Chapter 971: Negative News Exhausted

Task progress: 245 people arrested.

Task progress: 256 people arrested.

Jiang Yuan leaned back on the sofa, watching the task progress numbers climb, and felt quite pleased.

It felt just like earning passive income.

A sum of money, if it came from rent, was worth more than money earned through 996.

Arresting over two hundred people is much easier if someone else does it for you.

Jiang Yuan couldn’t help stretching and yawning, as if he’d returned to that sweltering afternoon, collecting rent for his father, running through building after building, hot and exhausted.

“Jiang Team Leader, you’ve worked all day. Want to take a break?” The Jing Bureau official always seemed unusually understanding.

Jiang Yuan waved his hand with a smile. “No rush. The front line might still send over a lot more evidence. I’ll rest after reviewing it.”

Danda was an enterprise that went legitimate years ago; before it was exposed, no one knew how much corruption lurked inside. Even now, nobody really knows the full extent.

Even Jiang Yuan and his team could only confirm through Lao Pu that Danda’s chairman Lu Qiang had been involved in inciting murder—but Lao Pu’s arrest itself was somewhat probabilistic.

Moreover, if it were only Pu Li alone, bringing down Lu Qiang would require immense effort. So despite being an old man with a gangster background, he knew the game.

Only with a detective like Jiang Yuan—who had criminal investigation skills, administrative power, and public reputation, plus supportive leadership—could this case be successfully resolved. None of these elements could be missing.

Without supportive leadership, searches and lockdowns against Danda would never have been approved. Without a detective like Jiang Yuan, leadership couldn’t storm in and solve the case themselves; without solid evidence and case files, the case couldn’t proceed.

Whether a hidden criminal underworld exists within Danda, inaccessible even to its own members, is hard to say. Some may have truly cleaned up after going legitimate, but others might be path-dependent, actively or passively reverting to their old methods.

A decade ago, during corporate battles, Danda’s executives didn’t use sophisticated tactics—they likely just fell back on crude, straightforward methods.

For these potential cases, as long as you find the thread, they can still be solved.

For example, these arrested Danda members must first have their DNA and fingerprints collected; given the numbers and probability, someone will inevitably slip up in some old case.

Besides that, similar weapons used in the crimes, or other related tools, might link to other cases—just like the reason Lao Pu was arrested.

As they spoke, photos began arriving at the backend.

The dozen or so forensic staff Jiang Yuan had prepared immediately went into action.

Forensic officers know evidence is like cockroaches: when you find one, a family with four generations of high officials is waiting for you.

When collecting evidence, detectives never take just one piece. If the scene has so little evidence that only one item needs collecting, they’ll scrape the bottom of the trash bin for fecal matter to run chemical tests on.

But if the scene has tons of evidence and many items need collecting, they often miss some—or simply pack up the entire room, or even mix multiple pieces of evidence into one evidence bag.

So now, larger police units—or smaller ones facing major cases—send their forensic teams directly to collect physical evidence. The goal is clear accountability.

Jiang Yuan started with fingerprints.

Fingerprints and DNA are the most direct evidence pointing to a person. DNA takes hours to process, but fingerprints are faster—and more precise.

Jiang Yuan once participated in a fingerprint blitz in Changyang City, using existing fingerprints to solve cold cases.

The principle is the same: newly collected fingerprints are full prints—ten fingers rolled across the scanner until all fingerprint data is captured.

As everyone knows, fingerprints left at crime scenes are always partial. Forensic technicians typically draw the distinctive points of such partial prints and wait for the system to match them.

But accurately marking distinctive points on newly collected fingerprints is equally important.

What people think of as fingerprint matching—some magical image comparison—is, in truth, still mostly numerical comparison.

In short, it’s a two-way effort. Both sides’ responsible officers must give their all for a match to be likely.

Everyone knows a fingerprint has about a hundred distinctive points.

Very few technicians mark that many distinctive points on newly collected fingerprints.

One reason is limited time; another is limited skill.

Some points are hard to identify and mark, and mistakes are common. Full prints aren’t necessarily easier to mark than partial ones from crime scenes.

Ultimately, the technicians responsible for marking fingerprints are mostly entry-level LV0.5 to LV1 performers. In a society that says “do as much as you’re paid for,” you can’t expect a rookie officer earning 5,000 yuan a month to show remarkable creativity or responsibility.

But Jiang Yuan really can mark all one hundred distinctive points.

And he doesn’t find it burdensome.

It’s like marking a hundred special points on a single image. Someone untrained, even if diligent, will find it exhausting and error-prone.

But if trained—especially exceptionally well—it becomes a craft.

Thus, when Jiang Yuan marks one person’s fingerprint, he’s effectively marking a thousand distinctive points. Running a database search with a thousand points increases the chance of a match.

The increase isn’t huge, because the system will pop up matches with just eight distinctive points—and even six if needed. Jiang Yuan merely raises the probability.

Still, in this environment, when the first suspect’s fingerprint was marked and a match immediately popped up, Jiang Yuan couldn’t help mutter: “Bad luck!”

Bad luck *2!

Bad luck *3!

The consecutive matches made the atmosphere in the conference room lively.

Even Jiang Yuan hadn’t expected so many matches.

“Danda really has a lot of criminals,” Jiang Yuan said, already a bit tired after matching the fifth suspect—but honestly, he’d only marked twelve suspects so far.

“Most of the matches are for minor cases that weren’t taken seriously before,” Tao Lu said, sitting nearby because of Song Tiancheng. “Old unsolved cases from years ago were just dropped. Back then, we never got their fingerprints—so they slipped through.”

“Once you go legitimate, you have no reason to collect their fingerprints,” Song Tiancheng nodded, letting the matter drop.

Tao Lu smiled. “Good thing we’ve now confirmed these cases—we can use them to pull these people out.”

“Yes. These people have lived in comfort for too long—they probably don’t want to go to jail,” Song Tiancheng said, glancing at his phone. “Bring in economic crime investigators.”

“Understood,” Tao Lu replied immediately. With this, jurisdictional advantages would shift. He then asked: “Should we issue a public notice?”

The notice had been pre-written. For a listed company, preparation was essential.

Song Tiancheng nodded. “Issue it. Don’t know if the stock price will crash.”

One hour later.

A large contingent of economic crime investigators arrived at the conference room.

At the same time, Danda’s stock price successfully hit the daily upper limit.

Negative news exhausted—all good news—Danda Pure Version.