Chapter 139 Da Lin

Chapter 139 Da Lin

The club manager said, "Officers, I do have some impression of Liang Wenjun. He's a regular at our club. For these young masters like Zheng Rui, I always personally attend to them whenever they visit. Every time I saw him, he was either with Zheng Rui and his friends or accompanied by different women. As for unfamiliar men you mentioned... I truly haven't seen any."

"I really didn’t see Liang Wenjun on Saturday. We keep records of our guests, and I just had someone check—he definitely didn’t come that day."

Yue Lingchuan asked, "What do they usually do here?"

"Oh, all kinds of things," the manager replied. "Drinking, playing cards, trendy games... Some of the younger crowd’s pastimes, I don’t even understand."

Shen Qingye keenly caught the keyword: "Cards?" She pressed, "Do they gamble?"

"Well..." The manager hesitated. "I wouldn’t really call it gambling."

He scratched his head. "Probably just playing around. Even if they win or lose a grand or two in a day, that’s nothing to them—just casual fun."

He paused, then chuckled. "Besides, we’re a legitimate business. If the stakes were too high, we wouldn’t dare allow it."

He smiled, watching them carefully.

"We understand," Shen Qingye casually reassured him before turning to Yue Lingchuan with a frown.

Still no leads.

After bidding farewell to the manager, they checked every place Liang Wenjun had ever visited, even just once, but the answers they received were all similar.

...

The moon hung high in the sky, and the city was much quieter compared to the day.

Inside the spacious Jeep, the mood was tense.

Yue Lingchuan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and glanced at the others through the rearview mirror. "Liang Wenjun clearly intended to keep this hidden—otherwise, Zheng Rui and the others would know about it. So, it’s no surprise he deliberately avoided familiar places when meeting someone."

Wei Zhengyi and the others naturally understood this, but after such a long investigation with no results, they were getting frustrated.

Zhou Qiming said, "We still don’t know who this 'Brother Xu' is. Even Liang Wenjun’s phone records show no related calls or messages. Captain Ma’s team tracked the number, but no one answered. When they checked the registered owner, it turned out to be a man in his seventies."

With so many bars and clubs in Pingjiang City, it was impossible to check each one in a short time.

This dead-end feeling was utterly frustrating.

After a moment of silence, everyone let out collective sighs.

Shen Qingye hadn’t spoken since getting in the car, just staring out the window as the glow of streetlights reflected in her dark eyes. Sorting through the known clues in her mind, she suddenly said, "If we can’t find anything from the front, why not approach this backward?"

Luo Kaiyang instinctively asked, "What do you mean? How do we approach this backward?"

Jiang Cheng, sitting nearby, had a glint in his eyes. "You mean... look into the underworld angle?"

Shen Qingye nodded. "Exactly."

She turned to the group and began analyzing. "Liang Yongcheng has always indulged Liang Wenjun—buying million-dollar sports cars on a whim, so his allowance was no small sum either. Plus, the people around him are all rich kids. In such a situation, if he owed only a small amount, his savings or borrowing from friends would’ve covered it. Even if that wasn’t enough, he could always cook up an excuse to ask Liang Yongcheng for more money—for a house, a car, whatever—and Liang Yongcheng would likely give it. But the fact that they had such a huge fallout, with Liang Yongcheng so furious, means the debt had to be huge."

So huge that he couldn’t possibly hide it from Liang Yongcheng.

The team sat in quiet contemplation.

Liang Yongcheng, chairman of a listed company, gave his son handouts that weren’t small—at least six figures, maybe seven.

Under such circumstances, Liang Wenjun still had to go to Liang Yongcheng for money...

Just how much did he owe? A few hundred thousand? A million?

...Or could it be in the millions?

"Even if an ordinary person gambles... could they really lose that much cash?"

These days, the average monthly wage is barely a thousand yuan (about $150). For regular people, losing a few grand—maybe ten thousand—gambling would already be insane. But millions...

Liang Wenjun comes off as reckless, but the investigation shows he’s no fool.

Under normal circumstances, anyone with half a brain would quit while they’re ahead. Yet Liang Wenjun ended up owing so much...

Could it have been a single massive loss?

It hit Zhou Qiming all at once. He looked at Shen Qingye and said, "You think someone deliberately set him up? Scammed him out of that much cash?"

Shen Qingye nodded. "Word is, some folks hunt rich marks, running long cons. They start small, hooking them with casual bets, then reel 'em in deep until they’ve lost everything."

"According to Zheng Rui and Dong Wenwu, Liang Wenjun had never been involved in such things before, and none of the club staff knew about it either. Meaning the folks he was with weren’t his usual crowd."

"If they weren’t from his circle, how did Liang Wenjun even meet them?"

That’s why I’m thinking—what if he got marked from the start? Otherwise, there’s no way to explain why Liang Wenjun suddenly owed so much dough; or why the registered owner of that phone number was an elderly person.

Like the whole thing was staged to keep their hands clean.

Zhou Qiming murmured, "Yeah... this kinda thing happens more than you’d think."

In fact, those people don't just target wealthy young heirs—they also prey on migrant workers.

Right before New Year’s, construction sites often distribute the year's accumulated wages, leaving many workers with substantial cash. Some see dollar signs, suckering them into games and stripping them of every last cent. In the end, these guys end up broke—or worse, buried in debt.

They’d worked a case once where a worker's family stormed the police station, accusing the contractor of withholding wages and leaving their husband empty-handed after a year of work. The contractor insisted he had paid everything before New Year’s, with no delays. The family wouldn’t buy it and raised hell, demanding justice. After digging deeper, the truth emerged—the wages had indeed been paid, but the man had gambled it all away. Fearing his family's questions about why he had nothing to show for a year's work, he blamed the contractor. He hadn’t expected his family to confront the contractor directly, leading to such an outcome.

After that, contractors around here made it policy—wages were no longer handed directly to workers. Instead, they were either given to the workers' families or delivered by the contractor to their homes.

Most workers under these contractors were either locals or fellow villagers from the same hometown. Combined with the police's crackdown on gambling, this practice had somewhat curbed the problem.

Shen Qingye looked around and continued, "So I thought, since we're hitting dead ends with Liang Wenjun's side, why not shift our approach? Start with the underworld connections and see if we can find someone called 'Brother Xu.'"

Yue Lingchuan tapped the steering wheel absentmindedly and said, "Not a bad angle."

He paused, glancing at Zhou Qiming through the rearview mirror. "Lao Zhou, you’ve gotta have guys who know these dirtbags, yeah?"

Zhou Qiming had joined the force earlier and was sociable, making connections everywhere. Over the years, he had built a network of informants who had assisted in many cases.

After a moment of thought, Zhou Qiming replied, "Yes."

"For gambling leads... Da Lin’s your guy."

·

Da Lin was someone Zhou Qiming had encountered during a previous case. The poor bastard had bad timing—around the time of the crime, witnesses had spotted him near the victim’s place. Add his rep as a deadbeat and his grudge against the victim, and all eyes landed on him.

It was ultimately Zhou Qiming who noticed something amiss and, after some digging around, uncovered the real culprit, thereby clearing Da Lin's name.

Naturally, Da Lin was super thankful. Coincidentally, another case later arose where he was summoned as a witness. He even used his shady connections to provide crucial leads for the police. Over time, given his sharp wit and willingness to cooperate, he was eventually recruited as a police informant.

...

Da Lin lived on the urban-rural fringe, a place full of all kinds of characters and far more chaotic than the city center. Yet for those navigating the gray areas, it was the perfect environment.

By the time they reached their destination, it was already past 10 p.m. The lights inside the house were off, and the surroundings were dead quiet, save for the long drone of cicadas.

The sharp "knock-knock-knock" cut through the silence. After a long pause, an impatient voice finally came from inside: "Who the hell's knocking this late?"

Zhou Qiming responded, "Da Lin, it's me."

The voice inside paused briefly, followed by hurried footsteps. Moments later, the door creaked open, revealing a man around thirty years old with a scar running through his left eyebrow.

"Brother Zhou!" The man lit up when he saw Zhou Qiming. But upon noticing the others accompanying him, his expression shifted slightly as he cautiously asked,

"Brother Zhou, is this... about a case?"

Zhou Qiming smiled. "Yeah, got a case we’d like your help with. Is now a good time?"

"Of course, of course! No sweat! Just me here!" Da Lin chuckled, quickly stepping aside. "Brother Zhou, come in, come in, hurry inside!"

Taking him up on it, the group stepped inside.