When Song Jinyue emerged from her space, only one building at the docks still had its lights on. Noisy voices drifted from inside, and from the sound of it, the people there were eating and drinking.
She quietly crept over to the window, bent low, and listened in on their conversation.
Good grief.
She would never have known if she hadn’t listened, but what she heard gave her quite a shock.
There were several families like Lu Weiguo’s who had caught wind of impending trouble and wanted to transfer their assets before secretly fleeing to Hong Kong with their wives and children.
They had all paid enormous sums of money to learn about this smuggling route and get in contact with the gang operating at the docks.
They thought that once they bought passage, they could take their entire families to Hong Kong and live comfortably from then on.
Who would have thought that the men at the docks were actually ruthless criminals who preyed on their own clients?
Once the families transferred all their wealth to the docks, the gang would use the excuse of smuggling them out to sea under the cover of darkness.
In reality, they intended to seize their clients’ fortunes.
Once the boats reached open water, they simply threw the passengers into the sea and left them to feed the fish!
In the original novel, the only reason Lu Weiguo and his family of four had successfully reached Hong Kong was because of Lu Manman’s heroine halo!
Song Jinyue also learned from their conversation that they had already used this method to murder seven entire families.
Who knew how many lives they had taken?
Song Jinyue clenched her fists.
These heartless bastards!
They could even bring themselves to murder small children.
They truly deserved to die!
One of the men, already thoroughly drunk, bragged that he had a crown passed down from the imperial palace and wanted to bring it out for the others to admire.
Egged on by his companions, he staggered out of the room with a flashlight and headed toward a nearby storage shed.
Song Jinyue quietly followed him inside.
Once inside the storage room, the drunken man first moved a coil of thick rope away from the corner. Then he crouched down and lifted one of the floorboards in front of him.
A dark passageway immediately appeared beneath it.
The man had barely climbed down when Song Jinyue followed right behind him.
His reactions were dulled by alcohol. Before he even realized someone was following him, Song Jinyue knocked him unconscious with a single punch.
She picked up the flashlight he had dropped and swept its beam around the hidden chamber.
Only then did she realize that there was an enormous secret space beneath the row of buildings at the docks.
The underground chamber was huge.
It was filled with redwood chests of various sizes. Every chest had been marked, and the belongings taken from each family had been stored separately.
Among the piles of chests, Song Jinyue soon found those marked:
“Song Family of Shanghai.”
She had discovered more than thirty chests in the secret room beneath the study back home.
Yet the number of Song family chests stored here was five or six times greater!
So the majority of the Song family fortune had already been secretly transferred here by that social-climbing bastard Lu Weiguo.
And still, he hadn’t been satisfied.
He had wanted to completely empty the Song residence before finally leaving.
In the end, however, all his scheming had backfired.
Everything he had done had been for nothing.
Without hesitation, Song Jinyue transferred all of the Song family’s assets into her space.
Several hundred chests still remained in the hidden chamber.
She counted the markings on them.
Exactly seven different surnames.
In other words, all seven families were already dead…
Song Jinyue pressed her lips together.
As a doctor, she had witnessed countless separations between life and death in hospital wards.
But this was the first time she had encountered people who had brutally murdered so many innocent lives purely for money.
Murderous lunatics like these—filthy rats hiding in the gutter—deserved to spend the rest of their lives rotting behind bars!
Now that she had discovered something like this, Song Jinyue couldn’t simply ignore it.
After collecting the Song family’s fortune, she left the secret chamber.
When she passed the unconscious drunk lying on the floor, she gave him several vicious kicks for good measure.
After climbing out, she replaced the floorboard and dragged over a crate filled with smuggled goods, placing it on top to conceal the entrance.
Worried that the police might have trouble finding the hidden chamber, she deliberately left several clues on the floor and placed the flashlight nearby.
The other men were still drinking noisily.
The table was covered with empty liquor bottles, and every one of them was completely drunk. They had long since forgotten about the man who had gone to retrieve something from the secret chamber.
Taking advantage of the fact that they were barely conscious and on the verge of passing out, Song Jinyue simply locked the door from the outside.
Perhaps because the gang was paranoid about their own criminal activities, the building had been fitted with a heavy iron door.
Even if they kicked until their feet broke, there was no way they could force it open.
Someone would have to smash the lock from the outside.
As for the only man who had left the room?
Song Jinyue had already knocked him unconscious and left him inside the secret chamber.
He couldn’t even get himself out, much less break the lock and rescue his companions.
With everything taken care of, Song Jinyue retraced her route and headed straight for the police station in Qingcheng.
She didn’t enter the station to make a report personally.
Instead, she placed the anonymous report she had prepared earlier somewhere the officers would easily spot it when they stepped outside.
Then she deliberately made some noise.
The moment the officer on duty came outside to investigate, Song Jinyue immediately slipped into her space.
The officer successfully found the report.
After reading its contents, his expression instantly became grave.
Better to investigate and discover it was false than ignore a warning that might be true.
He immediately alerted the other officers, and they rushed toward the docks mentioned in the letter.
If the information turned out to be false, the worst that could happen was a wasted trip.
But if it was true, they absolutely could not allow such vicious criminals to continue taking innocent lives!
…
The police successfully arrested everyone in the gang operating at the docks.
After an entire night of interrogation, they finally managed to get the criminals to confess.
All for the sake of stealing other people’s money and property, these deranged lunatics had actually gone so far as to murder innocent people!
It was enough to make anyone grind their teeth in fury.
In the end, those beasts, who were worse than pigs and dogs, paid the price for their crimes.
They were sentenced to death.
All the money and property they had illegally seized were also confiscated and turned over to the authorities.
The anonymous report had been an enormous help, so the officers began searching the surrounding area for whoever had delivered it.
However, after questioning everyone nearby, they couldn’t find a single person who had seen anyone approach the police station the previous night.
With no other choice, they expanded their search.
Meanwhile, the person they had been searching everywhere for was already sitting aboard a train bound for the capital.
All the sleeper tickets from Qingcheng to the capital had already sold out, so Song Jinyue had no choice but to buy a hard-seat ticket beside the window.
The train was packed with passengers.
People were squeezed tightly against one another, and since it was summer, the carriage was filled with the heavy smell of sweat.
Song Jinyue’s stomach churned from the odor.
Unable to bear it, she turned toward the window and focused on the scenery outside, hoping to distract herself.
As the train slowly began moving, a middle-aged woman sat down in the seat beside her.
“Young lady, are you traveling alone?”
“Mm.”
“Where are you headed?”
“The capital.”
“What a coincidence! I’m going to the capital too! Are you going there to look for work?”
“Mm.”
Song Jinyue’s stomach was still uncomfortable, so she wasn’t in the mood to chat.
Whatever the woman asked, she simply gave a casual response.
Song Jinyue had assumed their conversation would end after a few polite exchanges.
Instead, the woman beside her kept pressing her with questions, practically interrogating her as though she were conducting a household registration check.
When she heard that Song Jinyue was going to the capital to find work, the woman’s eyes immediately lit up.
“Oh my, what a coincidence! My cousin runs a candy factory, and they’re currently hiring a radio announcer. The work is easy, and the salary is thirty-five yuan a month. They’re looking for exactly the kind of young, energetic girl you are!”
The moment Song Jinyue heard that the woman wanted to introduce her to a job, she immediately straightened up from where she had been leaning against the window.