Skin - Chapter 61

Chapter 61 – Lu Yang’s Article

　　The car sent by the Municipal Bureau arrived quickly, and the police on the scene took action according to Meng Zhao’s instructions.

　　Meng Zhao stood there, confused and troubled. He watched Lu Yang’s body being carried into the car before turning around and leaving.

　　Walking to his car, Meng Zhao opened the door and got in.

　　He sat next to Lu Shichen and leaned heavily on the back of the seat: “Lu Yang is dead.”

　　Lu Shichen turned his head to look at Meng Zhao. Meng Zhao, who was extremely angry half an hour ago, was now leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed. Even though Lu Shichen was always unable to sense emotions, he seemed to be somewhat infected by the heavy and suppressed emotions in Meng Zhao.

　　Outside the car, a policeman came over and knocked on the window.

　　Meng Zhao opened his eyes, sighed, sat up and rolled down the car window.

　　”Captain Meng, we have completed everything you asked us to do. We will drive away first.”

　　”Go ahead.” Meng Zhao nodded and said to Zhou Qiyang, “Xiao Zhou, we are short of manpower right now. You can go back with them and take statements from the girls first. As for the two managers, I will personally interrogate them when I get back.”

　　”I understand, Brother Zhao.” Zhou Qiyang responded, then pushed the door and got out of the car.

　　When the ambulance carrying Lu Yang’s body drove by, Meng Zhao turned his head and looked at it through the window.

　　At this moment, Meng Zhao’s eyes revealed not only sadness, but also an emotion called compassion. Lu Shichen looked at Meng Zhao, and recalled that when he saw Zhao Yunhua jumping off the building and committing suicide, leaving a pool of blood, Meng Zhao’s eyes revealed the same emotion.

　　But at that time, he didn’t have any emotional fluctuations, and even felt that it was just a meaningless overflow of sympathy.

　　The person who killed Zhou Yan eventually chose to commit suicide. Two lives offset each other, which couldn’t be fairer.

　　Now, Lu Yang, who caused Zhao Yunhua to commit suicide, also lost his life because of this incident. Looking at Meng Zhao on the side, Lu Shichen began to feel that perhaps the loss of life cannot be understood by the logic of “two lives offsetting each other”.

　　After the police cars drove away, the surroundings returned to silence, with only the sound of the gurgling river remaining in the ears.

　　Meng Zhao calmed down, opened the car door and walked out.

　　He got out of the car and walked around to the driver’s seat. Just as he was about to get in, Lu Shichen reminded him from the back seat: “Handcuffs.”

　　”Oh… I forgot.” Meng Zhao walked over, opened the car door, bent down and used the key to unlock the handcuffs for Lu Shichen.

　　Just as he was about to close the car door, Lu Shichen reached out to stop him and then stepped out.

　　Lu Shichen got out of the car, walked to the passenger seat, opened the door and sat in.

　　Meng Zhao didn’t say anything and got in the car.

　　The car sped along. At first, neither of them spoke. They drove into the territory of Huai’an District. After driving for a while, Lu Shichen said, “This is not the direction to the Municipal Bureau.”

　　Meng Zhao kept driving while looking ahead and said, “I need to confirm something.”

　　”About Lu Yang?” Lu Shichen asked.

　　”Well, how did Lu Yang find this place? There must be something fishy. The police used so many people and spent so much time, but they were unable to conduct an accurate and rapid investigation. Lu Yang found this address in a short time by himself. I think it is necessary to find out how he found it.”

　　Seeing that Lu Shichen didn’t respond for a long time, Meng Zhao turned his head to look at him: “What do you think?”

　　Lu Shichen paused: “You didn’t bring Xiao Zhou.”

　　Meng Zhao: “…”

　　The two were silent for a moment, and Meng Zhao said, “Let’s find a locksmith company.”

　　•=|=•

　　Just like the last time they visited, Lu Yang’s home was still a bit messy, with a lot of printed materials piled in the bedroom.

　　There was a laptop on the table, which Lu Yang had left on when he left.

　　Meng Zhao walked over, touched the touchpad with his finger, and the screen lit up. Lu Shichen also stood beside and looked at it.

　　The background interface of his official account filled the entire screen. There seemed to be a document in the editing state of the draft box.

　　Meng Zhao quickly scanned the contents of the text editing box. The words written by Lu Yang were exactly about the exposure of the pornographic live broadcast platform “Cage”.

　　”Cage, as the name suggests, is like a dark cage, and the girls imprisoned in it are all ‘birds’.”

　　”The birds don’t have their own names. Based on the time they enter the cage, they are named No. 1, No. 2, No. 3…”

　　”The birds need to do their best to please the spectators outside the cage in order to get more ‘feeding (rewards)’. The bird that receives the most feeds on that day will satisfy any request of the spectator who gives the highest reward. And the guest who feeds the most each month will have the opportunity to enter the dark cage and designate any bird to satisfy any request of his or her own.”

　　”As for those birds who cannot meet the audience’s needs, the audience has every right to punish them. At the beginning of each month, the bird with the lowest reward will be at risk of being ‘auctioned’ and will have to meet any abuse requirements specified by the audience with the highest bid.”

　　”The 24th bird was the target of one of the sanctions. After entering the cage, the bird tried several times to ask for help outside the cage. However, her behavior was soon discovered by the caretaker inside the cage, so she became the next target of abuse.”

　　”The designated torture theme for the 24th bird was ‘rape’. The cage keeper deliberately relaxed his guard, making her think she had a chance to escape. Little did she know that all her cautious actions were being broadcast live. What awaited her was a brutal and real rape. The person who committed the rape was the spectator who gave the highest reward the previous month. It was he who auctioned off the opportunity to torture the ’24th bird’ at the highest price.”

　　”The live broadcast of this torture quickly became the most viewed video in the cage, but the 24th bird disappeared. Birds flying away from the cage is an occasional occurrence, and no one will miss them. The spectators stared at the birds in the cage with eager eyes, and at the same time they hoped that the new birds would bring them more fresh excitement.”

　　“And Cage also has extremely high entry requirements for spectators. They must be introduced by someone and pass an offline review before they could be qualified to enter the Cage.”

　　”How did these birds fly into the cage? This probably started with a live broadcast company called ‘Yunya’…”

　　This was the beginning of the article. Lu Yang introduced the cage’s operating model in detail with pictures and texts, and then changed the subject to how the girls were lured into the cage by someone using Yunya Live as bait.

　　”While learning about this incident, I was very curious about whether Yunya Live was an innocent bait. After learning about Yunya’s CEO, Wu Weihan, I speculated that Wu Weihan must be related to Cage. He was even the founder of the Cage platform and the creator of the system!”

　　”Wu Weihan’s crimes are far more than just Cage. I don’t know if you remember that in April I published an article about Zhao Yunhua’s accidental killing of Zhou Yan. Zhao Yunhua mistakenly believed that Zhou Yan was the murderer who bullied Zhao Tong to death. In fact, Zhou Yan, who had shown kindness to Zhao Tong, had never participated in bullying Zhao Tong. Who was the real murderer of Zhao Tong? He completely disappeared even though the case had been brought to court. We can infer that there must be a very powerful force behind the real murderer.”

　　”After Zhao Yunhua passed away, I visited dozens of alumni who graduated from Wenzhao High School and found out that Wu Weihan, the son of the city’s business tycoon, Wu Jiayi, was a classmate of Zhao Tong and Zhou Yan ten years ago. It was he who initiated the bullying of Zhao Tong and forced Zhao Tong to death!”

　　”Not only that, Zhao Tong’s neighbor Lin, who was also the most beautiful girl in the class next door. She inexplicably developed a mental illness during her relationship with Wu Weihan and refused to leave her house for the next ten years. What happened to Lin is probably a secret that only Wu Weihan knows.”

　　”For ten years, Wu Weihan has relied on his father, Wu Jiayi, to bully his classmates to death, and now he has established the cruel and dark platform like Cage. The crimes left behind by this man are far more than what I have recorded in this article.”

　　”I published this article not to create a gimmick or to attract attention, but because the last article to a certain extent led to Zhao Yunhua’s suicide. I know that many people say that I caused Zhao Yunhua’s death. I have always felt guilty after that incident. I want to find out the truth behind it, give an explanation to Zhao Tong and Zhao Yunhua who died unjustly, and let the real murderer receive the due trial and punishment.

　　”After this article is published, if the girls in Cage can be rescued, I will donate all the income from my public account this year to these girls to help them heal their trauma. I also hope to atone for what I did before.”

　　After reading the entire article, Meng Zhao felt heavy-hearted. After a moment of contemplation, he said, “What Lu Yang meant by this article is that Cage relies on tips from customers to make a profit. But the Wu family is so big that these tips are just a pittance compared to the huge capital of the business giant. Can he take it seriously?”

　　Lu Shichen said: “This is just Lu Yang’s own understanding.”

　　”Well, Lu Yang’s understanding is probably wrong,” Meng Zhao nodded. “The manager said ‘the boss will bring customers here’. It is very likely that Wu Weihan’s real purpose is to provide services to these customers and exchange benefits. The establishment of this reward system is just a means of stimulating the rich to satisfy their desire for control and participation.”

　　Lu Shichen said, “hmm”.

　　Meng Zhao continued: “However, since Lu Yang knows so much about this operating model, he should have studied this platform in depth…” As he spoke, he opened the computer’s browser and looked through Lu Yang’s recent browsing history. The most recent browsing record was the cage platform.

　　Meng Zhao continued to look through Lu Yang’s browsing history. He found that although Lu Yang had promised him several times that he would not interfere in the case, in fact he had never stopped wanting to find out the truth.

　　Just after Lu Shichen was hospitalized, on the day Meng Zhao had just spoken to him on the phone, Lu Yang had clicked on the hot search keyword “Sanatorium basement” on the Internet, and then browsed quite a lot of discussions about this matter by searching for this keyword. Meng Zhao clicked on these discussion posts one by one and browsed quickly.

　　One of the posts was titled “Do you know Wu Jiayi’s son Wu Weihan? It seems he is in prison. Does anyone know the inside story? Please share.”

　　Meng Zhao clicked into the post, and all the comments below were speculations related to this matter—

　　”Isn’t Wu Weihan the CEO of Yunya Live? Could it be that he is evading taxes?”

　　”Do you remember the incident in the basement of the sanatorium a while ago? It was very close to the time when Wu Weihan was locked up. I wonder if there is any connection between the two incidents.”

　　”I haven’t heard that the sanatorium is owned by the Wu family.”

　　”Wu Jiayi’s son is not a good person anyway. I have a friend who went to high school with him. I heard that he was very arrogant when he was in school. He changed girlfriends one after another and didn’t take his teachers seriously at all.”

　　•=|=•

　　Going down, Meng Zhao saw Lu Yang’s post record,

　　”I am collecting all kinds of information about Wu Wei Han for a fee. Anyone who knows please contact me privately. I will reward you handsomely.”

　　Meng Zhao clicked on Lu Yang’s profile picture and found that many people had sent him messages after seeing Lu Yang’s comment.

　　At the top were some unread messages that Lu Yang hadn’t had time to read. Most of the people provided some hearsay, and there were also quite a few scammers who asked Lu Yang to pay first.

　　And in the most recently read message, Lu Yang had a rather long conversation with that person.

　　That person had no avatar and his nickname was the initial nickname automatically assigned by the system. It was this person who provided Lu Yang with information about CAGE.

　　Gyktulgb0022: Are you looking for Wu Weihan?

　　Lu0307 (Lu Yang): That’s right, if you can provide useful information, I will give you a generous reward.

　　Gyktulgb0022: I don’t want money. I do have a lot of information about Wu Weihan, but I want to know what you want to do with Wu Weihan’s information. If you just want some boring gossip, then I have nothing to say.

　　Lu0307 (Lu Yang): I don’t want gossip, I just want to confirm whether Wu Weihan is a guilty person. If so, I will punish him.

　　Gyktulgb0022 was silent for a few minutes, then sent another message: “Okay, I choose to believe you.”

　　Next, Gyktulgb0022 sent a URL: “Click and take a look.”

　　Followed by the account number and password: “Log in with this.”

　　After about ten minutes, Lu Yang probably browsed the website before sending a message: “What a beast! Is this the website built by Wu Weihan?”

　　Gyktulgb0022: That’s right, YunYa Live is just Wu Weihan’s main business, and this website is the most important thing he has been running over the years.

　　Lu0307 (Lu Yang): How did you know about this website? Can you tell me more about it?

　　Gyktulgb0022: I was once a victim of Cage.

　　Later, Gyktulgb0022 sent a long paragraph of text, all about the operation model of the Cage platform. After reading these texts, Meng Zhao was sure that Lu Yang’s article was the processing and integration of the content provided by this person, and he also polished the text.

　　At the end of the chat, the man sent a location message: “This is the address of Cage’s base. You can go and verify if what I said is true.”

　　Meng Zhao looked at the text and fell into deep thought. After a while, he said, “Lu Yang browsed the Cage platform, and then wrote the article based on the information provided by this person. In order to verify the reliability of the information, he planned to go to the Cage base to verify it before publishing the article. Unexpectedly, he never came back…”

　　After Meng Zhao finished speaking, he fell silent.

　　A few seconds later, he held the mouse, reopened the official account interface, and slowly moved the mouse to the “Send” button.

　　At this moment, Lu Shichen’s hand covered the back of his hand.

　　Meng Zhao turned his head to look at him, and Lu Shichen shook his head at him again.

　　Meng Zhao understood the meaning of his action, but this time, he did not change his mind like last time: “As a policeman, I may be held accountable for my actions, but as a person with a conscience, I want to help Lu Yang fulfill his last wish.”

　　After a moment, Lu Shichen looked at him and let go of his hand.

　　Meng Zhao clicked the mouse, and after a very light crisp sound, Lu Yang’s article exposing “Cage” was made public.