Stop it, the country really can't fit any more bans on the domestic entertainment industry.

Half an hour ago.

In Mushroom Village, in Old Niu Tou's farmhouse courtyard.

The old woman slumped to the dusty ground, slapping her thighs hard with both hands.

Tears streamed down her deeply wrinkled face, and she let out a heart-wrenching wail.

"That old man..."

The old woman wiped away her tears as she loudly berated him, "I can't live like this anymore! Why is he so troublesome?!"

"At your age, it would be so much better to stay home and take care of your grandchildren. Why do you have to go to a big city like the provincial capital and get involved in those shady things?"

"He told me he was going to visit relatives when he left, but now he's been arrested. How can our whole family hold our heads up in the village anymore?"

She cried harder and harder, her thin body trembling incessantly in the sunlight.

Old Zhang stood aside, looking at the scene before him, so full of life yet so heartbreaking.

Hearing his sister-in-law's sobs growing louder and louder, he felt a sense of helplessness.

As the local police officer, it is my duty to come here today to inform Lao Niutou's family that he has been arrested for gambling in the provincial capital.

Faced with such an emotionally distraught family member, he knew that any words of comfort would be futile, and he could only let them vent first.

Just then.

A cell phone rang from the policeman's trouser pocket.

The sound of the bell seemed particularly abrupt in the courtyard.

Old Zhang reached into his police cell phone and glanced at the screen.

The incoming call display above clearly showed it was an internal number from the provincial capital's economic crime investigation department.

Upon seeing this number, Old Zhang's expression immediately turned serious.

He took a deep breath and winked at Niu Daniu's wife, who was wiping away tears beside him, signaling her to take care of the old man first.

Then, he turned around and strode out of the courtyard gate.

They went outside to the old locust tree with its lush branches and leaves, away from the crying and commotion in the yard.

He swiped his thumb across the screen, pressed the answer button, and held the phone to his ear.

"Hello, this is Lao Zhang."

When the call connected, I heard a tired voice from my colleague in the provincial capital.

The other party's tone was very serious, without the slightest bit of the usual pleasantries.

Then, the officers from the provincial economic crime investigation department told him that they had just discovered something important through the phone of the arrested old man.

The comrade from the provincial capital's voice became even lower.

"This is the core reason why we contacted you."

"After bringing the man back to the station, we conducted a surprise interrogation of him overnight."

"At first he refused to speak, but later, under the persuasive influence of the policy, he finally confessed the truth."

"Our technical staff simultaneously seized his personal belongings and cracked the password on his phone."

"We discovered in his chat application that he had recently joined a mysterious group chat."

"Furthermore, he downloaded and saved a document locally on his phone."

The colleague from the provincial capital paused for a moment, then read out the name of the document.

"The document was titled, 'My Life as a Gambling God'."

Just hearing this name.

Old Zhang was speechless.

He felt that everything he heard today was challenging his thirty years of experience as a police officer.

"Just because you read a short biography?"

Old Zhang could hardly believe his ears.

He was able to win 600,000 at a high-end casino after reading a fabricated autobiography?

How is that possible?

"Now that you've found the group chat, have you caught the person?" Old Zhang asked anxiously.

The sound of a mouse clicking came from the other end of the phone.

"The provincial capital's technical departments stayed up all night."

"We mobilized our most skilled cybersecurity experts to trace the account that uploaded the document in a comprehensive manner."

"That account has a very arrogant username, which is 'The Only True God in This Group'."

"We resolve IP addresses and then cross-reference the base station signals."

"The target's real address has been successfully located."

The voices of my colleagues in the provincial capital carried an undisguised disbelief.

"Old Zhang, this is also the most unbelievable part for us."

"After locating the person who uploaded this biography of the ultimate gambling god, 'the only true god in this group'..."

"His address shows he's in Mushroom Village, Yinhe County, Yanghai City!"

........................................

Upon hearing this news...

Old Zhang was dumbfounded on the spot.

He felt a buzzing in his head, and he was completely stunned.

Mushroom Village?

It is this remote, backward, and impoverished rural area where he is standing right now, where there are hardly any young laborers left.

In this village where you could easily hit three old farmers with a brick you threw, there was actually a master of gambling who could write a gambling manual that would shake the provincial capital.

This news completely shattered his worldview.

Old Zhang held his phone, feeling his palms were covered in sweat.

Familiar faces from the village flashed through his mind.

Zhang the Blind Man at the East End of the Village?

Li the Cripple at the west end of the village?

Or are they young people who came back from working away from home for the Chinese New Year?

impossible.

These honest, simple farmers have barely even been to the county town a few times; how could they possibly write something like that?

He hadn't even fully processed this shocking information.

On the other end of the phone, the instructions from the provincial capital police had already been relayed.

"Old Zhang, a master of this level hiding among the people poses a great threat to society."

"The provincial department leaders attach great importance to this."

"Given that the target may have strong counter-surveillance capabilities, we cannot launch a large-scale search and arrest operation in the village for the time being in order to avoid alerting them."

"What they mean here in the provincial capital is that you are the local police officer in charge of the area, so you are most familiar with the movement of people in the village."

"I'm giving you an important task."

"Immediately conduct a clandestine investigation in the village to see if there are any suspicious outsiders recently. We must find out who the author of this 'God of Gamblers' biography is!"