Afterward, my company was taken over by the man in black. Many shareholders suddenly disappeared, and the technicians were replaced. The company's business projects were all changed to drones. I didn't realize the drones had problems at first. Later, I discovered they were equipped with blades, machine guns, drills, and other things, and only then did I realize these drones were definitely meant to harm people, or perhaps for warfare.
I continued to operate the company like this, but in reality, I was just a shell. I received the money, and it was more than I had ever made when my previous company was profitable. I thought it wouldn't be a bad thing to continue assisting them if no one found out. But in the end, I was discovered by you.
As Gongshu Yangyan spoke, we had a general understanding of his company's situation.
Liu Yuning said, "We will continue to investigate the whereabouts of your technicians and some shareholders. Given your situation, if you cooperate with us and help us find many clues, your sentence can be reduced!"
"I beg you, officers, I was truly forced. I still have surveillance footage in my office. You can check it, and perhaps you'll see what happened at the time!"
I asked, "Don't you overwrite your recordings here every week?"
"We do have backups, at least for three months."
Liu Yuning and I exchanged glances. It seemed we could follow this lead to find the person who had been threatening Gongshu Yangyan.
We went to the technical department together. We had retrieved the company's surveillance footage at the time but hadn't examined it in detail. Following Gongshu Yangyan's directions, we began to focus our efforts on reviewing the surveillance.
Gongshu Yangyan said it was around 10 p.m. about a month ago. We began to search the footage around that time, frame by frame.
In all my years as a police officer, this was the first time I had ever been so serious. At that moment, myself and everyone else could be described as fully focused. After an unknown amount of time, we discovered useful footage. The scene was exactly as Gongshu Yangyan had described. Someone had indeed suddenly "climbed" into his office. The person's movements were very strange, fast like a gecko, agile, and they quickly reached Gongshu Yangyan's back and held him hostage.
Since the surveillance cameras also recorded audio, we could hear their conversation. However, the sound was very noisy. If we couldn't confirm that the spoken content was the same as what Gongshu Yangyan said, we couldn't be sure that Gongshu Yangyan's account was factual.
I took the USB drive containing this video and found a colleague in the audio analysis room, asking him to analyze the recording. Technician Xiao Li carefully inserted the USB drive into the computer.
After a period of testing, he said, "I've tried it. Based on the wavelength, I'll capture noise samples, then replace the noise reduction parameters, perform noise reduction processing, and finally extract the pure human voice. Whether it can be heard clearly will require multiple comparisons."
However, after Xiao Li struggled for a long time, the playback was still... indescribable. I felt it was only slightly better than before, but I still couldn't make out anything clearly. Only one word seemed slightly more distinct: "You."
This word was useless. Its meaning was too broad. Even if I gave it to Dao Zhi Yong, a document examination expert, it would be meaningless. Nevertheless, I told Dao Zhi Yong about it. He was researching it, and I couldn't figure it out on my own. I had to leave the provincial department and, after an unknown amount of time, drove back to the courtyard.
I hadn't been back for a long time. I tossed and turned in bed, intending to rest, but I couldn't fall asleep. I was constantly thinking about the noise. Perhaps it was luck, but I suddenly thought of someone.
I quickly got out of bed and walked to the street near the courtyard. I remembered that my neighbor, Aunt Huang, lived nearby. She was blind.
When I arrived at her house, I knocked and called out, "Aunt Huang, are you home?"
"Yes, it's He Sheng. You busy person, why do you have time to visit me today?"
"I have some recordings that I need your help to listen to. Is that okay?"
Before Aunt Huang could answer, she opened the door. Her eyes were closed. "Listen to recordings? Yes, my hearing is good!"
In the past, I had solved a case where I encountered an unclear recording. A key witness had heard the sounds of the crime from a great distance, and it was because of him that we had a crucial clue to solving the case.
That witness was blind.
I played the recording in front of Aunt Huang and let her listen carefully.
After listening to a period of rustling sounds, Aunt Huang said seriously, "I hear it. Some dialogue, but one sentence says, 'You are the North Star, you scoundrel. I've heard of your organization before. You've gone too far, haven't you? Now you are like rats crossing the street. Don't just say the police, even we hate you immensely. You, the strange person with a face full of scars.'"
"Strange person with a face full of scars?" I captured this keyword. When I asked Aunt Huang what else she heard, she analyzed and said, "It seems like he was being threatened, and they wanted him to do something with drones."
"Are you sure?" I questioned.
Aunt Huang said with great certainty, "There's definitely no mistake. I used to be a spy and carried out many missions. I relied on my ears to help. Hmph, don't think that blind people can't do special jobs. Let me tell you..."
Aunt Huang started to ramble, but I managed to say a few words to her before leaving. It seemed that blind people's hearing was indeed astonishing. I had previously asked experts to scan the brains of blind people and compare their ability to distinguish and locate sounds, finding that blind people have a stronger ability than normal people. The reason for their remarkable ability is functional compensation.
Blind people can hear sounds that normal people cannot detect and successfully extract information from those sounds because they frequently stimulate the auditory system in their cerebral cortex.
At this time, the visual processing system, which is no longer functional, is entirely dedicated to serving the auditory system, thus blind people generally have more developed hearing.
Upon returning to the provincial department, I directly shared the description of the strange person with He Xin. Then, we used this information to check the surveillance near the company. Gongshu Yangyan's case had been basically confirmed through investigators' verification, so now it was just a matter of finding the person with the scars.