Chapter 94: A Shocking Corruption Scandal!

At the gate of No. 32 Youth Road.

“All right, we’re here.”

Yang Dong glanced out the car window. The jade-white villa standing there in the silence of the deep night was indeed enough to stir a greedy eye.

Gu Santong shrank into himself, not daring to look outside, much less at his own villa.

“Chief Gu, time to get out.”

“This isn’t your Education Bureau chauffeured car. You’ve ridden in it long enough, haven’t you?”

Yang Dong glanced at him, then, together with Lu Yike, hauled him out of the car.

By now, Gu Santong’s legs had gone weak. He could barely stand, cold sweat beading across his forehead.

“Donglai, Shuangquan, help him inside.”

Yang Dong gave the two Hou men a sign. They immediately took Gu Santong over, supporting him as they walked toward the villa’s courtyard.

“No key,” someone said.

When they reached the gate of the villa courtyard, they found it locked.

“Chief Gu, where’s the key?”

Yang Dong turned and asked Gu Santong.

Gu Santong kept his head down, gritting his teeth in silence.

Fine. So he really would not shed tears until he saw the coffin.

Yang Dong did not bother with him. He went to the eastern side of the iron gate, stepped on a blue-stone tile, pried it up with his hand, and took out a ring of keys from underneath.

Seeing that Yang Dong actually knew where the key was hidden, Gu Santong felt icy all over, and cold sweat poured down his body even more violently.

Lu Yike, seeing how familiar Yang Dong was with the place, would have suspected he had some connection to the villa if it had not belonged to Gu Santong.

How did Yang Dong know the key was hidden there?

Suppressing the doubt in her heart, Lu Yike did not ask further. The investigation came first.

But once this case was finished, she would definitely find time to have a serious talk with Yang Dong.

With a sharp click, the lock opened, and Yang Dong pushed the iron gate wide.

The group went in at once.

Reaching the front door of the two-story villa, Yang Dong used one of the keys to unlock the outer door as well.

When he pushed open the heavy villa door, the first thing that met their eyes was a lavishly decorated reception hall.

The mottled carpet was clearly made from white tiger skin. These were protected animals, yet their hides had been stripped and turned into a carpet.

From the size of it, there had to be at least a dozen white tiger pelts.

White tiger skins alone were contraband, and a dozen of them would be worth at least a million yuan.

Above their heads hung a chandelier in a pure European style, gilded gold and luxurious to the extreme, with a radius of at least one and a half meters.

This three-meter-wide European chandelier looked truly extravagant.

Even Hou Donglai, once he stepped inside, was shaken to the core by the scene before him.

So this was what it felt like to be a corrupt official. It was almost comfortable enough to be obscene.

The first floor alone was at least four hundred square meters, and the two floors together came to nearly a thousand.

Classic sofas faced a fifty-inch rear-projection television set, the best model of the era.

“This villa in this district must cost at least three million yuan, right?”

Yang Dong withdrew his gaze and looked at Gu Santong.

Gu Santong lowered his head awkwardly, neither daring nor able to answer.

“Let Chief Gu sit on the sofa. No matter what, this is still his villa. He should at least enjoy his own sofa for a bit. Otherwise, there won’t be another chance later.”

Yang Dong signaled to the two Hous, then joked at Gu Santong as well.

For such a luxurious villa, the value in Lingyun City would only be around three million yuan, but in a first-tier city it would be worth at least tens of millions.

Still, a three-million-yuan villa tied to an official at the bureau-director level—tut, tut.

“Captain Yang, there’s nothing much to see here, is there?”

“If you like it, I can give it to you. I only ask that you spare me.”

Gu Santong sat trembling on the sofa of his own villa, yet it felt like sitting on hot coals. Being here filled him with fear.

Only then did he realize how scorching hot a villa bought with embezzled money could be.

“You? I couldn’t possibly afford it.”

Yang Dong smiled first, then tapped the exquisite rosewood coffee table and continued, “Chief Gu, since even you said it’s just a villa and nothing worth looking at, why are you so nervous?”

“Me? Was I nervous?” Gu Santong lifted his head to look at Yang Dong, trying as hard as he could to suppress the panic in his heart and force himself to appear calm.

But calmness cannot be performed once fear has taken root. The harder one tries, the more obvious the tension becomes.

Yang Dong snorted at Gu Santong’s act and slowly walked toward the refrigerator near the dining room.

By then, Lu Yike was holding the enforcement camcorder, recording everything inside and outside the villa from left to right. All of it would become evidence for the Discipline Inspection Commission, useful later when Gu Santong was handed over to the judicial system. Every detail could affect sentencing.

“Yike, come here!”

At Yang Dong’s call, Lu Yike, still holding the camcorder, walked over to him, stopping in front of the refrigerator.

“Don’t—”

Seeing the two of them approach the fridge, Gu Santong shouted at once, trying to stop them.

But Yang Dong was faster. He yanked the refrigerator door open.

Crackling and crashing, countless stacks of red banknotes spilled onto the floor.

The entire refrigerator’s chilled compartment had been packed full of banknotes. A rough count would come to several million, because each bundle was in one-hundred-yuan notes, one hundred bills to a stack, meaning ten thousand yuan per bundle.

Lu Yike had plenty of investigative experience, but even she was stunned by what she saw.

“Gloves!”

Yang Dong held out a hand. Lu Yike immediately took a pair of white silk gloves from her pocket and handed them over.

After putting on the gloves, Yang Dong took out all the money from the refrigerator’s chilled compartment.

“Twenty...”

“Fifty-five...”

“Eighty-three...”

“One hundred twenty-five...”

“One hundred twenty-six!”

Yang Dong placed the money on the dining table. Thankfully, Gu Santong’s dining table was large enough to hold such a pile.

“One million two hundred sixty thousand in total!” Lu Yike counted silently as well, then spoke up.

“More than that...”

Yang Dong opened the freezer below as well. All of the freezer drawers had been removed, and inside were still more piles of Renminbi, stacked to the brim.

Yang Dong continued to wear the white gloves and took the money out piece by piece, counting carefully.

“One million five hundred thousand!”

The freezer contained one million five hundred thousand yuan. Added to the one million two hundred sixty thousand in the refrigerator, that made a total of two million seven hundred sixty thousand.

Lu Yike was already deeply shaken. In this era, embezzling a few hundred thousand yuan was already a very serious corruption case.

Yet the scene before her told her that this might well become the most serious corruption case in Lingyun City to date, an astonishing scandal indeed.

“Shuangquan, check everything upstairs too—the bathroom, the refrigerator, the bookcase, the safe, the washing machine. Look through all of it!”

Yang Dong gave Hou Shuangquan his instructions.

Hou Shuangquan immediately ran up the stairs and headed to the second floor.

Before long, a cry of shock came from upstairs.

“Captain, money! It’s all money!”

Yang Dong and Lu Yike exchanged a look, then immediately headed upstairs.

When they reached the second floor, even though Yang Dong had already prepared himself, he was still deeply stunned.

What he had told Hou Shuangquan to search had almost become meaningless.

Because Gu Santong had no need at all to hide money in the bathroom or the washing machine.

Starting from the staircase landing and stretching all the way into the bedroom, the floor was covered entirely with money, red banknotes laid out thick as a carpet.

At a glance, there had to be at least ten million yuan.

Yang Dong noticed that every window on the second floor was tightly curtained, as if to ensure no one could see what was happening inside.

Lu Yike immediately held up the enforcement camcorder and filmed the scene carefully. It was simply too shocking.

“Pull back the bedsheet!”

Yang Dong signaled to Hou Shuangquan ahead.

Hou Shuangquan nodded, walked into the bedroom, and lifted the bedsheet off the double bed, a bed nearly two meters wide.

Money!

Still money!

“We won’t be able to count this with just the two of us.”

“Yike, call for backup,” Yang Dong said with a sigh.

“What do you mean, call for backup?” Lu Yike looked blankly at him, unfamiliar with this later-age internet slang.

“It means call the Municipal Discipline Inspection Commission and ask for help, send more investigators. Just the few of us? It would take forever to count all this.”

Yang Dong pointed at the vast scene before them, his expression complicated.

This astonishing corruption case, and the uproar it would create, might be no smaller than what Tian Guanghan had confessed.

Because Tian Guanghan’s case was known only to a few high-ranking people in the city.

But Gu Santong’s staggering corruption case before them now was of the kind that could not be hidden even if one wanted to.

By tomorrow morning, the flood of reports would be impossible to avoid.