Chapter 1: Strange Phenomena in the Underworld

  Leaving the director's office, Chen Zhenhua could only wait patiently for the director's reply. However, during this time, he and Huang Aiguo couldn't leave the archives room. To them, it seemed like the archives room was their final destination.

  Huang Aiguo, who was late for work, heard that he could leave this unlucky archive room and was so excited that he almost screamed. The dull work in the archive room had made them feel like their souls were imprisoned long ago, and being "released from prison" was a fortunate thing to celebrate.

  So the only way to celebrate was to immediately plan the steps for investigating the case, while also patiently waiting for the director to notify them to leave or send someone to notify them to hurry up and take action.

  Finally, in the afternoon, Deputy Director Yan Song pushed open the door of the file room and said to Huang Aiguo and Chen Zhenhua who were sorting files inside: "Not bad, it seems you only know how to sort files, look! How clean."

  "Is it?" Huang Aiguo smiled and said, "But also similar to a prison cell, Director Yan, are you here to inspect the work?"

  "That's not it," Yan Song brushed off the dust that had floated onto his sleeve, then looked around and said, "I've come to inform you that you can investigate the gold shop robbery from a few years ago. Of course, although you have been ordered to investigate, don't affect people's normal lives, okay? As police officers, you should understand the common people and care about them. I'm not saying this because I'm afraid you'll do something wrong, but what I'm saying is clear?"

  "Director Yan's instructions are correct, we will definitely pay attention." Chen Zhenhua interrupted.

  So they "liberated"!

  To crack the case, the two went to the gold shop to ask about the eyewitness of that robbery. They thought that although it had been several years since the gold shop was robbed, such a sensational case in Haizhou City would be remembered by even a mute person if reminded slightly.

  However, when they came to the gold shop and asked around, the service staff in the gold shop said that no one knew, and they all said that they were hired after the gold shop was robbed. Except for Ruan Jiaolou and Zhang Yuan, none of the previous employees worked here anymore.

  Then Chen Zhenhua inquired several times and finally found out the residence of one of the resigned employees, so they rushed to that employee's hometown by car.

  This employee, known as Hu Qin, is a woman in her thirties who serves as the manager of this gold shop. She is diligent at work and has strict demands on employees, yet she is also well-liked by them.

  Her home is in a village on the outskirts of Ubon City, and this village has also benefited from the development of the city. Under the attention of the municipal leaders, it has become a model for the superior leaders to inspect the development of the suburbs of Ubon City. Almost all the leaders who come to inspect the work will be arranged to visit this village. When they see this rich and beautiful village, they feel relieved and say with emotion: The people of the world have already achieved a well-off life!

  In order to satisfy the leaders, the town and village leaders of Wubang Town spent a lot of effort. Regardless of whether the common people were willing or not, under the instructions of the village leaders, each household raised money everywhere to decorate their houses, which looked quite decent after two years of hard work, turning it into a brand new village.

  Hu Qin's home was at the entrance of the village, a two-story glazed tile house with white ceramic tiles on the walls. The whole house looked quite distinctive, with two rows of flower pools in front of the door. One pool had scallions and garlic sprouts planted in it, while the other had Chinese cabbage. In short, they weren't for growing flowers, and they didn't have the leisure to appreciate them either. It was just that the village officials required them to do so - every household had to have two flower pools, it was a task.

  There were a few potted plants in front of Hu Qin's house, which were placed beside the flower pool. The shape of these potted plants was not very good, but not too bad either.

  Today, Hu Qunjia's house door was tightly closed. Chen Zhenhua and Huang Aiguo knocked several times but no one heard any response from inside the room. Just when they were about to give up, someone behind them said: "Excuse me, who are you looking for?"

  Chen Zhenhua was originally peeking through the door crack with one eye, when he heard someone speaking behind him. He turned around somewhat awkwardly and saw a man in his forties with a haggard face standing behind them. The man was wearing a blue Zhongshan suit, black trousers, and rain shoes on his feet. He had a hoe slung over his shoulder, looking like he had just returned from working in the fields.

  The man looked at them coldly and then asked another sentence: "Excuse me, who are you looking for?"

  "Bad consciousness," Huang Aiguo awkwardly walked into the man, then took out his police ID and said to the man, "We are from Haiying City Police Department, we are here to investigate a gold shop robbery case. Is this Huqin's home?"

  Even if he revealed his identity, Hanzi still didn't have a good face. He said coldly, "Yes, this is Huqin's home."

  "Then who are you?" Chen Zhenhua said.

  "I am Hu Qin's husband," said the man. "My name is Yuan Qifa."

  "Is that so?" Chen Zhenhua sized up the man named Yuan Qifeng for a moment, and then said, "A few years ago, the Golden Store in Haizhou City was robbed, but it has not been solved until now. Recently, a woman was killed in her own home in the residential area. In order to solve the case, we went to the Golden Store to investigate and found that all the employees who were working at the store during the robbery had quit their jobs, regardless of age. After asking around, we learned that there is a person named Hu Qin in Tiankan Village, so we came to understand what happened before. We hope you can let us see your wife, how about it?"

  "I don't think it's necessary anymore," said Yuan Qifeng.

  "Why?" Huang Aiguo asked.

  "It's all in the past," Yuan Qifah put down the hoe on his shoulder, opened the door of the house, but did not invite Chen Zhenhua and Huang Aiguo to enter.

  "But things haven't ended yet," Huang Aiguo chased after him, just as he was about to reach the door.

  Yuan Qifah took out two small stools, indicating that they should sit outside the house, and then he himself also brought out a stool, sat down smoking, saying: "To be honest, after my wife resigned and returned home, she didn't expect to receive threatening phone calls frequently, warning her to be careful what she said, or else her life would be in danger."

  "Threaten her?" Chen Zhenhua and Huang Aiguo were both shocked, how could someone threaten them? Did they know the hijacker or had they seen the hijacker's face?

  "Can you tell us about your wife's situation after she comes back?" Chen Zhenhua said, leaning in towards Yuan Qifeng.

  "That year, after my wife resigned and returned home, I saw that her complexion was not good, so I thought she had quit due to illness and advised her to see a doctor. However, no matter how I asked her, she just evaded me with vague answers. One day, when we came back from working in the fields, we found an envelope without an address at the door. Out of curiosity, I opened it and saw that the letter inside was full of threatening words. We were both very scared and rushed to report to the police station, but the police said that the letter might be someone's prank and they couldn't find out who wrote it, so they didn't take my case seriously. However, a few days later, another letter arrived with similar content, which made us even more frightened, especially my wife. We went to report again, but the police refused to accept it. From then on, my wife lived in a daze every day and would sometimes wake up from nightmares. Two months later, she couldn't bear the pressure in her heart and finally suffered a mental breakdown."

  "Is he mentally abnormal?" Huang Aiguo looked at the man speaking in front of him, saw that his face was haggard and not lying at all, so he believed what Yuan Qifah said.

  "Where is your wife now? Is she at home?" Chen Zhenhua asked.

  "She's dead!" Yuan Qifeng said calmly, without showing any sign of grief. Perhaps extreme pain can make a person calm down instead.

  "Dead?!" Huang Aiguo and Chen Zhenhua were shocked again.

  "How did he die?" Huang Aiguo continued to ask.

  "It was the river that you all had to cross when you came to our village, didn't you notice it? She drowned in that very river."

  "Not bad, we did notice, unfortunately! Can you take us to see your wife's grave? Of course, if it won't be too painful for you," Chen Zhenhua said.

  "My wife is buried on the mountain top behind this village, it's easy to find. In recent years, no one has been buried on the mountain, so if you see a new grave, that's my wife's. I won't go there, you know, it would be too painful."

  Chen Zhenhua and Huang Aiguo didn't force the issue either, they both understood why Yuan Qifeng didn't want to go. Nobody wanted to gradually return to normal life but then try every means to go back to the painful past. So, the two of them could only go take a look themselves.

  When they arrived at the top of the mountain, they indeed saw a new grave. There were also other graves nearby, but those had been there for many years. Some of the graves had collapsed after many years and only had a small pile of dirt left, some even looked like just a mound of earth with wild grass growing on it, such graves could hardly be recognized as graves at all.

  The two stood in front of the new grave, staring blankly for a moment. Then, out of respect for the deceased, both bowed deeply.

  Just as the two of them bowed their heads, a whizzing sound suddenly came from above, followed by a loud "bang" as a large stone nearby splashed out a shower of sparks. As police officers, they immediately recognized the sound - it was the sound of bullets flying through the air, and the bullets were heading straight for them. It was unclear who the target was, but fortunately both men ducked down in time to avoid getting hit.

  "Who is it!" Huang Aiguo shouted loudly, pulling out his handgun from his waist and hastily finding a large rock to shield himself. His eyes rapidly scanned the surroundings, his pupils darting back and forth like searchlights on a bunker, scrutinizing every visible spot on the mountain and the adjacent one in the distance. He carefully examined every place within shooting range, leaving no stone unturned.

  But he saw nothing, and the whole mountain was quiet and sultry.

  "Somebody wants to kill us," Chen Zhenhua said, looking at Huang Aiguo.

  "And with guns!" Huang Aiguo nodded and said.

  "But who can have guns besides police these days? Are you saying it's the police?" Chen Zhenhua said suspiciously.

  "Don't forget that the hijackers also used guns, and it's just a coincidence that we came to Hu Qin's house today and were ambushed. I think someone has been tracking our movements, or else how would they have come here to assassinate us? On the way back, let's carefully analyze who knew about our itinerary."

  "You're right," Chen Zhenhua nodded, and after a brief look around, they hastily descended the mountain.

  Back at Hu Qin's home, but Yuan Qifeng was not at home, and the doors and windows of the house were tightly closed.

  With no results and almost getting killed, the two of them were inevitably disappointed and fearful on their way back to the city, so neither of them spoke.

  The car drove for a while, Huang Aiguo felt an urgent need to urinate, so he stopped the car and planned to find a place to relieve himself. Chen Zhenhua also felt some urgency, so she followed him down from the car. The two of them went into the cornfield below the highway to relieve themselves.

  Just as they were about to start, the two of them suddenly heard a loud explosion, followed by a black smoke mushrooming into the hole, and then they heard a series of metallic objects falling to the ground with a piercing "clang clang" sound.

  The two were startled by the explosion and their bodies shook for a moment. They quickly fastened their seatbelts and returned to the road, only to be stunned again by the scene in front of them.

  Their police car was blown to pieces, with the tires rolling off to one side and burning. The entire body of the vehicle was charred black by smoke and flames. In other words, their police car exploded.

  "How could this be?" Chen Zhenhua asked with wide eyes.

  "How do I know?" Huang Aiguo's face turned pale, he frowned and looked at the still burning police car, "There are people on the mountain who secretly shot us, now our car has exploded, are we in danger?"

  "I think our car was either because of the long time, or the oil tank cracked and leaked oil, then dripped onto the exhaust pipe, and finally burned up and exploded the oil tank." Chen Zhenhua said after circling around the damaged police car.

  Huang Aiguo did not respond in time, he was also searching around the burning car, and finally saw a box, an iron box. He tore off a piece of cloth from his clothes, wrapped it around his hand, picked up the similarly charred box from the ground, sniffed it under his nose, and found that it smelled like sulfuric acid or something similar. So he said with certainty: "I dare to say for sure, someone has installed a homemade bomb under our car, wanting to blow us to death."

  "It's another assassination!" Chen Zhenhua said, "Is it a timed bomb?"

  "That's not it," Huang Aiguo said. "You see on TV, assassinations are always done with timed bombs? In fact, this is different from a timed bomb, but the method is almost the same. This kind of bomb has a fuse, one end of which is connected to the exhaust pipe. As long as the car starts moving and the exhaust pipe gets hot, it will ignite the fuse containing white phosphorus, and finally detonate the explosive. Just now when I got out of the car, I smelled a strange smell, but because I was in a hurry to pee, I didn't pay attention. It turned out that our car had already started burning underneath, if not for my urgent need to pee, we would both have been blown up."

  Chen Zhenhua nodded, and the two squatted down by the side of the road, watching as the car writhed in agony in the flames, both feeling a bit tense.

  "What should we do?" Chen Zhenhua asked after a long while.

  "Be careful from now on, there are people shooting cold arrows at us from behind, and it's hard to guard against hidden arrows!" Huang Aiguo said.