The raindrops of late spring carried a chill, and the bronze lions in the courtyard of the Jiangcheng Municipal Committee glowed coldly in the rain curtain. Chen Mo's fingers, clutching the report materials, trembled slightly. On the paper with the ink still wet, the words "Evidence of Jinxiu Group's organized crime" pricked his eyes painfully. As the deputy captain of the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Municipal Public Security Bureau, he has been secretly investigating this business empire that has dominated Jiangcheng for twenty years for three months.
When the elevator number jumped to the 17th floor, Chen Mo took a deep breath. The walnut door of the mayor's office was ajar, giving off a faint aroma of tea. The moment the door was pushed open, he froze on the spot - Zhou Hongru, the chairman of Jinxiu Group, was pushing a sandalwood box in front of Mayor Lin Guodong. Inside the box lay a piece of imperial green jade, which glinted with a strange light in the rain outside the floor-to-ceiling window.
"Xiao Chen is here?" Lin Guodong didn't even raise his head. His fingertips rubbed the jade, "I heard you've been checking the accounts of Jinxiu recently?" \ "" Chen Mo felt a tightness in his throat and the tip-off materials in his briefcase hurt his ribs. Zhou Hongru turned around, his gaze behind his gold-rimmed glasses like a poisoned silver needle: "Young man, for some things, it's better to pretend to be blind than to see them."
Three days later, Chen Mo's informant, the former financial director of Jinxiu Group, died in a car accident on Binjiang Road. In the surveillance footage, the dump truck that ran the red light drove straight into the Yangtze River after hitting someone. When the body was retrieved, its fingers were still tightly grasping the USB drive. Chen Mo stood in front of the freezer at the funeral home all night. The encrypted files on the USB drive showed that Jinxiu Group, under the guise of real estate development, had built a huge empire of pornography, gambling and drugs underground in Jiangcheng. The official seals of multiple government departments were prominently affixed to the relevant documents.
"Captain Chen, the provincial inspection team is going to take away the case file of Jinxiu from your hand." \ "" Assistant Xiao Wang's voice was in a crying tone, "Just now someone came to the detachment and said you were suspected of leaking secrets." \ "" Chen Mo looked out of the window at the heavy rain and suddenly remembered what Zhou Hongru had said. He opened the safe, scanned and backed up all the evidence, and hid the original documents in the locker at his daughter's kindergarten using the "secret passageway" from the Thirty-Six Stratagtras.
On the third day of his suspension, Chen Mo was ambushed while picking up his daughter from school. The daggers of the three men in black glowed coldly. The man with a scar-faced face at the head grinned savagely, "Boss Zhou said, 'I'll leave you a way out. It all depends on whether you know the good looks or not.'" At the critical moment, a police motorcycle broke through the rain curtain. Zhao Jianfeng, the captain of the Criminal Investigation Corps of the provincial department, threw out a sentence: "Chen Mo, follow me."
The incandescent lamp in the interrogation room was so dazzling that one couldn't open their eyes. Zhao Jianfeng threw a stack of photos on the table, each of which recorded the underground casino, pornographic club and drug trading scene of Jinxiu Group: "We have been keeping an eye on Zhou Hongru for seven years. The umbrella behind him is powerful and influential, and there are spies within the provincial department." Dare you take a gamble? Chen Mo stared at the photo of Zhou Hongru holding the mistress of the secretary of the municipal committee, and recalled the USB drive that the informant was holding before his death. He gritted his teeth and said, "How can I bet?" \ ""
"Counter-espionage strategy." Zhao Jianfeng retrieved the surveillance footage, which showed Sun Hao, a capable assistant of Zhou Hongru, meeting with overseas drug dealers in a bar. "Sun Hao is not willing to be subordinate to others. We need to make him feel that there is an opportunity to take advantage." \ "" Chen Mo forged evidence of Sun Hao embezzling drug funds overnight and sent it to Zhou Hongru through a mysterious channel. Sure enough, three days later, Sun Hao was expelled from the Jinxiu Group. When he was found on the street, he had three daggers stuck in his body and was in a posture like a sacrificial lamb.
With Sun Hao's death, Chen Mo realized that he had underestimated the ruthlessness of his opponent. Zhou Hongru began a fierce counterattack. First, he exposed the false news that Chen Mo was "handling cases in violation of regulations", and then his daughter's kindergarten was suddenly found to have "serious safety hazards" and was forced to close down. Chen Mo's wife broke down in tears on the phone: "Little Mo, let's give up. I'm afraid..."
Late at night, Chen Mo lit a cigarette by the river. The river wind stirs up waves and lashes against the embankment. Suddenly, he recalled the "Bitter Meat Stratagem" among the Thirty-Six Stratagems. The next day, he voluntarily surrendered himself to the discipline inspection commission and admitted to "abusing his power". In the detention center, he deliberately got close to the informant planted by Zhou Hongru, fabricating the false impression that "someone in the provincial department was protecting him". The news soon reached Zhou Hongru's ears. The old fox was indeed hooked and began to accelerate the transfer of assets, preparing to flee abroad.
Just as Zhou Hongru was about to board the plane in the early hours of the morning, Chen Mo was secretly released. He led a special police team disguised as journalists and went straight to the headquarters of Jinxiu Group. The account books, overseas account information and the list of protectors in the safe have finally come to light again. When Zhou Hongru was handcuffed, he stared at Chen Mo and sneered, "Do you think you've won?" Lin Guodong and the others had already cleaned up their tails.
The day the court pronounced the verdict, the streets of Jiangcheng were deserted with thousands of people. Zhou Hongru was sentenced to death on multiple charges, while five officials including Lin Guodong were only sentenced to three years in prison for "dereliction of duty". Chen Mo stood on the steps of the court, looking up at the grey sky. The resignation letter in his pocket was soaked with sweat. He knew that this battle was far from over - among those unexposed files, there were more "Zhou Hongru" grinning from the shadows.
When he got home, his daughter threw herself into his arms and said, "Dad, the teacher said you are a hero." Chen Mo carried his daughter into the study and locked the worn-out "Thirty-Six Stratagrapes" in the deepest part of the drawer. Outside the window, as dusk deepened, the neon lights of Jiangcheng lit up one after another, unable to illuminate some corners that would never be exposed to light.