Chapter 459: Results Uncovered

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau, Level Seventeen Underground.

The supercomputer center's dome is covered with three hundred sixty cold‑light screens, blue‑white data streams pouring down from all directions, making the whole space look like a dissected electronic heart.

The air‑conditioner vents blow with a whoosh, keeping the temperature at a constant sixteen degrees.

But today, everyone present is sweating.

Su Ming stands behind the central console, hands braced on the desk, eyes fixed on the main screen without blinking. Behind him, twenty‑three Federation top‑tier data analysts each occupy a workstation, the clatter of keyboards crackling like a downpour.

The scene itself is already surreal.

Because beside each blue‑uniformed Federation analyst's workstation, every two seats a pitch‑black external terminal is wedged in. The terminal's casing bears dark‑gold markings—the encrypted seal of Eden Garden.

Black data streams and blue firewalls intertwine, bite, and permeate each other on the main screen, like two snakes tangled together.

The Federation's supercomputer is processing Eden Garden intelligence.

Not long ago Su Ming obtained that data disc from Chen Shao in the abandoned theater; now it is plugged into the host's core interface, its dark‑gold pulse light flickering, casting the surrounding analysts' faces in alternating light and shadow.

"Deceased No. 9, former Federation Third Administrative District Environmental Protection Bureau deputy director Zheng Heming," the analyst Song Yuan to Su Ming's left pushed up his glasses, his voice a little hoarse, "In 2041 he ordered the alteration of waste‑discharge data for the Dongzhou Chemical Park, causing heavy‑metal contamination of groundwater in three downstream villages, resulting in 117 cancer deaths. That year an environmental group filed a real‑name report, and the prosecutor's office opened a case—"

"And then?" Su Ming asked without looking up.

"The key witness died in a car accident three days before the trial, the chain of physical evidence broke, and Zheng Heming was found not guilty for lack of evidence and released. He retired early last year, living off a monthly pension of 48,000 yuan raising fish in Hainan."

Song Yuan tossed Zheng Heming's file onto the top‑left corner of the main screen, aligning it beside the data of the first eight deceased.

Su Ming's gaze swept back and forth among the nine photos.

Different positions. Different ages. Regions spanning five administrative districts. Family backgrounds, social connections—hardly any overlap.

But there is one thing, like an invisible thread, that links these nine people together.

"Song Yuan."

"Present."

"Retrieve the original verdict texts for Deceased Nos. 10 through 13."

The keyboards clacked in a burst. Four legal documents, each dozens of pages long, were compressed into a keyword cloud floating at the center of the main screen.

Su Ming swiped his hand through the word cloud twice, pulling out four highlighted entries: statutory sentence, death penalty, insufficient evidence, acquittal.

He stepped back.

His whole weight shifted onto his heels, his head tilting slightly.

All twenty‑three analysts simultaneously looked up at him.

They had seen Su Ming make this move before; whenever he assumes this posture, it means some calculation incomprehensible even to him is running in his mind.

Silence.

The supercomputer's fans hummed low, the air conditioning making the cuffs of shirts sway gently.

Su Ming spoke.

"Thirteen individuals," his voice was low, his speech slow, as if muttering to himself, "All different occupational backgrounds and social ties, the only commonality—"

He turned to face the team.

"They were all formally indicted by prosecutorial authorities on charges whose statutory penalty is the death penalty."

The room fell utterly silent.

Su Ming extended a finger and pointed at the main screen.

"Note, not generic crimes. These are the specific charges printed in black and white on the indictment, whose maximum statutory penalty is death: intentional homicide, manufacturing and selling toxic food that caused death, bribery of an especially massive sum. Each is enough for three executions."

He withdrew his hand, sat on the edge of the console, and swung his legs in the air.

"But in the end, all thirteen cleared their names through legal means. Some had their evidence chains deliberately destroyed. Some had key witnesses die under mysterious circumstances. Some simply had judges take bribes. The result was the same—acquittal, and they swaggered out of the courthouse doors."

Song Yuan inhaled a sharp breath of cold air.

Su Ming ignored him.

"Zhang Yuanqing's legend isn't random murder."

He tapped the edge of the console, producing a crisp click.

"He is carrying out the death penalty."

When the sentence landed, the keyboard clatter of every analyst in the supercomputer center ceased simultaneously.

Su Ming could hear his own breathing.

He leapt down from the console, moved to the front of the main screen, and his five fingers flicked rapidly across the interactive interface.

"His underlying rule logic is terrifyingly simple—he only kills those who 'should have died but didn't.' The law found them not guilty, but Zhang Yuanqing disagreed. Using the forensic expertise he once had, he reopened a trial for each escaped victim."

Su Ming tapped Zheng Heming's photo.

"Only his courtroom has no lawyers, no jury. The verdict is singular—death, executed immediately."

A young analyst couldn't help interjecting, "So his legend is… a tailor‑made executioner?"

"More precise than a mere executioner," Su Ming said, "Each of his legends ties the method of execution directly to the crime the victim committed. Zheng Heming poisoned the water source; his death was to be corroded alive in a high‑concentration heavy‑metal solution. Liu Peizhi perverted justice and sentenced lives to death; his death was to be dissected while still alive. If you examine the autopsy reports, every detail matches."

"The romance of forensic science," Song Yuan forced a wry smile.

No one could laugh.

Su Ming turned to face the room, his hands slipped into his pockets.

"Do you know what this means?"

He scanned the room.

"It means we can backtrack to his next target."

The entire supercomputer center boiled instantly.

Song Yuan was the first to react, his hands flying over the keyboard: "I'll model it right away! Filter criteria—across the entire Federation, cases where prosecutorial agencies indicted on death‑penalty charges but the defendants were ultimately acquitted or exempted from criminal punishment! Cross‑reference with the energy residue coordinates supplied by Eden Garden—"

"Hold on," Su Ming raised his hand.

Song Yuan's fingers froze.

"Add a weight parameter," Su Ming said. "Zhang Yuanqing doesn't kill in chronological order. His earlier targets committed relatively minor crimes, and later he kills increasingly serious ones, with the victims' social impact growing larger."

He traced a stair shape in the air.

"He is climbing a ladder. This thing for him isn't a revenge list—it's an upgrade path. So the next target must be the one on the list with the gravest sin, the greatest social impact, and the deepest legal loophole."

Song Yuan understood and his fingers typed faster on the keyboard.

"The weight matrix is set; begin a full‑database search!"

On the main screen, the judicial archives of the Federation's eleven administrative districts opened simultaneously. Millions of files turned into data streams flooding the supercomputer Core, while blue and black code tangled wildly across the display.

Eden Garden's dark‑web Intelligence was fed in synchronously.

Each time Zhang Yuanqing committed a crime, the residual energy coordinates were marked on the holographic map, thirteen red dots forming a winding trail like a contracting python.

The progress bar began ticking from 0%.

7%.

23%.

Su Ming stared at the screen without speaking.

There was a taut string in his mind, inexplicable why.

Everything was clearly proceeding smoothly. Eden Garden's Intelligence quality was unexpectedly high, and Zhang Yuanqing's behavior pattern had been successfully parsed. At this rate, the target could be locked before dawn.

But something still felt off.

It's like a puzzle nearing its final pieces; the picture becomes clearer, yet you keep feeling that a few fragments in the box don't belong to the image.

41%.

58%.

The analysts stared at the progress bar; some unconsciously bit their nails, others held cold coffee cups they had forgotten to drink.

79%.

91%.

Song Yuan's voice rang out: "Chief, the high‑weight targets are converging, currently the top three—"

"Wait until it finishes running," Su Ming said.

95%.

97%.

99%.

The progress bar stalled briefly at 99%.

Just a brief half‑second.

The previously stable data flow on the main screen suddenly produced a fleeting snowflake.

It wasn't a large‑area interference; it was a tiny flash in a corner, as subtle as the speckle that occasionally appears on an old TV when changing channels.

Song Yuan frowned, tapped the keyboard twice, and pulled up the system log.

"Fault‑tolerance algorithm self‑corrected," he scanned, then exhaled, "Normal fluctuation; the data volume is huge, the supercomputer occasionally jitters like this."

Su Ming's gaze lingered for two seconds on the spot where the snowflake had vanished.

He said nothing.

The progress bar jumped to 100%.

In the center of the main screen, a highlighted red coordinate point popped out.

At the same time, a file also popped up.

The photo showed a fifty‑something overweight man, square face, thick eyebrows, a smile that carried the stiffness of someone who had spent a fortune on cosmetic surgery.

"Liu Zhen," Song Yuan read the name, his voice involuntarily lowered a few tones, "Federation Third Administrative District, former actual controller of Hengyuan Mining Group."

He retrieved the detailed information.

"In 2038, a massive gas explosion occurred at Anyuan Coal Mine under Hengyuan Mining. The official death toll was announced as eighty‑one, but leaked data from the rescue team that year showed actual deaths exceeding two hundred. The direct cause: the mine's support used substandard, black‑heart building material; the load‑bearing beam shattered under the blast."

Song Yuan's voice grew deeper.

"Subsequent investigation found the materials supplied by Hengyu Building Materials under Liu Zhen's name, with all quality reports forged. The procuratorate charged him with 'producing and selling counterfeit products,' the statutory maximum penalty being death. Yet during trial, three key witnesses recanted, the chain of custody for physical evidence showed a 'procedural flaw,' and ultimately—"

"Acquitted and released." Su Ming finished the sentence for him.

The red coordinate point on the main screen kept flashing.

Su Ming stared at the point's location.

Then his pupils contracted briefly.

"Where is the coordinate?"

Song Yuan enlarged the holographic map. The red marker landed on an isolated villa in South City of the Federation Third Administrative District, surrounded by extensive commercial zones and residential buildings.

Su Ming recognized the location.

He obviously recognized it.

Because north‑east of that red dot by less than eight hundred meters lay a vast gray‑blue complex—lecture halls, dormitories, training fields—its aerial outline clearly discernible.

Qiu Ce Yuan.

Su Ming's lower spine tingled.

He didn't move; his hand remained in his pocket, yet his fingertips had already clenched the fabric inside.

"Song Yuan."

"Hmm?"

"You said the system jittered when it hit 99%?"

"Yeah, the fault‑tolerance algorithm self‑corrected; the log records—"

"Pull that log entry out for me to see."

Song Yuanzhao did it. A line of green system code floated in the corner of the screen.

Su Ming looked for three seconds.

He could not see any problem.

The log indeed showed the standard fault‑tolerant correction process—trigger conditions, response time, checksum—all normal.

But Su Ming didn't look at the data.

He was looking at the feeling.

The thirteen homicide victims were spread across five different districts, spanning two thousand kilometers east‑west. Based on Zhang Yuanqing's movement trail, the probability that his next target would be in District One or District Seven was at least sixty percent.

So what was the result?

The supercomputer's optimal solution, however, landed in District Three.

It happened to be right next to Qiu Ce Yuan.

It so happened that Su Ming's current strategic focus—monitoring Lu Yu and overseeing Chen Yao—was entirely centered on that spot.

This coincidence was too clean.

So clean it seemed as if someone had measured with a ruler, trimmed all variables to the same size, then stitched them together thread by thread.

Su Ming didn't say it out loud.

He simply stood in the supercomputer center's cold air, watching the thin distance on the map between that red dot and the Qiu Ce Yuan complex eight hundred meters away.

Someone came up to his side.

"Ming, the target is locked. Want to notify the action team to deploy?"

Su Ming snapped back to attention.

"Notify." he said, his tone as flat as usual, "It is currently extremely dangerous and hard to handle. Request Lord Wei to have Liang Wen lead a team to block the main gate, Jiang Yuan lead a second team to seal the Underground Parking Garage. Have Qin Zhixia coordinate the District Three branch to block the surrounding three kilometers."

"Received!"

The analysts began busily issuing orders, and the supercomputer center's clattering keyboard sounds resumed.

Su Ming turned and walked toward the Exit.

After two steps he stopped, turned back to glance at the main screen.

The red dot was still flashing.

It brightened, dimmed. Brightened, dimmed.

Like an eye.

He pulled open the soundproof door and entered the corridor leading to the elevator. The corridor was gray, the lighting pallid, and his footsteps were muffled after being absorbed by the cement walls.

Su Ming took out the old flip‑top encryptor and dialed a number.

After two rings the line connected.

"Director."

"Speak."

"Target locked. Liu Zhen, former controlling owner of Hengyuan Mining, hideout located in South City of District Three."

The other end remained silent.

Su Ming added, "The straight‑line distance to Qiu Ce Yuan is seven hundred eighty meters."

This time the silence lasted longer.

Lord Wei's voice came through, hoarse and deep, like sandpaper on metal.

"What do you think?"

Su Ming leaned against the corridor wall, phone pressed to his ear, eyes fixed on a flickering lamp tube on the ceiling that was about to fail. The tube flashed at a rate almost matching that red dot on the main screen.

"I can't say." he answered honestly, "The data is fine, the logic is self‑consistent, Eden Garden intelligence has also been cross‑verified. But…"

"But what?"

Su Ming licked his lips.

"Too smooth."

He switched the phone to his other hand.

"From decoding Zhang Yuanqing's behavior pattern to locking the target took less than four hours total. Director, we chased him for half a month without even catching a shadow, and today everything suddenly aligned. This feeling…"

He paused, speaking in a tone that even he found absurd.

"It's as if someone had written the answer for us in advance, just waiting for us to fill it in."

The line on the other end fell silent for a few seconds.

Lord Wei gave no comment on the judgment.

"Deploy according to the plan first." the old man's voice was steady, "Liu Zhen must be kept alive—he is both bait and a chip. Also, over at Qiu Ce Yuan, send additional personnel."

"Understood."

The call ended.

Su Ming tucked the flip‑top device away and stood in the corridor for a while.

The lamp tube that was about to fail finally went out completely, and that short stretch of corridor fell into darkness.

He slipped the encryptor back into his pocket, lifted his foot and continued toward the elevator.

The soles on the cement floor made a monotonous, dull thud, one after another.

At the same time.

Qiu Ce Yuan, medical room.

Sunlight streamed through the louvered windows, carving narrow white strips across the tiled floor. A faint scent of disinfectant drifted, and a half‑filled glass water cup sat on the table, its walls beaded with fine droplets.

Chu Che sat in the office chair, the cuffs of his Doctor's Lab Coat rolled up to about three centimeters above his wrists—precise as if measured. Gold‑rimmed glasses perched on his nose, the lenses refracting the outside sunlight and partially obscuring his eyes.

The computer screen before him displayed a student health‑check summary table, the cursor frozen on a name and not moving again.

But he wasn't looking at the screen.

His gaze fell through the gaps of the blinds onto the playground.

In the afternoon, Qiu Ce Yuan rarely had a quiet break between classes. Students in twos and threes were scattered along the edge of the playground; some queued at the tuck shop, some leaned on the railings playing with their phones.

Lu Yu came out of the side door of the teaching building.

He kept his head down, his school uniform zipper pulled all the way up, hands in his pockets, walking at an unhurried pace along the track at the edge of the playground toward the tuck shop.

Occasionally, a passing classmate would greet him; he would nod slightly, smile, and then continue on.

A very typical fourteen-year-old boy. Ordinary, quiet, unnoticeable.

Chu Che watched that back.

Sunlight stretched the boy's shadow thin, casting it onto the red plastic track, swaying with his steps.

He lifted his water cup, took a sip, and when he set it down the base tapped lightly against the tabletop.

The curtain's shadow fell on his face; the line of light and dark happened to cut across the edge of the lenses, revealing the extremely shallow curve on the lower half of his face.

"A good show is about to begin."

He pushed his gold-thread glasses.

A flash of reflection from the lenses hid his warm eyes completely in the white cold light.