Chapter 505: The Second Victim

"Oh? This is rather interesting," Qi Youxuan replied as though he was deep in thought, smiling.

"Do you know Feng Haoli?" Zhang Ming asked.

Yu Zhijie paused for a moment before answering, "I don't recall such a person. Should I know him?"

"When I called your company earlier this morning, they mentioned the deceased, Feng Haoli, was a member of your club," Zhang Ming explained as he took out a photo of Feng Haoli before his death and placed it on the table, showing it to Yu Zhijie.

Yu Zhijie replied very quickly, "Our club has many members. I'm not the one in charge of the memberships. Would you please wait a moment?"

Yu Zhijie made a direct phone call to his secretary, asking her to search for Feng Haoli's files immediately.

After a moment, the secretary delivered Feng Haoli's information to them. It turned out that Feng Haoli joined the cycling club two years ago.

"Joining our club does not require a hefty fee. You only need to come in for registration and fill in these forms with your personal information. After that, you can follow us on our official WeChat account. Some of the more active members will directly add our club employees as friends. That way, they can keep track of our latest activities and their respective deadlines via our employees' WeChat Moments. If they're interested, then they can just register with us and we'll manage the participants' arrangements and grouping. We're just a different form of tour group. Once you've paid the group fees, we'll proceed to plan the trip, lodgings, and provide any assistance in difficult situations. Compared to an actual cycling trip, this is actually much better in terms of safety and cycling enjoyment," Yu Zhijie explained.

Wei Muran picked up Feng Haoli's files. Apart from his personal information, there were also records of his participation in the club's activities.

Since his joining of the club two years ago, including the trip to Mêdog county, he had participated twice. Once every year. From the perspective of a cycling trip, with it being such a unique way to travel, this frequency is not low.

Qi Youxuan remained quiet all the while. He just kept himself busy on his phone, doing his own things.

Wei Muran took a peek, realizing that he had followed the club's official WeChat account without them realizing and was then browsing through the past advertisements. There were plenty of pictures showing their cycling activities. Paired with catchy slogans—it looked like a blast.

"Do you always post pictures every time you organize a cycling activity?" Qi Youxuan shifted his gaze from the phone and asked with a slight twitch of his lips.

"Yes, this is also a form of advertising," You Zhijie replied.

"If that's the case, then you should have photos of the trip to Mêdog county that Feng Haoli took part in right?" Qi Youxuan asked.

"Er..." Yu Zhijie was stuck for a moment. "If you're talking about the trip to Mêdog county, I do have some recollections. However, they only posted some photos during the early part of the trip. As for the later part of the trip, they stopped posting that much as they were reaching the destination. That's why we're unable to post any. The photos that we post are taken by the participants themselves and posted on WeChat. Our employees are following them, so we select the better pictures, do some editing, and then post them. For the Mêdog county trip, our employees only saved one pretty interesting picture."

Yu Zhijie sent the secretary to search for it. In just a short moment, the secretary came back holding an iPad. On the screen was a picture of five persons' backs. They were facing the sun so even their backs were unclear.

That was a picture that they had already seen before.

"Are there any more?" Zhang Ming asked, frowning.

Yu Zhijie looked at the secretary, only to have her shake her head, "At that time this was the only photo saved as we thought that the journey was a long one and we could take plenty more towards the end. The main attraction was after Tibet, hence we did not save any before that. We didn't expect that after Tibet they would stop posting."

Zhang Ming looked towards Qi Youxuan, seeing him nod his head, then Zhang Ming proceeded to take out a group photo of five persons taken from the front. That photo was a group photo taken before Feng Haoli had started posting negative messages, where all five displayed charming smiles.

"These five people, please identify them," Zhang Ming said.

"Our company has someone in charge of posting photos for advertising. He will be more familiar with the club members. I'll call him over," the secretary explained, then went out of the room.

After a short moment, she came back with a young man in his twenties following behind her. That person seemed young and was most likely still in university.

"He is Qiu Mingchao, currently a third-year student at our local city university. He's working part-time here in our club," the secretary explained. As they were only working with background operations, mostly focusing on Weibo and WeChat promotion by uploading photos, their workload was not heavy. However, due to a large number of minor things that needed to be settled, other part-timers could not take on more work, and it was a waste to open up a new position for it. Therefore, they decided to hire a university student.

Zhang Ming signaled Qiu Mingchao with a nod to have a seat, and then showed him the picture. "These people are members of your club. Do you recognize them?"

"Yes." Qiu Mingchao nodded. "I remember these people. Due to the number of club members, I can't recall their names off the top of my head. Let me go dig for their information."

Qiu Mingchao quickly searched for their information, then lined them up neatly from left to right for them.

"Why are there only three sets? There should be a total of five sets including Feng Haoli's information," Wei Muran exclaimed.

"The one in the middle is our boss, Wei Guangzheng. His information is not in our database," Qiu Mingchao explained.

Zhang Ming immediately looked at Yu Jiezhi, "Why did you not mention this when we asked you earlier?"

Yu Zhijie was stunned for a moment, then saying, "I do recognize our boss. However, since I did not recognize the other three, I might as well not say anything and let those who know him introduce him altogether. I didn't hide it on purpose."

Yu Zhijie's explanation was not a good one, but they had nothing to refute him with.

Only that Zhang Ming was unable to hold back and snickered.

Qi Youxuan asked Yu Zhijie for Wei Guangzheng's phone number and company address. Although Wei Guangzheng had founded the company, he currently worked for his own company as a marketing manager.

Three of them left the club. Wei Muran held onto Wei Guangzheng's name card that Yu Zhijie passed to them.

"Weihao Co.,Ltd. Have you guys heard of it before?" Wei Muran asked out of suspicion. She was doubting if she was unclear due to her lack of interactions with the financial world.

Turned out that even Qi Youxuan and Zhangming were at a loss.

"Perhaps it's a small company," Zhang Ming explained, "but the name Wei Guangzheng is... too virtuous..."

"Pfft!" Wei Muran laughed, while Qi Youxuan dissed, "However, based on his creepy appearance, it should be 'Wei' of 'Xu Wei1', Wei Guangzheng."

Zhang Ming nodded in agreement, "Now that's a name reflecting the personality. His parents' ideals were great, but their genes were lacking."

Zhang Ming notified Jiang Yuecheng with a phone call that they were heading to Wei Guangzheng's company.

However, when they reached Weihao's marketing department, they found out that Wei Guangzheng was not in the office.

"Manager Wei took a leave of absence yesterday afternoon and didn't come in today," Wei Guangzheng's secretary informed them.

"Did he contact you today?" Wei Muran asked.

The secretary shook her head, "I tried calling his mobile phone this morning but nobody answered."

"Is he always like this?" Zhang Ming questioned.

"No," answered the secretary. "Our Director Wei, father of our manager, has strict requirements for his son, and makes sure he punches in every day. Even if the manager doesn't come in, he would always find an excuse to take leave, not to be out of contact like this."

The secretary looked around, and then whispered, "If the manager misbehaves, Director Wei will cut his pocket money, so the manager doesn't act as he likes."

At that moment, Zhang Ming received a call from Jiang Yuecheng. His expression changed, and he quickly ended the call. He then signaled towards Qi Youxuan and Wei Muran with a look and the three left. Only then did Zhan Ming tell them, "Wei Guangzheng was found dead from hanging in his house."

"Captain Jiang and his team are already there. He's asking for us to hurry over."

...

The trio rushed over to Wei Guangzheng's house. Bai Mo was in the midst of examining the corpse.

When Zhao Yiyang saw them arriving, he went ahead and told them everything he knew.

"Wei Guangzheng, deceased. Twenty-eight years old. We received a police report from the neighbor complaining about their bathroom leaking all the way to the lower floor. Nobody answered when they came knocking, so they proceeded to make a police report. As we came in, we discovered Wei Guangzheng was already dead," Zhao Yiyang explained.

The floor was still covered with a thin layer of water.

Qi Youxuan did not examine the body straight away but instead went to the bathroom first.

Wei Guangzheng's unit had three bedrooms and two living rooms, located in a decent area. The pricing for this place should be at least a hundred thousand per square meter.

Qi Youxuan opened the bathroom door and saw that water from the bathtub was overflowing. The condition of the floor was much worse than outside.

"The bathtub's tap was turned on by someone. Piping had no problems. When we came in, the tap was flowing fully," Zhao Yiyang explained as he followed behind Qi Youxuan.

Ever since he witnessed Qi Youxuan's ability, Zhao Yiyang had already planned to stick close to Qi Youxuan whenever he can whenever there was a case, hoping to learn as much as possible.