Chapter 44: Discovering a Clue
「In Qianhai Town.」
The middle-aged man and the young adjutant went from shop to shop according to their plan, finally arriving in front of the Anxin Food Processing Company.
Even before they got close, they were hit by waves of a metallic, bloody smell and the stench of rotting meat.
"Anxin Pet Food Processing Company?" The young adjutant read the sign out loud, enunciating each word, his tone puzzled. "Why is it for pet food?"
"Take a closer look at the word ’Pet’," the middle-aged man reminded him.
The young adjutant focused his gaze on the word and immediately noticed how it differed from the others.
The characters for "Pet" were a size smaller than the rest of the name. They were also clean and tidy, unlike the other characters, which showed numerous scratches and signs of wear. The word had clearly been added later.
Glancing at the women washing meat in the open yard, the two men paid them no mind and walked straight toward the main gate.
They had just reached the middle of the yard when a burly man, who had been sitting by the door playing on his phone, shot to his feet. He barked at them, "Who are you? What are you doing here? This is a factory. No unauthorized personnel."
The middle-aged man simply pulled out his identification. "Food safety inspection. Please cooperate with our work."
The young adjutant couldn’t help but mutter, ’Can’t he see the uniform is a dead giveaway?’
The man was still skeptical and reached for the ID to inspect it more closely, but he was stopped by an old man in a black leather jacket who came out from inside, having heard the commotion.
"Officers, what brings a food inspection to our facility? We just make pet feed here."
"Just a routine inspection. Any company or shop related to food products is subject to a check. Even though you make pet feed, you’re no exception."
"Yes, of course."
The old man in the black leather jacket wrung his hands and nodded, leading the two men inside while explaining as they walked.
"These are the shelves where we store our raw materials. The meat here is all for today’s use. The workers outside are responsible for washing it, and once it’s clean, it’s sent to the back workshop for processing."
The middle-aged man looked at the meat on the shelves, which was constantly dripping bloody water, and his brow furrowed almost imperceptibly.
’Even for making pet feed, these storage conditions are far too poor.’
After speaking, the old man in the black leather jacket tried to lead them to the backyard to see the machines in operation.
"Don’t you have a cold storage unit? Is all the food shipped in and processed fresh daily?" the middle-aged man suddenly asked.
The old man in the black jacket feigned a look of sudden realization and slapped the back of his head.
"Getting old, I completely forgot about that. This way, this way. It’s pretty cold inside, you’ll need to wear a coat. But we only have two, what do you think?"
"I’ll go." The middle-aged man took the military-style overcoat and put it on. It had clearly been worn by many people; the inside smelled of a mix of things.
The cold storage unit was larger than he’d imagined. There were at least five times as many shelves as outside, all of them packed to the brim with various kinds of meat.
"You use all meat for your pet feed? That’s quite generous." He said this as he picked up a package of meat to check the production and expiration dates. "These are all close to expiring? You’re not using any expired food, are you?"
"No, no, absolutely not. We’re a legitimate company and follow all the standards," the old man in the black jacket hastily denied.
The middle-aged man randomly pulled out several packages from various shelves. The dates on all of them showed about half a month left before expiration.
"Let’s go."
The old man in the black jacket led the two into the backyard. A blue rain canopy supported by a steel frame was built over the yard.
In the center of the yard, a machine was roaring. A few people were busy next to it, handling a series of tasks like feeding materials and bagging the product.
He reached out and scooped up a handful of freshly made feed from the output chute. It was still warm in his palm. He brought it to his nose and sniffed but didn’t detect any strange odors.
He tossed the feed back into the bag. As he pulled his hand back, his fingers grazed the surface of the table, instantly becoming covered in dust.
Looking at the area beneath the feed bags, he could clearly see the tracks left by them being moved.
Up ahead, the old man in the leather jacket was still explaining to the young adjutant how they made the pet feed. Just listening to him, one could easily get the impression that he was a professional, a true expert in his field.
Pulling his hand back, the middle-aged man continued to observe the machine and the people working beside it.
The machine was likely secondhand; it looked like it had been in use for many years, yet the company had only been open for a little over six months.
The person in charge of feeding the machine worked quickly, piling the intake chute full in no time, and had to take some material out to put back in later.
The person bagging the product would let the feed from the output chute spill onto the ground while changing bags. A small pile of feed had already accumulated on the floor, but no one seemed to care.
The person responsible for the final packaging was extremely careless. Labels were slapped on crooked, sideways, and even upside down—it was pure chaos.
They put on a good show, and he hadn’t found any hard evidence, but the details were riddled with errors.
After collecting samples of all the food products and raw materials according to standard procedure, the two men said their goodbyes and left.
"We didn’t really get anything today," the young adjutant lamented. "What a wasted trip."
"No, we gained a lot," the middle-aged man said, shaking his head. "Today’s visit confirmed my suspicion that this is one of the dens. If we stake it out for a few days, we might find something."
In a residential building across from the Anxin Pet Food Processing Company, Zhang Daoyi stood before a second-floor, floor-to-ceiling window, observing the company’s activities.
When he saw the middle-aged man’s face, his heart leaped in shock.
’How could it be him! Why would he be involved in investigating a common food poisoning case? Has he discovered a lead?!’
The person accompanying Xu An back to Xu Family Village to collect samples was a fresh-faced rookie, new to the workforce. Having just started the job, he wasn’t as stern as other law enforcement officers and would chat with Xu An about this and that on the way.
He got even more excited when he heard that Xu An had just taken the college entrance exams this year.
After asking about his exam score, he started analyzing which universities and majors he could get into, and what kind of jobs those majors could lead to after graduation.
If Xu An could have heard all this before choosing his major in his past life, he would have been ecstatic. But in this life, he no longer planned to go to college, so none of it was necessary for him anymore.
Still, the officer meant well, so Xu An chimed in with a few words of agreement from time to time.
With someone to chat with, the journey didn’t seem so long, and they soon arrived back at Xu Family Village.
Just as Xu An parked the car in front of the house, the two little ones, Xu Kang and Xu Le, must have heard the sound and came bounding out the door to greet him.
"Brother!"
"Brother’s back! Brother, give me a hug!"
The two of them bounced over to Xu An, only then noticing the young law enforcement officer standing behind him. They froze on the spot, a little unsure of what to do.
"His clothes look so familiar!"
"Silly, that’s the uniform the police officers wear on TV."
"Why is a police officer at our house? Did Brother do something wrong? Is he here to take Brother away?"
Listening to the little ones’ conversation, Xu An didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He wondered where on earth they had seen such strange TV shows.
"Mister, please don’t take my brother away, okay? My brother is very good, he wouldn’t do anything bad," Xu Le said, tilting her head up to look at the young officer with a serious expression.
"Mister is here to check if the food is safe, not to arrest Brother. Be good and go back to your room. I’ll come play with you in a little while, okay?"
Xu An ruffled their fluffy little heads. Their hair seemed to have gotten a bit darker, not as light as it was when he first woke up.
The two of them stared at the young officer for a while, seeming to decide he wasn’t a bad person, before obeying Xu An and heading toward their room. As they walked, they kept looking back, adding, "My brother really is a good boy."
"Your brother and sister are really cute," the young officer said, unable to hold back a smile. He added with a sigh, "I have a sister at home, around my age, and all she does all day is get on my last nerve."
As he spoke, he patted Xu An’s shoulder. "My sister is your age, she just finished the college entrance exams too. I’ve nearly pulled my hair out trying to help her with her applications."
"What was your sister’s score on the exams?" Xu An asked curiously.
"She just made it past the tier-one university cutoff by eight points. Besides unpopular majors, it’s not a safe bet for any decent university, which is why it’s such a headache."
Barely eight points over the tier-one cutoff—that score was indeed precarious.
Xu An suddenly recalled something a roommate from his past life had said when they were talking about college applications.
Unlike Xu An, whose score wasn’t high and who could only pick a so-so major at a so-so school, his roommate’s score was higher.
His score had surpassed the tier-one cutoff, so he decided to take a gamble and apply exclusively to unpopular majors at top-tier 985 and 211 universities.
The competition at these popular universities was too fierce, and he was unsurprisingly rejected by all of them. By a strange twist of fate, he ended up at the same university as Xu An, becoming his classmate and roommate.
During college, he complained more than once that when he was filling out his applications, he saw a 985 university that planned to recruit one student from Hai City.
But precisely because they were only accepting one student, he thought the probability of getting in was too low and didn’t apply.
Later, when the admission scores were announced, he made a point to check. The person who got in had a score three points lower than his.
In other words, if he had applied back then, he definitely would have gotten in!
That was a 985 university, and the major was logistics—he wouldn’t have had to worry about finding a job after graduation. His roommate regretted that decision for a full four years.
"The logistics program at Hongxi University is actually quite good, but they only recruit one student from Hai City. Still, since applications are processed with parallel choices now, it’s worth considering. If you get in by some chance, you’d be in a good program at a 985 university."
Xu An mentioned it in passing and didn’t elaborate. He led the young officer into the kitchen and pointed to the freezer. "This is where we store our ingredients."
This was the main purpose of the visit. The young officer stopped the small talk, took out his tools, and began to collect samples from the ingredients in the freezer and the residue around the pot.