The Anguo County government secretary, now in his forties, was quite humorous and possessed a broad vision. He impressed Fifth Grandpa as a man of great potential. However, the public's assessment was different. To disguise his feelings, Fifth Grandpa had become "good friends" with the older men, inviting them to a state-owned restaurant for a meal last night. Over a few drinks, a mix of truth and lies emerged. Filtering out the bragging, the conclusion is that Secretary Hou was a double-dealer, and it was he who spearheaded the struggle against the old factory director. Consequently, many at the pharmaceutical factory hated him. If he hadn't spearheaded the struggle, the old director and his wife wouldn't have died.

Grandpa Wu was shocked upon hearing this. He hadn't imagined Secretary Hou was more complex than he'd imagined. While seemingly humorous and promising, he was actually a man with ulterior motives. Grandpa Wu decided to investigate further, to find out why Secretary Hou was spearheading the fight against the old factory director and whether there was a larger conspiracy behind this.

Grandpa Wu and his bodyguard split up and went around collecting clues. That night, he took his bodyguard to Secretary Hou's house and found out what was wrong.

Secretary Hou's house is a single-family house in the county government compound. The compound is entirely made up of bungalows, with only five such houses. It is a house that ordinary people look up to.

His family wasn't large, just four people: a couple and their two children. His wife worked at the neighborhood office. The children were probably in fifth or sixth grade, though they didn't look very tall. Normally, by the time someone was in their forties, their children would be old enough to work, but his two were only in their teens.

He walked through the first-floor living room and the children's room, then up the stairs to the second floor. There was a string of bells tied to a rope at the stairwell, quite discreetly hidden in the darkness. If it weren't for Grandpa Wu and his two well-trained bodyguards, the bells would have surely rung by now. He slipped through the ropes and found a small living room, tiny, split between three bedrooms. Grandpa Wu had no idea which room the man slept in, so he could only search room by room.

Gently opening the door to the left of the stairs, I found the couple sleeping in this room. It was a little after one in the morning, and Grandpa Wu lit some "sleep-inducing" incense, placed it in the room, and then left and closed the door.

These were given to him by Jiang Shaoming in the past. He hadn't used them for many years, but they hadn't expired.

After leaving Secretary Hou's room, the bodyguard discovered problems in the other two rooms and waited for Fifth Grandpa to come out and call him over to take a look.

Then I saw a room filled with something that looked like a formation. The air was thick with the smell of tar, a bit fishy. If I had been here, I would have known it was the smell of human blood. Unfortunately, the kid was in the special forces catching drug dealers and wasn't here.

Fifth Grandpa was also familiar with this smell. He remembered that many brothers died on the battlefield. When the war was over, they carried people out, and this was the smell after the blood was burned dry.

After sniffing a few more times and determining the source of the smell, Grandpa Wu made a prompt decision to retreat and quickly go back to call for help.

The three of them were very quick, and soon they were back at the back of the state-owned hotel. They climbed up the outer wall to the second floor, through a window that had been opened in advance, and found themselves in a bodyguard's room. This was why Fifth Grandpa had requested three rooms; these three rooms were not adjacent, and all were designed to facilitate nighttime travel.