Attending ex-girlfriend's wedding, arresting the groom's officer on the spot

The most difficult part was how to report the results to the task force. Zhang Kai stood at the door of Lu Chuan's office, the report in his hand like a hot potato. When Lu Chuan saw the conclusion of "excluding the same person," his fingers holding the cigarette suddenly stopped in mid-air, the ash falling long and leaving a charred mark on the file. "So we went in the wrong direction?" Lu Chuan's voice was hoarse. He flipped through the surveillance screenshots submitted by Wang Shuai. In the footage, "Zhou Mingguang" was walking towards the top floor. At this moment, every movement seemed to exude a deliberately feigned stiffness.

Zhang Kai pulled up a reconstruction of the deceased's skull and placed it side-by-side with a photo of Zhou Mingguang: "The similarity in the brow bone and jawline is 78%, which is a typical 'mirror image disguise'—the murderer deliberately dressed the deceased in Zhou Mingguang's clothes, wore his cufflinks, and even imitated his gait, all to mislead us into believing the deceased was Zhou Mingguang." He pointed to the left ear in the reconstruction, "The deceased didn't have three moles; this is the most crucial difference, which wasn't noticed before because it was covered by hair."

The lab's refrigerator hummed again, as if reminding them of the urgency of the situation. Zhang Kai pushed the revised list of the deceased's characteristics in front of Lu Chuan: around 45 years old, 178cm tall, right-handed, with a denture in the upper left lateral incisor, traces of an old fracture healing on the scapula, and blood type AB Rh-negative—a rare blood type with a probability of only 0.3% in the population, which might become a new breakthrough.

After learning the results, Zhou Mingguang's wife suddenly remembered a detail she had overlooked: "Last month, a strange man came to see Mingyuan. He had a small piece missing from his left ear and said it was from a dog bite when he was a child." She gestured to the location of the wound, which perfectly matched the subtle scar on the deceased's left ear. This discovery shocked Zhang Kai—the deceased might have known Zhou Mingguang, and might even have died in his place.

By the time Zhang Kai sent the latest report to the task force group, the sky outside was already turning white. He took off his gloves, watching the disinfectant slowly flowing in the pool, and suddenly realized that this forensic examination was not the end, but a new beginning. The mystery of the deceased's identity had been partially revealed, but what was exposed was a more complex conspiracy—like the cellular structure under a microscope, seemingly clear outlines concealed countless unsolved secrets. Amidst the hum of the refrigerator, he began to re-examine all the biological samples. This time, he was no longer looking for Zhou Mingguang's traces, but for the final testimony left to the world by the stranger whose identity had been deliberately erased.

Zhang Hui's desk was piled high with flight itineraries, hotel registration records, and immigration data. The red lines drawn on the map with a highlighter were intricate and resembled a large net. He stared intently at the computer screen, the call logs from the three months before Zhou Mingguang's disappearance scrolling before his eyes. Suddenly, a landline caught his attention—this number would ring precisely every Wednesday night at nine o'clock, the calls never lasting more than a minute, and the most recent call was the day before Zhou Mingguang "disappeared."

Following this lead, Zhang Hui visited the old residential area where the phone number was registered. The stairwells were piled with clutter, and peeling paint revealed faded advertisements. When he knocked on the door with a faded "Fu" character pasted on it, the old woman who opened the door looked him over warily: "You're looking for Old Chen? He moved away a long time ago, saying he went south to stay with relatives." Zhang Hui showed his identification, and the old woman breathed a sigh of relief. "That kid always comes to Old Chen's house, wearing a black mask. He always comes at night and leaves before dawn."

Through community surveillance, Zhang Hui identified a black sedan that frequently entered and exited the residential area. The license plate was forged, but the driving trajectory showed that the vehicle was last seen at an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city. When the special police broke down the door, the scene inside the warehouse made everyone hold their breath—Zhou Mingguang was huddled in a corner, his eyes filled with fear but also a hint of relief, with a cold bowl of instant noodles and a stack of documents on the table in front of him.

“They’re trying to kill me to silence me!” Zhou Mingguang trembled as he took the water glass. “Yuantu Technology’s smart city project used only substandard materials. I had the evidence, so they sent people to hunt me down.” He pulled out a USB drive containing complete test reports and transaction records. “I found someone with a similar build to me, paid him to impersonate me, just to mislead them.”

However, Zhou Mingguang's survival brought the investigation to a standstill. All previous investigations surrounding "Zhou Mingguang's death" were rendered useless, and the atmosphere in the task force's meeting room was oppressive and suffocating. Lu Chuan stared at the messy clues scribbled on the whiteboard and suddenly remembered a detail Zhang Kai had mentioned in the autopsy report—the deceased's upper left lateral incisor was a denture.

"Investigate all dental clinics in the city!" Lu Chuan's voice broke the silence. "Focus on records of patients who have had the same type of dentures installed in the last five years." After the order was given, each team acted swiftly. After visiting 73 clinics, they finally found a lead at "Sunshine Dental Clinic" in the west of the city.

“I remember this case!” The old dentist pushed up his reading glasses and pulled out a yellowed medical record. “Li Jianguo, he came in four years ago to get dentures. He was a hoodlum, often got into fights, and once his front tooth was knocked out.” Although the photo in the medical record was blurry, the jawline contour matched the deceased’s perfectly. The clinic’s X-ray archives were even more irrefutable evidence; the shape of the denture’s metal frame was exactly the same as the foreign object in the deceased’s mouth.

Through Li Jianguo's social connections, the task force discovered that he had intricate ties with loan shark companies, and Li Biao's "Honest Loan" was among them. Even more coincidentally, a week before his disappearance, Li Jianguo had been seen at Liang Kuan's hot pot restaurant, where he had a heated argument with Liang Kuan and Li Biao's men.

Lu Chuan stared at Li Jianguo's photo, a cold glint in his eyes. The puzzle of the case was finally beginning to unfold: Li Jianguo had been hired to impersonate Zhou Mingguang, but was silenced for some reason. And the mastermind behind it was likely Yuantu Technology, which was trying to cover up the truth about the shoddy construction project, and the loan shark gang that colluded with it.

"Re-examine Li Jianguo's movements, focusing on the people he contacted before his murder." Lu Chuan wrote the three characters "Li Jianguo" on the whiteboard. "At the same time, thoroughly investigate the financial records of Yuantu Technology. I want to see how many secrets they are hiding." As the night deepened outside the window, the lights of the Criminal Investigation Detachment remained on all night again. A new contest had just begun.

A damp leather file folder was slammed onto the conference table of the Criminal Investigation Division. The rustling of paper mingled with suppressed breathing. Lu Chuan's knuckles tapped heavily on Li Jianguo's photo: "An employee of a debt collection company, habitually using violence, with seven convictions for intentional assault in the past five years." He pulled out several yellowed mediation agreements, his fingertip tracing the name "Tian Feng." "And this vice president of Yuantu Technology started frequently borrowing money from underground banks three months ago." (End of Chapter)