Chapter 43: Finally Found You
Hai City People’s Hospital.
A few staff members only had to ask a few simple questions before the proprietress of Jiajia Fast Food Restaurant spilled the beans, confessing everything she knew.
After cross-referencing her story with the statements from her employees, they confirmed everything was consistent.
"Does this count as a confession? Can I get a lighter sentence, maybe a smaller fine?" Liu Jia finished, looking at everyone present with hopeful eyes.
"Do you think this is a market where you can haggle? Your sentence isn’t up to us. The police will conduct an investigation, and the court will make the final ruling."
Hearing the words "police" and "court," Liu Jia’s mind went blank with panic.
’No, all I did was use some expired ingredients. How did it get this serious? Involving the police and the courts... shouldn’t it just be a fine? Are they trying to scare me? Do they want me to pay more compensation?’
At that thought, Liu Jia forced herself to sit up in bed, fighting back her nausea. Her face was a mask of terror as she asked, "It’s not that serious, is it? I admit I used improper ingredients, but it’s not bad enough to get the police involved, right? Just tell me how much the fine is. As long as the police aren’t involved, I’ll pay whatever it is."
"This isn’t a simple case of poor hygiene where you get a chance to clean up. The food from your restaurant has endangered public health and safety."
The middle-aged man finished speaking and pulled out his phone to call the relevant personnel. Their work was done; the Public Security Bureau would take over from here.
During this time, Liu Jia clung to a sliver of hope, begging pitifully for a chance to turn things around.
But her hopes were completely shattered when police officers appeared at the door of her hospital room.
She panicked and started blurting things out indiscriminately.
"Why are you only arresting me? I’m not the only one using expired ingredients! The Good and Come Again Fast Food Restaurant on the back street! The lunch box stand at the construction site entrance! All the places around me, even the cafeteria inside the construction site, they all use expired ingredients! Why single me out?!"
Hearing this, the expressions of everyone present turned stern.
The middle-aged man in the lead, however, perked up. ’Is she... taking them all down with her?’
If what Liu Jia said was true, this was no longer an isolated food safety issue concerning a few businesses. This was a problem with the food safety of all of Hai City!
Seeing their expressions change, Liu Jia grew even more frantic. "I saw it with my own eyes! Old Liu, the owner of Good and Come Again Fast Food Restaurant, that young guy with the dyed-blond hair who does the purchasing for the construction site, and those two punks selling lunch boxes at the gate—they all get the same stuff I do! Go arrest them too! Go on, hurry!"
Regardless of whether she was just trying to drag others down with her, this concerned the food safety of the entire city. It had to be investigated to the very end!
Because Liu Jia hadn’t fully recovered, she was kept in the hospital under guard. The remaining personnel all returned to their respective units to urgently report the situation to their superiors.
Within two hours, a comprehensive inspection of restaurants, food stalls, and meat wholesale markets across the city was launched.
The area around the Zijing Garden construction site was, naturally, the first to be hit.
Unlike the morning’s inspection, which relied on senses like smell and touch, this time, samples were taken from all food items and sent to a food testing center for individual analysis.
With Xu Dongliang eating and drinking heartily to the side, a few of the braver workers were finally drawn over. Five meals were sold, leaving four lunch boxes on the stall.
Since the lunch boxes hadn’t sold out, Xu Heping couldn’t just find a shady spot to lie down and play on his phone like usual. He had to squat behind the stall, playing on his phone while occasionally shouting out a sales pitch.
Suddenly, a police car drove up and stopped right at the construction site gate.
Four people got out of the car—three men and a woman. Each carried a large black bag.
The four exchanged a look and then headed off in different directions.
One of them walked directly toward Xu Heping’s stall, stopped in front of it, and said coolly, "Routine food safety inspection. I need to register your personal information. What’s your name, address, and ID number?"
Uncle Dongliang had warned them about this in the morning. Plus, they were always law-abiding citizens, so they weren’t flustered by the police. They answered every question without hiding a thing.
After registering his information, the officer casually pointed to three of the lunch boxes on the stall. He took out several transparent, sealable bags, collected random samples from the three meals, and bagged them. Finally, he affixed a barcode to each, and the process was complete.
It wasn’t just Xu Heping’s lunch box stall. The neighboring fried rice stall, the entire row of restaurants across the street, and the cafeteria inside the factory—samples were taken from all of them, from finished products to raw ingredients.
This wasn’t just happening at Zijing Garden; these inspectors appeared in every town and district throughout Hai City.
Xu An’s location was no exception.
However, the situation on Xu An’s end was a bit awkward. By the time the inspectors arrived, he had already finished delivering all the lunch boxes. His stall was empty, with only a few dregs of soup left in the soup pot.
After a brief discussion, they decided to leave one person behind to accompany Xu An back to Xu Family Village to collect food samples, while the rest continued with their original plan.
A city-wide food safety inspection was no small undertaking, involving thousands of people and businesses.
Shortly after the operation began, Zhang Daoyi learned about it.
In the past, operations like this required several meetings, big and small, before being finalized. For this one to launch so quietly, there could only be one explanation: ’Something’s gone wrong!’
Zhang Daoyi hurriedly made some inquiries and eventually confirmed that over a dozen workers from the Zijing Garden construction site had been hospitalized for food poisoning.
’Zijing Garden,’ he thought. ’I remember several restaurants over there source ingredients from me. I wonder if it was one of them.’
’Better safe than sorry. Caution is the key to survival. I have to take countermeasures!’
First, he called the old man in the black leather jacket at Anxin Food Processing Company, telling him to hang up the sign immediately and to gather and organize all related documents.
Then, he dialed the number of a man named Old Zhong.
"Hello? Hey, Old Zhong, it’s me! Zhang Daoyi!"
"Oh, it’s nothing major. I just got word that there’s a city-wide food safety inspection in Hai City today. I was worried you hadn’t heard, so I thought I’d give you a heads-up."
"Uh-huh, yes. We’re suspending all external sales for the next few days."
"Yeah, yeah. We’re just in the pet feed business. This has nothing to do with us."
"Okay, great. Are you free this afternoon? We should grab a meal. I was at the Fishermen’s Tavern in Beitun Town a few days ago, and their seafood was incredibly fresh."
"Good, good. Let’s meet in Beitun Town this afternoon then. Alright, sounds good."
After hanging up, Zhang Daoyi felt a little more at ease.
’That’s right, I’m just in the pet feed business. What’s there to panic about? I really lose my cool when I get anxious.’
At the entrance of Anxin Food Processing Company, the old man in the black leather jacket directed several people as they hung a sign above the door. This sign had an extra word compared to the one Xu An had seen before.
’Anxin Pet Food Processing Company’
Inside, all the flyers and documents related to wholesale food sales were packed into a cardboard box. The old man in the black leather jacket even made a special trip home to place the box in his wardrobe, burying it securely under clothes and quilts.
In the open space outside Anxin Pet Food Processing Company, the women who had been gone for so long reappeared, wearing aprons and squatting by the faucets to wash various types of meat.
From behind the building came the WHIR of a machine starting up. The washed meat was fed into the machine’s intake, eventually rolling out of the exit as solid pellets, which were then packed into bags printed with pictures of pets.
A van pulled to a stop in Qianhai Town. Seven or eight people got out, led by a stern-looking, imposing middle-aged man.
He pulled a pair of white gloves from his pocket and, while putting them on, asked the young adjutant beside him, "Are you sure this is the den?"
The young adjutant shook the colorful flyer in his hand, double-checked the company name and address on it, and replied decisively, "That’s right."
"Excellent. We’ve finally found a bigger fish!"