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

Chapter 1060 The Corpse Under the Cliff

His fingernails dug deeply into his palms. "I told Liang Kuan to put the body parts into black plastic bags, no more than 20 pounds per bag, so they could be easily thrown into the ditch..."

The last stop was a sewage ditch on the outskirts of the city. In the rain, the reeds rustled desolately in the cold wind. Wang Mingshan pointed to a whirlpool in the middle of the ditch: "First the arm was thrown, weighed down with a stone... then the leg, drifting far away with the current..." His voice trailed off, almost swallowed by the rain, "The head... the head was buried in the reeds over there, I was afraid wild dogs would dig it out..."

Xiao Wang crouched down, pointing to a patch of freshly turned soil by the ditch: "The soil sample here tested positive for the same clay composition as the soles of your shoes." Wang Mingshan looked up sharply and saw the technician taking a sample with a Luoyang shovel; the damp soil in the transparent bag had the same bluish-black hue as his shoes. "That night the fog was so thick, I thought no one saw me..." He suddenly slumped down in the mud, letting the cold rain soak him to the bone. "I drove my truck around eight intersections, and even covered the license plate with mud..."

As the rain stopped, a sliver of gray appeared on the horizon. The moment Wang Mingshan was being led into the police car, he suddenly turned back to look in the direction of the machinery factory, where the rusty iron gate gleamed coldly in the morning light. Xiao Wang folded his umbrella, looking at the evidence points the officers had marked at each scene—from fingerprints on the steel pipe to fibers at the bottom of the ditch, from bloodstains in the freezer to the mud on the soles of Wang Mingshan's shoes. These scattered fragments were gradually piecing together the truth of that rainy night, like the light piercing through the clouds, ultimately illuminating all the dark corners.

Less than a week after Wang Mingshan's case was closed, the administrative team received another report that hikers who had gone into the mountains had found a body at the bottom of a cliff.

When the call was received, the twilight in the mountains was painting the sky a dark blue-green. Li Ming's hand, gripping the walkie-talkie, veins bulging, writhed as the SUV rattled along the winding mountain road, its wheels crunching over gravel. The caller's voice trembled on the phone: "A body...a body is stuck in a tree branch below the cliff, covered in blood!"

Upon arriving at the scene, the warning tape fluttered in the cold wind. The warning sign at the edge of the cliff, which read "No Climbing," was already blurred and illegible due to the entanglement of vines. Xiao Yang crouched down, the red beam of his laser rangefinder scanning the cliff face: "The vertical height is about 80 meters, the slope is nearly 70 degrees, and there are fresh scratches and abrasion marks on the rock face." His hiking boots crunched on the damp moss as he pointed to several broken vines, "The fibers at the broken ends of these plants are torn, indicating that someone grabbed onto them during a fall."

Carrying his investigation kit, Xiao Sun slowly descended along the safety rope. The body was wedged among the pine trees halfway up the mountain, dark red blood staining the needles an eerie purplish-black. "The deceased was male, approximately 35 years old, with two sharp-force wounds on his right chest, the wounds being V-shaped, consistent with the characteristics of a single-edged knife." He used tweezers to pick up the corner of the deceased's clothing; the edge of the fabric had a clean cut. "The murder weapon was at least 15 centimeters long, and when it was pulled out, it rotated, resulting in uneven wound edges."

At the top of the cliff, Xiao Wang was questioning the hikers who had reported the incident. Two young men, their raincoats covered in mud, huddled beside a police car. The boy, wearing glasses, was still trembling: "We were trying to take a shortcut down the mountain when we heard a heavy thud below... We looked through our binoculars and saw..." He suddenly covered his mouth, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. The other girl added, "We found this trail of blood when we came down," she pointed to a dark red mark in a crevice in the rocks, "It stretched all the way to the edge of the cliff."

Li Ming held up his flashlight, the beam sweeping across the pile of rubble at the edge of the cliff. Several fist-sized rocks were stained with blood and hair, and next to them lay half a bloodstained climbing rope. "The deceased did not fall accidentally," his voice echoed through the valley. "These rocks show signs of being moved; the murderer must have used them to create the illusion of a fall." He crouched down, and under his magnifying glass, the bloodstains on the rubble appeared as splattered droplets, not drips.

As dusk settled and a damp mist filled the mountains, Li Ming stood on the edge of the cliff, watching Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun don their survey gear. He gave the order: "Don't miss any clues within a 500-meter radius." The two nodded, turned on their headlamps, and the light pierced through the thin mist, drawing crisscrossing bands of light between the cliffs and vegetation. A survey race against time had begun.

Xiao Sun set up the 3D scanner in a suitable position, adjusted the parameters, and the device emitted a blue light and began to slowly rotate, recording the entire scene of the fall into the system. "First, fix the overall scene, then do a detailed investigation," he said to the recording equipment, his voice echoing in the silent valley. Xiao Yang took out his DSLR camera and took pictures of the scene from different angles, the sound of the shutter being particularly clear in the empty mountains. "Notice the distribution of bloodstains on these rocks," he pointed to several stones with dark red marks, "The angle of the splatter indicates that the deceased was standing when stabbed, not injured during the fall."

During their investigation of the cliff edge, the two discovered more details. Xiao Sun used tweezers to pick up half a broken fingernail and placed it in an evidence bag: "The fingernail was broken in an irregular pattern, likely caused by the victim scraping against the rocks while struggling." His metal detector beeped at a pile of rubble. Carefully clearing away the rocks, he revealed a silver cufflink, still stained with blood. "This doesn't look like something a mountaineer would wear; it might have been left by the murderer." Xiao Yang immediately photographed the cufflink, recording its location and its relationship to the surrounding environment.

Following the trail of blood, the two men ventured deeper into the bushes. Xiao Sun crouched down and examined the ground with a magnifying glass: "There are two sets of footprints here. One set is from the victim's hiking boots, and the other is from ordinary sneakers, around size 42." He took out plaster powder and a mold to fix the footprints, "but the footprints have been badly washed away by the rain, making it difficult to extract complete patterns." Xiao Yang carefully examined the vegetation along the way, occasionally stopping to cut off a few leaves with scratches or indentations with scissors. "The murderer and the victim chased each other here; the direction of the broken branches and their freshness can tell us something."

Back at the location of the body, Xiao Sun began examining the deceased's clothing. He carefully turned up the coat, revealing a crumpled note in the inner pocket. Unfolding it, he found a string of numbers and the words "3 PM tomorrow" written on it. "This might be an important clue," he thought. He photographed the note and put it in an evidence bag, continuing to check the other pockets, but only found an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Xiao Yang, on the other hand, focused on the deceased's wounds, carefully measuring them with a ruler: "Two stab wounds, one about 8 centimeters deep, piercing the lung; the other 6 centimeters, stabbing the liver. The killer was ruthless; they must have wanted to kill the victim."