Chapter Ninety-Five: Sacrificial Pawn

Simple Plan was truly about to take off. The band had just won the national championship, standing out from the crowd, and immediately received countless invitations from record labels. Almost the very night the final ended, representatives from several companies came to the hotel where the four of them were staying and blocked the entrance, begging them to sign.

The contracts offered by each company were extraordinarily tempting. In a domestic pop scene that prized the individual and neglected the group, the deal Simple Plan received could be called a pioneering one for a mainland band.

Base salary, revenue sharing, packaging, album releases, music video production, a national tour, a specified number of annual appearances, and other excellent terms were all written into the contracts. Yet not a single record company managed to obtain Simple Plan’s signature.

The four of them, Zhang Kexuan and the others, knew perfectly well that more than sixty percent of their victory had come thanks to Li Mu. If they wanted to go farther and higher, they had to stay tightly behind Li Mu and listen to him.

So the four young men, who had traveled all the way from Jinling to Yanjing to stir up trouble in the music world, went to the press conference the day after winning the championship and then immediately boarded a plane back to Jinling.

The local media in Jinling had been lying in wait. They began surrounding Simple Plan right from the airport. When the four faced reporters from their hometown, they were clearly much more patient. They not only gave brief interviews at the airport, but also accepted invitations from the provincial television station and Jinling’s own city television station. They even agreed to appear on a music program at Jinling Radio.

That evening, the four all went to Zhang Kexuan’s home, where their parents had also gathered to celebrate for them. Zhang Kexuan found time to call Li Mu and ask what the band should do next.

Li Mu gave him only one sentence: “Don’t come looking for me these next few days. Just enjoy, to the fullest, the glory a champion deserves.”

Then he hung up.

He understood those four well enough. Didn’t they make music just to show off? Since they had finally gotten the chance to strut in a big way, they should enjoy it for a few days. Sometimes what people call the pursuit of a dream is really just vanity in disguise.

Besides, Li Mu truly had no time to deal with them. The day after tomorrow, his own flagship store would open, the largest undertaking he had ever made in either of his two lives.

That said, Li Mu did not simply set their affairs aside. Now that they had won the championship, it was the perfect chance to capitalize on the moment and promote them. The rest could be left to Zhao Kang and his online posters.

Thinking of how he had once taken a hundred thousand yuan in promotion fees from Zhang Kexuan, Li Mu went to the bank and transferred seventy thousand yuan to Zhao Kang: fifty thousand as operating funds, and twenty thousand as Zhao Kang’s fee.

Just after the money was sent, he happened to receive a call from Zhao Kang. Li Mu was about to tell him about the transfer when Zhao Kang said anxiously, “Xiao Mu, something’s come up.”

“What happened?” Li Mu frowned. It did not sound like good news.

Zhao Kang said, “There was a car accident in the suburbs before dawn yesterday. Someone killed a married couple who sold vegetables and then fled the scene. Now the internet is full of posts about it, and the photos from the scene have been exposed too. It’s terrible, and everyone online has gone crazy. People are fired up, saying they want to pool clues and catch the hit-and-run driver. Everyone’s attention has been drawn to this case, and hardly anyone is following Guo Lin’s matter anymore.”

Li Mu had kept urging Zhao Kang to keep fanning the flames around Guo Lin’s business, mainly to make sure Guo Lin did not get off lightly. But in truth, that alone could not do Guo Lin much more damage. Li Mu had been forced to take this approach because he had no better weapon. He had always wanted to bring Guo Lin down, but had never found the decisive strike.

Public attention was limited. Once people were drawn to another hot topic, their focus on something else would naturally diminish. There was nothing to be done about that.

What was most troublesome was that this was a hit-and-run case, and a serious one at that. Netizens were not merely watching this incident; since they had already begun posting everywhere to collect clues, it meant they had personally joined in. At that point, Li Mu could do nothing.

Online trolls were like yeast in the network, but without the dough, yeast alone was useless.

Li Mu was somewhat troubled. Although he knew for certain that Guo Lin had already abandoned the plan to harm his father, Li Mu had stubbornly held the thought of pursuing this matter to the end. After all, the person Guo Lin had meant to hurt was his own family.

A moment later, Li Mu’s brow furrowed even more deeply, because he faintly felt that hit-and-run, vegetable-selling couple, both killed—those details seemed strangely familiar.

After thinking it over carefully, he searched his memory and found some clues about the case.

The accident had indeed drawn enormous attention from the people of Haizhou in the following period. But as the culprit was never caught, the matter gradually faded from memory and became an unsolved case.

It was not until several years later that the criminal finally surfaced. What shocked everyone beyond imagination was that the one who had fled the scene back then was none other than Wu Dong, a man who would later become a famous power broker in the province’s energy industry.

Wu Dong was from Haizhou. He had started out in coal, and within a few short years had rapidly grown into one of the province’s leading coal magnates. Several years later, while competing with others in Jinling, he hired killers to murder three rivals in succession. He had thought he could get away with it and rise to become the province’s coal king, but he offended someone high up. The police worked hard to crack the three contract-killing cases and finally dragged Wu Dong into the light.

Wu Dong spent several million yuan maneuvering behind the scenes and ultimately escaped the death penalty, receiving a suspended death sentence instead. At that very moment, someone filed a实名举报 against him, alleging that several years earlier in Haizhou, he had driven drunk and killed a couple who sold vegetables. The report also claimed that after the incident, Wu Dong had given three million yuan to Li Jiawei, then the deputy head of the city bureau, who helped destroy much of the evidence at the scene, instructed his subordinates to handle things vaguely, and even told Wu Dong to find a way to move the accident vehicle to Wencheng, repaint and alter it, and sell it as a stolen car in order to erase the evidence. That was how the case became an unsolved mystery.

In the end, Wu Dong was punished for multiple crimes and sentenced to death, and even Li Jiawei, who had already been promoted to chief of the Haizhou Public Security Bureau, was dragged into prison along with him.

Li Mu’s mind was racing. Wu Dong’s relationship with Guo Lin was anything but ordinary; he had long treated Guo Lin like a god of wealth. Eighty percent of the coal produced by Xiling Mine was monopolized by Wu Dong, and Guo Lin’s shadow income also came mainly from him. These things had long been open secrets in Haizhou. Since Wu Dong had brought disaster upon himself, why not simply strike a match and set Guo Lin and Wu Dong ablaze together?

After silently making up his mind, Li Mu waited inwardly for the right moment. He would keep waiting, waiting for the situation to ferment.

In just one day, the internet was flooded with discussion of the hit-and-run. The man behind the wheel became the target of public condemnation throughout Haizhou. At noon that day, both Haizhou Television and the Haizhou Daily reported on the matter, and what pushed the incident to a new peak that evening was a segment in the nightly news showing a visit to the victims’ family.

The couple had two children: an elder daughter who was just starting high school, and a younger son still in primary school. In addition, two elderly family members lived with them. Now that the pair had been brutally killed in the car accident, the pillar of the household had collapsed entirely. The two old and two young members of the family had lost all means of support. Their heartbroken, helpless faces before the camera moved countless citizens of Haizhou.

By the next day, citizens and netizens alike had begun donating to the victims’ family on their own initiative. Posts calling for donations and asking for clues about the hit-and-run driver were everywhere online. Under such circumstances, hardly anyone still paid attention to Guo Lin’s affairs.

Guo Lin also finally relaxed. At the same time, he silently thanked the hit-and-run driver’s entire family. At the crucial moment, that driver had drawn the public’s attention away and done him a huge favor.

At that point, Guo Lin still had no idea that the hit-and-run driver was actually Wu Dong, a man closely tied to him.

On the day of the incident, before dawn had even broken, Wu Dong, acting on Li Jiawei’s instructions, brought in his trusted men and gave the wrecked car a new identity. They loaded it into a container truck and hauled it south overnight.

After the three million yuan was delivered to Li Jiawei, Li Jiawei also gave him his solemn assurance: the number of cameras in Haizhou’s entire traffic system was currently less than a hundred, the surveillance coverage was pathetically sparse, and there was not a single camera within five kilometers of the scene. Since the accident happened before dawn, there were no witnesses to be found either. With only the scant evidence left at the scene, they could not even pin down the vehicle involved, let alone trace it back to him.

So after two uneasy days, Wu Dong finally settled down. The vehicle was the key piece of evidence. With it gone, he had nothing to fear from the police. Even if the television station kept reporting on it every day, that did not matter; people would only curse the hit-and-run driver. They could never connect it to him.

Feeling much lighter, Wu Dong could not help cursing that old fossil Guo Lin for his good luck. Not long ago, Guo Lin had even asked him to spend money deleting posts on his behalf. Yet as soon as Wu Dong’s own affair broke out, no one cared about Guo Lin anymore. In the end, he had actually helped Guo Lin out of trouble. It was a pity he would have to keep this buried in his stomach and had no way to ask Guo Lin for any reward.

Just as Wu Dong was sighing over Guo Lin’s good fortune, he never dreamed that someone had already decided to sacrifice him in order to bring Guo Lin down.