Chapter 96: Gu Ci's Name Sounds Familiar

Captain Yang brushed past the investigator without so much as a glance and strode quickly up to Gu Changrong. "Dr. Gu... I mean, Doctor, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Sorry to have worried you," Gu Changrong said with a wave of his hand. Then he frowned in confusion. "Captain Yang, what are you doing here?"

He remembered saying that no protection was needed for the time being.

"You're too kind, Doctor Gu. I just happened to be patrolling this area," Captain Yang said with a straight face, inventing nonsense without blinking.

"I see," Gu Changrong said, enlightened.

Watching the two of them exchange words so naturally, the investigator, the hospital director, and the others could not help widening their eyes.

At this point, if anyone still could not tell that Captain Yang had come for Gu Changrong, then they were truly blind.

The investigator in particular could not understand how the tiny doctor he had always looked down on had become someone Captain Yang treated with such care.

Still unwilling to believe it, he asked, "Captain Yang, you know Doctor Gu?"

"Doctor Gu operated on me before," Captain Yang said again, his expression steady as he spun another lie.

Then, in a formal tone, he said, "Since the warrant is in Professor Gu's hands, that means we can search the laboratory, correct?"

As for the matter of assault...

Captain Yang's gaze fell on the cool, quiet young woman the investigator had mentioned.

The girl was gentle and demure; even if she did hit someone, she probably would not have much strength behind it.

For some reason, though, her name sounded oddly familiar, as if he had heard it often from someone before.

Still, Captain Yang did not dwell on it.

Right now, his main task was to protect Professor Gu.

He certainly could not allow Professor Gu to be bullied right under his nose.

Under Captain Yang's pressure, the director felt the strain weighing even heavier on him.

Looking at the laboratory door, his expression shifted uncertainly as he moved forward at an agonizingly slow pace.

Just then, his phone vibrated.

A secretive smile touched the corners of the director's mouth. He no longer delayed, and instead opened the laboratory door with unusual briskness.

Seeing this, Captain Yang left one man behind and went back out to continue his "patrol."

The entire laboratory was laid bare before everyone.

Because the latest trial of the special medicine had been forcibly suspended, the lab was now eerily empty, with no one inside.

The worktables were also spotless.

On the surface, there was nothing strange about the laboratory at all.

The supervisor immediately shouted, "Well? What do you have to say now?"

The director gave a cold inward smile. "If Doctor Gu wants to inspect it, then inspect away. But if you don't find anything, should Doctor Gu not owe me an explanation as well?"

Gu Ci's eyes, half-smiling and half-cold, swept across the refrigerated cabinet at the back of the lab. "Then if we do find something, will the director resign on the spot and submit to an internal review?"

Captain Yang ignored the director's words altogether and said, "Miss Gu, don't worry. If there is really a problem, I will take him away myself. That is my duty, and I won't shirk it."

A flash of anger crossed the director's heart.

"Let's see you find something first," he said.

With that, he led the group to where the lab stored its materials.

Inside, there was not a single finished dose of the special medicine, nor any RTC-1 extract.

The reason was simple: those things had already been destroyed the last time Gu Changrong had come.

For a moment, Gu Changrong also felt at a loss.

It was the kind of helplessness that came from knowing full well that the other side was up to something, yet being unable to seize them by the collar. Having never experienced anything like this before, Gu Changrong felt deeply ill at ease.

Gu Ci looked at the director. "The laboratory logbook."

The director's eyes flickered, and he ordered the supervisor to fetch the logbook from inside the lab.

When no one was looking, the director gave the supervisor a meaningful glance.

The supervisor immediately understood. Not long after, he came over with a logbook in hand.

Seeing how composed the director remained from head to toe, the supervisor also relaxed, lifting his chin with arrogant confidence. "Go ahead and check. In any case, we have nothing to be ashamed of!"

So long as Gu Ci and the others found nothing, even with Captain Yang here, they could not simply arrest someone without cause.

Gu Ci said nothing. She took the logbook and began leafing through it from start to finish.

Gu Changrong leaned over to look as well, but he could not spot anything unusual.

It was simply a record of all materials entering and leaving the laboratory.

Last time they had been here, they had used the figures in this very logbook to destroy the finished doses.

When Gu Ci finished reading, she raised her eyes.

"Musk beetles, short by 507 grams. Mallow seeds, short by 78 plants. TG compound at twenty percent concentration, short by 200 milliliters..."

As one figure after another left her lips, Gu Ci's cool voice instantly made the hair on the director and supervisor's bodies stand on end.

After she finished listing every missing item, Gu Ci tilted her head slightly and looked at the two of them. "May I ask where these missing materials went?"

Anyone familiar with extracts and bone healing would know that every material Gu Ci had named was used to produce RTC-1 extract and the special medicine.

"Director, how do you intend to explain this?" Gu Changrong asked outwardly calm, though inwardly he could not help grumbling.

Why had he failed to notice any of these discrepancies when he looked at the logbook last time, while his own Gu Ci had found so many flaws the moment she stepped in?

Naturally, Gu Changrong did not know there was such a thing as cooking the books.

And cooking the books was, in fact, an art of the most intricate and roundabout kind.

A seasoned forger could take a plainly wrong set of figures and make it flawless, leaving no crack for anyone to seize upon.

But no matter how skilled the hand, if the underlying data itself was wrong, the whole set could never truly reconcile.

It was just that these traces were very hard to discover.

The director and supervisor had never imagined that this little girl before them could see through any of it.

The supervisor even sneered inwardly, thinking that this foolish girl was probably trying to verify whether they had secretly manufactured the special medicine by comparing material quantities.

He had just watched, almost as if watching a joke, as Gu Ci flipped rapidly through the logbook, and his contempt had reached the extreme.

And yet Gu Ci had actually named every missing material.

How self-assured he had been moments ago, and how unbelievable this now seemed.

He himself only vaguely remembered the quantities of a few materials, and the figures Gu Ci had given for those were entirely correct.

As for the others, even the supervisor himself could not remember their exact quantities, yet Gu Ci had stated them all without error.

In an instant, the supervisor felt as though he were dreaming.

The investigator did not understand the use of these materials and impatiently said, "Weren't you here to inspect the special medicine? Can you stop wasting time on irrelevant nonsense?"

It was only a doctor who had once operated on Captain Yang. Did he really think he would get any reward after that?

Certain that Captain Yang would not make an enemy of him over a mere ordinary doctor, the investigator's tone turned even harsher than before.

After all, Captain Yang had just embarrassed him in front of Gu Changrong.

Gu Changrong's mouth twitched, and he looked at the investigator for a long moment. "Do you even know what these materials are?"

The investigator snorted. "What do the materials have to do with your insistence on barging into someone else's lab?"

"Doctor Gu, are you trying to change the subject again? Whether their logbook is missing materials is an internal matter for their hospital. What does it have to do with you?"

"Ridiculous," Gu Changrong could not help thinking again. How had the research institute sent such an investigator?

"These materials are all used to make the special medicine, and even the proportions roughly match. The items missing from the logbook are exactly these. And you say this has nothing to do with it?"

Hearing this, even though the investigator did not understand the composition of the special medicine, he understood the implication.

Immediately, his face turned pale and then red, and he still forced out a rebuttal. "Who knows if you're just naming them at random based on the same proportions?"

But by then, no one present paid him any further attention.