The crackdown on organized crime began with the arrest of the mother-in-law.

Chapter 1040 Decomposed Corpse Found at Construction Site

Finally, he stood at the door, glanced back at the house, and said, "I locked the door and drove away. On the way, I contacted Zhao Liqiang and asked him to pick me up. You all know what happened next." After saying this, Wang Zhandang seemed to have exhausted all his strength, collapsed to the ground, and tears streamed down his face.

Li Ming looked at Wang Zhandang, his eyes filled with disgust and anger: "Take him away!" Two police officers stepped forward, pulled Wang Zhandang up from the ground, and escorted him out of the room filled with sin. The police car slowly started, carrying Wang Zhandang to prison, where he would face the full force of the law.

Less than three days after that case was closed, the criminal investigation team received another report.

When the roar of the excavator abruptly ceased, the air at the Wangjialiang construction site seemed to freeze. Driver Lao Chen gripped the control lever tightly, his knuckles white. Fragments of rotting flesh, having slipped from the bucket, clung to the rusty steel arm, emitting a nauseating stench. He staggered off the machine, his work pants stained with black mud at the knees, a wet strand of long hair still clinging to the cuff—torn from a corpse's scalp.

"Call the police! Call the police!" Old Chen's roar pierced the morning mist, his hard hat askew on his head. The foreman, who was directing the work, threw down his walkie-talkie and rushed over. Seeing the half-exposed, bluish-gray leg under the excavator, he immediately grabbed the excavator's tracks and began to retch. The scene instantly erupted into chaos. Workers dropped their tools and scattered in all directions, the dust rising and their terrified screams echoing among the reinforced concrete ruins.

Twenty minutes later, Li Ming's police car rolled over the pile of rubble, its red and blue lights piercing the gloom. As the police tape was being put up, Xiao Zhou was already comforting the pale-faced Old Chen. The person who reported the incident covered his mouth with his oil-stained hands, cold sweat mixed with vomit seeping through his fingers: "I was just digging the foundation normally, the bucket suddenly got stuck, I thought it was steel bars..." He suddenly trembled violently, his helmet falling to the ground and rolling a long way, "The flesh on his leg was rotten to a pulp, and there were nails stuck in the bones!"

Xiao Yang squatted beside the excavation pit, the white light of his surveying lamp cutting through the putrid air. The body was in a twisted, side-lying position, the skull clearly indented, the flesh around the wound turned inside out, revealing the stark white bone. Maggots swarmed in the eye sockets and nasal cavity, and countless fly eggs covered the ligature marks on the neck. "Time of death more than 20 days ago," he said, using tweezers to pick up the corner of the deceased's clothing. The tattered work shirt was still stained with dark red scabs of blood. "Mechanical asphyxiation combined with blunt force trauma, strangulation followed by slamming."

Xiao Sun was surveying at the site, the red light of his laser rangefinder dancing among the rubble: "The burial site is located 1.2 meters below the original factory's load-bearing wall. The fill contains broken glass and nails, consistent with demolition work." He suddenly pointed to the edge of the shovel bucket, where black substances adhering to the metal surface fluoresced under ultraviolet light. "Biological tissue residue has been extracted; DNA testing is needed." The technician immediately stepped forward to take a sample; the tissue fragments picked up by tweezers were still dripping a foul-smelling liquid.

Xiao Zhou questioned witnesses in the makeshift shed. The foreman's hands trembled as he held the thermos, oblivious to the tea spilling onto his trousers: "This factory area has been vacant for three years. Only stray cats and dogs come and go. When they gave us the tender last month, they said they wanted to clean it up and build a shopping mall." He suddenly slapped his thigh, "Oh, right! About two weeks ago, a security guard said he heard strange noises at night, and thought it was just stray cats fighting!"

Li Ming squatted beside the body, his gloved fingers parting the deceased's decaying hair. A rusty work badge slipped from the collar, the blurred words "Wang Jialiang Construction - Chen..." still faintly discernible. He turned to his team members and ordered, "Investigate the missing persons from the construction site over the past month, focusing on security guards and temporary workers. Xiao Yang and Xiao Sun, continue to expand the search area. Xiao Zhou, go retrieve the site surveillance footage and personnel files."

Xiao Sun's metal detector suddenly emitted a sharp beep. Three meters from the burial site, under a pile of rubble, he unearthed half a toothed steel bar—the remaining tissue fragments at the tip perfectly matched the shape of the victim's wounds. "It looks like it was taken from scaffolding." As he placed the evidence into a sealed bag, a trace of dark red blood touched his fingertips. "The blood wasn't completely carbonized; it might be from secondary injury."

At this point, the documents Xiao Zhou brought back from the project site plunged the case into mystery. The personnel register showed that a security guard named Chen Hai had indeed joined the company three months prior, but all contact information was invalid. Even more bizarrely, all the construction site surveillance cameras mysteriously malfunctioned the week the victim was murdered; the supervisor stammered, "The hard drive suddenly failed, and we can't fix it."

Li Ming drew a timeline on the whiteboard, circling the name "Chen Hai" heavily in red. The roar of excavators restarting drifted in from outside the window, but no worker dared to approach that land reeking of corpses.

The morning light struggled to pierce the thick haze over the construction site. Xiao Yang adjusted his DSLR camera to macro mode, aiming the lens at the black residue on the edge of the excavator bucket. "F8 aperture, 1/250 shutter speed, ISO 400," he quietly announced the settings. The flash went off continuously, and high-resolution photos from different angles were instantly transmitted to the survey tablet. Meanwhile, Xiao Sun held a 3D laser scanner. Red grid beams intertwined above the excavation pit, transforming every inch of soil undulation and every rubble edge into a precise digital model.

“Pay attention to the soil layers around the body.” Xiao Yang crouched down and carefully inserted a probe into the side wall of the pit. “The upper layer is backfill soil mixed with construction waste, and the lower layer is darker in color and has a significantly different moisture content.” He took out a soil sampling kit and placed the layered soil samples into sealed bags. “Take them back to the lab for particle size analysis and mineral composition testing, and compare them with the soil attached to the deceased’s clothing.” Xiao Sun simultaneously scanned the soil layers with a portable XRF spectrometer, which emitted regular beeping sounds: “Abnormal enrichment of iron, silicon, and aluminum elements detected, possibly indicating the presence of metal tools or fragments of building materials.”

At a distance of 4.7 meters from the burial site, Xiao Sun's multi-band light source suddenly stopped when it swept across a blue brick. "It shows a fluorescent reaction under ultraviolet light." He switched to blue light mode, and pale green patches appeared on the brick surface. "It might be a biofluorescent substance. Extract a sample for ATP testing." Xiao Yang immediately wiped the surface repeatedly with a sterile cotton swab and sealed the sample into a low-temperature preservation tube. When the investigation light moved to the side of the brick, two parallel scratches appeared under strong light, about 0.3 millimeters deep, with metallic particles remaining at the edges.

“These are typical drag marks from a sharp object.” Xiao Yang measured the spacing with calipers. “The mark width is 2.1 millimeters, consistent with the specifications of a hex wrench.” He took out a magnifying glass to examine the bottom of the scratches. “Fine metallic scratch stripes are visible; scanning electron microscopy analysis is needed to determine the type of tool.” Xiao Sun had already marked the location of the bricks in the 3D model, linking them to the nearby scattered bolts. “These M12 bolts have fresh tightening marks on their surfaces, consistent with commonly used scaffolding specifications; perhaps this can pinpoint the source of the murder weapon.”