A live stream that dramatically transformed a depressed schoolgirl shocked netizens across the count

Gu Qingshang did not touch the reply box.

She recorded the lock screen time, the unknown number, and the text message content, captured the original page, and sent it along with the authorization for the query to the law firm's email address, then casually pushed the phone to Chen Lang.

Su Niannian braced herself against the wooden table with both hands, her short wolf-tail hair hanging down beside her face.

"Reply to him, 'Come at me if you dare.'"

"Replying would be tantamount to telling him that the text message scared us." Gu Qingshang exited the page. "That sentence won't be part of the evidence chain."

"Then curse a few more times, until you can get in."

"The lawyer will talk to him on my behalf."

Su Niannian closed her mouth, but her jaw remained clenched.

Chen Lang put the transparent evidence bag on, wrote the time on the seal, and glanced at the half-open wooden window.

The vegetable-selling tricycle outside the wall is still parked in the same spot.

The car owner squatted down next to the vegetable basket and tied up scallions. He wrapped the rope around the basket seven or eight times, but there wasn't a single extra bundle of scallions on the car.

The two tourists in the distance took turns holding up their cameras and taking pictures of the bougainvillea under the eaves for about ten minutes without moving their feet.

Chen Lang drew the curtains.

"The newsletter only mentioned the northern foothills, without mentioning the cooperative or the health and wellness project at all."

Gu Qingshang turned the computer around.

"The house number in the photo was just repaired, and the live streamers didn't miss it."

"This means that the other side knows we're going out and that we're going to the northern foothills, but they haven't gotten what we just found out yet."

Chen Lang picked up the document bag and sealed it.

"Those guys outside are just keeping an eye on the door to see if we've left. The one sending the text messages is hiding in the back; he won't show himself."

Bai Weiwei turned off the remote start of the two SUVs, and the engine noise outside the courtyard wall stopped.

"Are we still going to the northern foothills?"

"go."

Chen Lang collected the phones from the table and turned off location sharing and automatic photo uploading one by one.

"No live stream today, keep the old photos to yourself. Don't mention any locations on the street, and don't upload any photos to the cloud."

Su Niannian crossed her arms.

"They came to scare us first thing in the morning, are we just going to put up with it?"

"Who said we tolerated it?"

Chen Lang hung the heavy truck key back on the wall.

"Let him squat there all day, and we won't even be able to smell the exhaust fumes from our cars."

The two SUVs remained in the yard.

Bai Weiwei went out through the back door, borrowed a straw hat and a delivery tricycle, and placed several empty vegetable baskets in front of the bamboo gate, blocking the view inside the courtyard.

The vehicle in front drove away from the east alley. Ten minutes later, the vehicle behind followed closely behind the tricycle, bypassing the grain drying ground, and connected to the country road from the south side of the village.

The man who had tied scallions to the wall got up to look over, then took out his phone and dialed a number.

In the last row of the car, Chen Lang leaned back in his seat, the terminal playing high-altitude footage transmitted back by the levitating ball.

"After being tied up for twenty minutes, I finally remembered that I could still make calls on my phone."

Su Niannian glanced back.

"Should we arrest them and question them?"

"What law did he break by squatting by the roadside bundling up scallions?"

Chen Lang turned off the screen.

"Let him keep squatting. There's no one in the yard, so he can keep watch for us."

"This security guard doesn't need a salary, and he even brings his own stool." Bai Weiwei laughed as she gripped the steering wheel.

The two vehicles, separated by four intersections, entered the Beilu Township Road one after the other.

As the mountain road narrows, medicinal herb fields unfold on both sides. Villagers squat on the ridges, weeding with bamboo baskets on their backs. Off-road vehicles roll over gravel pits, and tie-dyed cloth strips brush against the rearview mirrors.

Bai Weiwei sat in the passenger seat of the front car, reciting the old names of the villages along the way.

"This area used to be called Shikanpo, but the name has been changed on the map long ago. Further north is Yanzikou, where the cooperative used to collect medicinal herbs, and several nearby villages would send their herbs there."

Shen Qingci held a hardcover notebook and wrote down the old names, forks in the road, and abandoned notice boards one by one.

She drew a horizontal line behind the swallow's beak.

"If a logistics order from ten years ago uses the old place name, searching with the current name will definitely not return all results."

"The old folks are still using the same old names." Bai Weiwei pointed to the stone wall in the distance. "When you're going around the Three Spirits, don't just read the map when you ask for directions. If the names are wrong, they won't know where you're asking for."

Shen Qingci added a note in the margin.

In the car behind, Gu Qingshang glanced at the side mirror every now and then.

A bread truck loaded with vegetable baskets followed for two kilometers before turning into a parking lot at the market entrance. A silver sedan drove through three intersections and stopped in front of the health center, where the occupants helped an elderly man with a cane out.

"There are no cars following us anymore," Gu Qingshang said.

"This road connects six villages, and everyone has to travel this route."

Chen Lang leaned back in his seat.

"If you treat every local car as a spy, we won't even need to check the files today; we can just start filming a spy drama."

Gu Qingshang looked away.

"You looked in the rearview mirror seventeen times in forty minutes."

"Habit."

"What exactly do you do for a living?"

"A true travel blogger."

Su Niannian, who was sitting in the front row, turned around.

"You've done a pretty jack-of-all-trades as a blogger. Washing dishes, chopping wood, beating up bodyguards, and now you're even in charge of surveillance."

"These are all chargeable services." Chen Lang raised his eyelids slightly. "The wages you owe me are enough to keep me working in the hospital until next year."

The tension in the car eased a little.

Forty minutes later, two SUVs stopped outside the Songhe Village Committee.

The bulletin board at the entrance had just had its paper changed, and a row of red characters was printed at the top.

Beware of free medical consultation scams and refuse to be sold overpriced health products.

Below are twelve records of people being scammed, with amounts ranging from eight thousand to twenty thousand.

In the corner were several photos of health product packaging, with the boxes printed with "Cheng's Secret Recipe" and "Cangshan Divine Doctor".

Bai Weiwei stood by the car door and read the notice from beginning to end.

"Someone is using Mr. Cheng's name to deceive the elderly in the village."

Su Niannian took the equipment box out of the trunk.

"No wonder the village committee kept asking us three times yesterday whether we would do a live broadcast."

The village committee office has four long tables, and three staff members are gathered around a computer checking the refund list.

The printer ejected a page of material, and the man sitting in the middle took the paper and looked up at the door.

Bai Weiwei first handed over the referral slip issued by the village.

"Director Zhou, as we mentioned on the phone yesterday, we're here today to check some old documents."

"Come in."

Director Zhou took the referral slip and then looked at the bag of materials in Gu Qingshang's hand.

"What do you want to investigate?"

"There's a mountain health and wellness project from ten years ago, and publicly available files left from when the Yunxiu Cooperative was deregistered." Gu Qingshang placed the materials on the table. "It involves a doctor named Cheng Shouzhou."

Director Zhou closed the register.

"Looking for Mr. Cheng again?"

He did not accept the materials.

Which company do you work for?

"We don't have a company." Gu Qingshang took out a letter of authorization from the patient's family. "My grandfather received his assisted treatment ten years ago, and now his condition has worsened. I want to verify the treatment records from back then."

"That's what the previous group said too."

Director Zhou nodded toward the bulletin board outside the door.

"They claimed to be Mr. Cheng's relatives, and came into the village to take blood pressure for free, giving away eggs and medicine kits. Once the elderly got to know them, they took out a set of health products for 18,800 yuan, saying that it could cure any disease."

"Twelve households paid the money. We've been chasing them for half a month, and we still haven't gotten 170,000 yuan back."

His gaze fell on the equipment case that Su Niannian was carrying.

"Cameras, young livestreamers, finding miracle doctors—your setup isn't much different from theirs."

Su Niannian placed the equipment box on the table, the metal clasp making a loud thud as it hit the surface.

"Last night, fearing the elderly person's information might get out, we even deleted the live stream cache. We even delivered the materials to you, but you didn't even look at them before lumping us together with scammers?"

Director Zhou remained seated.

"When those twelve elderly people paid the money, they also felt that the other party was a good person."

Su Niannian turned her foot and pressed the sole of her shoe into the crack of the floor tile.

"What you're saying—"

"Nian Nian".

Gu Qingshang raised his arm to block her.

Su Niannian turned her face away, her chest heaving twice, and retreated to the door.

Chen Lang opened the equipment box.

The floating live-streaming ball, action camera, and microphone were all lying in the anti-collision groove, the power was off, and the memory card had been removed.

He pushed the equipment box onto the reception desk.

"You can keep the things here."

All of their phones were turned off, put into transparent storage bags, and placed next to the equipment box.

"We won't be broadcasting live today, we won't inquire where Zhou Henian lives, and we won't ask the old man any questions. We'll only look at the project files that can be legally accessed, as well as the cooperative's deregistration documents."

Director Zhou glanced at the equipment box.

"Are you willing to verify my identity first?"

"ID card, family authorization letter, lawyer's letter, and commitment letter regarding the use of the documents are all in the bag."

Chen Lang pushed the document forward a bit.

"You're keeping an eye on outsiders to protect the village elders, which is perfectly reasonable. If we want to go in and check information, we'll follow your rules. Check whatever you require."

The only sound in the office was the spinning of the printer.

Director Zhou picked up the authorization letter at the top and handed it to the staff member next to him.

Another person dialed the publicly listed phone number on the law firm's website to verify the letter number and the handling lawyer.

Shen Qingci stood by the reception desk, her gaze fixed on the corner of the table.

The refund register wasn't properly sealed, with half a page of the form showing.

The twelve elderly people were arranged in order of payment date, with the salesperson, receiving account, family member's phone number, and refund progress noted behind them.

There were also several handwritten reminder slips lying on the side.

The handwriting was different, but they all wrote about the same thing: the old man's home could not be told to outsiders.

Shen Qingci placed the timeline on the table and stopped outside the reception desk.

"This registration form is very detailed."

Director Zhou looked up at her.

"Who received the money, which account it went into, and how far it was refunded—it's all recorded separately." Shen Qingci pointed to the obscured notes section. "If someone comes to inquire about the elderly person's address, it's fine for you to stop them. If we were guarding this door, we would have stopped them too."

Director Zhou slowed down his movements as he flipped through the materials.

"You understand, that's good. We've learned our lesson before, the village can't afford to suffer a second time."

"So the materials we brought will also be handled according to this rule."

Shen Qingci laid out the timeline.

The patient's name, medical record number, and hospital name were all covered with black strips, leaving only the date, the purchase of medicinal materials, the suspension of the project, and the change of the cooperative on the paper.

"The prescription wasn't posted online. The information about the elderly person who told us about their situation last night—where they live, their age, what illnesses they've had—has also been completely deleted."

She placed the commitment letter regarding the use of the data on the timeline.

"If we really need to question the villagers later, we will first make our identities and purposes clear. If they are unwilling to talk, we will leave on the spot. We will not broadcast or disclose information about anyone's illness or what medications they have used."

Director Zhou looked down at the timeline.

"Then why are you targeting the Yunxiu Cooperative?"

Shen Qingci pushed over a copy of an old photograph.

"Cheng Shouzhou lived on the northern slope for a period of time. Not long after, the health and wellness project was halted, and the cooperative was also deregistered. These three events happened within three months of each other, the timing was too close."

She pointed to the wooden house in the photo.

"There used to be a sign at the entrance of this forest ranger station that said it was a temporary contact point for medicinal herbs for a mountain health and wellness project. But we checked the public roster and couldn't find this contact point or Cheng Shou-chou's name on it."

Director Zhou asked, "Can you be sure that he was involved in this project back then?"

"Not yet."

Shen Qingci put the pen cap on.

"Right now, all we can say is that this line of investigation is worthwhile. The photos and dates match up to some extent, but we still lack other materials to corroborate it."

She moved the old photo forward by half an inch.

"It's precisely because the facts haven't been verified that we came to the village committee to go through the formalities and check the public records. If we went to block Zhou Henian's door based on just a photo, we wouldn't be much different from those swindlers outside."

The staff members behind the table exchanged glances.

The staff member in charge of verification hung up the phone.

"The lawyer replied that there was no problem with the identity, and the letter number matches."

Director Zhou flipped through two more pages of the commitment letter, and just as his hand touched the file application form, the landline on the desk rang.

He picked up the receiver.

"Songhe Village Committee, who is this?"

A low male voice came from the other end of the phone. The office was small, and every word on the receiver reached everyone's ears.

"The group that first came to the village is a livestreamer. Seeking medical help is just a pretext; they're just here to get views. Don't let them see the cooperative's records. If something really happens, you can't afford the responsibility."

Director Zhou held the receiver and looked up at the people around the table.

"Who are you?"