Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 212: The Same Phone

"Same URL, recorded on a different day, still counts as a separate item."

Hu Yongnian slid the form back out from under the window, but not before reading aloud the previous item's reference number.

"Eight hundred."

"That line of text was in the last one," she said. "Yesterday afternoon I recorded it again. The line was gone."

"That's not a discrepancy." Hu Yongnian spun his pen around his fingers. "Lay the two side by side, and they corroborate each other. Take either one alone, and it's just a desk on a certain morning."

"Can the notarial certificate say 'it changed'?"

"No." He said, "It only records the date, the time, the URL, how many pages were captured, and who was operating beside you. That 'gone' you're after—put the two pages next to each other, and whoever looks will see it themselves."

"How do I fill in the 'purpose' column?"

"Write 'comparison of changes.'" Hu Yongnian uncapped the pen. "Don't write who's right and who's wrong. If you do, I'll have to bounce it back for a rewrite."

"What if it changes again tomorrow?"

"Every change, new item." He bent over the keyboard. "You want to watch it daily, come pay daily. We don't mind the volume. We just wonder if you've got that many eight-hundreds."

She slid the hard drive through. One copy of the original screen recording on the drive, one in cloud storage. Filenames ended with dates, not a single character altered. The invoice went to Tang Guo's name. She copied the previous item's reference number into the blank on the new form, then glanced at the signatures on both sheets—a day apart. The data item from last time was still in processing; when the certificate was ready, they'd call the firm's landline.

At nine-thirty, the wok spat and clanged against the stove downstairs. He Xiufen sat by the door peeling garlic, a layer of skins settling at her feet. Shen Zhixia went upstairs and booted up the old computer.

"Innovation Road 9, Block B, Room 403"—that line had been copied whole from Dingchang's public disclosure page. The registry didn't recognize addresses; it only recognized names and that string of numbers. She pasted the address into another tool—one that searched by address but required a membership. She only had trial credits left. Every search cost one.

The results stacked up line by line.

First line: Dingchang. Second line: Jiangzhou Lianxin Paper Co., Ltd. The first item under business scope read "paper product manufacturing," the fourth "packaging and decorative printing." Below that, a logistics information consultancy, a Xingye Network Technology, an advertising design firm; in between, three names so dry you couldn't tell what they did. The bottom line had the newest date of establishment.

She counted three times. Nine companies.

Under the social insurance column, one company listed two employees, three listed zero, the rest all listed one. Combined registered capital just over eleven million yuan, every subscription deadline pushed twenty years out, and the paid-in capital column didn't even print on the page.

She copied the nine lines into her notebook. On the third pass, He Xiufen came upstairs with the garlic basin.

"Innovation Road 9, Block B." He Xiufen pushed her reading glasses up. "I've been in that building."

"I know. Two years ago, the factory that printed waybills."

"That's the one." He Xiufen's finger landed on the second line. "Lianxin Paper. That year I went looking for the boss to sign something. There was just one girl answering phones in the office. Three plaques hung by the door, and she answered for seven or eight companies by herself."

"Did she get you the person?"

"She said the boss wasn't in, but the seal was with her." He Xiufen flicked off a garlic skin. "She pulled open the drawer, and I saw four or five seals, bound together with rubber bands."

"How many plaques are up now?"

"I wouldn't dare say. In a room like that, plaques are hung, not printed. One more or one less, nobody needs to tell anyone."

"Nine companies under one door number," she said. "Does that count as—"

"Counts as business." He Xiufen cut her off. "That's what bookkeeping agencies do: open accounts for people, file taxes for people, answer phones for people. A hundred companies in one building isn't against the law. You write on paper 'these nine are one gang,' and they'll knock you back with one sentence—we just use the same bookkeeping agency."

"Then what can I write?"

"Write what they share." He Xiufen set the garlic basin at the corner of the desk. "Look at them one by one. Then talk."

She went through the nine again from the top. This pass she looked at the names—two of the nine had a "Xing" character in their trade name.

She pulled open the hard-shell folder and slipped out the sticky note from the seam. The top line was in her own handwriting, seven characters: "One 'Xing' character on a wooden sign." Below it were two lines she'd copied earlier: "Hold that frame. Don't name it yet." "Don't check who posted it. Check who paid." Beneath the last line, she added a half-sentence: Xing, in two places. Pending.

Then she went back to the screen, dragged the clip to the cut point, moved it frame by frame, zoomed in. The half character on the wooden sign was still half a character.

She stared for a while, then slid the sticky note back into the folder seam. She didn't write a single word in her evidence notebook.

He Xiufen looked up from the garlic basin, glanced at the frozen frame on screen.

"Seeing doesn't count," she said. "What your eyes see, once it's in the notebook, becomes your words—not the paper's."

"I know."

"What about the job posting page?"

She pulled the notarial certificate out and turned to page nine: the post on the park's recruitment board—matrix account operations, footage editing, daily pay, per-item rates, multi-platform distribution, preference for on-site staff. The publishing entity column read Xingyao Media.

"It says 'on-site' here." He Xiufen tapped the word. "'On-site' means someone sits there every day. Paper first, then photos of the desk."

She picked up her phone and sent a message to the unsaved number: Innovation Road 9, Block B, Room 403. Registry shows nine entities at that address. Dingchang is one of them. Xingyao is at 11, Block A—one small road away.

A reply came back: Number counts aren't evidence. What they share is.

She copied out the business account number again. She'd seen this string in three places: the end of Sukan's profile bio, the end of Jingxuan's bio, and the contact listed on Xingyao's job post. She went back to the disclosure pages and clicked into annual reports one by one.

The report split into pages: company contact phone, postal code, email, company mailing address—each field in its own box. She compared them one by one. Eight companies checked: not a single match. Finally she opened Dingchang—under "company contact phone," the number matched that string exactly.

She recorded the screen with a timestamp, then searched Xingyao by name.

Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd. Registered address: Room 403, Block A, No. 11 Chuangxin Road, Chengdong Xingang Industrial Park. Four years old. Seventeen employees insured.

She dragged down the form. Under "email," a string of digits with a mail domain attached.

She'd just copied that string into her notebook. She flipped back two pages—Dingchang's annual report email. Same one.

[Thud. Both companies' annual reports list the same email address.]

"Write 'identical.'" He Xiufen took both pages and looked first at the email field, then at the signatures. "'The email addresses listed in the two companies' annual reports are identical.' 'The phone number listed in Dingchang's annual report is identical to the number on the quotation sheet.' 'Identical' is what your eyes can verify. 'Same company' is the verdict you're handing down for it."

"What does a shared email tell us?"

"Tells us someone uses it to receive mail." He Xiufen pushed the pages back. "Who the mail lands with—that's the next step. These pages go behind 'handler'—annual reports are self-filed. Filing means someone handled it."

She clipped the two pages in, preserving the order from two days before, then drew a line between two columns. One column labeled money: a single line, Dingchang's corporate account, buying views. The other labeled work: also a single line, Xingyao's job post—per-item pay, matrix distribution. She drew the line to the middle and left half a row blank.

He Xiufen stood behind her, watching.

"A room like that isn't a company," she said. "It's a power strip. Whoever plugs in, the sockets are all the same."

"What if the thing plugged in breaks?"

"Swap it out." He Xiufen gathered the garlic skins into her palm. "The strip doesn't move."

"I want to go see 403."

"Don't. You go today, and by tonight there's one fewer plaque on that door. You don't even know how many plaques are up right now."

"Then notarize all nine pages."

"Eight hundred each."

"Nine items. Seven thousand two hundred."

"Do two." He Xiufen picked up the garlic basin. "One for Xingyao, one for Dingchang. The rest you record yourself, timestamp, store on the drive—that's work, not evidence. Tang Guo's two thousand yuan rent is still due. Spend money on what you can slap down on a table."

—

A little past three in the afternoon, Zhi'an came upstairs with his backpack.

He set the bag on a chair first, then pulled out a sheet of paper folded twice and spread it open in front of her. A screenshot from the class group chat: that thirty-seven-second clip, with a comment underneath—"This Tang Guo, isn't she your sister's friend?"

"Who forwarded it?"

"No idea. The one who forwarded it got it forwarded too." Zhi'an said, "I didn't reply."

"Don't." She folded the paper and tucked it under the keyboard. "Your Tang Guo jie is staying with us these next few days. Don't take this home."

"I know." Zhi'an shoved his hands in his pockets. "Kids in my class are asking if you can take cases without a license."

"What did you say?"

"I said my sister has the certificate." He made a face. "Noted front to back."

She sat him down at the computer. Nine companies, clicked one by one, page after page of disclosure records; she stood beside him recording the screen, calling out times and names. At the eighth company, Zhi'an stopped.

"Jie."

"Keep clicking."

"Why are there nine companies in one building?"

"Because someone handles the paperwork for them."

"So it's like the little shop downstairs," Zhi'an said. "One counter—sells SIM cards, tops up phone credit, takes delivery parcels, and handles broadband relocations for people."

Her hand on the record button paused. Then she told him to read the last company.

"Jiangzhou Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd."

"Date of establishment."

"June twentieth."

"First item under business scope."

"Digital content production services."

"Insured employees."

"Zero."

She copied the four lines into her notebook, the pen tip hesitating over the word "zero." Of the nine, the newest account had done nothing at all yet. She copied it to the bottom of the checklist page and left a blank space after it, no line drawn.

At six-thirty, He Xiufen came up to clear the desk. She glanced at the column of nine lines on screen, said nothing, draped the rag over her shoulder, and went downstairs.

Back home that evening, Tang Guo pulled the livestream light out of its box, wiped the lens with a tissue, plugged it in and tested it. The light came on, white and harsh. She reached over and switched it off.

"Still works," she said.

"The light's fine."

Zhi'an was doing practice papers in his room, a strip of light leaking under the door. Tang Guo sat holding the lamp for a while, then leaned over to look at the page spread on the desk. On the checklist: line one, who cut it. Line two, who spread it. Line three, who paid. The small line added at the bottom: Innovation Road 9, Block B, Room 403. One room, nine entities.

Her finger drifted to the bottom row.

"Why does this one have nothing?"

"Opened June twentieth."

"Opened to do what?"

Shen Zhixia's pen stopped over the empty space after that line. She didn't set it down.

"Waiting for money."