The crackdown on organized crime began with the arrest of the mother-in-law.

Chapter 1046 Discoveries of Gastric Resection Surgery

Yuanda Timber's warehouse was hidden inside an abandoned sugar factory on the outskirts of the city. When Li Ming led a surprise inspection, workers were applying colorant to ordinary poplar wood with roller brushes. In an iron drum in the corner, a mixture of nitrocellulose lacquer and industrial-grade iron oxide red emitted a pungent odor. Next to it, on stacks of tulipwood planks, the anti-counterfeiting labels were homemade using an inkjet printer. "They were all made according to Yazhu's requirements," the warehouse manager said, crouching on the ground with his head in his hands. "They wanted cheap goods, so we figured out how to dye them; anyway, laymen can't tell the difference."

The timber lead had become entangled in a counterfeit scandal, so Li Ming turned his attention to tracing the source of the cinnabar. At the "Huichuntang" pharmacy in the city's traditional Chinese medicine market, an elderly doctor, wearing reading glasses, weighed astragalus with a steelyard: "Cinnabar? You can only sell it with a doctor's prescription." However, in a hidden compartment of the warehouse, law enforcement officers found 50 kilograms of bulk cinnabar, the particles varying in size and simply packaged in plastic bags. Spectroscopic analysis revealed that this cinnabar contained large amounts of calcite and quartz impurities, with a mercuric sulfide content of less than 60%, while genuine medicinal cinnabar should have a mercuric sulfide content of over 96%.

“The goods came from a mine in Jiangxi,” the pharmacy owner said, trembling as he pulled out the bank transfer records. “They said it was high-purity cinnabar, and the price was half the market price.” Following the flow of funds, the police found the illegal mine in Jiangxi. The mine owner was using rudimentary methods to refine cinnabar. In the crude workshop, mercury vapor filled the air, and the workers didn’t even have basic protective equipment. But the investigation showed that the sales records of this batch of adulterated cinnabar did not contain any evidence pointing to the deceased or anyone related to the construction site.

“The wood is fake, the cinnabar is adulterated,” Xiao Yang slammed the test report on the conference table. “All the clues we’ve found point to commercial fraud involving substandard goods, but they have no connection to the deceased.” Li Ming stared at the two keywords, “North American tulip tree” and “cinnabar,” on the whiteboard and drew an X in the middle with a red pen. The rain outside the window had stopped, and a ray of sunlight pierced through the clouds, illuminating the scattered wood shavings on the table—those trace pieces of evidence that had once been highly anticipated had now become a misdirection in the investigation.

A technician suddenly burst in, holding a new test report: "Team Leader Li, we conducted carbon-14 dating on the wood shavings found under the deceased's fingernails. The tree is between 55 and 60 years old. The counterfeit boards from Yazhu Home Furnishings and Yuanda Timber are from trees no older than 20 years." This discovery instantly silenced the meeting room. Li Ming picked up the deceased's photograph, his gaze falling on the old fracture in his left little finger: "In other words, the genuine tulip tree material the deceased came into contact with did not originate from the counterfeit channels we investigated."

As night fell, Li Ming returned to the forensic laboratory. He put on gloves and carefully picked up the cinnabar sample. Under ultraviolet light, the calcite impurities emitted a faint fluorescence. "This fluorescence reaction," he suddenly remembered, flipping through the deceased's pathology report, "is consistent with the spectral characteristics of the unidentified deposits on the deceased's gastric mucosa!" This discovery gave him a jolt, and he immediately dialed Zhang Lin's number: "Re-examine the deceased's stomach sample immediately, focusing on whether it contains calcite!"

The centrifuge in the lab hummed, and Li Ming stared at the spinning test tubes, as if he could see fragments of the truth dancing within them. While the investigation into the wood and cinnabar had exposed the dark side of commercial fraud, the truly crucial trace evidence related to the deceased remained shrouded in a deeper fog. And that piece of wood shavings from a 50-year-old tree, along with the cinnabar containing calcite, might just be the real key to unlocking the mystery of the death.

While Li Ming's investigation in the epidemic area was not yielding any results, Xiao Zhou's work was also not progressing particularly smoothly.

In the criminal investigation team's records room, the incandescent bulbs emitted a soft hum, and dozens of computer screens cast a cold glow in the dead of night. Xiao Zhou rubbed his sore eyes; the printer in front of him continued to churn out new copies of medical records, the smell of ink mingling with the acrid bitterness of instant coffee, growing increasingly pungent in the confined space. This was the third day of the screening work, and his and his team members' desks were piled high with folders labeled with different colored sticky notes, like a small, precarious mountain.

"Team Leader Zhang, all the gastric resection surgery files from the Third People's Hospital between 2018 and 2023 have been transferred here." Intern Xiaolin staggered in, carrying a thick cardboard box, her uniform shirt soaked with sweat. She pulled out the top file; the diagnosis of "Billroth II anastomosis" on the yellowed pages was glaringly obvious. "There are 127 files in this batch, with 39 people matching the age range."

Xiao Zhou took the file and quickly flipped through the medical records. Each document required verification of the patient's age, surgery date, past medical history, and a check for any old fractures in the left little finger. "Pay attention to the surgeon's signature," he shouted to his busy team members. "Focus on cases operated on by Chief Physician Wang Zhiqiang; he's the city's leading authority in this field." Before he finished speaking, Technician Lao Zhou suddenly coughed, his face turning red from the dust of the paper: "These handwritten medical records are harder to decipher than gibberish! Before 2019, the electronic file format wasn't standardized; converting it took half an hour!"

The screening work proved far more difficult than anticipated. Keyword searches in the system frequently resulted in misjudgments, including cases of conservative treatment for gastric ulcers; some hospital records were damaged by mold, leaving key pages illegible due to improper storage. Xiao Zhou had to lead his team to each hospital, manually searching through dusty archives for original records. In the underground archives of the Municipal Central Hospital, the air was suffocatingly stuffy; wearing masks, they compared pages one by one under dim lighting, sweat dripping onto the yellowed medical records.

"A potential case has been identified!" At 2 a.m. on the fourth day, Xiaolin suddenly jumped up from her chair, knocking over a water bottle that rolled a considerable distance on the floor. Pointing at the computer screen, her voice brimming with barely suppressed excitement, she exclaimed, "A 48-year-old male who underwent a gastrectomy at the Central Hospital in 2020. The surgical procedure was a perfect match, and..." She zoomed in on the patient's X-ray of his hand, "...an old fracture of the little finger on his left hand, healing for over eight years!"

The entire team snapped to attention. Xiao Zhou immediately contacted the household registration department to retrieve the information; however, the man in the photo was gaunt, a far cry from the swollen, decomposed face of the deceased. Even more devastating, the investigation revealed that this man was currently working out of town. During the video call, he was seen carrying cement at a construction site, the background noise of machinery and the shouts of his coworkers clearly audible. "Wrong again," Xiao Lin slumped back into his chair, dejected, his eyes red-rimmed. "This is the 17th suspected case."