Chapter 27: Big Sister Will Pamper You!

Half an hour later.
At the police station.
Xu Hui pulled a large pile of snacks from a filing cabinet and dumped them in front of Lu Xingzhou.
"Little Zhou, if you run into any more cases in the future, don't call your sister. Call me instead, how about that? ... Ow! Jiangying, what did you hit me for?"
Lu Jiangying, who had been standing behind Xu Hui, flicked her forehead with her left hand.
"Stop trying to corrupt my brother. Don't you know how dangerous it is to encounter criminals? And you're suggesting he get involved in this kind of stuff."
Lu Xingzhou shook his head.
"That won't work. If I call my sister, the credit goes to her, and I'm still waiting for the day I can go out and say, 'My sister is the Chief of Police'."
Xu Hui’s eyes darted around, figuring she had to spend a little to gain a lot.
"Little Zhou, I heard from your sister that you aren't married yet. What do you think of me? If you say 'My wife is the Chief of Police' later on, it’s basically the same thing."
Lu Xingzhou looked at her with innocent, brutal honesty. "How could that be the same? People can get divorced. My relationship with my sister is permanent; unless you travel back 27 years and stop my mom and dad from getting married, she will always be my sister. Besides, if there were two criminal investigators in the house, I don't think I could survive that kind of life."
Lu Jiangying stood with one hand on her hip, turning her head to look out the window as she struggled to suppress a laugh.
Xu Hui’s face darkened like ink. She had finally met her match in this pair of bizarre siblings.

Third floor.
In the main conference room, the atmosphere was heavy.
Miao Hui sat at the head of the table. On one side was the Criminal Investigation Detachment, led by Lin Tianzong. On the other was the Narcotics Control Detachment, led by Song Xiangchen.
Song Xiangchen stood up and walked to the projector screen.
"We can now basically confirm that a large-scale, highly organized drug manufacturing and trafficking syndicate is operating within Shanhe City. They purchase 99.9% pure alkaloid bricks from the Golden Triangle, refine them into 65% secondary bricks within the city, and sell them to secondary organizations. Yao Haichuan, whom we captured this time, was a 'mule' transporting these 65% bricks to the secondary organizations. According to Tang Hongguang’s confession, these secondary organizations further reduce the alkaloid content to about 25% before selling it to him through their own mules. He then mixes in glucose to bring the purity down to between 2% and 5% for retail."
Miao Hui’s brows furrowed deeply. She never expected that what started as a simple theft case would escalate into such a massive, well-organized drug trafficking operation.
The last time she faced a drug syndicate of this scale was 20 years ago. Back then, she had just retired from the military, transitioning from driving an old 88C tank to driving a police cruiser.
Miao Hui asked, "Is there any more detailed intelligence?"
Song Xiangchen shook his head. "The opposition has a very strong sense of anti-surveillance. Yao Haichuan always picks up the drugs from fixed locations, paying with non-sequential banknotes or sometimes foreign gold. It’s the same for Tang Hongguang; he picks up the drugs from a set location and leaves the cash in the spot he found them. They have never actually seen the people they trade with. When contact is necessary, the traffickers leave a note with a URL, but the site can only be logged into once and lasts for five minutes. The call made to Yao Haichuan at the pool hall came from a virtual number routed through an overseas server."
Miao Hui summarized, "So, in other words, other than catching a low-level distributor and a mule, we have absolutely no leads."
Song Xiangchen and Lin Tianzong exchanged a glance and nodded.