The group immediately began investigating.
Previously, because they knew the list was fabricated, they hadn’t analyzed in detail the supposed list of people Hong Guodong had “assaulted.” Now, however, it seemed that the other side had planted this thread quite deeply.
“Yan Xue. His older sister’s name really is on the list.” The moment Xiao Que saw the name, he suddenly breathed a sigh of relief. This meant they had finally caught onto the other side’s train of thought. “They’re definitely going to use Yan Xue for something next.”
“Yan Xue is only two years older than Yan Yu. Hong Guodong was already the vice president of the vocational and technical college back then, but he generally taught general education courses, so he taught far too many students. Yan Xue definitely attended his classes, but whether Hong Guodong actually knew who Yan Xue was is hard to say.” Feng Tang found the subject Hong Guodong had taught two years ago. “He taught an Outline of Modern History.”
“This…” Shu Yu was momentarily speechless.
Even at a vocational and technical college, a general education course like that wouldn’t be taught separately to each individual class. Most likely, it would be held in a lecture hall.
With several hundred students attending each lecture, even if Hong Guodong took attendance every single time, it would still be difficult for him to remember who Yan Xue was.
“Yan Xue definitely took general education courses during her years at the college, so she must have met Hong Guodong before. But by that logic, probably half the students in the entire college had attended one of his classes.” Feng Tang raised her head. “Saying that he got to know and remember Yan Xue through a class like that and then assaulted her is a bit too much of a stretch.”
Especially when no one even knew whether Yan Xue had skipped those general education classes.
“This is basically an unsolvable mystery. Yan Xue is twenty-four this year. There’s a high probability that she’s already had sex, so there’s no way to work backward from that.” Shu Yu rubbed her temples. “Does anyone else on this list have any connection to Yan Yu?”
“Still checking.” Feng Tang sent Yan Xue’s information to Shu Yu. “Take a look at Yan Xue’s information first.”
Shu Yu opened Yan Xue’s file and found that everything about her was perfectly ordinary. There was nothing particularly noteworthy in it.
“If Yan Xue posts a long statement right now claiming that she was assaulted, then there really would be no way to verify it against the dead.” After reading the file, Shu Yu continued, “As long as she makes up a convincing time and place, and chooses somewhere without surveillance cameras, then as long as her story holds together, gathering evidence would be extremely difficult. Hong Guodong is already dead. He has no way to remember what he was doing that day.”
“Logically speaking, Hong Guodong’s wife should know his whereabouts.” Lu Anran started to object, only to suddenly remember that Hong Guodong had two mistresses as well. “No, that’s not right. He might have concealed his whereabouts from his wife because he was secretly meeting one of his lovers. And someone juggling three women like that could easily have told each of them different lies. We can’t expect to get a definite timeline of Hong Guodong’s movements from them.”
“His phone should be with the special investigation team, right? Have all his chat records been extracted?” Shu Yu asked.
“They have. I’ll ask them for a copy.” Lu Anran guessed what Shu Yu was thinking. “Are you planning to search his chat records from Yan Xue’s three years at the college for an alibi?”
“What I want to know even more is exactly how many WeChat accounts he had,” Shu Yu said. “Right now, it’s difficult to determine whether someone might already have accessed his WeChat chat history.”
“This…” Lu Anran frowned. “His body was taken to the morgue immediately after his death. Logically speaking, the other side shouldn’t have had an opportunity.”
“That may be true, but can you guarantee that Hong Guodong never lost his phone at any point between Yan Xue’s graduation and now?” Shu Yu certainly wasn’t that optimistic. “The other side has been attacking the police, prosecutors, and courts extremely aggressively using this case. They definitely came prepared, so it’s entirely possible that they already possess a great deal of information.”
“That really is possible.” Xiao Que thought back to Yan Yu’s personal information suddenly being exposed today. “Yan Yu’s personal information doesn’t look like something they only gathered at the last minute either. They probably had it in their hands long ago.”
Lu Anran sighed and resigned herself to contacting the cyber police.
Meanwhile, after checking through the remaining names, Feng Tang confirmed that none of the other people on the list had any connection to Yan Xue. Other than all being women, there was no connection between them whatsoever. They weren’t even students from the same year, and their ages were relatively spread out.
“There probably isn’t any connection between these people.” Feng Tang deleted the final name. “It looks like they just randomly picked some girls’ names from a list.”
“Very possible.” Shu Yu closed Yan Xue’s personal information. “I’m guessing the special investigation team should already be contacting their counterparts in W City to help arrest Yan Yu.”
“If they’re willing to expose his location this clearly, I have a feeling he might not actually be there,” Xiao Que said. “If they can successfully catch him, that would definitely be good news. Even if his DNA doesn’t match, we might still be able to find other people involved in the case through him.”
For a homicide case to have gone this long without even identifying a suspect was already very slow.
“Let’s ask the special investigation team after lunch. They won’t be able to move that quickly.” Shu Yu closed her laptop. “Comrades, it’s already past noon. What do you want to eat? I’ll order delivery.”
“It’s Crazy Thursday today. You know what I mean.” Feng Tang gave her a slightly ingratiating smile.
“Same here.”
Lu Anran and Xiao Que immediately agreed.
Chen Heng said he wouldn’t join in and went to the cafeteria by himself.
“Actually, we probably should take advantage of their workplace cafeteria. I bet the food is pretty good.” Feng Tang hesitated.
“Crazy Thursday or the cafeteria. Pick one.” Shu Yu looked at her.
“Crazy Thursday.”
Feng Tang immediately switched sides.
Shu Yu rapidly ordered a huge pile of food and didn’t even blink when she paid.
The greatest benefit of transmigrating into this novel—
She finally had money.
The delivery arrived quickly. While they were eating, Shu Yu received a WeChat message from Shu Ling.
“You really did go on another business trip,” Shu Ling said. “I went home to pick something up, and the housekeeper said you’ve already been away for two days.”
“Aren’t you used to it by now?” Shu Yu slowly replied.
“Is it this case?” Shu Ling sent her a link. “I heard people discussing it on set these past couple of days.”
“Yeah. We only took over yesterday.” Shu Yu gnawed on a chicken wing while typing with one finger. “There are actors in your production following this?”
“Of course. Don’t be fooled by how all of them pretend they’re living on 2G internet. In reality, their internet speeds are faster than anyone else’s,” Shu Ling complained. “But none of them control their own Weibo accounts anyway, so they don’t have to worry about getting caught following gossip.”
“That does have its advantages,” Shu Yu replied. “For example, everyone who reposted things about this case quietly deleted their posts after the story backfired.”
“I never repost things like this, even though I control my own Weibo account.” Shu Ling sent an emoji wearing sunglasses. “After hearing you talk about these cases so many times, if I haven’t seen an official white-text-on-blue-background statement, I assume it’s nonsense.”
Shu Yu was extremely gratified.
At the very least, this little sister of hers was very supportive of her work.
So she naturally took the opportunity to gossip.
“What’s that award-winning actor in your production like?”
“He’s okay, I guess. He’s not as handsome as he looks in his professionally retouched photos.” Shu Ling sounded somewhat disappointed. “And he’s a little shorter than I imagined.”
“Doesn’t practically everyone in your industry exaggerate their height? You’re still not used to it?” Shu Yu asked with a laugh.
“I’m used to it, but after seeing too many professionally retouched photos without ever meeting the person, finally seeing him in real life is still a little disillusioning,” Shu Ling replied. “But he’s a decent person. He doesn’t put on airs, and he didn’t exaggerate his height that much. He’s 179 centimeters and claims he’s 183.”
“That counts as honest in your industry,” Shu Yu commented.
Shu Ling strongly agreed and invited Shu Yu to visit the set if she had nothing to do after finishing this business trip.
“Visit you at Hengdian?” Shu Yu was somewhat tempted.
Not because she wanted to meet celebrities.
She was tempted because she could finally go somewhere and look around.
She had been in this world for two weeks, and all she had done was work, work, and work.
“Yeah. We’ll be filming at Hengdian for another two months.” Shu Ling sent her a photo of her script. “I’ll have to stay here until at least June.”
“Okay. I’ll find time to come over once I’m done with work.”
After replying, Shu Yu saw Shu Ling say that she had to go film, so she put down her phone.
Feng Tang had originally been casually scrolling through her phone when something suddenly startled her so badly that the chicken drumstick in her hand dropped onto the table.
“Look! Yan Yu started a livestream!”
Feng Tang rubbed her eyes. After confirming that she hadn’t seen it wrong, she stared at them in astonishment.
“Yan Yu? Livestreaming?” Lu Anran swallowed the half-eaten hamburger in her mouth. “What the hell is going on? Wasn’t he supposed to have been taken away by the local police?”
“I don’t know either, but I’m absolutely sure this is him!”
On Douyin, an account verified as “I Am Yan Yu” had been livestreaming for three minutes.
In just those three short minutes, the news that he had started a livestream had already shot into the top ten trending searches.
“What the hell is happening?” Xiao Que hurriedly put down his food and immediately called Team Leader Liang.
It took a while before Team Leader Liang finally answered.
“Team Leader Liang, have you seen that Yan Yu is livestreaming?” Shu Yu had no interest in exchanging pleasantries and asked him directly.
“We saw it. The local police told me,” Team Leader Liang replied. From the sound of it, he wasn’t at the special investigation team’s office. “They went to the address that was exposed online to find him, but the place had already been completely cleared out. W City is currently trying to locate his IP through the livestream signal.”
“All right, understood.”
Shu Yu hung up.
“That address really was fake. The other side obviously did it deliberately.” Shu Yu could feel her temples throbbing.
This time, the other side had clearly switched tactics again, and she still had absolutely no idea what their real objective was.
“Let’s see what Yan Yu intends to say first.”
“We’re not contacting the platform to shut down his account?” Lu Anran’s hands paused.
“Not yet. If we shut down his account now, we’ll only make it look like we have something to hide.” Shu Yu gritted her teeth. “And at the very least, we need to find out what direction they plan to steer this whole thing next. Otherwise, they’ll keep catching us completely off guard!”