Read Novel Full Chapter 221: Jiangzhou Kuaikan
Chapter 221: Jiangzhou Kuaikan
At 8:10 on the morning of July 9th, He Xiufen flipped the desk calendar to July 18th, circled the date in red ink, then drew a horizontal line through the circle.
"Starting today, everything else gets out of the way for this page."
The noodle shop downstairs had just lifted the steamer lids, and the scent of scallion oil climbed up through the stairwell, all the way to their desk. Shen Zhixia spread her folder open. The first page held a line she'd added last night: submit explanatory materials before July 18th, with written statements from relevant parties and supporting evidence. Below that came the three items from the checklist—who cut it, who spread it, who spent the money.
She pressed her pen tip against the third line, then flipped the page.
She'd looked at the "Jiangzhou Kuaikan" homepage yesterday afternoon. The Chengnan Notary Office had only extracted the video page, not the homepage. This morning, the bio had gotten shorter: the old line "Daily hot-topic updates, business inquiries via homepage" now kept only the first half, and the little institutional verification badge next to the name had been removed on the 3rd.
Three hundred six posts in total. The earliest was from April 17th, the footage blurred as if shot through frosted glass—a fire somewhere else, the music louder than the image. She scrolled down one by one. From May 11th through July 3rd, five posts a day: the first on the hour, each subsequent one every twenty-seven minutes. The 10:51 a.m. post on July 4th was twenty-one seconds long, with 38,400 views still showing—the exact number written in Hu Yongnian's work log.
She copied the number into her folder and drew a line beneath it.
The laptop took forever to boot. She typed "Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd." into the search bar—she'd typed those characters too many times this year, could've done it with her eyes closed. The annual report page came up; the contact phone field held an eleven-digit number starting with "138."
She'd copied the business-contact number from the "Jiangzhou Kuaikan" homepage onto a piece of paper and set it next to the screen.
Identical.
She'd checked that business number on the quotation sheet against Dingchang's annual report number back in June, digit by digit. Today's string marked the third place the same number appeared.
[Thud. The same number doesn't answer the phone for two different companies.]
She pulled up the Xinghe entry again: Jiangzhou Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd., established June 20th, zero insured employees, registered capital subscribed at one million yuan with a twenty-year subscription period, registered address at Room 403, Block B, No. 9 Chuangxin Road. Nine companies hung their names by that door—she'd gone and counted. Dingchang was one; Xinghe was the newest, its business scope led by digital content production services.
She'd seen June 20th before—Tang Guo's for-sale sheet was numbered 0620-07, the first four digits matching. She wrote "same day" on her paper, not "therefore."
Tang Guo came upstairs carrying two bowls of small wontons, the steam fogging her phone screen. She wiped it off and propped the phone beside the folder.
"Scheduled." She said. "This account was ran on a schedule."
Shen Zhixia looked up.
"I've run accounts too." Tang Guo slurped between words. "What does a real person's posting look like? Post whenever they think of it—one in the morning, three at night, titles typed off the cuff, staring at the screen deciding what image to pair. This account's not like that. After May 11th, five a day, first on the hour, every one after that spaced twenty-seven minutes. Even that night they reposted my eight posts, they went up two at a time, same intervals—like someone working from a table."
"A table means someone's scheduling." He Xiufen came out from the back room, a registered-mail receipt in her hand. "The people get scheduled. The company pays for the schedule. The account's not worth much—the schedule is. Write this down: the account's posts display batch-scheduling characteristics. Write 'display,' not 'identical.'"
"Can I write 'the same company'?"
"'The same company' is a conclusion." He Xiufen tucked the receipt into the folder. "When numbers match, you write that the numbers match."
Shen Zhixia wrote two lines in her notebook:
The phone number listed in the business-contact field of the "Jiangzhou Kuaikan" homepage is numerically identical to the phone number disclosed on Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd.'s public annual report; the same numeric string also appears on the quotation sheet in this case. The account's homepage bio changed on the morning of July 9th.
She looked up when she finished. "This page needs another notarization trip today."
"Good that you thought of it yourself." He Xiufen said. "A screen recording isn't test material—Gong Shusheng made that plain enough. What you see today needs someone to nail it down for you today."
"Can we ask for another copy of the platform's disposition statement? One listing everything they've sent from the backend."
"What did they say last time?"
"Only provided to judicial organs; requires an investigation order."
"Then fold it into the evidence-investigation application after filing suit. Don't count on it today." He Xiufen nudged the desk calendar toward her.
Shen Zhixia reached for the phone but her hand found her cell first. The unsaved number's last message was from past eleven last night, two lines: make them see the face is fake before discussing character; the person who can land that name is still at Hengzheng. She'd replied "who," and nothing came back.
"Any word from that side?" He Xiufen asked.
"No."
"Him moving one step inside Hengzheng costs more than you running ten errands outside." He Xiufen picked up the rag and wiped the table. "For now, fill your ten days. The three things you need to gather in that time—have you thought it through? An appraiser only issues an opinion; he won't write you a character reference. A notary only records the operator, the timestamp, the checksum. The platform's disposition statement doesn't even include a 'who.' None of them speak to character."
"So the missing piece has to be written by a person."
"And by a person who's worked a case with you." He Xiufen draped the rag back over the rail. "Keep your hands moving while you think about it. Nail down the account page first. Get to the notary by three and it still counts as accepted today."
Around eleven, He Xiufen called her into the back room.
"Come here."
She pulled open the bottom drawer of the metal cabinet, reached in, and pulled out a kraft-paper envelope. The flap was wound with string, the ends frayed.
Three items lay inside: a printed "Editing Labor Settlement Sheet," a photocopied ID card, and a handwritten receipt.
Fourteen lines on the sheet. Reference numbers, durations, unit prices, amounts. Durations ranged from thirty-seven to forty seconds; the unit price was a flat forty yuan; the final line totaled 560 yuan. A signature sat in the bottom-right corner, flat strokes with the horizontal strokes hooked inward at the end—Hao Qiuchi, Dingchang's legal representative. Same name, same hand. Days ago, He Xiufen had laid these two signatures side by side; the notation in her ledger read: "morphologically consistent; whether by the same hand to be determined by expert opinion."
Shen Zhixia turned the paper over.
The back held a hand-drawn table, the grid lines crooked, the writing cramped into the boxes, row after row, not one wasted word:
Item one: delivered. Item two: re-cut breaths. Item three: lift levels. Item four: patch one frame.
Fourteen boxes in all, the last reading "three remaining tomorrow."
Tang Guo came over with her bowl and peered down at it. After a moment she set her chopsticks down.
"Re-cut breaths, lift levels, patch one frame." She said. "All three are in that twenty-one-second video."
She ticked them off on her fingers: cutting a breath means chopping out the half-beat where the speaker inhales so the rhythm doesn't stall; lifting levels means boosting the audio slightly to make the speaker sound more energetic; patching a frame means pulling a still from the source footage and pasting it over the seam to hide the cut. Using all three together is the mark of someone with fast hands—flat rate per video, forty yuan each, who has time to fuss over a half-beat breath?
"I watched two from that batch two years ago." Tang Guo said. "Exactly like this."
"Which two?"
"Ones about a doctor." Tang Guo said. "They're still up on another account; you can find them. I just took it for sloppy editing at the time. Never thought about it like this."
He Xiufen pulled the settlement sheet back, flipped it to the front, and pressed two fingers over the payee line.
"Hold this thread." She said. "Don't go to her."
"The name's on this paper." Shen Zhixia said.
"She's not going anywhere." He Xiufen slid the sheet back into the envelope. "She was nineteen then, cutting videos through the night at an internet cafe, forty yuan a pop. Xingyao never paid the last batch; she sat in this office for a whole afternoon and said 'forget it' on her way out. Go find her now and her first thought will be 'how did I bring this on myself again.' Wait until Xingyao's sitting at the defendant's table and she comes back—then she'll say 'I want my money, and I want to be heard.' That's the only time the words will hold up."
She shoved the envelope into the deepest corner of the cabinet and stacked a pile of old case files on top.
"When this case writes Xingyao into the defendant column, you can come back for it."
Shen Zhixia returned to her desk and wrote:
The processing methods shown on the handwritten delivery log on the back of the Xingyao "Editing Labor Settlement Sheet" from two years ago (re-cutting breaths, lifting levels, patching one frame at the seam) bear similarities to the processing patterns present at the seams of the test material in this case; whether produced by the same person is pending verification, to be determined by expert opinion.
She wrote the word "similarities," then looked at it and left it unchanged.
[Thud. Fast hands sign the same sheet.]
At 2:40 p.m., the small office at the Chengnan Notary Office. Hu Yongnian spread his previous work log open and started a new line. She didn't touch the mouse—she read the link aloud, he clicked it, saving screen after screen to the USB drive, recording timestamps, filenames, and checksums. The words "Jiangzhou Kuaikan" still sat on the page, the bio already shortened. He added a line to his log: one webpage item, operator Shen Zhixia, same purpose as above, three business days, six hundred yuan, receipt made out to Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm.
She walked out at 3:20 to an overcast sky and wind carrying the earthy smell of coming rain. Tang Guo stood on the steps scrolling her phone, then extended it toward her.
Six characters: This account has been deactivated.
At 2:40, when she'd been reading the link and Hu Yongnian clicking it open, the account had been alive, that video still showing 38,400.
Shen Zhixia dialed He Xiufen.
"Write it in." On the other end, the sound of vegetables being picked, a metal basin clanging. "First line: According to the page display, this account has been deactivated, deactivation time unknown. Second line: This account's homepage remained publicly accessible as of approximately 2:40 p.m. on this date, with notarization records on file. Don't write 'they deleted it.'"
"Why not?"
"Because if you write 'they deleted it,' your first line has to establish who 'they' are." He Xiufen said. "The paper's in your hand. The cleaner he deletes it, the louder your paper gets."
"Should I drop by the police station tomorrow to add a note?"
"Do it. Say you had the homepage notarized this afternoon, and by evening the account was gone—get the times down exactly." He Xiufen paused. "But first get clear on who took it down. What you wrote down yourself—someone else deactivating the account for you—that's a separate ledger entry."
By six in the evening, the other accounts in that same batch of six had started moving too. Two wiped their posts, the counters dropping to zero; one changed its name to a string of pinyin and swapped its avatar for a picture of the sea. Tang Guo scrolled and read them out, and by the third one, her voice went quiet.
[Thud. The one who deletes it signs that page for you.]
"I'm not deleting my post." Tang Guo said.
"No, you're not."
Home at 7:20. Tang Guo sat up from the couch and turned her phone around. Four characters in the name: Jiangzhou Sukan. The avatar was a gray box. Registration time: 4:07 this afternoon. The first post had just gone up, and the cover image was her—the exact frame from that twenty-one-second video, not even the faint edge distortion changed.
"Change your shirt." Tang Guo said. "It's still that face."
Shen Zhixia picked up her pen and wrote "Jiangzhou Sukan" beneath the "Jiangzhou Kuaikan" line, leaving a space between them. An empty space, saved for the next one.