Chapter Thirty-Seven: Cash Withdrawal

Li Qiao hurriedly stood up, his face pale as he nodded repeatedly. “Rest assured! Please, both of you, rest assured! I’ll keep my phone on twenty-four hours a day! If you need anything, just call me directly! I’ll give you my home address—you can come to my house if you need to! Let’s try not to trouble the workplace leaders and colleagues, alright?”

Ning Shuyi neither agreed nor disagreed, but thanked him again before leaving the office building with Huo Yan. As she stepped down the stairs, she caught a glimpse of Li Qiao’s figure inside, watching them from behind the glass.

“You were just scaring him before we left, weren’t you?” Once they were in the car, Huo Yan finally spoke to Ning Shuyi. “I don’t think you really suspect Li Qiao all that much—if anything, you just look down on him.”

“You’re right.” Ning Shuyi smiled and nodded. “It’s exactly because of his contemptible behavior that the suspicion surrounding him feels weakened. He doesn’t seem to have the motive, or even the means, to commit the crime.”

“Yes, he’s a self-centered man from head to toe, always scheming.” Huo Yan shared the same view.

“That’s right! Li Qiao never truly loved Wang Yuluo. His goal was simply to use intimacy as a shortcut to a better life, to polish his image, so he could effortlessly live well—maybe even transform himself from an ordinary salesman into the husband of the company owner’s only daughter.”

Ning Shuyi despised such people, but it was precisely Li Qiao’s blatant selfishness that ruled out his involvement: “He thought Wang Yuluo was chasing him, that he had everything under control, could sit back and wait for victory. But he never expected that he’d lose her, that the prize would slip away from him.

But look at him: after failing to find a suitable marriage partner on Wang Yuluo’s terms, being mocked and ridiculed by everyone, losing face, he didn’t react with anger or humiliation. Instead, he took time to reflect, realized that meeting someone like Wang Yuluo was already a stroke of luck for him, and immediately changed his attitude, chasing her relentlessly.

Even the cosplay he used to mind so much—now, just to win her back, he’d force himself to praise it extravagantly!

So for someone so driven by self-interest, as he himself carelessly let slip just now, if someday he gets his way and climbs up in life, he might indeed try to reclaim all the dignity he lost today.

But for now, what he needs most is Wang Yuluo alive. If she dies, all his ‘bearing humiliation for future gain’ is in vain!”

“Even if Wang Yuluo rejects him outright, he wouldn’t go so far as to kill for revenge.” Huo Yan truly despised men like Li Qiao. “Injured pride means nothing to him—he never had any pride to begin with. So there’s no way he’d lash out in rage and murder someone to vent.”

“But I wasn’t just scaring him for nothing,” Ning Shuyi said as she entered the address into the GPS. “There’s still a chance we’ll need to contact him about something later.

I also want him to feel his suspicion hasn’t been fully cleared, that he’s still under police scrutiny. Otherwise, before this case is resolved, he might go online and start fabricating stories again!

Putting his character aside, during an ongoing investigation, his reckless comments online could cause us no end of trouble, stir up confusion. So it’s best to minimize that risk.”

Huo Yan glanced at the address Ning Shuyi had just entered, then started the car. “You don’t need to input it—it’s the bank near Wang Yuluo’s neighborhood, right? I remember the way from last time.”

Ning Shuyi withdrew her hand, obliging. For someone who could lie in wait as a sniper, spatial awareness was essential; Huo Yan’s sense of direction went without saying.

They had previously begun checking Wang Yuluo’s bank information. On the whole, nothing looked suspicious on the surface—no unusual expenditures. Yet there was one record that struck Ning Shuyi as odd.

In this age of increasingly convenient mobile payments, even many elderly people have learned to scan and pay with their phones. Those who still prefer cash are becoming rare.

But Wang Yuluo, a woman in her twenties, had frequent ATM cash withdrawal records in her bank account—not just once or twice, but repeatedly, many times.

This naturally caught Ning Shuyi’s attention, so they needed to clarify it at the bank.

It was relatively easy to obtain the information. The two quickly acquired Wang Yuluo’s detailed transaction history for the past six months, as well as the bank’s surveillance footage from the last three months.

As soon as she reviewed the transaction history, Ning Shuyi spotted the issue.

Not only did Wang Yuluo make multiple cash withdrawals at ATMs, the frequency of these withdrawals had been steadily increasing.

From once or twice a month six months ago, to three or four times a month two or three months ago, to nearly two or three times every week in the past one or two months.

Her withdrawal frequency was rising, leading to the conclusion that her dependency was growing—from occasional, to clearly addicted just before the incident.

Although the medical examiner noted during autopsy that the concentration of residual substances in her blood wasn’t particularly high, which could mean her intake wasn’t enormous, if the tragedy hadn’t happened and her life hadn’t ended, judging by this withdrawal pattern, she was already stepping into a dangerous pit and seemed ready to plunge deeper.

As Ning Shuyi noted Wang Yuluo’s increasingly frequent withdrawals, Huo Yan made another observation.

“Look at these transactions,” he pointed out the anomalies for Ning Shuyi to review. “Usually, Wang Yuluo’s withdrawals weren’t identical each time, but generally averaged around five or six thousand yuan, and even when the intervals shortened, there was still some pattern to them.

But these few are strange: the timing is irregular, no discernible pattern, and each withdrawal is only five or six hundred. I don’t think that’s Wang Yuluo’s style.”

Ning Shuyi agreed—there was definitely something off here. Wang Yuluo’s mobile payment records showed her daily small expenses were mostly handled digitally, not always in cash.

That’s why each five or six thousand (or more) withdrawal suggested she was making covert cash transactions for things she didn’t want to leave a trace for.

Therefore, these few low-value withdrawals stood out—there was no apparent reason for them to exist.