Chapter 68 Macbeth Nine

TL: Cici, Editor: SilverandGold, QC: IsaLee

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Synopsis: “It’s Mr. Yang! Mr. Yang!”

The Zhou’s official website crashed. At about the same time, Lang Qiao caught the person who sent the video on the kidnapper’s behalf. The internet police scrambled to find the sender of the e-mails.

However, now, the delicate balance and communication between the kidnappers and the police were cut off in both directions.

There were protruding tentacles everywhere throughout the entire network. They followed the gossip and swam around in the sea.

At the moment, Zhou Junmao was no longer a person. His life, experience, and gossip had become an open book. Every punctuation mark had been publicly released, and was displayed naked under the eyes of everyone. They could repeatedly sigh, chew and taste—

“With detailed evidence and reasoning. Who is the illegitimate child that Zhou officially admitted to?”

“About Zhou Junmao’s mistresses.”

“The Zhou’s A-shares sunk to the daily limit at opening today. Discuss the different rules of the A-share and Hong Kong stock markets.”

“Why did the other mysterious founder of Zhou’s die at an early age?”

“Zhou Junmao was originally named Zhou Dalong, and he lived a life where he rose from the bottom to the top.”

“Zhou Junmao’s late wife was actually the widow of a cousin? Wow, discuss famous wives in history.”

“The illegitimate son recuited a murderer to murder his father. Let’s talk about the mysterious Oedipus plot.”

There were so many comments like these. Unless the word “Zhou” was listed as a forbidden word and expelled from the list of surnames, they could not be all deleted.

On the kidnapper’s countdown card, the words “zero minutes and zero seconds” kept flashing. With the arrest of the band of people from the Heng Da Corporation, the kidnappers shut their mouths and became ominously silent.

Countless eyes stared at the motionless page.

Luo Wenzhou lifted Yang Bo’s driver’s collar: “Doing your evil deals under the eyes of the police, I haven’t met such a brave suspect in a few years. My friend, you are full of courage!”

The driver was about thirty years old, with a crew cut and a fair face, but the kind of “fair face” that would be easily forgotten. He clearly walked in with Yang Bo, but nobody noticed him even after he had been here for a long time.

Suddenly caught, the driver’s legs trembled and was almost unable to stand: “I…I didn’t do anything, I just…posted a message on Weibo…”

“Posting argot with a newly-registered account? Who will read it?” Luo Wenzhou handcuffed him immediately. “Are you writing a diary online or expressing feelings to the air?”

Fei Du hurriedly walked a few steps sideways so as not to hamper Captain Luo from exerting his operational ability as he shook his head sympathetically: “I know the person who instructed you is in this house. Maybe he’s still watching you — think about it, sir. Now, if Zhou Huaijin got some unexpected misfortune, what you have done will become totally different in nature. What did he give you to make you take such a fall for him?”

As soon as he finished, someone shouted, “Captain Luo, video from the kidnappers.”

Luo Wenzhou: “…”

As soon as he talked about “unexpected misfortune”, there was news about the kidnappers. Fei Du was really magical. If he could sew this mouth, Luo Wenzhou felt that he could grind an iron pestle into a needle if need be.

Without the technical support from the Heng Da Corporation, the kidnappers seemed to be exhausted of tricks, and they uploaded the fourth video in a chaos.

This time the video was only a few tens of seconds in length. The camera shook badly. There was the silhouette of a man in the video. This man was obviously one of the kidnappers. He was wrapped in black cloth from head to toe, not a single strand of hair could be seen. He held the lens in one hand and shot the other hand of himself. The other hand held a chopper for chopping ribs.

Zhou Huaijin curled himself up desperately, the panic in his voice was about to substantialize: “I don’t know, I don’t touch the business on the Asia side, my father and Zheng were in charge, I really don’t know anything about fund companies… …Don’t come here! Don’t—Ah!”

At this time, another voice came from outside the view. It sounded like the accomplice of the knife-lifting kidnapper, who urged hazily with a voice distorted by the voice changer: “Stop shooting, hurry up, they are very quick!”

The kidnapper who carried the chopper ignored this and slowly raised the chopper with one hand.

Zhou Huaijin tossed like a fish, and finally stood up with his legs tied to the chair legs. He staggered backward, but unfortunately the young man’s cerebellum was not very developed. He stumbled under his feet, and lost his balance. With a scream, he fell to one side and was out of the camera frame.

The moment he fell, the camera flickered, as if the kidnapper who carried the chopper had already chopped him.

Including Luo Wenzhou, everyone heard chuckles in their heads.

In the next moment, the camera stabilized again. They saw that because of Zhou Huaijin’s fall, the chopper missed Zhou Huaijin slightly, and was lodged into the wall of the car. The pasted black cloth suddenly cracked with a loud noise. It seemed like the kidnapper aimed to dismantle Zhou Huaijin.

The kidnapper who held the chopper made a “tut” sound, looking regretful.

His accomplice was anxious behind him: “Come on, are you done or not?”

Luo Wenzhou immediately raised his hand and cut off Fei Du’s line of sight—

“No! No! Don’t! I will confess… You’re right! You’re right! Everything you said was right!” Zhou Huaijin in the video was already too panicked to care about what he was talking about.

The kidnapper who carried the chopper heard this, paused, and tilted his head slightly.

The anxious accomplice beside him cursed and turned his head as if to push open the cargo compartment door. Light came in and fell on Zhou Huaijin’s dejected face.

Zhou Huaijin was blinded by the sun and as he rubbed on the ground in vain, he said breathlessly: “There are three… three public welfare funds in the country, and only one normal fund. It’s there to deceive the public. The other two are used for money laundering and tax avoidance. There are many loopholes in cross-border capital supervision. It is not easy to find this out. It is true, I promise! I can tell you anything else you want to know!”

The kidnapper who carried the chopper waited patiently for him to finish speaking, nodded with great satisfaction, then he lifted the chopper without warning and chopped down.

“Ahhhhh!”

There was a piercing scream in the video. Before the worried people could see what was happening, the whole car quaked violently as if the engine had suddenly started, and the video stopped abruptly.

Fei Du patted Luo Wenzhou on the back of his hand and waved at the handcuffed driver: “Look at that. What was I saying?”

The driver rolled his eyes up and planned to faint on the spot. Unfortunately, Luo Wenzhou refused to allow him such an option. He immediately caught his neck and shook him around: “Let me ask you once again, who do you work for? If you keep covering up for him, you will become one of the prime culprits.”

The driver was completely out of his mind: “I, I…”

Luo Wenzhou suddenly let go of him and shouted aloud: “Check his personal accounts, properties, close relatives, including children, and all his recent contacts on his mobile phone, home phone, and social networks. I can’t f**king believe we can’t find anything useful!”

“Mr. Yang! It’s Mr. Yang!” The driver yelled out, “Don’t bother the kids, we don’t know anything! I was following Mr. Yang’s orders!”

“Mr. Yang?” Fei Du leaned on a yellow sandalwood table lazily. “Yang Bo? Do you mean that kidnapping Zhou Huaijin and exposing his identity as an illegitimate child were all instructed by Yang Bo? What did he ask you to do?”

The driver leaned against his chair, the elbows of his handcuffed hands rested on his knees and he held his head as if he were too ashamed to show his face, whispering, “He just… asked me register a new account, send a Weibo message on the new account, and tell ‘them’ where you were so that they could run away in time.”

Fei Du narrowed his eyes slightly when hearing the phase, “in time”.

Luo Wenzhou pressed immediately: “So you know where the kidnappers are?”

“No no… I don’t know.”

“Nonsense!”

“It’s true! I don’t know, really! I am Mr. Hu’s man, not Mr. Yang’s — he cannot trust me totally. So I just post whatever I heard and let them judge whether or not it’s true. I know they are still in Yancheng, because large trucks entering and leaving the city may be checked. The police will be under strain once Mr. Zhou is missing. The risk will be greater. It is better to be ‘hiding under the lights’, anyway, anyway…”

Fei Du: “Anyway, you will tell them any news.”

The driver looked up at him and quickly avoided his eyes: “They said that when the time comes, they’ll find a convenient place and drive the car into the river. The kidnappers will smash the windows and swim ashore — then they will hide in the forest. They would have been in the water so even the dogs can’t find them. Only… Only god knows where they are.”

Luo Wenzhou picked up the phone: “Tao Ran, look for a two-ton van. From yesterday afternoon to early this morning, exclude passing vehicles… Yes, the kidnappers are still in the Baisha River area, 10 kilometers around there, excluding shallow water areas, village areas, and relatively flat areas…”

Tao Ran said quickly: “Then there is only the shelter forest in the northeast, it’s less than one kilometer away from me.”

Luo Wenzhou said: “Turn the police siren to maximum volume. There are two kidnappers. It is easy to have conflict under stress. The hostage may have a chance.”

“By the sounds of it, this is a very complete story. Yang Bo is a bastard son whom Zhou Junmao refuses to legitimize. He deliberately joined the senior management team and found a suitable opportunity to kill Old Zhou. Then he kidnapped Zhou Huaijin and forced the family to officially legitimize his status so that he can inherit the company.” Fei Du took off his glasses, wiped them, and continued to ask the driver, “Allow my curiosity, what did Yang Bo offer you?”

“My son…” The driver struggled to squeeze a sentence out of his throat, “My son needs to go abroad for medical treatment. I have no money and no resources…”

Fei Du seemed disappointed and shook his head: “This story is a bit old—”

Luo Wenzhou hung up the phone, glanced at him with a warning look, and asked him to talk like a human.

Fei Du’s attitude changed immediately: “I mean, Yang Bo can give you this, but can’t Zhou Huaijin give you the same thing? Even Zhou Huaixin can do it, so why would you just turn to Yang Bo? It’s easy for you to say it’s Yang Bo. How do we know that you are telling the truth?”

Luo Wenzhou asked: “Conspiring with outsiders, speculating on the Zhou’s scandal, and suppressing its own stock price, is there any benefit for Yang Bo? Is he harming others without benefiting himself?”

“No, no!” The driver shook his head hurriedly. “As long as they confess about the illegitimate child, the official website will crash. If it does not crash, they will make it so. Then nobody can use it and no official statement can be made. No matter what the kidnapper asks, the company will not admit it. They can take this opportunity to do Mr. Zhou in… Otherwise, the company has a Weibo account, so why do the kidnappers want them to post announcements on their own website?”

“Afterwards, as long as you mourn Zhou Huaijin deeply, condemn the frenzied kidnappers, and then denounce all the things that have not been answered as slander, people will of course follow the trend and reprimand the violence and sympathize with the victims after they think of political correctness later. The company will not really be hurt. Without Zhou Junmao and Zhou Huaijin, there is only one small skeleton professional, Zhou Huaixin, who is completely no rival. It is self-evident as to who the company will fall into in the future.” Fei Du said, “The plan sounds very well thought out.”

The driver looked at him blankly and felt that Fei Du had other meanings in his words.

“Take him back to the Bureau!”

In the Baisha River area, the police car convoy that rang like a mountain and a tsunami was divided into three groups and rushed into the protection forest mountainous area in the northeast direction. It almost created an atmosphere of siege in the quiet wild.

Two days of autumn rains made the muddy field inaccessible, and the soft soil was full of water.

“Vice Captain Tao, there are fresh car tracks!”

Tao Ran wiped his sweats: “Chase!”

The Baisha River rose slightly. They chased along the river while the sound of the water became louder and louder, and the car tracks soon led them to the riverside.

“Over there!”

“In the water! In the water!”

A white truck was undulating in the Baisha River, slowly moving with the slightly turbulent currents——

In the Zhou house, except for Yang Bo who was taken away for interrogation alone, everyone was waiting for the news with bated breaths, different expressions and different plans. The only exception was Zhou Huaixin, who seemed to show his true feelings, clinging to the armrest of a wooden chair next to him, and the wooden chair was scratched by his non-mainstream long nails.

Every second seemed stretch two weeks longer.

“Captain Luo,” Tao Ran’s voice was a little unclear in the sound of the howling water. “The cargo box was washed away and no one was in there. We don’t know if he was taken away by the kidnappers or caught in the water.”

Zheng Kaifeng’s face went dark, and Hu Zhenyu’s back suddenly stiffened.

Zhou Huaixin stood up abruptly, his hips hit the hardwood tabletop without him noticing it, and there was no trace of blood on his lips. He looked like a pale clown.

Luo Wenzhou said in a deep voice, “Continue searching.”

Tao Ran, who got into the water himself, took a mouthful of water and coughed twice: “Continue searching!”

“Vice Captain Tao, over there!”

The kidnappers were probably alarmed by the sound of a police siren. Panicked, they drove the car into the water and ran away. The cargo box was not closed tightly. Zhou Huaijin inside floated out with the wooden chair under him. The wooden chair looked like a crappy life preserver, and only god knew if the man riding it was alive or not. It was like a leaf in the wind and rain, drifting with the flow dangerously.

“I got him!”

“Tighter, tighter, don’t loosen it! Wait… he’s still breathing!”

Twenty minutes later, news of Zhou Huaijin’s rescue came back to the Zhou house. Zhou Huaijin was stabbed in the leg. Fortunately, it was not fatal. Alarmed by the siren, one of the kidnappers did not give his conspirator a chance to kill and properly mutilate the person as he hurriedly kicked the accelerator and drove the car into the Baisha River. Then the two kidnappers fled and Zhou Huaijin drifted out with the flow.

Hu Zhenyu breathed with a look of relief, and Zheng Kaifeng closed his eyes calmly. God knew whether he prayed or cursed in disappointment.

Zhou Huaixin was paralyzed on the ground for a long time, unable to get up, and then he staggered into the bathroom and vomited.

Someone came in through the door. Zhou Huaixin thought it was a maid, so he stretched out his hand with his eyes closed and said hoarsely: “Give me water.”

A bottle of mineral water with the lid unscrewed was passed to his hand.

Zhou Huaixin poured the water into his mouth and heard the person behind him say: “Isn’t that too much, Brother Zhou? Didn’t you know the result long ago?”

Zhou Huaixin was caught off guard, and he swallowed the water intended for cleaning.

 

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