After breaking up with my boyfriend, I made a fortune and rose rapidly in my career.

Huazhong Microelectronics.

Chen Ping's fingers were still on the table when he immediately recalled what had happened two months ago. The pile of old equipment that Lin Yuanzhou had brought back from Huazhong Microelectronics filled half the laboratory; the casings were rusty, the interfaces were outdated, and they were all industrial products that had been obsolete for at least fifteen years.

Veridian's hard drive was found among that batch of things.

But everyone's attention was focused on the hard drive, and no one checked the rest of the data a second time.

Wu Shaoming's last words still echoed in his mind: "There's something hidden inside that batch of equipment."

Chen Ping pushed back his chair, stood up, and walked out of the interrogation room without looking back.

In the corridor, Qin Yu came to greet him.

Is what he said credible?

"It's not important. You'll find out if you look it up."

As Chen Ping walked, he took out his phone and dialed Lin Yuanzhou's number.

The phone rang four times before being answered, and the sounds of a soldering iron and an exhaust fan could be heard on the other end.

"Mr. Lin, are you in the lab right now?"

"Just removed a main control board. What happened?"

"How much of that old equipment from Huazhong Microelectronics is still left undismantled?"

Lin Yuanzhou paused for two seconds, and the noise from the exhaust fan suddenly decreased, indicating that he had probably moved away.

"About a third of it has been dismantled. The rest is piled up in warehouse B, and we just finished filing and numbering it last week."

"Don't touch it. Wait for me to get back."

Chen Ping hung up the phone, quickly passed through the access control of the Provincial State Security Department, pushed open the building door, and a gust of cold wind blew on his face.

He fiddled with his car keys in his pocket, then turned and got into the car.

He drove 300 kilometers back to Nanzhou.

The clock on the dashboard pointed to nine o'clock at night, and the headlights illuminated the road ahead in a blinding white. Chen Ping held the steering wheel with his left hand and sent three encrypted messages to Lin Yuanzhou on his phone with his right, relaying Wu Shaoming's part about the old equipment word for word, and adding at the end: "Every single screw must be checked."

After sending the message, he tossed his phone onto the passenger seat.

At 11:40 p.m., the car turned into the Nanzhou High-tech Zone.

The lights were still on in Lin Yuanzhou's laboratory, and the roller shutter door of the B-area warehouse was open, with plenty of light from the incandescent bulbs inside.

Chen Ping parked the car and went into the warehouse.

Lin Yuanzhou was squatting on the ground, with a row of disassembled instruments spread out in front of him. Four young engineers in anti-static suits stood next to him, each holding a screwdriver and a magnifying glass.

"Have we arrived?" Lin Yuanzhou looked up, his forehead covered in a fine sheen of sweat.

"What hasn't been checked yet?"

Lin Yuanzhou pointed towards the depths of the warehouse.

On three rows of iron racks, dozens of devices of varying sizes were stacked, including oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, industrial controllers, signal generators, and so on. The oldest one had a 2006 manufacturing label on its casing, the adhesive tape of which had shattered into pieces.

"As you said, I've had them dismantle it starting from the outermost row. Each unit was numbered, and they were dismantled layer by layer, with each internal space scanned using an endoscope."

Chen Ping nodded, did not interfere, and dragged a folding chair to the corner of the warehouse to sit down.

The dismantling process is progressing very slowly.

Each piece of equipment had a different structure. Some had their bases secured with hidden clips, while others had partitions welded onto their inner walls, requiring a hot air gun to carefully blow them apart. Four engineers took turns working on it, and the loose screws and partitions that were removed piled up on the ground.

At 1 a.m., the first row was counted, and no abnormalities were found.

At 2:40 a.m., half of the second row had been checked, but there was still nothing.

A young engineer's hand trembled, and the screwdriver slipped, cutting his finger. Blood dripped onto the gray casing.

Lin Yuanzhou handed over a band-aid and glanced back at Chen Pingfang.

Chen Ping sat in the chair, legs crossed, arms folded across his chest, without urging him on.

3:17 a.m.

"President Lin!"

In the far corner of the second row, an engineer wearing goggles raised something in his hand, and Lin Yuanzhou called out to him.

It was an old-fashioned high-frequency signal generator, its casing painted military green, the model number on the nameplate worn away and illegible. The engineer flipped the base over and probed inside with an endoscope; the screen showed a gap of less than five millimeters between the base's steel plate and the casing.

Lin Yuanzhou walked over quickly and took the endoscope.

On the screen, there was a fingernail-sized object stuck in the interlayer, covered with a layer of yellowish wax.

"tweezers."

The engineer handed over a pair of pointed tweezers. Lin Yuanzhou held his breath, used the tip of the tweezers to probe into the interlayer, grasped the object, and slowly pulled it out.

A corner of the wax seal broke, revealing the black plastic outer shell inside.

It's a micro memory card. TF format, but the capacity label is covered by wax.

Lin Yuanzhou placed the memory card on an anti-static mat, pinched the edge of the wax seal with two fingers, and peeled it off little by little. The entire card was revealed; the surface was free of scratches, and it was well-sealed, suggesting it had been stored in the metal interlayer for many years.

Chen Ping stood up from the folding chair and walked to the control panel.

"Can you read it?"

Lin Yuanzhou inserted the card into the card reader and connected it to his laptop. The screen flickered and displayed an encrypted partition containing only one file.

Filename: 202_REC.wav

It's an audio file. The encryption algorithm is AES-256, which is a bit old, but it's still very standard.

Lin Yuanzhou's fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard, bringing up the decryption tool and starting the cracking program.

Four minutes later, the encryption was removed.

The file is less than 8MB and contains two audio recordings, totaling six minutes and eleven seconds.

Lin Yuanzhou pushed the laptop in front of Chen Ping, his index finger hovering over the play button.

"put."

The first recording came through the speaker.

Two men were talking. The first one had a deep voice with a distinct Jiangbei accent; it was Yan Qinghua. Chen Ping had heard this voice countless times in Guangling and wouldn't mistake it.

When Yan Qinghua discussed the acquisition of Veridian, he mentioned the valuation, the closing timetable, and the number of an offshore account.

The second voice was very low and hoarse, as if it had phlegm, and the last syllable of each sentence was drawn out. This person was teaching Yan Qinghua how to operate, using very careful wording, only using code names for each key point, and never saying the full name.

The first paragraph has ended.

When you click on the second paragraph, the timestamp shows it's from thirteen years ago.

It was the same hoarse voice, but the other person in the conversation had changed.

They were discussing the auction of an industrial land plot in the Nanzhou High-tech Zone. The man with the hoarse voice was arranging the bidding strategy, even setting the pace of the bidding and the price range.

After the recording finished playing, the warehouse fell silent, with only the hum of the lights audible.

Lin Yuanzhou looked at the computer screen. He extracted the hoarse voice from both recordings and compared them side by side, finding that the waveforms looked basically the same.

"I compared the two recordings, and the hoarse voices in them should be from the same person."

Chen Ping didn't speak. So, he took the laptop, imported the audio file into the police's voiceprint database, and began the comparison.

After a while, the results came out, showing a high match rate of 98.7%.

A photo of a man appeared on the screen; he was not young, and his name was written below the photo.

Zhang Jingru. Former Secretary of the Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Commission, now retired.

Chen Pingfang stared at the screen, shocked.

Lin Yuanzhou also came over to take a look, and he was stunned as well.

But Chen Ping didn't stop. He scrolled down the page, and in the kinship section, the son-in-law's name was—

Qian Bo.