Dark Light Chaser.

Chapter 174 Backtracking Evidence
Inside the criminal investigation team, Shi Hongfang was walking slowly.

Jiang Kaiji and Mei Jianbai led a group of men to Wang Youcai's clubhouse to arrest people;

Liu Yuan went to the hospital to visit her old classmate, preparing for a second examination of the fake Wang Sheng's body;

Tian Hao and Jin Ping'an went to Hu Yingshao's home to collect evidence.

Apart from a few people who were responsible for ensuring the basic operation of the detachment, most of the staff were absent.

Click, sizzle.

Shi Hongfang opened the interrogation room door again and sat down opposite Hu Yingshao, but this time, he did not bring any recording tools.

"Hongfang, you're here."

Hu Yingshao stopped acting with a long face and leaned back on the sofa calmly.

Shi Hongfang clasped his hands together on the table and said, "If possible, I hope you can call me Captain Shi here."

Hu Yingshao glanced at the security camera with a strange expression, then raised an eyebrow: "You've come to see me alone, so the security cameras are definitely off. It's just the two of us here, no need to worry about those little things... Have all those people left?"

“You’ve made such a big fuss, we don’t have time to just loaf around in the team.”

Shi Hongfang took out his spare phone, unlocked it, placed it on the table, and pushed it towards Hu Yingshao.

Hu Yingshao reluctantly got up from the sofa, walked to the table, and picked up his phone.

"Tao Jun didn't delete the video?!" Hu Yingshao feigned extreme surprise.

"There's no need for you to put on an act in front of me. The videos Wang Youcai has are at most scandals, and they won't have any impact on you."

Shi Hongfang leaned back in his chair and looked up at Hu Yingshao: "Something that is obtained through great hardship is valued far more than something that is easily obtained."

You went to great lengths to get Tao Jun to delete those videos, just to create the impression that all the crucial evidence was on those USB drives, thus diverting their attention and making it easier for you to do other things.

Hu Yingshao ignored Shi Hongfang and fiddled with his phone over and over. Finally, he fixed his gaze on the logos in the four corners of the phone.

The logo is a door that is slightly ajar.

"In the past two years, Mr. Hu's health has been getting better and better. The number of times he goes to the club has been increasing year by year. Should I compliment him on his vigorous old age?"

Seeing that Shi Hongfang was getting impatient, Hu Yingshao dawdled for a long time before finally opening the phone folder.

Looking at the dozens of sub-files named with dates and times, he sighed insincerely: "Sigh, Hongfang, sometimes these social engagements are beyond our control. You should know that better than I do."

"Don't interrupt. You know what I mean. Why did you kidnap someone three months ago? Give me an explanation right now. I don't have time to argue with you about this case."

Shi Hongfang couldn't understand what had gotten into Hu Yingshao that made him do something so outrageous three months ago.

Why not just honestly find a prostitute at a club?

Directly drugging and tying up people is something a cunning old fox like Hu Yingshao wouldn't do.

Tian Hao and Jin Ping'an only had the case at hand in their eyes.

Shi Hongfang, on the other hand, took a holistic view, expanding his vision to the entire Qianhua City.

He not only had to handle the case at hand, but also deal with the power shifts that followed Wang Youcai's downfall.

"What are you talking about, Hongfang?"

Hu Yingshao gave a sly smile: "I was just going to the club for socializing, I didn't do anything else."

Shi Hongfang took a deep breath: "Then let me put it another way. What are your thoughts on the series of kidnappings that started three months ago?"

Hu Yingshao grinned, his wrinkled old face looking nauseating.

“Hongfang, you are a criminal police officer. You should have your own opinions and not always ask others for their opinions.”

"Besides, I don't know anything about this kidnapping case, and I haven't read the case file. Even if you ask me for my opinion, I don't know what to say."

Hu Yingshao simply refused to budge, even though there were only the two of them, Hu Yingshao and Shi Hongfang, in the interrogation room.

Shi Hongfang had no choice but to put away his phone and leave, having no other option but to deal with the old man.

He had already placed his hand on the doorknob, about to leave.

Hu Yingshao suddenly said, "To be honest, you are not suitable to be a criminal police officer. In terms of observation skills, you are not even as good as Tian Hao. Why have you been clinging to the position of captain for so many years?"
Your brother has always been saving the deputy director position for you.

"Are you interfering in my family affairs?" Shi Hongfang said coldly.

"This is just the teacher's advice."

Hu Yingshao chuckled dryly: "Your phone is pretty good."

No matter how cunning or treacherous an old fox may be, it wouldn't dare to show off in front of a tiger.

After making this nonsensical compliment, Hu Yingshao curled up back into the sofa and took a nap.

With his eyes tightly closed, he didn't notice that Shi Hongfang's gaze was growing colder and colder, almost to the point of freezing him.

As the door slammed shut, Hu Yingshao opened her eyes again and said sourly, "If it weren't for your good family background, someone like you..."

The red light on the monitor came back on, and Hu Yingshao immediately shut his mouth and continued to doze off.

…………

"Old Tian, ​​come and take a look at this!" Jin Ping'an shouted from the study.

Tian Hao, who was busy collecting fingerprints in the living room, had just finished putting his fingerprints on the card and saved them when he hurriedly ran to the study.

"what happened?"

"Smell this."

Jin Ping'an handed over an inkstone.

"The smell of disinfectant." Tian Hao put down the inkstone and picked up the calligraphy brush from the box.

Some of these brushes are old-fashioned dip-ink brushes, while others are brushes with an integrated ink reservoir.

The former is mostly used for calligraphers' creations, while the latter is used to save time when writing inscriptions for others in public places.

These calligraphy brushes were also soaked in disinfectant. Judging from the concentration of the odor, the soaking time should have been less than twenty hours, which means it was yesterday.

Jin Pingan said excitedly, "Why don't we try going back in time? We don't use disinfectant to wash calligraphy brushes."

Tian Hao cautiously shook his head: "You can only use backtracking three times at most, it's best not to act impulsively."

"If I were Hu Yingshao, I would have burned all these things before turning myself in, instead of washing them with disinfectant and then blatantly leaving them on my desk for someone to check."

"Since we're already here, we can't just leave like the tech department did, taking some fingerprints and hair samples, snapping a few photos, and then leaving, can we?"

Jin Ping'an felt that since he had three chances, it wasn't impossible to try four or five more times.

There's no need to conserve energy on this.

"Anyway, looking back at the past of this house, one item is enough. Compared to the decorations in the house, this item that Hu Yingshao will take out to use will show you more and more complete things."

Jin Ping'an began to persuade Tian Hao: "Can you help me see which brush he uses most often? I'll try to go back and see."

Tian Hao couldn't refuse him, so he had no choice but to agree.

However, instead of choosing the brushes that could hold ink, he picked up the solid ones.

"Tao Jun once said that Hu Yingshao liked to grind ink with bodily fluids, so it is very likely that he used this kind of old-fashioned brush."

Tian Hao picked up a heavy calligraphy brush and handed it to Jin Ping'an: "Nobody knows which ones he uses for daily practice and which ones he uses for creating art. Just pick one and try it out."

"Row."

Jin Ping'an closed his eyes and began to trace the brush back.

Soon his consciousness arrived at a distorted space filled with rooms of all sizes, each room recording a piece of the history of the calligraphy brush.

Jin Ping'an began to drift towards the nearest occupied rooms. The closer the rooms were to his consciousness, the closer the events were to taking place.

In fact, Jin Ping'an's ability to rewind wasn't like this at first.

When he first discovered his abilities, this space of consciousness was in complete chaos, and the retraced history was a non-linear time structure.

Every piece of history is constantly shifting; what happened yesterday may be just a hundred meters away, while events from decades ago may seem like they are right before our eyes.

The current orderly arrangement of history is the result of his continuous use of his abilities to adjust the space according to his own understanding.

These two are... Wang Youcai and his younger brother Wang Youde?
As Jin Ping'an looked around at the rooms, he spotted the Wang brothers, Wang Youcai and Wang Youcai.

Based on repeated experience and the distance, Jin Ping'an estimated that the incident must have happened recently, most likely just a few hours ago.

With limited time available, instead of wasting more time searching through the long history for evidence of Hu Yingshao's illegal and criminal activities, it would be better to obtain information about Wang Youcai first.

After the two met last night, Wang Youcai and Wang Youde disappeared. That old bastard Hu Yingshao must know something.

With that in mind, Jin Ping'an didn't hesitate any longer and immediately immersed himself in this period of history.

Jin Ping'an's body appeared in the living room, but he quickly noticed something was off.

'I thought... there's no sound...'

History with a voice is rare, and this time they weren't as lucky as before.

However, the silence did not affect the plot development; he quietly followed beside Hu Yingshao.

Hu Yingshao opened a tea bag and poured the tea powder into the teaware.

'Does this old man like to drink tea dust?'

Not long after, the family's female caregiver hurriedly ran to the door.

Fortunately, Hu Yingshao did not do anything suspicious during this time, so Jin Ping'an was able to spare some attention to observe the female caregiver.

They happened to notice the arrival of the Wang Youcai brothers.

Jin Ping'an stood beside the caregiver, looking at the Wang brothers with their unfriendly expressions and the female caregiver who was bowing repeatedly as if apologizing. A sense of doubt arose in his heart.

Could what Hu Yingshao said be true? Did Wang Youcai come over last night to threaten him?

No sound is really troublesome.

Wang Youcai walked through Jin Ping'an's body to the coffee table and sat down, unceremoniously pushing the tea set aside.

Instead of calling the police as Hu Yingshao had suggested, the caregiver picked up a garbage bag and went downstairs, giving everyone space to talk.

'It seems I'm overthinking it.'

Jin Ping'an shook his head at Hu Yingshao with a look of disgust. Wang Youcai had only pushed the tea set away, but it was being exaggerated as if he had overturned it.

Wang Youcai looked unwell, as if he was arguing with Hu Yingshao about something, but soon he put on a smiling face and offered tea.

What followed was pretty much what Hu Yingshao had said when he surrendered, except that he didn't go to get the tea leaves but instead answered a phone call.

Jin Ping'an's spirits lifted immediately, and he pressed the pause button to memorize the phone number.

Although all the information in the room will be fed into his mind after the regression ends, recalling a phone number from a bunch of messy information is still a challenge.

To give a simple example, recalling a phone number is as difficult as asking Guo Xiaosi to grab a rebound from Kobe Bryant in basketball.

It's not as difficult as climbing to the sky, but it's at least as difficult as getting dust on the tip of a needle.

After watching the interaction between Wang Youcai and Hu Yingshao, Jin Pingan made up his mind.

'When I have time, I definitely want to learn lip reading!'

Jin Ping'an stood between the two sides, itching with impatience.

This feeling is even more unbearable than a poor student watching a foreign movie without subtitles. Even if you don't understand what the characters in the movie are saying, you can still get the general meaning from their tone of voice, actions, and expressions.

But these people, one by one, like to keep their true feelings to themselves; you can't tell anything from them.

His only gain was that phone number.

Exiting the backtracking process, Jin Ping'an immediately took out his phone and quickly wrote down the string of numbers before the flood of information overwhelmed his mind.

About five or six minutes later, Jin Pingan shook his slightly dizzy head and got up from the sofa.

Tian Hao handed over a bottle of mineral water: "How are you feeling?"

"Not bad. I haven't been completely stagnant over the years. At least my tolerance is much stronger than before." Jin Ping'an unscrewed the bottle cap and gulped down a large mouthful.

“Wang Youcai did have an argument with Hu Yingshao last night, but it wasn’t as Hu Yingshao said, that the two Wang brothers threatened him.”

In the end, it seems Wang Youcai compromised with Hu Yingshao. After Wang Youcai and his group left, Hu Yingshao stood alone on the balcony, muttering something to himself with a disdainful expression.

"In short, this retrospective analysis yielded no useful information other than that phone number."

Unfortunately, there was no sound this time, and I don't understand lip reading, otherwise I would at least know whether their argument last night was related to the case.

After listening, Tian Hao stroked his chin and asked, "Didn't you see the later parts?"

"No, to save time, I went straight to that timeline after seeing Wang Youcai." Jin Ping'an scratched his head sheepishly.

"I have an idea."

Tian Hao said, "Since your headache and nausea are caused by a large amount of information being fed in, wouldn't it be possible to avoid the aftereffects if you didn't enter a specific time period and just observed in your consciousness space?"

Jin Ping'an explained, "But if we don't go in, we can't see all the contents. And even if we don't go in, the time I can stay in that space is limited; I can't stay there indefinitely."

"But if we don't delve into a specific period of history, there won't be any aftereffects of information indoctrination, right?"

"So, wouldn't you be able to backtrack multiple times? With so many backtracked segments, surely a few key pieces of information will surface, right?"

Based on his understanding of Jin Ping'an's abilities, Tian Hao offered suggestions.

"Hey, hey, hey... Do you know how many historical events are in that consciousness space? Even if I don't go in, information will still overflow and be fed into my brain."

Moreover, that information is no longer just simple information; it also contains a lot of confused memories. I'm afraid that when I come back, I won't be able to tell whether I'm a person or an object.

Most importantly, with so many fragments to recall, finding key information is harder than finding a grain of sand in a bag of rice.

Jin Ping'an had considered this method, but he ultimately gave up because it was simply too inefficient.

Let's cultivate books, let's cultivate books, let's cultivate books...

There are too many subtle foreshadowing elements; I suggest you wait a while before reading it all at once, it will be much better that way…

After this case is over, I will write a few chapters of daily life as a transition, and then it will be Ai Liang's high school life. At that time, all the foreshadowing in the second volume will be revealed all at once (and I may also dig four or five more plot holes).

This writing style isn't very friendly to readers who are following the story closely, and as a seasoned bookworm myself, I can certainly sense that.

Sometimes when I review my own books and look for typos, I feel like locking the author in a dark room and not letting them eat until they write at least 10,000 words a day!

I wrote it myself? Then it's alright...

As an author who can foresee the subsequent plot, there are naturally reasons for writing it this way; I just want to apologize to the readers who have followed the story...

I'm so sorry!

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(End of this chapter)