This is Human Intervention, Not Coincidence

“This wall must be about two meters thick, right? How could it be dug through?”

“It's not two meters, it's 1.8 meters,” the Manager explained, glancing at the wall that had been breached.

Chen Ke took another look at the cut in the wall.

“One point eight meters… that’s about my height… What kind of tool could have done this? The thief who broke into here must be quite something.”

Han Fei beside him couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Do you even have a height of one point eight meters?”

Chen Ke immediately fell silent.

He wanted to argue, but he lacked the confidence to do so. His height could only be described as ‘about’ one point eight meters, but if you were to get technical, it was far from it.

“What kind of tool could make a hole in a wall that’s 1.8 meters thick?” a police officer couldn’t help but ask.

“A heavy-duty drill, but that would take a long time,” someone replied.

“Heavy-duty drill… Captain Han, we could start by looking into that. If we check who recently purchased a heavy-duty drill, we might be able to narrow down the suspects, right?”

Before Han Fei could respond, Xu Mo shook his head.

“A heist of this magnitude must have been planned for a very long time. We don’t know how long exactly, but relying on just the heavy-duty drill… it’s not enough to narrow down the suspects.”

As soon as these words were spoken, the police officer immediately lost hope.

Xu Mo made sense. This theft involved an amount as high as one billion yuan. The thieves must have planned this for a long time—it could have been months or even years. Either way, it definitely wasn’t a short period.

Starting the investigation from the tools used was pointless. Who knows when the thieves bought their tools? Maybe they prepared them long ago.

Xu Mo walked up to the hole in the wall, jumped onto the cut edge, and peered outside.

On the other side of the wall was the city’s main sewage pipeline. The pipeline was quite spacious, but it emitted a foul smell.

Using the flashlight on his phone, he illuminated the bottom of the pipeline, which was filled with sewage.

After a moment, Xu Mo returned to the vault.

“The other side of the wall is the city’s main sewage pipeline. It’s quite wide, and the thieves must have escaped through it. The bottom is full of water, so any footprints left by the thieves would have been destroyed.”

This was the city’s main sewage pipeline, connected to all the manholes on the ground. The thieves could have exited through any manhole.

Trying to trace the thieves based on footprints would be like finding a needle in a haystack.

“No footprints… Could we use police dogs? Maybe they could track the suspects by scent?” Wang Dachuan suddenly suggested.

Xu Mo glanced at him but didn’t say anything.

As the new captain of Team Seven, Chen Ke lightly tapped Wang Dachuan on the head.

“Didn’t I just say it’s a sewage pipe? How do you expect police dogs to work in that?”

Police dogs wouldn’t be able to perform in such an environment. The strong smell of sewage would mask any human scent.

The three police officers who had come to learn simply observed Xu Mo in silence, not offering any opinions.

Their task was to learn, not to investigate. They were there to see how Xu Mo conducted the investigation.

Every word and action of Xu Mo’s was being carefully noted, ensuring they didn’t miss a single detail.

“Footprints are out of the question, and the sewage pipeline connects to all the manholes on the ground. It seems… there’s no point in trying to trace the thieves’ escape route. We should look elsewhere,” Han Fei mused.

With that, he turned his attention to the several surveillance cameras in the vault.

Such places usually have closed-circuit cameras, using a local network that’s physically isolated. Hackers can’t infiltrate them, so the footage couldn’t have been tampered with.

“Any clues in the surveillance footage?”

“No,” the Manager shook his head vigorously. “There was a power outage due to a wiring fault at noon. The cameras didn’t capture anything during that time. By the time the power was restored, there was a hole in the wall, and the safe was empty.”

If the surveillance had recorded anything useful, he would have told the police right away.

“A wiring fault? Was it caused by human intervention?” Han Fei zeroed in on the key point.

“No, it was because a rat chewed through the wires, causing a short circuit and a fire that burned a bunch of wires,” the Manager replied truthfully.

Hearing this, Han Fei couldn’t help but scratch his hair in frustration.

The cause of the wiring fault was a rat, not human intervention, which meant it was purely a coincidence.

He was at a loss.

The thieves had dug a hole from the outside, and coincidentally, the power went out due to the wiring fault at that exact moment. The surveillance cameras didn’t capture anything, and by the time the power was restored, the thieves had already made off with the loot and escaped through the sewage pipeline.

There was no footage from the surveillance cameras, and the other side of the wall was a sewage pipeline, making it impossible to trace. There were no clues at all.

Not just Han Fei, but all the police officers were frowning, unsure of where to start.

Without surveillance footage or any direction or footprints left by the thieves, everyone fell into silence.

The three trainee officers also felt the difficulty of the case.

But the more challenging the situation, the more they looked forward to Xu Mo finding the key to solving it.

At that moment, Xu Mo spoke.

He looked at the Manager. “Don’t you have a backup generator at your insurance company?”

“Yes, we do.”

“Why didn’t you use the generator when the power went out?”

“We thought of that right after the power outage, but the generator had been sitting for too long… it was broken.”

Xu Mo’s face showed a look of contemplation.

The thieves had struck at the exact moment when the insurance company’s wiring was chewed through by a rat, causing a short circuit and a fire that led to a power outage. And coincidentally, the backup generator had also malfunctioned.

It was too much of a coincidence, so much so that it didn’t feel like a coincidence but rather a carefully orchestrated event.

“That’s quite the coincidence… Take me to the power room,” Xu Mo said.

“Sure!”

The Manager didn’t hesitate and immediately led the group to the power room.

After Xu Mo’s question, the other police officers also realized that things were a bit too coincidental.

Why did the wiring get chewed through right when the thieves were about to strike? And why, at that exact moment, did the generator fail?

In the power room, the Manager pointed to a bundle of wires near a blackened wall. “The wires that were chewed by the rat were here. The rat was electrocuted and burned, and these wires are all new replacements.”

“Where did the burned wires go?” Xu Mo asked.

“We threw them away, in the trash outside,” the Manager pointed to the door. Realizing something, he added, “I’ll go get that trash can.”

A moment later, the Manager returned with a trash can.

Inside the trash can were the burned wires and a rat that had been killed by the electric current.

“This is a fancy rat,” Xu Mo immediately noticed the rat in the trash can. It was a pet rat, not a common rodent.

He was now even more certain that this was not a coincidence but a deliberate act…