Chapter 23 Undercover, Calm, Unbelievable! Yuan Jianxing felt that...
After leaving the deputy director's office and taking the private elevator next to it, Yuan Jianxing took out his phone to read the long list of messages that Mu Wangzhuo had just sent him.
In the chat box, Mu Wangzhuo first gave a lengthy description of the astonished expressions on everyone's faces when the deputy director announced the disciplinary notice. He then meticulously recounted what he had seen and heard in front of his office, subtly praising his own foresight along the way. Finally, he said, "You didn't come to the adjudication bureau today, so you must be packing your bags at home. Why don't you just go pick them up directly, so I don't have to make another trip? It's a good way to respond to the call for energy conservation and environmental protection."
Pressing the button to go directly to the second basement level, Yuan Jianxing typed a reply: "So easily turned? Aren't you afraid he really is an undercover agent from Kang Mingji, as I said before?"
Mu Wangzhuo's two replies came one after another:
"Then you haven't met him in person. If you had, you wouldn't think that way."
"The worst thing for an undercover agent is to be outstanding in appearance. If you're easily remembered, how can you be an undercover agent?"
Yuan Jianxing did not refute Mu Wangzhuo, because logically speaking, this was indeed the case.
But since yesterday, he has already experienced too many illogical things.
So much so that he even began to suspect that illogicality was the fundamental logic of the world.
Upon switching out of the office communication system, Yuan Jianxing saw that his job title had been downgraded from "Chief Executive Officer" to "Junior Executive Officer," and the people under his supervision had changed from thousands of executives in the central region of headquarters to a trainee executive officer.
The trainee executive's name field had two characters written on it: Fu Ze.
After staring at the name for a long time, Yuan Jianxing opened the trainee executive's profile and zoomed in on the front-facing photo with two fingers.
He truly found it hard to imagine that someone with such an indifferent face could speak so emphatically in front of a crowd, as Mu Wangzhuo had described:
"I believe in myself, and I also believe in Harami Hoshi."
You've never even met me, so why should you trust me?
Do you believe in Hara Mihoshi as a person, or in the position of CEO?
...
Realizing that her emotions were not quite right, Yuan Jianxing stopped thinking about Fu Ze.
After replying to Mu Wangzhuo with "I understand, I'll arrange it," he put away his phone and stared blankly at the ceiling of the private elevator.
The texture of the brushed metal distorted in his eyes, vaguely outlining the scene he had seen when he returned to his office yesterday.
*
With the power outage resolved, the lights in the executive office area were turned back on, and the indoor temperature control system resumed operation, dispelling the heat that had seeped in through the wide-open windows.
When Yuan Jianxing finished his report and returned to his office, he was greeted by the same coolness that had remained unchanged for decades.
The prison chair was placed with its back to the door, and the lower half was blocked by the desk, so when he first looked over, he could only see a crooked figure sitting there.
Just as he was about to remind the other person, "This is the adjudication chamber, so sit properly," Yuan Jianxing suddenly sensed that the other person's behavior was somewhat unusual.
After taking two steps, the crisp sound of leather shoes striking the floor became slightly hesitant.
He looked down and saw a bloodstain on the edge of his shoe, which was slowly spreading.
Tracing the blood flowing down the cracks in the floorboards, Yuan Jianxing saw the "surprise" that he would never forget.
The man's right arm was pierced through by a charred bullet hole, hanging limply at the side of the chair, no longer possessing the strength he had when he pointed the gun at Snake Eyes.
The already thin clothes were almost half-soaked by the blood seeping from the bullet holes, sticking stickily to the person's body.
The almost black blood plasma slowly accumulated beneath him, overflowing the edge of the prison chair and leaving several ugly, worm-like streaks where it flowed.
The fatal flaw was the bullet hole right in the center of his forehead.
Presumably due to a prior injury to his right forearm, the amount of bleeding from this bullet hole was not large; from a distance, it looked like a folk decoration that the person had deliberately placed between his eyebrows.
However, the fact that his hair, which was soaked with blood and had congealed into clumps at the back of his head, was barely recognizable as originally orange, testified to the immense power of the injury.
Despite suffering additional torment before death, the deceased showed no signs of struggle. Even their expression was...
Calm.
So composed, so composed that Yuan Jianxing was somewhat dazed—as if from the very beginning, this person had treated death as some kind of answer sheet.
But Yuan Jianxing couldn't calm down.
He had seen far more gruesome deaths than this, and he knew very well that given the man's actions yesterday and his "publicly broadcast" behavior on the rooftop, he was doomed to die.
However, sometimes, "death" and "death" are not equivalent.
A sentence handed down after trial is different from a violent death caused by personal grudges arising from superstition or supernatural forces.
At this moment, all the countless laws and regulations in Yuan Jianxing's mind vanished, leaving only four words:
This is outrageous!
Despite the burning rage within him and his fingers trembling and burning from the rush of blood, Yuan Jianxing calmly followed procedure and dialed the tribunal to report the accidental death.
After reporting the case and transferring it directly to his own name from the system, Yuan Jianxing stood upright in his office, still in the position of stepping on the bloodstain, watching through the floor-to-ceiling window as his shocked colleagues rushed toward him with various recording and testing instruments.
Although their movements were as swift and precise as when they were out on missions, in Yuan Jianxing's eyes they seemed to have been slowed down dozens of times.
A black and yellow cordon was set up at the office door. Countless people crowded into Yuan Jianxing's office. The indicator lights of various testing instruments lit up frequently, and a cacophony of voices echoed in the tiny space.
It wasn't until an executive marked the footprints under Yuan Jianxing's feet and said, "Chief, you can move now," that Yuan Jianxing's consciousness returned, and the flow of time returned to normal.
He immediately retrieved the surveillance footage and rewound the video to the time when he and Mu Wangzhuo left the office.
Before the surveillance system lost synchronization due to a power outage, two executives delivering documents had entered and exited his office. After the surveillance was restored, no other abnormalities were found.
So this is the only way to start.
The executives with their hair up and ponytails were inexplicably called back from the field and, even more inexplicably, taken into the interrogation room.
Yuan Jianxing was already waiting there.
The instant they were caught in Yuan Jianxing's gaze, they instantly recalled that seemingly outrageous rumor that had been proven true time and again—
All lies are exposed in Yuan Jianxing's eyes.
Did you notice anything unusual when you came to deliver the documents?
"No." The two, now covered in cold sweat, shook their heads simultaneously.
Looking at the scene photos projected onto the screen by Harami Hoshi, the hairdressing executive's voice trembled slightly: "When we entered the room, the suspect was still asleep!"
"How can you be sure he's sleeping or unconscious?" Yuan Jianxing pressed.
The executive officer immediately explained, "Because he took the initiative to talk to us afterward, he definitely wasn't unconscious."
"So what did he say to you?"
“Tell us…” The ponytail executive glanced at the trembling executive with her hair up, steeled her resolve, and, upholding the spirit of daring to take responsibility, and recalling Yuan Jianxing’s illustrious record, told us everything. “At the time, we saw your trainee executive’s file and were wondering how to pronounce the person’s name when the suspect took the initiative to tell us how to pronounce the name and what it meant.”
Although the document itself is not very important and does not involve any confidentiality principles, peeking at it is a major taboo in the workplace.
Just when the hair-up executive and the ponytail executive thought they were about to get a scolding, Hara Mihoshi didn't dwell on the issue. Instead, she continued to ask, "Anything else?"
"That's all, really. We received a mission and left later," the two replied hastily, their nerves on edge.
I don't know if I'm worried about my current situation or relieved that I've managed to escape unscathed.
After this interrogation, Yuan Jianxing ruled out the possibility that the two women were assassins based on their genuine reactions.
After asking the two about their mission details and double-checking with the other officers, Yuan Jianxing waved for them to leave, then mentally noted down a few key points:
1. At approximately 9:40 AM, a large-scale brawl involving firearms broke out near the Adjudication Bureau. Following reports from residents of V City, the Adjudication Bureau dispatched an equal number of officers to quell the unrest.
2. As of 9:53 a.m., the suspect is still alive.
3. At 10:12, the power tripped in the executive officer's office area due to a voltage overload. All the east and west-facing windows were opened for ventilation.
4. At 10:30, the power supply problem was repaired and everything returned to normal.
Furthermore, based on the forensic examination of the body's current condition and the time range of death, there is no doubt that the suspect was assassinated between 10:12 and 10:30.
At least within the adjudication bureau, everyone's cell phones were equipped with GPS tracking, and no one came to Hara Mikihoshi's office during the power outage.
The answer is obvious – the assassin was an outsider, and an outsider with an inside agent providing cover.
Regardless of whether the fighting outside was truly an accident, this brief power outage certainly wasn't.
Yuan Jianxing certainly wasn't naive enough to think that the Trial Bureau was some kind of pristine, ideal land, but this act of killing someone within the Trial Bureau, especially in his own office, was as blatant and brazen as leaving a stain of ink on a blank sheet of paper.
Now that the assassin's origins have been determined, the next step is to find out their modus operandi.
Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, Yuan Jianxing looked to the east and west.
Although the office was practically "wide open" at the time, it was still not an easy task to get to Hara Mihoshi's office through the open east and west windows without being discovered.
After much deliberation, Yuan Jianxing finally identified a relatively feasible route and focused his attention on the ventilation shaft that was a necessary passage along the route.
In recent years, in order to introduce that holographic real-time monitoring system, the Adjudication Bureau carried out a major renovation of the executive officer's office area and also installed central air conditioning.
Using this extensive ventilation system, the assassin could reach his destination—Yuan Jianxing's office.
Looking up at the vent on the ceiling of the room, Yuan Jianxing roughly estimated its size.
It is 40 centimeters long and 25 centimeters wide, a size that is barely enough for a thin adult to pass through.
However, considering that the executive who remained in the office at the time did not hear any noise, the assassin must have been even thinner.
He was thin, but his physical strength allowed him to complete such a treacherous route in just a few minutes...
Just as the on-site bullet hole analysis report was released, Yuan Jianxing immediately locked onto the Hercules AXR, which was inconspicuous at the back of the list of dozens of alternative weapons.
Putting yourself in his shoes, if he were to adjudicate a murder case at the General Administration, he would also bring this small, controllable, easy-to-assemble and disassemble pulse gun that can be reloaded.
However, the number of people in V City who can master this gun to a high degree is actually not as large as one might imagine.
And he only knows one right now.
Turning back to pick up the papers that had been scattered on the floor due to the earlier chaos, Yuan Jianxing pulled out a resume and then tidied up the other documents before putting them back on the desktop.
Looking at the height and weight recorded, Yuan Jianxing felt that he had vaguely found the truth.
So, Yuan Jianxing turned around and went back the way he came.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com