CH 275

After the elderly man finished speaking, an electric tricycle drove against the flow of people towards the direction of the Hongjing Municipal Bureau.

Although it was late afternoon, the sunlight outside the building was still bright, and there was no shortage of police officers coming and going at the entrance of the Municipal Bureau.

“Lao Zhang, time to check the packages!”

The delivery guy from Shunshui Express stopped the tricycle, knocked on the window of the Hongjing Municipal Police Bureau’s gatehouse, and shouted.

“Take it easy,” the gatekeeper, Lao Zhang, said slowly as he flipped a newspaper.

The delivery guy immediately fell silent, nervously glancing into the courtyard of the Municipal Bureau, and started unloading the packages one by one from his tricycle. “This case is huge! Do you have any insider information, Uncle Zhang?”

Lao Zhang had been the gatekeeper of the Municipal Bureau for ten years and had rich counter-surveillance abilities. He wouldn’t disclose any insider information just because of a delivery guy’s inquiries.

He pushed his rattan chair, walked out of the gatehouse with his hands behind his back, and said as he walked, “That’s not true. There are big cases every day.”

He squatted down and checked each package for suspicious names and phone numbers, just like a king inspecting his soldiers. If he found any problematic items, he had the authority to call the person out or put the mail through an X-ray machine.

Especially at times like this critical moment, his inspections were even more meticulous.

The Shunshui Express delivery guy finally finished moving all the packages. The weather was still scorching hot. He wiped his sweat while humming a tune and returned to the black-painted electric tricycle. He took several letters from the package hanging on the front of the tricycle, used them as fans, and handed them to Lao Zhang with a leisurely sway.

The gatekeeper’s hand had thick calluses. If the Shunshui delivery guy observed carefully, he would notice that these calluses were caused by firearms, not any kind of manual labor. However, ordinary people wouldn’t have such keen perception.

When the letters were handed over, the cheerful expression on the gatekeeper’s face changed. Among the four printed letters, which were reminders from the Social Security Center and credit card repayments, there was one that looked different from the uniform machine-printed ones. The gatekeeper took out a handkerchief from his front pocket, placed it between his fingers, and slowly pulled out the letter.

The envelope was made of cowhide paper, and the back was sealed with a blood-red wax seal. In elegant calligraphy on the front, it was written, “To Xing Conglian, Hongjing Municipal Bureau.” Under the sunlight, some parts of the letter were reflecting light, making it blurry.

……

Xing Conglian didn’t receive the letter immediately. The reason wasn’t that he was in a meeting with senior officials, but rather that the situation hadn’t yet reached his area of control. What arrived before the letter was the first wave of public opinion frenzy.

In the network department area of the hall, things exploded without any regard for diplomacy.

The first person to jump up was Wang Chao.

Although he was still wearing a baseball cap indoors, he displayed an entirely mature level of control beyond his age in his area of expertise.

Chewing on lemon-flavored gum, he glanced at several screens around him, his eyes sweeping through the surging data streams. He didn’t even need to input any commands, yet he had already made a preliminary judgment on the situation.

Despite furrowing his brow, there was no sign of nervousness or anxiety in his eyes.

He patted the shoulder of the person beside him, indicating that they could temporarily take over his position, then he headed straight for the small glass room at the end of the hall.

“Boss, there’s movement online!” Wang Chao didn’t care how many provincial-level officials were in the glass room. He didn’t even knock; he just pushed the door open and reported directly to Xing Conglian. Xing Conglian hesitated for a moment, giving Minister Shen the opportunity to ask, “What’s going on?”

Wang Chao pursed his lips.

Xing Conglian nodded to him in agreement. With the instructions received, Wang Chao rushed to the computer in the corner of the glass room and opened his laptop, which was connected to the main screen.

Another screen embedded in the wall beside the glass panel lit up with an icy blue light, causing a moment of discomfort.

Unfazed by the others in the room, the teenager immersed himself completely in his cold and precise world of calculations. He gathered the data from the control room, and on the screen appeared several bar charts, which belonged to the government’s public opinion monitoring software—clumsy in appearance but easy to operate.

Wang Chao selected the section with “harmful words”, and in the next second, all the bar charts became colorful and continuously climbed, resembling the body of a snake.

“Thirty seconds ago, the combination of keywords ‘betting’ and ‘poisoning’ on the internet has exponentially increased.” Wang Chao explained as he quickly dragged the mouse to the next screen.

Instantly, a nebula-like scene appeared with countless bright white dots on a deep blue background.

Wang Chao clicked on the source data in the center of the nebula. It was a Weibo post, and the sender’s IP was located in a shopping mall in a certain city with a massive crowd, making it difficult to determine who actually sent the Weibo in a short period of time. The post contained only three images, without any text, indicating that the sender was well-versed in evading network monitoring.

The first image was a screenshot of the hidden result of the dark web vote, displaying the time in the lower right corner.

The second image showed the scene of a riot in Meicun’s clothing market from a peculiar angle, and in the lower left corner, a person raised their wrist to reveal a steel watch, with the focus of the entire photo on the watch’s time while the crowd surging into the clothing market in the background was entirely blurred.

The third image didn’t have any time information; it was a cold and programmed security inspection notice sent by higher authorities to various subway entrances in Meicun.

Clearly, these three images were put together to imply a message: before the tragedy in the Meicun clothing market occurred, the government’s higher-ups had already known about the impending attack, made various preparations, and even successfully avoided problems at the train station. However, they concealed this information from the public, leading to the tragic incident at the clothing market.

There was no denying that the sender of this Weibo post was a master of public opinion manipulation.

They directly aimed the blame at the government, implying that they were concealing information from the public. After all, what could generate more public interest than criticizing the government?

After completing everything, Wang Chao looked up with sharp eyes, and only asked three words, “What to do?”

“Do you still need to ask? Of course, it’s controlling the situation under guidance!”

“How to control?” he asked, as if he were challenging the public opinion experts of the higher authorities. He effortlessly pulled up several typical remarks.

——Damn, this is too insane.

——Isn’t this a terrorist attack? Damn, all they do is shit, and when something happens, they don’t dare to even fart.

——Are they crazy, these people!

——What’s the website? I’m voting to destroy Hongjing. I’ve been annoyed by those idiots in Hongjing for so long.

As Wang Chao adjusted the data, the nebula on the screen expanded even more.

The public opinion expert slammed the table. “Explain to the public that the government did indeed receive information in advance about the attack and had made preparations. In order to prevent social panic and aid the investigation, they did not inform the public of the overall situation. The relevant details are still under investigation. Please believe that the police have the ability to solve the case. Besides official announcements, do not believe any rumors… And…” He thought for a moment before continuing, “We also need to shut down this source and trace the individuals involved. Do I need to teach you how to handle this kind of situation?”

Wang Chao didn’t follow orders; his attitude was evident. In the entire glass room, he only listened to one person. Xing Conglian faced Minister Shen directly, and from the moment Wang Chao entered, the elderly man’s face had turned very unsightly.

“I know what you’re thinking, but making premature judgments without concrete evidence can be intimidating to the public and threaten social stability. What if the criminals take advantage of this?” The old man paused and said, “Xiao Liu’s plan is the most secure. You focus on solving the case…”

Before Xing Conglian could speak, Zhang Xiaolong became the second person to interrupt the meeting. The female officer held a bag of evidence, no longer as timid and shy as before. “Captain Xing, the gatekeeper received a letter addressed to you.” She picked up the envelope and continued, “We’ve checked it, and there’s no powder-like substance inside.”

Xing Conglian nodded calmly and accepted the bag of evidence. Meanwhile, on the embedded screen behind him, Wang Chao opened the last message:

——Po Master* gave me the method for online voting. Let’s all vote to destroy Yongchuan!

*It refers to people who publish posts, videos, audios, and pictures on the internet. Generally, referred to as the landlord or Weibo blogger on forums.

……

At the same time Xing Conglian received the letter, the same letter was also sent to Fengchun TV station.

The only difference was that the mail wasn’t delivered through traditional means of dispatch.

The letter appeared in the email inbox of every employee in the news editing department at Fengchun TV station, sent through a mass mailing list.

Some people treated it as junk mail and didn’t open it, but others were compelled by the subject and clicked to open the entire email, which was designed to look like an animated letter.

Like magic being instantly lifted, the sealing wax fell off, and the animated email popped up and then automatically opened itself. The black calligraphic letters landed on every pair of pitch-black pupils.

In the first two minutes, after many people were eager to open the letter, no one spoke. But the confusion and bewilderment after reading it were quickly engulfed by an icy and horrifying atmosphere.

The sound of chairs and tables being pushed open echoed in the open office, and those with quick reflexes had already taken screenshots and saved the email, and some even lifted their phones to take pictures.

The editor-in-chief rushed out of his private office and shouted loudly to the entire office, “What are you doing? Taking pictures and screenshots to upload to social media? Do you think the police won’t come knocking on your door?”

But in the next moment, the flashlights and camera shutters clicked, like the best mockery.

The editor-in-chief’s face turned pale. Seeing this, the editor, who couldn’t resist taking the photo, courageously raised his hand and said, “Boss, this is huge news. Even if we don’t report it, other media will. And it’s not the police who will give us bonuses…”

The editor-in-chief was taken aback. His face became gloomy, but it seemed like he couldn’t find the right words to refute at that moment.

Just then, a journalist in the corner, who had been refreshing Weibo, shouted, “BAS TV station has already sent out a ‘Breaking News’ post!”