Chapter 57: Chapter 56: A Special Gang!
Linlan City has many hospitals.
But not all hospitals are the same.
A hospital might be top-tier in pediatrics, but that doesn’t mean it excels in other fields.
Some have extensive experience in surgery, but their internal medicine department might be lacking.
And the killer—a man driven to desperation by his boss, with his survival instinct at its peak...
Would he choose a children’s hospital?
Of course not.
Even if he didn’t know all the ins and outs, the sheer flow of people would eventually steer him toward a place equipped to treat his specific condition.
And what is his condition?
We don’t know.
But the possibilities from chemical and paint exposure are limited.
Furthermore, the killer is still capable of murder. If we rule out surgical issues, that leaves internal medicine, most likely respiratory medicine.
In all of Linlan City, there are only a handful of hospitals that excel in respiratory medicine!
With Xu Huo and Wang Hu in agreement, a large number of police officers were immediately mobilized.
CLICK!
Xu Huo and Wang Hu pulled open the doors of the police car but hadn’t gotten in yet.
The next second, Xu Huo froze mid-crouch. He straightened up and stared at a bus in the distance.
Not far from the murder scene, an unremarkable bus was parked.
It was pulled over to the side of the road, and several men in black suits had just gotten out.
They were now standing in the distance, gazing in their direction.
Xu Huo narrowed his eyes. He recalled that the domestic departments in this life were different from his last one. The personnel were different, too; many unheard-of agents now existed.
"Those people..."
Wang Hu glanced up, and his heart sank.
"Let’s go!"
He urged, plopping himself into the car.
"This is bad. With these guys showing up, the official team sent from the Capital City must be on their way..."
"I can’t believe they gave us so little time!"
Xu Huo didn’t say anything. He took one last deep look before getting into the car.
This case was too big. It was an earth-shattering event.
The Capital City would definitely send people within twenty-four hours!
Usually, Zhang Jian would be the one to handle them, but Wang Hu hadn’t expected another group to show up...
"Whose men are they?" Xu Huo asked.
"A bunch of Plague Gods."
Wang Hu said in a low voice, showing no intention of explaining further.
"Wherever they are is where trouble is brewing..."
Xu Huo didn’t press for more information.
As the car slowly began to move, Xu Huo closed his eyes to rest.
’I’m not particularly curious about their identities,’ Xu Huo thought. ’There are so many classified departments these days. God knows which one they belong to.’
’But I didn’t expect them to get here so fast.’
It was currently three in the afternoon.
Only seventeen short hours had passed since the case broke...
Inspecting the scene, reporting the case, holding a provincial meeting, reporting to the Capital City, the Capital City holding a meeting, dispatching personnel, and then those people traveling here...
It had all happened in just seventeen hours!
Unsurprisingly, the provincial task force was also assembling. But even if they did, it would be useless.
Whenever a provincial task force was formed, Wang Hu was usually one of its leaders. But he himself was already in Linlan City...
The current task force was practically no different from a provincial one.
Xu Huo stopped thinking about these matters. As the car drove on, his mind began to spin once more.
「...」
There weren’t many hospitals in Linlan City with good internal medicine departments.
It couldn’t be helped. The city was too poor, surviving on tourism for the time being. The tax revenue was low, leaving little money for hospitals.
Putting aside the cost of the buildings themselves, the equipment alone was a bottomless pit.
Cheaper devices cost hundreds of thousands, commonly used ones cost millions, and the rare ones cost tens of millions!
The cheapest part was the nurses.
Interns were even cheaper—they practically had to pay to work.
As a result, Linlan City currently only had seven Class A Grade 3 hospitals, and only one of them specialized in internal medicine.
Xu Huo and Wang Hu focused their investigation on this one, while the other Class A Grade 3 and Class B hospitals were investigated by other officers simultaneously.
However...
Once they started, they discovered this was much harder to investigate than they had anticipated!
"Cancer cases or other terminal illnesses from the last three years..."
"How can there be so many people?!"
Wang Hu was stunned. He stared at the list of over ten thousand names in the digital archives, completely dumbfounded.
"Out-of-towners, locals, temporary transfers... this is actually a small number for a three-year span," the doctor guiding them explained.
Wang Hu’s brow furrowed.
’Investigating all of them... God knows when we’d ever finish...’
"What about just the locals?"
"Several thousand," the doctor answered truthfully.
"Can we search for patients whose cancer was caused by chemical products?" Xu Huo frowned, thought for a moment, and looked at the doctor.
The doctor shook his head.
Unlike in surgery, it’s hard for internal medicine patients to clearly explain the cause of their illness. They might not even know how they got sick.
So doctors tend to focus on the condition itself. Aside from giving some advice, they don’t usually ask why the patient got sick. Even during diagnosis, they mostly just ask about physical symptoms before running detailed tests with equipment.
But that raised a problem. If the hospital’s archives couldn’t identify the cause, or if the cause was unknown for most patients...
How were they supposed to track down the killer?!
Wang Hu’s brows knitted tightly. He mulled it over for a long while, thinking of comparing the thousands of people identified by the internal affairs team—those who had conflicts with the deceased—against the hospital’s records.
But...
"What good would a comparison do?"
Xu Huo spoke up again, his own brow furrowed.
"The patients might have died, or they might have been discharged to await death at home. Forget the hospital, even the police can’t contact these people. We have no idea where they are or how they’re living..."
Wang Hu fell silent.
The killer was most likely no longer in the hospital. He’d been discharged and then committed the murder.
Did the hospital know he was a murderer?
No.
And so, naturally, they wouldn’t have any record of him being a killer.
It was the same for all the other patients who couldn’t afford treatment and could only go home to die.
Their files would look exactly the same, and they’d be just as unreachable...
Never mind dozens or hundreds of such cases.
Even investigating just a few dozen people would be extremely difficult for the police!
At the very least, if their luck was bad, it would be impossible to lock down the suspect’s file within twenty-four hours, let alone arrest him!
"This is tough..."
Wang Hu let out a heavy breath, deep in thought.
"The hospital is a crucial lead. If the killer was a patient, his file must be in there."
"But..."
"The hospital focuses on the illness, not the person."
Wang Hu stared at the thousands of files that remained even after filtering and fell silent.
The killer’s file was in there somewhere.
If they could just fish it out, they could make the arrest. Then everything else would be easy to handle, easy to talk about.
But there was absolutely no information that could point them to the right one...
Unless they coordinated with the internal affairs team and checked every single person one by one. They could solve the case that way, but it would take too long, and the killer might expand the fallout from the case...
Even if they did solve it, Wang Hu didn’t believe Linlan City would escape without getting skinned alive.
However, just because the hospital didn’t know...
...doesn’t mean no one knows!
"If the hospital focuses on the illness, then naturally, there are others who focus on the person."
Suddenly, it was as if Xu Huo had thought of something.
"There’s a group that focuses on the person, not just the patient!"
Humans are complex creatures. In the Pyramid structure of society, the further down you go, the more grassroots you get, and the greater the likelihood of people banding together.
Take the Lower Nine Professions, for example.
The Beggar Gang, the Boat Gang, the Vehicle Gang, and so on—they were all groups that formed by banding together.
But once these people climb higher in status, they abandon these kinds of gangs and become ’organizations.’ Take the underworld forces of the old days. To put it bluntly, they started as a bunch of fearless hoodlums who gradually developed, became more internally disciplined, and eventually, they were bound to become a corporation.
The environments at the Starting Point and the final destination are complete extremes. The former is chaotic and noisy; the latter is hierarchical, rigid, and ice-cold.
In other words, the further down you go, the more humanity is on display.
It’s the same with patient groups!
The hospital handles the illness, but no one cares about the person. So these people naturally drift together and eventually form a small group.
"This group knows everyone’s illness, and they also know everyone’s contact details and personal information..."
"They even talk about things within this group that they would never tell the hospital..."
Xu Huo narrowed his eyes.
"They know everyone’s movements!"
"And they can connect patients from multiple hospitals..."
If they could find this group, and if its leader was willing to cooperate with the police and help with the investigation...
Then...
...they could absolutely crack this case in a short amount of time!
Hearing this, Qian Hua’s heart skipped a beat.
’The Capital City has sent people...’
’Zhang Jian is probably sweating bullets. There’s a second group of people watching the crime scene, staring down at you like King Yama himself!’
’Going by the plan to cross-reference hospital files with the internal affairs data, we’ll never finish in seventy-two hours...’
’But assuming Xu Huo’s idea can cut that time down to twenty-four hours...’
’No! Thirty-six...’
’Forty-eight hours!’
’If we can solve this case within forty-eight hours, then there’s still hope for Linlan City!’
At this thought, Qian Hua couldn’t help but clench his fists. His palms grew sweaty as he held his breath and stared intently at Xu Huo.
"This group..."
"What is it?!"