At first, besides the oil smoke accumulated over the years, nothing unusual could be seen in the pipeline.

Qi Fei suggested according to his previous speculation: "Look downward and see where the pipeline goes underground."

At the end of the pipeline, an exit could be vaguely seen, which seemed to have been chiseled open artificially. The direction could not be seen clearly in the lens, and only some oil smoke accumulated around the pipeline could be seen. It seemed that it was still used for oil smoke exhaust.

The investigation process was long and boring. Just when everyone thought they would return empty-handed, a black mass appeared on the screen...