Chapter 224: Copy It Ten Times

Jianyuan Company.

Jiang Yuan sat in a large conference room, the long table covered with piles of documents and reports.

In the corner of the room stood a evergreen plant, well-maintained.

Several Jianyuan staff members carried boxes of documents in and stacked them beside the evergreen.

Several officers had wanted to help but didn't know how, and Jiang Yuan turned them down.

Document examination is a highly personal task; it requires no teamwork and little input from others—at least not during the examination itself.

After the examination, if anyone disagrees with my conclusion, then they're wrong.

Bai Yuequn suspected the person who sent the photos was either Yuan's eldest or second son; Jiang Yuan agreed, so he prioritized reviewing Jianyuan Company's records.

Of course, the sender could also be a retainer of the eldest or second son, but based on current information, all such retainers were actually employed by the company.

This is a common flaw in Chinese-style companies: to save on taxes, everyone wants to expense even a cup of Starbucks through company funds—how could they possibly use personal money to support people? An extra cost of 20% or more, even for the wealthy, is something they strive to avoid.

Or rather, the richer someone is, the less willing they are to spend such money.

Whether the person printed the message or not makes little difference—it actually reduces the workload for detectives.

For document examination, identifying which printer produced the text is simpler. Common techniques like yellow-dot tracking can precisely determine the printer's manufacturer, model, serial number, and print time.

With this information, finding the person becomes far easier than Jiang Yuan's current approach.

After all, there are far fewer printers, and their sales channels leave a traceable path.

Moreover, printer-based document examination is harder to dispute than handwriting comparison.

So unless the case is too minor for police to investigate deeply, or too foolish to warrant high-tech methods, attempting a major crime without detection is extremely difficult—you'd need the determination of someone who's earned a Ph. .

All that meticulous planning, brooding alone at home, is just a tactical display of strategic laziness.

Study! Only through study can one truly commit a sophisticated crime.

Only such a person deserves to be meticulously uncovered by experts across every field, using thirty years of accumulated skill.

"Could everyone please organize the files for this person?"

As several on-site officers idly scrolled through their phones, Jiang Yuan pulled out a document.

The senior forensic image analyst immediately put down his phone and came over to look, whispering: "Is this the person?"

"Fifty percent chance. Find more documents with his handwriting—I'll compare them." Jiang Yuan replied softly. The Jianyuan staff had left the room, but they were still cautious on someone else's turf.

The analyst grunted and got to work immediately.

Several people worked together and quickly dug out a dozen documents, all bearing handwritten numbers.

Jiang Yuan selected several numbers and examined them closely.

The most distinctive feature in this person's numbers was the Arabic numeral "7"—he always curved the horizontal stroke.

Many people have similar habits. With only ten Arabic numerals, and their high repetition rate across a global population of seven to eight billion over a century, any variation in any digit is commonplace.

But within a small circle, such traits become impossible to ignore.

For instance, among these thousands of documents in the room, only about a hundred people write the top stroke of "7" with a curve; narrowing it further by the curve's angle could pinpoint one unique individual.

A low-level supervisor in the logistics department, yet one who required access to upper-level resources.

"It must be him." Jiang Yuan compared several other numbers he'd written—they were all similarly consistent.

The analyst glanced at the name: Wang Song. He immediately sent a message to his team leader.

Then he asked: "What about the written text? Does 'WeChat' match?"

"Left-handed," Jiang Yuan said. "He probably feared revealing his handwriting in Chinese characters—but it still matches."

Identifying non-dominant hand writing is indeed more difficult and demands higher expertise from examiners, but it's still possible.

Handwriting involves so many factors—layout, stroke order, proportions, stylistic patterns—habits formed over years of writing cannot be easily changed.

Seeing Jiang Yuan so confident, the analyst said nothing further.

After all, it was just a matter of summoning someone for questioning; someone this secretive and intellectual usually panics after just two questions.

Another call went out, and Lei Xin was delighted—solving the case felt so methodical, like following a formula, strangely simple.

He immediately began acting.

This case involved multiple connected cases, making it complex: the Qianjin District Criminal Brigade was handling it, the Ningtai County Criminal Brigade was involved, and Qinghe City police were assisting.

Normally, under such circumstances, a new special task force would be formed, with a new team leader appointed to coordinate efforts.

But this time, events moved too quickly—even officials accustomed to meetings were overwhelmed, and work proceeded in a scattered, uncoordinated manner.

Unexpectedly, even in this disorganized environment, Jiang Yuan kept solving cases.

When Jiang Yuan returned to the Qianjin District Criminal Brigade, Wang Song had already been brought in.

Huang Qiangmin had just arrived. He'd just reported to Ningtai County leaders and met with several Qinghe City officials to align the investigation direction—only to find Jiang Yuan had already caught the person who sent the notes and photos.

"You're going straight for the hard targets," Huang Qiangmin said, unsure whether to praise or warn Jiang Yuan.

Jiang Yuan felt a flicker of excitement but remained humble: "Why do you call it going straight for the hard targets?"

"Whenever you hit a tough obstacle, you just crush it flat—that's what I mean by going straight for the hard targets," Wu Junhao returned, clearly fond of Jiang Yuan's style—it suited him perfectly.

Huang Qiangmin grunted: "We usually don't operate this aggressively—at least not before. Cases like this, where someone sends a tiny note and you track them down? We'd never do it this way. Our county doesn't even have a single full-time document examiner."

Jiang Yuan asked humbly: "Then how did you do it before?"

"Before…" Huang Qiangmin recalled, "We'd first investigate people close to Yuan the eldest and Yuan the second. Someone who does this kind of thing must be one of their trusted inner circle. That narrows the pool significantly. Then we'd use document examination to methodically check each one, questioning them all, looking for inconsistencies."

This traditional method of investigation—" Paicha "—earned its place among veteran detectives' three essential tools for deep reasons rooted in China's social reality.

In a society of personal connections, many suspects' secrets are no secrets at all to those who know them. Daily information flows constantly.

It's like in a village—even without surveillance—it's nearly impossible for a stranger to slip in unnoticed.

Today's society is less intimate, but within organizations, or large private firms like Jianyuan, people have worked side by side for a decade or more—they're still deeply familiar with each other.

In contrast, Western societies lack this social foundation, so their investigative methods don't rely on " Paicha "—not just due to police resources or institutional differences, but because their social conditions are fundamentally different.

If Jiang Yuan hadn't caught Wang Song, Huang Qiangmin's standard approach might still have eventually identified the culprit.

The entire process would have become a massive logic puzzle.

A group of detectives would pore over "A said," "B said," "C said," "D said," searching for lies and slips.

In the past, this process often uncovered other cases too.

It felt like gathering grass and accidentally catching a rabbit, or reaping wheat and scooping up fish.

Jiang Yuan's method, by contrast, was like mechanized farming: a combine harvester roared forward, an automatic baler followed—regardless of crop type, it just cut everything down.

"Copy this passage ten times—slightly faster," ordered a junior officer, feigning authority in the interrogation room.

Wang Song was a man in his thirties, holding a cushy logistics post—he wasn't intimidated by junior officers. He glanced at the document with "WeChat" and the numbers, then asked quietly: "What if I don't want to copy?"

This interrogation was still led by Lei Xin, whose teeth were stained yellow. He smiled: "We're asking you to copy because we don't want to wrongfully accuse you—we're giving you a chance to help us correct any mistake. If you refuse, you can sign a waiver."

Wang Song naturally couldn't sign that. He asked: "How will you correct it? What if I write nonsense?"

"Nonsense is fine," Lei Xin smiled. "Handwriting isn't about content—it's about what you write."

"Still, why ten times?"

"We'll analyze the relationships between your own handwriting samples, then compare them to the evidence. We'll draw our conclusion from that."

Wang Song hesitated again.

His face grew serious, yet he tried to appear casual—his expression twisted slightly.

"Just write. Don't waste time," Lei Xin, the detective captain whose teeth were stained yellow, said, his tone heavy—he could tell at a glance whether someone was lying.

Wang Song gripped the pen tightly. Before he even wrote, his palm was drenched in sweat, trembling slightly, the pen tip unsure where to touch the paper.

He kept his head down; sweat beaded on the back of his neck.