Driving the tiger to devour the wolf uses one secret to cover up another secret...
To be honest, most of the case progress Zhou Han brought up today came from Huaili police and his old classmate Han Zhao.
He and Han Zhao both worked in the field of trace analysis. After graduation, he came to Dengyuan, a place full of talented people, while Han Zhao went to Huaili, where talented people were hard to come by.
Zhou Han thought he was conscientious and had solved many major cases, but he often had to take into account the relationships between his superiors and subordinates, which inevitably hindered the progress of his work.
On the other hand, Han Zhao's GPA was not as good as his in school, and his rank was half a level lower than his, but in Huaili, he was the one who had the final say, and the leaders had to give him face in return.
After Han Zhao arrested Qiu Pengfei, he immediately took people to the cave to collect evidence. The entire interrogation process took only three months.
Qiu Pengfei confessed to his crimes, including removing road signs, causing a truck to fall off a cliff, participating in the trafficking of unearthed cultural relics, taking and kidnapping hostages, and illegally placing explosives to endanger public safety. He is about to face a prison sentence of more than ten years for multiple crimes.
So, he told Han Zhao everything he knew and guessed, hoping not to implicate his family, and requesting an appropriate reduction in his sentence.
Qiu Pengfei said that Wang Jian once drank too much and mistook him for Lao Moe.
He said, "Old Mole, don't blame me for being cruel. You know too much and are destined to die."
Han Zhao started investigating based on this sentence and found out that two years ago, a male corpse was fished out more than ten miles downstream of the Longji Mountain River. Someone called the police at that time, but the body was completely rotten and no one claimed it, so it had to be cremated.
Based on the police records, Han Zhao calculated the river flow rate in that season and visited Mutao again. He basically confirmed that the male corpse was Wu Dayong, also known as the real old mole.
"Old Mole knows too much," this sentence has a hidden meaning, and now it seems that it must be related to the porcelain in the cave.
Most of that batch of porcelains were purple gold glaze, also known as persimmon-colored porcelain. It just so happened that there was an ancient kiln site in Mutao, and archaeological evidence showed that the most produced porcelain at that time was persimmon-colored porcelain.
The porcelain excavated by archaeologists should be kept by the cultural relics department. Who hid them in the caves? Who dared to transport them out and sell them?
Wu Dayong was a genuine countryman who had not received much education. The porcelain artifact placed in front of him was no different from a lump of earth. How did he know that porcelain could be sold for money?
Therefore, there must be someone who knows the business behind Wu Dayong, Wang Jian and Qiu Pengfei.
When Zhou Han said this, the answer in Cheng Sizhou's mind was about to come out.
In fact, when Jiqing and Yu Ming teamed up to investigate the porcelain fragments in the truck that fell off the cliff, they had already discovered that the mastermind had mixed a small number of sacrificial utensils with a large number of ordinary porcelains.
Ordinary porcelain comes from the Mutao ancient kiln site, while sacrificial vessels come from the Longji Mountain ancient tombs.
The only one who had access to both was the archaeological team that was reorganized by the Cultural Relics Bureau after Wen Duo crossed the ocean. It was they who took Wen Duo's manuscripts and photos and brought Destan to the Wu tribe.
There were only five core members of that archaeological team. Apart from Tong Chunyang who resigned to change careers, the remaining four were: Zhang Hongliang, Pei Yan, Wu Puxian, and Zhao Hongxia.
When Cheng Sizhou talked with Wen Duo, Wen Duo reminded him that it was not difficult to identify the mastermind behind the scenes. The difficult part was that so many years had passed and the clues had been cut off. What method should be used to hit the target and make him confess and be punished?
At that time, the only thing Cheng Sizhou could think of was to go to Longji Mountain in person.
First, Mr. Jiang has passed away, and he has a legitimate reason to investigate the truth behind the truck falling off the cliff; second, with his professional level, he might be able to find new clues in Longji Mountain; third, he left without saying goodbye, and he certainly couldn't hide it from his parents and colleagues, so he wanted to use himself as bait to lure the person behind the scenes to take action again.
Things did develop as he expected, but the one who attacked them was Qiu Pengfei, not the old leader whom he had truly respected for many years.
"When Old Han was investigating downstream, he met an old man who was fishing. He was probably in his sixties. He said that Longji Mountain was too dangerous and it was inevitable that people would fall into the river, but the most bizarre thing was that in 1998, nine bodies floated up at once." Zhou Han opened the photo on the computer in front of him. It was the lower reaches of the river where the water flow gradually became gentle.
Wen Zichuan and Cheng Sizhou looked at each other. In 1998, they were eight and four years old, both ignorant children.
But they also heard from adults that in the summer of 1998, rare and torrential rains of high intensity, large scale and long duration caused serious flood disasters. Although the Longji Mountain River is an inconspicuous tributary of the Yangtze River, it was also affected by the heavy rainfall and the river water level rose sharply.
When a natural disaster strikes, everyone is busy protecting themselves. The sight of nine bodies floating on the river may seem horrifying, but in reality, it is easily overlooked among the rising death toll reported every day.
Han Zhao continued his investigation in Longji Mountain and Mutao Town using the clues of "summer of 1998, young and middle-aged male, dead or missing".
Twenty years have passed, and not many people can remember what happened back then, but he still found a middle-aged man in his thirties. The man told him that his father fell into the river and died in the summer of 1998.
Han Zhao asked for more details, and the man said that his father was very strong and worked as a porter in the village, moving goods for a living.
There were heavy rainstorms in 1998, and the people who used to collect wood and mushrooms stopped coming. He couldn't find work, and the family savings were getting less and less. He sighed at home all day long.
Suddenly one day, his father found a job. The employer was very generous and gave him 500 yuan, saying that he would give him another 500 yuan after he finished moving the goods.
The man remembered it so clearly because his father told him that when he got his wages, he would buy a color TV for the family.
But later, not only was there no color TV, his father also disappeared. Half a month later, he and his mother collected his father's body dozens of miles downstream.
The man said something similar to the old man who was fishing. A total of nine bodies were fished out that day. They were all strong young men from Mutao and surrounding villages and towns.
"Did they really fall into the river and drown?" Wen Zichuan felt strange. "Nine people fell into the water at the same time and in the same place?"
"Of course it wouldn't be such a coincidence," Zhou Han said. "Do you remember that rope bridge? It broke in 1998, and it wasn't until the winter that the mushroom farmers pooled their money to repair it."
Only a few old mushroom farmers who contributed money to the construction of the rope bridge still remember. They heard that it was eight or nine people who climbed onto the bridge at the same time, which caused it to collapse.
After the rope bridge was repaired, the mushroom farmers saw Wu Dayong often walking back and forth on the bridge, taking a shortcut to patrol the mountain, and the rope bridge did not collapse, so they asked Lao Moe how heavy it was. Lao Moe said, one hundred pounds.
Later, the Liu brothers also heard from the old mushroom farmer that the weight of the rope bridge cannot exceed 100 kilograms.
"The bridge didn't collapse due to pressure, it was broken by human hands, and those nine people were laborers who helped move the cultural relics." Cheng Sizhou thought about it for a moment and made a conclusion.
Han Zhao's discovery explained something that had always puzzled him: Destin was an overseas gang, and the process of their transporting cultural relics had to be very covert so as not to arouse the suspicion of the locals.
But if they hid behind the scenes and hired local laborers to move the boxes, no one would know what was inside once the boxes were closed. In an era without surveillance, this was enough to conceal the truth.
But a thousand yuan commission was too much. Cheng Sizhou remembered that his father's monthly salary at that time was only six or seven hundred yuan.
The porters in the mountains earn a thousand yuan a year by selling their labor, which is enough to ensure food and drink for their families. Moreover, they only need to go into the mountains to carry things, which takes two or three days at most.
He could imagine that the nine porters happily took five hundred yuan, did the work, and then fell into the river and lost their lives before they could get the remaining five hundred yuan.
"Was the rope bridge...broken by Old Mole?" Wen Zichuan felt sad. Behind the nine dead laborers were nine broken families. The children could never wait for their fathers to come back, the wives could never wait for their husbands to come back, and the old people could never wait for their sons to come back.
"Lao Moe died in the same way as them. There should have been ten porters back then, and it was Lao Moe who killed them." Cheng Sizhou stared at the words "drive the tiger to devour the wolf" written in black and white on the paper. For the first time, he felt heartbroken because he read a book and understood it too quickly.
Driving the tiger to devour the wolf is a strategy devised by the counselor Xun Yu for his lord Cao Cao in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The original intention was to hide himself and let the other two parties fight and consume each other so that he could reap the benefits.
In 1998, three forces broke into the Wu tribe, poisoned and killed people, and robbed ancient tombs: Destin, the archaeological team, and local laborers.
Destin took away a large number of cultural relics, and the archaeological team brought back a broken porcelain gui. The laborers may not have known what they were carrying, but the high commission also made the greedy people have evil intentions.
The person behind the scenes used the strategy of "driving the tiger to devour the wolf", letting the greedy Wu Dayong cut the rope bridge, kill the other laborers who came to ask for the balance, and then monopolize the commission.
In this way, Wu Dayong also had the "secret" of robbery and murder. He naturally became a pawn of the person behind the scenes, and used the identity of a forest ranger to guard the "inward-flowing" cultural relics in the cave for him.
Twenty years later, perhaps because Jiang Yunli re-investigated the hidden truth after his retirement, or perhaps because a disagreement arose between the chess player and the chess pieces, Wang Jian suddenly got involved and killed Wu Dayong.
If we say that twenty years ago, Wu Dayong was the "tiger" and the other laborers were the "wolves", then twenty years later, Wang Jian became the "tiger" again and Wu Dayong became the "wolf".
But Wang Jian also died. Although the truck falling off the cliff was an accident, Qiu Pengfei played a role in adding fuel to the fire.
"The final link: If Wang Jian is the 'wolf' and Qiu Pengfei is the 'tiger', then Qiu Pengfei must have seen 'him,'" Cheng Sizhou looked at the surveillance screen with a complicated expression. "He must have received instructions from 'him' to intercept us on our way back."
"I've interrogated him." Zhou Han breathed out, his brows etched with fatigue. "He said he wanted to kidnap you and extort money from you, but his plans were completely disrupted."
Qiu Pengfei admitted that when Wang Jian tricked him into coming, he promised to give him 200,000 yuan every month, but apart from giving him 200,000 yuan in cash in the first month, he never gave him any money afterwards.
So every time he saw Wang Jian, he would talk to him about money, but Wang Jian was very impatient and scolded him for being obsessed with money.
At the very least, Qiu Pengfei was just a small-time actor. If he hadn't seen that he could earn 200,000 yuan a month, which was faster than making money from filming, he wouldn't have come to the mountains to suffer such hardships.
Later he realized that what he and Wang Jian had done in partnership was trafficking in unearthed cultural relics, which was an illegal and criminal activity.
Qiu Pengfei panicked. If he had no movies to shoot, he would at most be poor and embarrassed, but if he broke the law, he would go to jail.
He wanted to take the money and run away, but Wang Jian said he had no money and asked him to wait a little longer. He said that he would be able to pay back all the money he owed him after he completed a few more orders.
But how could Wang Jian, an uneducated driver, understand cultural relics? Qiu Pengfei suspected that Wang Jian, too, had received a share of the money from his employer, but he had embezzled his share and lost it at the casino.
During the stalemate between the two, Qiu Pengfei accidentally heard Wang Jian say, "Lao Moe is destined to die." He began to worry that he was not only pretending to be Lao Moe, but would become the next Lao Moe.
Intentional murder, impersonation, trafficking of cultural relics... He didn't dare to get involved in this mess again. But just when he was about to run away, he received a special "express delivery".
The sender remained anonymous. After opening the box, it looked like a box of simply wrapped mooncakes. When the cakes were taken out, there was actually a letter under the paper grid.
The words on the letter were all typed. The sender told him that Wang Jian had lost more than one million yuan in gambling and had already lost all his money, so he wanted him to help "deal with" Wang Jian.
To show his sincerity, he prepared 200,000 yuan for Qiu Pengfei and asked Qiu Pengfei to pick it up at the agreed time and place.
This was the first contact between Qiu Pengfei and "him".
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