Chapter 664 - 551: Urine

Chapter 664: Chapter 551: Urine

"So you found it?"

Chen Jia Kang came closer and glanced at the cave, a look of disbelief on his face.

He knew this trip was for a case.

Of course, Wu Kaiwei’s team wouldn’t have disclosed the specific details of the case to him.

But as a Kang Province native, he actually knew which case it was.

Six lives!

The media had reported on it extensively back then. Many people in Longzhou and Kang Province had heard of the case.

The crucial thing was that after nine years, Walnut actually still remembered what happened.

It was just so incredible.

In Chen Jia Kang’s experience, giant pandas did have long-term memories and might remember people who had helped them even after many years.

’But Walnut was just over a year and a half old at the time, still developing. Could he really have such a profound memory?’

Unless what happened back then was so brutal that it left an extremely deep impression on him.

Chen Jia Kang turned to look at Walnut and sighed to himself.

Shen Xin immediately gestured for the two of them to step back.

He didn’t expect to find any DNA or anything like that in the cave after nine years.

But they might be able to analyze a few things from the state of the scene.

But then Walnut started to actively push his way inside, as if he wanted to experience and relive the memory.

Shen Xin quickly pulled him back.

Only Shen Xin could hold back a 200-kilogram bear.

Walnut grunted at Shen Xin a few times.

[Hungry]

[Bad]

[Sky]

The chaotic thoughts came in fragments, and Shen Xin had to guess their meaning.

Walnut was probably trying to say that he had been locked up in here, was often hungry, and had also seen bad people.

The only thing he could see was probably a palm-sized patch of sky.

"Walnut, which bad person are you talking about? Liu Baoli?" Shen Xin asked softly, leading him to the side.

Walnut hesitated for a moment, either recalling or deliberating, then nodded, and then shook his head.

After spending so much time with him, Shen Xin had always felt that Walnut’s feelings toward Liu Baoli were very complicated.

"Then was Wang Shulin here too?" Shen Xin pressed.

This time, Walnut’s nod was decisive. A fierce look crossed his face, and he snorted, expressing his anger.

But at least he wasn’t like before, where his anger would make him lose all reason.

This was the result of spending a long time with him and repeatedly talking to him about it, helping him to accept the situation.

It was the same with Wang Erpeng.

But when it came to Yang Guofa, the result was different.

Walnut first shook his head. After Shen Xin pressed him again, he seemed to think seriously for a moment before shaking his head again.

In other words, he had not seen Yang Guofa here.

Or if he had come, he hadn’t left a deep enough impression.

However, because of the snow, the team had previously speculated that Liu Baoli fed Walnut for a period of time, which would push the date of the mother panda’s murder even earlier.

It was possible that Yang Guofa didn’t show up after the mother panda was killed.

In the distance, Wu Kaiwei and the main team hurried over.

Shen Xin then asked the most crucial question: Did Walnut’s mother die nearby?

[Mother]

Walnut had a very deep impression of his mother.

He looked around, his gaze sad and vacant, then slowly shook his head.

Shen Xin was taken aback and asked him repeatedly, worried that Walnut hadn’t fully understood what he meant.

But the result was the same.

[Already dead]

[Earlier]

Walnut grunted twice. The memory of his mother made him start hugging Shen Xin, nuzzling into his arms for comfort.

Walnut didn’t have an accurate concept of one or two days.

But he could already understand "earlier" and "later," and had a concept of temporal sequence.

This actually fit with the team’s speculation.

First, they killed the mother panda, and Wang Shulin probably went to dispose of the body and sell the pelt.

Then, Walnut was left in Liu Baoli’s care for a period of time.

But they speculated the location must be nearby.

Liu Baoli, carrying a conspicuous panda cub, wouldn’t have gone too far before hiding him.

So they had to keep searching the vicinity and expand the search area.

"Let’s get you something to eat first."

Shen Xin took the bamboo shoots from Ding Yuwei and handed them to Walnut.

Wu Kaiwei, for his part, was greatly encouraged.

A discovery on the very first day—it was a great start.

The crime scene investigators immediately got to work, searching inch by inch for any useful physical evidence.

A preliminary survey revealed a few items.

A thin metal chain, probably a dog leash, had been abandoned in the cave.

The front end had a leather buckle-style clasp.

The other end of the leash was attached to an iron wedge with a ring, which had been hammered into a crevice in the rock.

That must have been what they used to tether Walnut to keep him from running off.

They had Walnut take a look. He recognized it and immediately started scratching at his neck.

A captive-bred giant panda in a base, at just over a year and a half old, would weigh around 20 kilograms.

In the wild, with insufficient food, his weight would have been even lower. A dog leash would have been more than enough to restrain him.

Besides that, they also found some highly decomposed food scraps.

They speculated that Liu Baoli probably did more than just feed him bamboo; he must have prepared other food for him.

He was from the conservation area, so he should have had the experience and known how to supplement a panda cub’s diet.

That’s why there was also a fairly large iron bowl in the cave, possibly for him to drink milk or water from.

These were the findings from the initial survey.

For anything more, they would have to spend time searching inch by inch.

But based on the current evidence, there was no doubt that Liu Baoli had secretly fed Walnut for a period of time back then.

This explained why Walnut’s "opinion" of him had always been somewhere between good and bad.

The investigation of the cave would take a long time. After a short rest and a meal, and confirming that Walnut wasn’t tired, the group set out again, fanning out to search for the place where Walnut’s mother had been killed.

Considering the panda’s physical condition, they couldn’t let him be active for too long.

They took another break in the afternoon and searched until just after three o’clock before heading back.

They had already covered several square kilometers.

After all, they weren’t searching inch by inch; they were mainly relying on Walnut to recognize the terrain.

Unfortunately, there were no new discoveries.

According to their plan, they estimated it would take another two or three days to cover the entire area around Hetaoping.

Walnut was housed at the conservation station in Liujiaping.

Chen Jia Kang’s team was there.

The Conservation Area Administration was also nearby. They were tasked with researching and rescuing giant pandas, and they had all sorts of equipment to monitor Walnut’s physical condition. If any problems arose, they could provide immediate treatment.

In any case, as long as he produced normal droppings every day and had Shen Xin with him, there shouldn’t be any major issues.

The panda could rest, but the people could not.

The task force relocated directly to Liujiaping, and their daily work had to be reported to Xu Jinguang in a timely manner.

As for the dog leash, Chang Zhigang took some men to see Liu Baoli’s wife and had her identify whether it belonged to their family.

News came back that evening: she had identified it. It was indeed from Liu Baoli’s home.

They questioned Liu Baoli’s wife again.

They asked if Liu Baoli had often gone out privately during that period.

Liu Baoli’s wife replied that it was hard to say. Because of his busy work schedule, he would often be gone for two or three days at a time on mountain patrols, not returning home.

Her point was that he might have been going out more than usual, but as for how frequently, she couldn’t say for sure.

Besides attending meetings and adjusting the upcoming search plan, Shen Xin also took the opportunity to catch up.

The task force had a whole room full of case files.

Yang Zeran and the others had finished reading them.

Shen Xin had been in Anjing, busy with the panda, and had only been briefed on the case through daily video conferences.

He was clear on the main details of the case, of course, but he hadn’t personally gone through the massive and complex collection of interview records one by one.

And some clues might just be hidden within them.

So Shen Xin took the chance to catch up, trying to read through all these interview transcripts and related materials.

Around dusk, there was another discovery from the scene.

Or rather, an analytical speculation.

They had previously speculated that there was snowfall when Walnut’s mother was killed, pushing the timeframe back one month from April 13th.

The last snowfall in Wudu that year was on March 9th.

But now, after investigating the scene, they believed this date could be pushed back even further.

They had factored in a new variable.

The cave wasn’t large, and Walnut was tethered. The bamboo should have been cleaned out regularly.

And so should the feces.

Pandas have a low food digestion rate; they are bona fide poop machines.

An adult giant panda can produce a full 20 kilograms of droppings in a single day.

The feces at the scene had clearly been cleaned up; there wasn’t a mountain of droppings piled up.

The droppings could be cleared away, but the urine could not.

Walnut was tied up there and couldn’t move around, so he would urinate whenever he needed to.

And giant pandas aren’t just poop machines; their urine output is also staggering.

An adult giant panda can urinate at least 5 liters a day.

Because they are herbivores, their urine is generally weakly acidic or neutral.

The smell is actually not bad; it’s not very stinky and even has a unique musky scent.

They have no natural predators, so they actively spread their scent.

In any case, as urine, it would definitely contain inorganic salts. Urinating in the same spot repeatedly would inevitably leave stains.

And since this spot was inside a cave, protected from the rain, the investigators found a rather thick deposit of crystalline residue within the range of the iron chain.

Urinating there every day—that’s no small amount.

Therefore, they speculated that the amount of time Walnut spent in this cave could be much longer than a month.

That meant the time of his mother’s death had to be pushed back even further.

This was another new discovery that gave the task force a clearer understanding of the case.

But to make any more progress, they still had to find the location where the mother panda was killed.

So they still had to rely on Walnut to find it.

But Shen Xin never expected that after such a promising start, the entire following week would yield nothing.

They had scoured the area around Hetaoping.

The task force had analyzed topographical maps, identified possible areas, and searched them all.

At this point, Shen Xin couldn’t help but feel discouraged.

’Logically, after Wang Shulin and the others killed the mother panda, they couldn’t have taken Walnut very far away to raise him.’

’If they took the roads, there would be too many unpredictable factors.’

’If they went through the mountain forests, traveling too far would be too exhausting.’

Logically speaking, the location should be somewhere near Hetaoping.

But even after expanding the search to an area nearly ten kilometers from Hetaoping, they still found nothing.

Wu Kaiwei was the chief of the Criminal Investigation Division; he couldn’t stay here indefinitely.

So, Chang Zhigang was put in charge of the task force on-site.

He could sense Shen Xin’s flagging morale and took the initiative to comfort him.

"Shen Xin, no matter what, we’ve already made a huge breakthrough. We can basically deduce what happened back then."

"We also discovered this Yang Guofa person. For you all to bring the case this far in just a few months... I really couldn’t be more satisfied."

For a nine-year-old cold case to have this much progress was excellent.

Shen Xin forced a smile and said he was fine.

’There’s progress, sure, but the problem is we’re hitting a dead end with Walnut, and there are still no results on Yang Guofa’s end.’

’And there are even more troublesome problems ahead.’

’Even if we identify the killer, how do we convict them?’

’Forget the fact that there won’t be any physical evidence left after nine years. Let’s just talk about Yang Guofa. What if he is the killer and fled the country to escape justice? He’s physically left the country; there’s nothing we can do about him.’

’Of course, just being able to give the victims’ families and all the colleagues from the original task force an answer, letting them know the truth of what happened, is already a good thing.’

’But if we can’t bring the killer to justice and make them face punishment, it will never feel complete.’

"Chang Zhi, I’m really fine. We’ll continue tomorrow. We still haven’t checked the old patrol routes, right?"

The only planned areas left to check were Liu Baoli and his team’s old patrol routes.

And beyond the plan, that would mean searching the entire Motianling area.