Chapter 123 Taking the First Step

Xinghan Province.

A plane landed here.

The members of the four teams stepped off the plane one after another.

"Let me emphasize once again, your recorders must remain operational throughout the entire process."

The policeman with glasses on his nose emphasized once more.

"Is it because someone is watching us?"

Xu Lingyun raised his head slightly, looking at people from a forty-five-degree angle.

"Yes, every choice you make will be scored."

"The top two places will be determined by these scores!"

As he spoke, four vans drove up from a distance.

"These vehicles will take you to Cui Shengli's house."

As his voice fell, everyone fixed their gaze on the approaching vans.

At that moment.

Long Hao stepped out from the crowd.

He spoke up, gesturing: "Are the drivers of these vehicles the ones who will be assigned to us during our time in Xinghan?"

"Yes. Considering your transportation needs, these drivers will temporarily follow your orders."

The middle-aged policeman nodded.

A moment later, the vehicles stopped in front of everyone.

After Chen Mo and the others got in the car, Long Hao glanced at Chen Mo.

"Mhm."

Their course of action after arriving in Xinghan had actually been finalized beforehand.

That was to go straight to Song Jia!

Three years had passed since the case.

Going to Cui Shengli's house at this time would basically be a waste of time.

Moreover, family extermination cases are usually driven by deep-seated hatred!

Obviously, finding Song Jia was the best way to get a head start.

The four cars drove out of the airport.

The second car, the one Chen Mo and his team were in, suddenly veered to the right and left the convoy.

This sudden move caused the other three teams to look over frequently.

This unconventional move truly caught everyone off guard!

"Sister Qing, what's going on with them?"

"Could they be going to find Song Jia? We have that clue too, shouldn't we follow them?"

Hearing her teammate's urgent tone, Xu Qingqing raised her hand to signal for calm.

She analyzed the current situation.

"Sun Aiguo has been in business for many years, and the business world is like a battlefield. Do you think he wouldn't realize Song Jia's purpose for approaching him?"

"So, the path through Song Jia is likely a dead end!"

Xu Qingqing said with a slight smile on her face.

She gave the driver an address.

Immediately after, her vehicle also headed in another direction.

Now, Xu Lingyun and Li Yun also began to panic.

...

In a cafe in Xinghan.

Chen Mo and Song Jia sat facing each other.

Long Hao and the others waited quietly in the car outside.

Through Chen Mo's invisible earpiece, they listened to the conversation between the two.

"Song Jia."

Chen Mo looked at the woman before him. She had a pure appearance and fair skin, clearly someone who took good care of herself.

She emitted a faint scent of jasmine.

However, none of that was the point.

The point was that she seemed to be in a very bad mood right now.

The expression on her face didn't look good either.

"Officer, I won't bother with pleasantries."

"Although the case of my sister and brother-in-law hasn't been solved yet, I've seen batches of police officers investigating it over the past three years, and I'm very grateful for that."

"But the killer really can't be found. Really."

Her voice grew lower and lower. By the time she said 'can't be found,' her voice was like the buzzing of a mosquito.

From her words and current state, it wasn't hard to guess the reason for her sadness.

Most likely, she was willing to trade her body to find the person who killed her sister.

But after three years, she hadn't found a single trace.

Perhaps she hadn't been that sad anymore, but being contacted by the police again recently brought it all back.

Sorrow surged within her once more.

"Actually, we know that the reason you've been with Sun Aiguo all these years is because of your sister."

Chen Mo offered a word of comfort.

Hearing this, a bitter smile appeared on Song Jia's face.

"Heh, so everyone knows. It seems everyone knows."

"Sun Aiguo knows too!"

She was already starting to regret the decision she had made back then.

Her motive for approaching Sun Aiguo was far too obvious.

"Tell me about your current situation, the more detailed the better."

"I'm a professional. You can trust me."

After Chen Mo finished, he added this sentence.

The meaning was clear: just because she couldn't see any problems didn't mean there weren't any.

Tell me, and I'll help you analyze it.

"For the past two and a half years, I've been looking for suspicious points about Sun Aiguo. For example, testing him when he was drunk or listening to his sleep talk, but nothing came of it."

"After that, I shifted my investigation to his accounts. Hiring a hitman costs money."

"I checked if Sun Aiguo had any large expenditures around the time of my sister's death, including company expenses, but every transaction was traceable."

"To this day, I haven't grasped a single shred of evidence."

"Maybe he isn't the killer at all!"

Song Jia held her head, her expression pained and her face filled with regret.

Once again, she regretted sacrificing her body back then.

"Your logic is sound, but you've overlooked one point."

"There are actually many ways to pay a hitman's commission. The most common ones include valuable jewelry or ancient artifacts."

There was another one Chen Mo didn't mention: cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin.

He wasn't sure if that stuff existed in '02; he hadn't known much about it in his previous life.

By the time he actually encountered it, it wasn't very profitable anymore.

"Jewelry?"

"Artifacts?"

She shook her head as she spoke. Sun Aiguo was so rich that it was impossible to count how many pieces of jewelry he'd had over the years.

She wouldn't even know if one was missing.

Search for every single purchase receipt?

Would those even still exist?

The more she thought about it, the more her head ached.

"To have a hitman exterminate an entire family in a place like China, they'd almost have to have a death wish. Therefore, the price would definitely not be low."

If the commission really was settled through jewelry or artifacts...

...he actually felt it would be much easier.

He would only need to look for Sun Aiguo's most expensive items.

"Officer, your analysis is incorrect."

Song Jia looked serious.

"If Sun Aiguo wanted to kill my sister's entire family, he could have just found someone destitute. It wouldn't necessarily have to cost that much!"

What she said wasn't without merit.

Giving a dying person a sum of money to kill someone indeed wouldn't require a high fee.

But!

She was overlooking the killer's methods.

"You seem to have forgotten that the killer's methods were clean and efficient, taking a life with a single strike. Do you really believe they hadn't killed before?"

Hearing this, Song Jia finally recalled the wound on her sister's neck.

She shook her head.

"We believe the killer was a professional. From Sun Aiguo's perspective, saving a little money by hiring a dying person to assassinate Cui Shengli's family wouldn't be nearly as good as hiring a professional to settle things once and for all!"