At 4:17 in the morning, the morning mist on the river bank had not yet dissipated, and the river breeze, carrying a damp and fishy smell, slapped the containers at the abandoned dock.
The first person to discover the body was an old scavenger.
The old man was hunched over, dragging a torn sack and searching for scrap metal among the containers when he suddenly tripped.
He got up cursing, and in the dim light of the day, he saw a pair of shiny Italian handmade leather shoes - the toes were facing up, and the soles were covered with muddy moss from the river bank.
Looking up from the leather shoes, there are well-tailored suit pants, a bloodstained shirt, and finally -
A purple face.
The old man let out a heart-wrenching scream.
At nine o'clock in the morning, the Public Security Bureau held a press conference.
"Preliminary investigations have identified the deceased as Zhou Hui, chairman of Xinghui Group. He died between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. this morning."
The spokesperson tapped the microphone to drown out the clatter of shutter clicks. "A suicide note was found at the scene, consistent with suicide."
The press box exploded instantly.
"Can the contents of the suicide note be made public?"
"There are rumors that Zhou Hui met with senior executives of the Gu Group before his death. Is this true?"
"Is there any connection between the Xinghui Group's alleged money laundering case and this case?"
The spokesperson, sweat dripping from his forehead, said: "The case is still under investigation, so I cannot disclose the details."
When the live broadcast cut to the Xinghui Building, the entire glass curtain wall building was shrouded in an eerie silence.
Security set up a cordon and employees filed out carrying cardboard boxes. One female employee's high heels got stuck in the revolving door, so she simply threw her shoes off and rushed into the rain barefoot.
The smart door lock of the Zhou family villa issued a sharp alarm when the police broke the door.
"According to the Criminal Procedure Law, we are now conducting a search of Zhou Hui's residence." The leading police officer showed the search warrant, followed by six forensic officers in white coats.
Lin Man stood at the top of the stairs in her silk nightgown, her nails painted red digging deep into the handrail: "My husband's body is still warm, and you—"
"Mrs. Zhou," the officer interrupted. "We found this at the dock."
Inside the transparent evidence bag was a Huawei phone with a broken screen.
Lin Man's pupils suddenly contracted - this was Zhou Hui's personal phone, and the lock screen wallpaper was a photo of the whole family in Maldives last year.
Eighteen-year-old Zhou Yuan suddenly rushed down from the second floor and said, "Give me back my dad's phone!"
She rushed towards the police like a little animal, but her mother grabbed her wrist tightly.
Lin Man's lips trembled, and her eyes swept over the police who were searching the study, swept over the opened safe, and finally stopped at the red dot of the surveillance camera in the living room - it should have been running 24 hours a day, but at this moment it was strangely off.
"Yuanyuan," she suddenly said to her daughter in German, "Go to your room and get the piano sheet music."
Zhou Yuan froze. This had been the mother-daughter code since they were little, meaning "Danger, hide quickly."
When the police pried open the secret compartment behind the wine cabinet in the basement, Zhou Yuan was stuffing her father's encrypted hard drive into a teddy bear doll.
She heard her mother screaming downstairs, followed by her brother Zhou Ziqian's roar: "Don't fucking touch my mom!"
The sounds of breaking glass, flesh colliding, and the metallic scraping of batons being unsheathed all mixed together.
Zhou Yuan curled up in the closet holding her teddy bear and smelled a faint smell of gunpowder coming from the doll - that was left by her father when he held her for the last time last night.
"Financial Weekly" used the entire front page to publish Zhou Hui's posthumous photo, with the title "The End of the Warlord".
The top five trending searches on Weibo are all related terms:
#Xinghui Group is involved in organized crime#
#Zhou Hui suicide scene video#
#Gu Group Emergency Statement#
The most popular video is a blurry surveillance video: at the dock in heavy rain, Zhou Hui kneels in front of a container, raising a pistol to his temple.
But 0.5 seconds before pulling the trigger, the picture suddenly shook violently, as if someone had remotely cut off the signal.
Financial blogger "The Wolf of Wall Street" posted an analysis: "Pay attention to the movement of Zhou Hui's left pinky finger. This is a distress signal commonly used by Wall Street traders, indicating..."
The post suddenly showed "Deleted".
In the morgue of the funeral home, forensic doctor Lao Chen secretly pressed the shutter.
In the photo, Zhou Hui's right hand is clenched into a fist, with a scorched scrap of paper peeking out from between his fingers. Old Chen carefully removes it with tweezers and reveals a few fragmented words under ultraviolet light:
[Night Owl...Chen...Gu...]
He suddenly heard the sound of the refrigerator slide behind him.
"who?"
He was answered by the muffled sound of a silenced pistol.
Five minutes later, a figure in a white coat walked out of the morgue and hung an "Equipment Maintenance" sign outside the door.
The morning light filtered through the corridor window, illuminating the cuffs of his suit that peeked out from under his white coat—the cufflinks were adorned with the Gu Group's eagle emblem.
Zhou Yuan saw Gu Yuxiao at the funeral.
The man in a black suit stood in the last row, like a shadow cutting through the light.
When the pastor read "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes", she clearly saw the curve of Gu Yuxiao's lips.
That night, Zhou Yuan pried open the floor of her father's study.
Hidden in the concrete interlayer was not a gold bar, but a copy of "Securities Analysis" that had been treated with chemical steganography. She shone an ultraviolet lamp on each page and saw her father's trembling handwriting on the title page:
Yuanyuan, by the time you see this, Dad will probably be gone. Remember, trust no one, especially those with the last name Gu or Chen. The combination to the safe is your birthday in reverse order. Inside is...
The writing stops here.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
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