Chapter 2599: Investigation (26)

Quan Youde knew how to cater to a man's weaknesses. Shortly after they became sworn brothers, he arranged for Lu Renjia to meet a gentle, agreeable young woman—one with "the look of a son-bearer," as they said.

Wine and lust proved a potent combination. Lu Renjia succumbed quickly, and before long, the woman was pregnant. She gave him a boy.

The birth of his son seemed to ignite something in Lu Renjia—a reckless courage, a determination to "do big things." What had once been furtive and small-scale now turned brazen. He threw himself into his partnership with Quan Youde with near-manic intensity, stealing publicly funded drugs in ever-larger quantities.

The steady flow of stolen pharmaceuticals transformed into shining silver dollars. Within a single year, Quan Youde distributed over twenty thousand yuan to him—more money than he could have earned in a lifetime working for the Senate.

Such staggering profits only fueled Lu Renjia's greed. He wanted to amass enough wealth to last his son a lifetime.

For days, Lu Renjia refused to reveal where he had hidden his illicit gains, or the whereabouts of his mistress and child. But after several sleepless nights of interrogation, he finally broke. The woman and boy were in Macau. As for the nearly thirty thousand yuan in dirty money, he had instructed her to purchase bonds and stocks in the Nanyang Company under their son's name.

Wu Mu found this confession grimly amusing. It seemed the Senate's naturalized cadres were keeping up with the times—no longer burying embezzled fortunes underground or bricking them up inside double walls.

"Should we bring his woman and child back to Guangzhou?" Zheng Mingjiang asked.

"Not yet. First, they're not criminals—at most, involved parties. Second, Lu Renjia is clever. He almost certainly has a backup plan." Wu Mu paused. "He knows our policies inside and out. He knows we won't make things difficult for women and young children. So he's probably made other arrangements for them. Those thirty thousand in bonds and stocks are the obvious assets—there are likely hidden ones too. He's counting on them accessing it after the storm blows over. No need to rush. Let's wait for this hidden thread to surface."

"You really think so?" Zheng Mingjiang looked surprised. "Would he think that far ahead?"

"Heh. You don't understand how these people's minds work." Wu Mu waved dismissively. "In any timeline, corrupt officials are people with a keen sense of crisis. Why else would they hoard wealth so frantically? They know perfectly well that exposure means imprisonment or death—yet they still pursue what they call 'sacrificing one person for the family's happiness.' Some even dream of 'benefiting future generations.' So they'll do everything in their power to hide money obtained through such hardship, squirreling it away for family and descendants."

Zheng Mingjiang fell silent. After a moment, she murmured, "I almost feel sorry for them now..."

"Aren't the ones truly deserving of pity Lu Renjia's wife and daughters?" Wu Mu's voice turned cold. "He arranged nothing for them."

Just like that, Lu Renjia transformed back into a despicable wretch in Zheng Mingjiang's eyes. She responded with palpable disgust: "You're right. We absolutely cannot let this mistress and bastard child live comfortably!"

"They won't. But we're not having an easy time of it either." Wu Mu's expression darkened. "Lu Cheng sent a telegram. Yesterday they raided the Jubao Hall—as expected, they found nothing. Just a few unimportant shop assistants. No account books, no registers. Even the undercover agent..."

"Yuan Shuzhi."

"Yes. Yuan Shuzhi is missing too. Most likely they took him with them."

Zheng Mingjiang tensed. "Could his identity have been exposed? Could they have silenced him?"

Yuan Shuzhi had joined this operation on her recommendation. If he had died in the line of duty because of her decision, she would never forgive herself.

"It's possible," Wu Mu acknowledged. "But if they truly wanted to silence him, why go to the trouble of taking him elsewhere? They could have killed him right there at the Jubao Hall. No—I suspect he learned something important, and Quan Youde decided to keep him close. He's probably with Quan Youde's gang now, hiding somewhere. I've already notified the police department and issued arrest warrants for Quan Youde and his associates. Yuan Shuzhi is on the list as well."

"Where would they hide?"

According to Lu Cheng's assessment, Quan Youde was most likely holed up at his farm estate. The investigation team had located its approximate position by examining transaction deeds archived at the county yamen, but the property lay deep in remote mountains. Local inquiries yielded nothing—no one knew the path.

"There's nothing we can do from here except wait for news from Lu Cheng and his team," Wu Mu said. "Quan Youde's gang can't have gone far. They're almost certainly still within Boluo County. He wouldn't dare venture deep into the mountains either—there are still un-naturalized Yao strongholds scattered throughout the Boluo range."

As they spoke, a communicator arrived with another telegram from the Boluo investigation team.

"New lead in the androgen case." Wu Mu scanned it briefly before handing it to Zheng Mingjiang. "They didn't catch the Southeast Asian man, but they caught the midwife."

Zheng Mingjiang snatched the telegram eagerly. The message was lengthy. After raiding the Jubao Hall and both of Quan Youde's residences in Boluo, the investigation team had ordered the local police and National Army to conduct a comprehensive "security check" of the medicine market.

During the sweep, they had unexpectedly captured the fleeing midwife who had been peddling "gender-changing medicine." According to her confession, she had come to Boluo to restock. After purchasing goods from the Southeast Asian man, she learned that problems had emerged with the gender-changing medicine and that police were looking for her. She had been hiding in the medicine market ever since.

The team thoroughly searched her residence, but the results were disappointing. They found none of the packaging Hao Long had specifically mentioned in his letter—no outer boxes, no glass jars for the testosterone gel, no copper dosing pumps. Only strong white spirits, various jars and pots, and an assortment of Chinese medicinal materials. This meant the "Sorceress" had performed secondary blending of the "aphrodisiac wine" here, but this wasn't the primary processing site.

The midwife also confessed that the Southeast Asian man had never claimed his product could "change the gender of a fetus"—only that it could "strengthen yang." She had later heard rumors that this Southeast Asian man was a eunuch who could somehow still visit prostitutes. That gave her an idea. If this medicine could make a eunuch "regain his yang," surely using it on a pregnant woman could transform a female fetus into a male one?

As a midwife, she understood the enormous market demand for such a miracle all too well. She immediately purchased two bottles of medicinal wine from him. Because the wine was expensive, she bought white spirits to dilute and re-blend it herself.

Beyond this, the midwife offered no important clues—only that the Southeast Asian man spoke broken Hokkien and could manage a few sentences of "New Speech."

"No real breakthrough," Zheng Mingjiang said, setting down the telegram with evident disappointment.

With Lu Renjia's arrest, the drug loss case was essentially solved. But Zheng Mingjiang remained unsettled by the "gender-changing medicine" and "aphrodisiac" angle.

In terms of case value, the androgen loss was a minor thread in this larger web of pharmaceutical crimes. Yet something about it nagged at her. Where had this Southeast Asian man come from? How did he obtain the androgen? And how did he know the correct way to use it?

These unresolved mysteries hardened her determination to uncover the truth.

Back in her office, she continued puzzling over investigative approaches. Since sales of the gender-changing medicine had begun as early as six months ago, that timeline effectively ruled out most potential suspects in the drug leakage. Only three main possibilities remained:

First, the Pharmaceutical Factory itself. Currently, this seemed least likely. Every drug loss case they had uncovered so far had no connection to the factory. She could essentially rule this out.

Second, the Bairen General Hospital. Apart from the factory, the hospital pharmacy was the only place that stocked testosterone gel. But if drugs were leaking from there, other medications would surely have gone missing too. Why would they only be discovering it now?

Third, the clinical trial subjects. This was Zheng Mingjiang's primary focus. But she had already consulted Hao Long, who explained that the drug trials had ended long ago. Many test subjects had since lost contact. Those who were easy to locate had been checked by Political Security without raising any red flags. Most of the remaining subjects had either found the drug too expensive or too inconvenient to use, or were simply unwilling to keep paying for medication at the hospital. How could she investigate further down this avenue?

Hao Long had promised to provide a complete list of test subjects, but once compiled, it would have to go through Political Security's investigation process—a delay of two or three months at minimum.

That left only one viable path: investigating within the Bairen General Hospital itself. After all, both the clinical trials and drug distribution had been conducted there.

Currently, their standard methods for auditing medical records and pharmacy accounts—beyond cleaning up "external hospital prescriptions"—involved checking whether the quantity of drugs prescribed over a given period matched the actual quantity dispensed, then scrutinizing medical records for suspicious patterns. Prescriptions for abnormally large quantities at once. Patients who repeatedly registered to see doctors for the same condition, potentially colluding with staff to siphon drugs.

But none of these approaches applied to the Bairen General Hospital or its test subjects. Experimental drugs were distributed at fixed times in fixed quantities. There was no patient registration system to exploit.

Zheng Mingjiang turned the problem over and over in her mind, mentally running through every known method of fraud, but she couldn't reach any concrete conclusion.

That night, she dreamed she was back in the old timeline—a student again, submitting her first paper to a journal. She relived the crushing pressure of reviewers and her supervisor bearing down on her, and jolted awake. As her mind cleared, she remembered: she had left that academic world ten years ago. Now, though she had become something of an "authority" herself, she still held fast to her principle of treating students and subordinates with genuine kindness.

(End of Chapter)