Read Novel Full Chapter 237: Three Entries Dated June 20
Chapter 237: Three Entries Dated June 20
Three sheets of paper lay side by side on the long table, one corner weighted down by a paperweight.
The left sheet was a photocopy of Guo Jianping's bank statement. The account name field bore his own name. Below it, five deposits. In the payer column, all five entries listed the same name: Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd.
The middle sheet held the string of characters copied on the day of the notarized extraction—the serial number from the back of the card. Three letters up front, ten digits after.
The right sheet held dates and amounts copied from the police station's official letter.
She used a ruler to slide the left sheet beneath the middle one. The June 23 deposit—the string in the summary reference field—matched the ten digits on the back of the card, digit for digit.
Once they lined up, she moved the ruler aside but kept her hand pressed on the paper's corner.
"That match is one they made themselves." He Xiufen stood at the far side of the table, apron still tied, a bunch of scallions she'd just carried up from downstairs clutched in one hand.
"The money went out on the twenty-third." Tang Guo crouched by the table, squinting at the tiny print. "The card wasn't turned in until July fourteenth."
"On June twentieth, someone told the outside contractors to switch card numbers." Shen Zhixia said. "The money arrived before the people did."
She added two lines to the page.
One line read "Branch office": the account-opening banks for Dingchang, Taiying, and Sheng'an all fell at the same branch office.
One line held the date—three instances of "June 20": the date stamped on Xingyao's Company Registration (Filing) Application, the registration date for the change of Hengyue Capital's legal representative, and the date on the notice Xingyao posted in the group chat telling outside contractors to report their new card numbers.
"Three entries. Same day."
"No more writing under it." He Xiufen set down the scallions, put on her reading glasses, and examined both pages. She tapped the red pen tip on "June 20." "If you write 'therefore,' this page becomes your inference. If you don't, these three lines are just what three sheets of paper each said on their own."
[Thud. What a sheet of paper says is only ever whatever its own lines can support.]
Lu Jibai set a cup of coffee beside her hand. Her own cup had been sitting on the corner of the desk since mid-morning, gone cold.
"These sheets of paper aren't three separate things," he said.
"They're one thing." She aligned the corners of the pages. "Same hand, same day, through the same hole."
She made three copies of that page. One went into the metal cabinet, one into the case file, one stayed out to be delivered in the afternoon—whenever a document was finished, two extra copies got printed that same day. That was He Xiufen's rule, so nobody could later argue about which copy was the real one.
He Xiufen pulled the desk calendar out of the drawer and flipped it to July, tapping the square for the twenty-ninth twice with the end of her pen. Four characters were written in that square: Evidence Submission Deadline.
"Anything that needs to be filed, don't sit on it a single day," she said. "Don't wait until the twenty-ninth to go hunting for paper. Today's the twenty-seventh. This page goes out today."
Yesterday morning's matter still lay buried under this stack of paper—Guo Jianping had taken the original of that letter stuffed into the guardroom to the police station and added it to the file. The officer had examined the original, kept a photocopy, and let him take the original back. The receipt slip was clipped to page two.
By the time the smell of scallion oil drifted up from downstairs, Tang Guo set another stack of paper on the corner of the desk. It was a table she'd stayed up past midnight making, every column filled with numbers: how many times the videos had been played, how many shares, how many comments contained profanity, how many times she'd been forced to move, how many unknown numbers were saved in her phone.
"Prosecutor Zhou said not to write 'egregious impact.'" She pushed the table forward.
"Write the numbers." He Xiufen scanned it, the red pen stopping on the "moved" row. "Moved three times. First time it was the landlord, the next two it was the people who bought the tables. Write all three—who made her move, what date she moved. Not a single line left out."
"They called me forty times in one night."
"Then write forty." He Xiufen said. "Don't write 'countless.' Numbers can be compared. 'Countless' can't."
Tang Guo hugged the table to her chest and headed back toward the door, then paused at the doorway and glanced back at the long table.
"Wu Jianchuan," she said. "That name sounds almost real."
"Sounding real doesn't count," Shen Zhixia said.
"Then what counts?"
"Whether those three characters show up in the books."
At 10:40, her phone rang. It was Guo Jianping.
"Shen laoshi, I'm fine." Those were his first three words. "Just letting you know—they haven't sent anyone again."
"The receipt's put away?"
"Locked in the metal box under the bed." He paused. "My wife's asking, for the hearing, should I change into nicer clothes?"
He Xiufen, overhearing, reached over and took the phone.
"Wear what you'd wear out on a job," she said. "You need to look like a working man. The night before the hearing, bring the original to the office. We'll go through the page count together."
There was an acknowledgment, then he hung up.
At eleven, she pulled out Xingyao's July 14 letter and spread it flat on the desk.
One page, two clauses in the body. The first clause contained one sentence: The source material was purchased by our company from an individual named Wu Jianchuan. Just a name. No ID number, no contact phone, no authorization documents, not even a signature.
She searched first in the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System. Wu Jianchuan as shareholder, as legal representative, as key personnel, as liaison—she clicked through column by column. All empty. Then she flipped through the ten pages of Xingyao's business records: those three characters didn't appear. The columns in Dingchang's public filings: not there either.
Then she dialed the phone number printed at the bottom of the letter. She knew that string by heart—it appeared on Dingchang's annual report, and on Taiying's and Sheng'an's annual reports too.
It rang four times before someone picked up.
"Hello, I'm looking for Wu Jianchuan."
There was a pause on the other end. "There's no one named Wu here."
"That letter was issued by your company."
"For anything about the letter, contact our legal affairs."
The line went dead. She noted the number, the call time, and the content of the call in the margin of the paper.
Three lines of results went down on the paper. One: the letter's stated "individual Wu Jianchuan" had no ID number, no contact information, and no authorization documents of any kind. Two: a search of the enterprise credit information publicity system found no such person in the registration records of Xingyao or Dingchang. Three: the phone number left at the bottom of the letter was the same string used in the annual reports of Dingchang, Taiying, and Sheng'an; the person who answered said no such individual existed.
After writing, she sat down across from He Xiufen.
"A real person selling source material would at least leave a receipt," He Xiufen said.
"Even if they paid cash," Lu Jibai added from his place by the window, "the disbursement ledger has to say three words: paid to whom."
"Then we check the books." She pressed the cap onto her pen. "If those three characters don't appear in the books, 'individual Wu Jianchuan' is a fiction the letter made up."
"One sentence—'we paid cash'—and they'll knock you right back." He Xiufen said.
"A person selling source material takes cash, ten or twenty thousand, without it landing in the books." Lu Jibai turned around. "But the money they paid Guo Jianping—every single payment went through the corporate account. Same company, two people, two different payment methods. That discrepancy is something they'll have to explain."
[Thud. Where things don't match—that's usually where the explanation is owed.]
"Dingchang isn't a defendant," He Xiufen reminded her.
"Apply to the court for collection."
"An application for the court to collect records from a non-party company," Lu Jibai said. "I've seen it twice. Granted once."
He pulled two photocopied pages from a folder and slid them toward her. The case name in the header had been cut off mid-line. The issuing court was an intermediate court in another province, dated six years back.
"Where did this come from?"
"Copied." He nudged his cup away from the paper's edge. "The person who copied it doesn't know you."
"This kind of case—I searched for three days."
"Then follow it in your application: in the requested items, write only what you want produced and from where. Under grounds, write only the one missing line—the rest, don't mention." He paused. "If the accounts really do come back, they still have two ways out—change the story, or change the man."
"Changing either doesn't scare me." She aligned the two photocopied pages. "What's written on paper is a name."
At two in the afternoon, she typed the Evidence Collection Application for the third time.
Three lines under requested items. One: request the court to obtain the corporate account transaction records of Jiangzhou Dingchang Culture Media Co., Ltd. from its account-opening bank. Two: request verification of whether any payments to or from "Wu Jianchuan" appear therein. Three: the period of collection shall run one year backward from June 23, 2026.
Facts and grounds, one paragraph only: The defendant, Jiangzhou Xingyao Culture Media Co., Ltd., stated in a letter dated July 14 that the source material in question was purchased in late May from an "individual Wu Jianchuan" and that payment had been made. The plaintiff's verification found that this "individual" has no verifiable information beyond a name. If the letter's claim is true, the accounts of Xingyao and Dingchang should contain payment records with this person.
She crossed out the term "related party" and wrote "Dingchang" in its place. Where a name could be written, don't write a relationship.
Final page, signature block: Applicant Shen Zhixia, lawyer at Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm, date. She read it over once after writing. This time, the word "trainee" no longer needed to be in parentheses.
At 3:20 in the afternoon, the line at the court's litigation service center windows wasn't long.
She handed over the application, along with the photocopy of Xingyao's letter, Guo Jianping's bank statement, and the three pages of search results from the public registry. The person behind the window flipped through page by page, paused when he reached the section listing requested items, and looked up.
"The evidence is in a non-party company's accounts?"
"It's in the records at that branch office."
"This type of application requires review by the trial division." He stamped the corner of the paper with a receipt stamp and tore off a slip. "You're the attorney of record?"
"Yes."
"Write your practice certificate number here."
She bent over the counter and wrote. She knew those digits by heart, but this was the first time they'd been written on a court's paper.
The receipt bore the filing date, the number of documents, and the receiving clerk's signature. She tucked it into her bag but didn't leave—she sat on the bench outside the service center for ten minutes or so, watching number slips advance one by one above the counters.
[Thud. Once the letter leaves from the court, what comes back isn't written by the other side.]
At 6:40 in the evening, her phone rang. Number not saved.
It was the clerk from the presiding judge's office. The application had been received and reviewed. That afternoon, the court had already issued a Notice of Assistance in Freezing Deposits to the branch office. The response would have to wait for the bank. "At the quickest, one day. Slowest, three."
"Thank you."
She hung up and stood at the window. The noodle shop's lights were on downstairs, the line stretching to the mouth of the alley.
She clipped the receipt slip to the very top of the kraft-paper folder, above Hao Qiuchi's. The folder was two fingers thicker than last month.
The desk calendar was flipped to July. In the square for the twenty-ninth, He Xiufen's four characters still stood. She added a line beneath them: Waiting for the response.
"What if the accounts are empty?" Tang Guo asked.
"Then it proves they wrote a person who doesn't exist onto their own paper."
"And what if there is something in the accounts?"
"If there is," she said, "then those three characters stand for a real person after all. A person standing is easier to find than paper."