Chapter 2602: An Imperfect Ending

Yuan Shuzhi's escape came as a welcome surprise. Lu Cheng had written him off as lost, yet not only had he survived—he'd brought back the approximate location of the farm estate.

Though Yuan Shuzhi couldn't pinpoint the exact route he'd traveled while blindfolded and bound, he remembered the general direction of last night's desperate flight. That was enough.

Lu Cheng immediately dispatched a squadron of Agricultural Reclamation veterans alongside fast-squad bailiffs who knew the local terrain. With Yuan Shuzhi guiding them, they located the wild tea stall first, then tracked his escape route backward. Within half a day, they found the ruined temple—reduced now to smoldering rubble.

Clearing the debris, they uncovered more than ten charred corpses. These were the workers Steward Gao had dismissed alongside Yuan Shuzhi the previous day. With their guard down, most had likely chosen to shelter in the temple overnight—and paid for that decision with their lives. Those who had ventured out into the darkness probably met similar fates along the road.

From the temple, finding the estate proved straightforward. The mountains appeared endless, but only a handful of paths could accommodate sedan chairs.

After a systematic search, the squadron located the farm estate where Yuan Shuzhi had been held. Predictably, it stood empty. Only a few tenant families remained, along with a dozen house guards tasked with protecting the property. Lu Cheng interrogated them on the spot. The tenants confirmed this was indeed Master Quan's estate and that many people had lived there until recently—departing one by one over the past few days. Where they went, the tenants claimed not to know. They protested their innocence with practiced desperation: they were honest farmers, nothing more, cultivating Master Quan's mountain fields and watching over his property, never involved in anything unlawful.

The house guards proved equally unhelpful. They knew only that Steward Gao had been the last to leave, instructing them to "guard it strictly" before his departure.

"How long have they been gone?"

"The Daoist and the Master left three or four days ago. Steward Gao departed yesterday."

A thorough search of the estate yielded no smoking gun. Mountains of paper ash filled the kitchen and ash shed—clearly the remains of incinerated account books and other incriminating documents. However, the warehouse still held significant quantities of drugs: stockpiles of "Lushi Powder" alongside various "Australian drugs" in their original packaging. Investigation team members with medical backgrounds identified most as antibiotics and painkillers.

They also discovered roughly ten thousand silver dollars and silver dollar coupons. Appraisal confirmed every piece was counterfeit—the coins cast from Zhuti silver, the coupons crudely modified from grain circulation vouchers.

Despite this haul, Lu Cheng remained unsatisfied. The situation was now clear: the counterfeit medicine ring was collaborating with the Huidaomen to plan a rebellion. Yet after all this work, they had captured neither the mastermind nor obtained detailed intelligence. How could she possibly explain such an outcome to the Senators?

She lingered at the estate, poring over Yuan Shuzhi's report and the tenants' confessions again and again. One thing seemed certain: since Quan Youde and Daoist Wood Stone had stayed here for an extended period—long enough to have Yuan Shuzhi organize their accounts for over a week—this was clearly a major stronghold. The previous night's silencing operation and document burning had been precautionary measures for a potential retreat. But they couldn't have anticipated Yuan Shuzhi escaping the massacre and immediately leading authorities back. The substantial quantities of drugs and counterfeit currency left behind suggested they hadn't formally abandoned the location—merely taken defensive precautions.

Still, the estate could no longer serve as bait for a trap. The conspirators must have realized the stronghold was compromised, hence their evacuation. Hidden sentries might even now be watching from the surrounding hills. There was no concealing the operation's success.

Even if a trap was off the table, something important might remain hidden here.

Lu Cheng ordered the National Army to conduct an exhaustive search of the estate and its surroundings—"dig three feet into the ground if you have to"—to uncover anything left behind.

The search bore fruit. A cache of account books was discovered inside a false wall in one of the courtyards. Yuan Shuzhi examined them and confirmed two separate sets: one recording daily illegal transactions, another organized according to the "Australian bookkeeping method."

"I didn't write these ledgers, but I did organize them," Yuan Shuzhi said after a quick review. "They must have made copies."

Where the originals he'd organized had gone was self-evident—delivered to Stone Elder.

Beyond the ledgers, they recovered preserved correspondence: over a thousand letters pertaining to the counterfeit medicine trade. A random sampling revealed the operation's scope extended far beyond Guangdong and its neighboring provinces, reaching as far as Nan Zhili and the Capital itself. In some regions, Lushi Powder commanded prices as high as fifty taels of silver per bottle. The scale of profit was staggering.

The reports reached Guangzhou swiftly. Neither Zheng Mingjiang nor Wu Mu found cause for celebration.

From a purely procedural standpoint, the drug leakage case was solved. But it was an imperfect resolution. They had traced the source, yes—but the mastermind behind the distribution network had escaped. Worse still, Hao Long's investigation into the hormone leakage had hit a dead end.

The mysterious Southeast Asian man's identity was eventually confirmed through the pharmaceutical factory's experimental archives. He was indeed a slave Quark Qiong had imported from Southeast Asia—his status as a eunuch unknown at the time. After arriving in Lingao, he'd been assigned to a labor brigade in Sanya before being recruited as a drug test subject. The terms were straightforward: upon completion of the experiment, he would be granted free status and allowed to return home or settle anywhere under Senate jurisdiction.

When the hormone trials concluded, the man received his promised citizenship. Initially, the test center maintained contact, requiring regular physical examinations to monitor for side effects. But approximately six months later, communication ceased. He vanished from his temporary residence without a trace.

Such disappearances weren't unusual—test subjects often drifted away once their obligations ended—so the center had simply noted the loss of contact and archived his file.

Where he went afterward, how he obtained testosterone gel, whether he had any connection to the counterfeit medicine operation—all of it remained unknown. A cold case. Hao Long vowed he would never give up, that he would "investigate to the end." But Zheng Mingjiang could already feel her own resolve flagging.

Wu Mu shared their frustration. The evidence increasingly suggested that the counterfeit medicine scheme, the currency forgery, and Liang Cunhou's brewing rebellion were all the work of a single organization.

They had uncovered clue after clue, yet failed to apprehend a single significant figure. They hadn't even managed to capture Quan Youde, a mere distribution agent. The failure was dispiriting.

The pattern was becoming clear. Whether stealing drugs to sell counterfeits or manufacturing fake currency for circulation, the purpose was singular: amassing the funds necessary to finance an impending riot.

The seized ledgers revealed obscene profits from the medicine trade. A man of Stone Elder's ambition wouldn't bury such wealth underground to await confiscation—he would spend it on "great undertakings." The counterfeiting operation followed the same logic: the elaborate effort wasn't simply to destabilize the economy, but to generate riot funds.

Wu Mu shuddered at the implications. Such vast resources converging toward a single violent purpose could unleash catastrophic waves.

Yuan Shuzhi's report alone indicated the gathered Huidaomen forces already numbered over twenty thousand—and this was certainly not the full count. Even Liang Cunhou's martial teams might represent only a fraction of their true strength.

This was nothing like Xiong Wencan's "indulging soldiers to become bandits" at the start of the mainland campaign. This was a meticulously organized, thoroughly prepared uprising, poised to erupt simultaneously across multiple locations throughout the province. Once it began, the newly established grassroots organizations and cadres in every county would suffer devastating losses.

We must resolve this before they strike, Wu Mu thought. Destroy them while they're still in the embryonic stage—wipe them out completely, leaving no seeds for future trouble.

With matters in Guangzhou temporarily settled, Zheng Mingjiang returned to Lingao for the ribbon-cutting ceremony establishing the Drug Administration Office. Just as the thalidomide tragedy of the old timeline—which had brought blood and tears to tens of thousands of families—had transformed the FDA from a modest office into a sprawling federal agency, drug administration in this timeline would inevitably follow its own thorny path of blood and tears. Physical well-being and moral conscience alike proved fragile when confronted with greed.

Before Zheng Mingjiang departed, Zheng Xiaoyu paid her an unexpected visit, ostensibly to "report on work."

As one of the heroes responsible for cracking the case, he merited her attention. She received him and listened as he explained his situation: his academic performance in senior primary school had been excellent, but the financial burden of raising his younger siblings had forced him to abandon any hope of middle school. Instead, he'd enrolled in the medical vocational program to start earning income immediately. Now he hoped to pursue advanced studies in medicine—and hoped Chief Zheng might help him secure that opportunity.

Zheng Mingjiang assured him he should continue his education; if finances became a problem, he could come to her directly.

Supporting naturalized students and cadres with aspirations in medicine and pharmacy was something she had done countless times before. What she did not expect was for Zheng Xiaoyu to suddenly drop to his knees and kowtow, declaring that her kindness made her like "parents of rebirth" and asking to formally become her disciple.

Zheng Mingjiang stood stunned, so caught off guard that she forgot to say the standard phrase: "The Senate doesn't practice such customs."

The incident left a profound impression. When she spotted Zheng Xiaoyu at the new semester's opening ceremony, an inexplicable feeling stirred within her.

"Do you see that advanced student?" She pointed him out to Shi Niaoren as he stood reciting the oath. "I have a feeling he'll become someone remarkable. But where that excellence will lead him..." She paused. "That, I truly cannot say."

(End of Chapter)