Revelation of the Way of Heaven

Chapter 185 Investigation

Entering the gray bar again, it was still the same as before. In the cool-toned atmosphere, the soft and lyrical music gave people a quiet and lazy feeling. The waiter I saw before, Ah Lei, was standing at the bar, tidying up the counter.

Unlike before, there seemed to be more people in the bar this time; there were hardly any empty seats.

"Business seems to be going very well lately!" Qin Xiaochuan greeted A Lei as he walked to the counter.

"Yes, things seem a bit unsettled lately. There are more people coming here to exchange information and issue missions. You demon hunters should know this very well, right?" A-Lei said, wiping a glass while looking at Qin Xiaochuan and Guo Shiyi with a meaningful gaze.

"How did you know we were demon hunters?" Qin Xiaochuan asked curiously.

"Don't forget what we do. If we don't even have this basic judgment, then we don't deserve to be in this line of work." After saying that, he handed the clean cup in his hand to Qin Xiaochuan. "How about this, you've finally come of age, shouldn't you come and experience adult life?"

"That's not why we came," Qin Xiaochuan said, pushing the other person's cup back. "Do you have any news about 'Brother Kun'?"

"You're lucky, he's a regular here." Lei took his cup back.

"We need his intelligence."

"I already said, he's a regular customer here, and we have an obligation to protect the privacy of every customer." Lei looked deeply at Qin Xiaochuan. "Unless it's another customer's request, we have to fulfill it, because every customer is God." As he spoke, he handed the wine glass to Qin Xiaochuan again.

"Name your price. I remember you offer more than just drinks; we need other services as well." Qin Xiaochuan pulled out the payment QR code that the secretary had already opened.

"Of course." Lei smiled with satisfaction. He tore a piece of sticky note off the bar, wrote a few lines on it, and handed it to Qin Xiaochuan, saying, "You should be able to find the information you're looking for here."

"It's a pleasure working with you." Qin Xiaochuan took the note and walked out of the bar with Guo Shiyi.

"Welcome to visit again." A Lei's polite voice came from behind.

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Kun's residence was a separate rental house. Guo Shiyi easily opened the door from behind using vines. Qin Xiaochuan entered the rental house, but Kun was not inside; he must have gone out.

The rented room was a bit messy, with leftover takeout boxes piled up haphazardly, and the dirty sofa indicating that the owner hadn't cleaned the house in a long time.

On the messy table lay a map, a crumpled piece of paper covered in writing, and several photos. Next to the map was a half-empty bottle of carbonated beverage.

Qin Xiaochuan casually picked up a photo from the table. It showed Yang Yutong and Teacher Zhou walking together on the road against the backdrop of the setting sun. The other photos were of various intersections and streets.

"It seems the other party scouted the location beforehand, knowing that Yang Yutong doesn't get home from school until very late every day, so they chose to make their move there in the evening," Qin Xiaochuan said.

"And this too," Guo Shiyi said. She picked up the paper, leaned in and took a closer look. It was covered with a lot of messy writing, but the four big characters "accident" stood out. Below the four big characters were words like "traffic accident," "falling object from a height," "falling into water," and "affected by other cases," with some of them marked with an X.

"It seems he's trying to orchestrate an accident. Among the options without an X, there are only traffic accidents and falling objects from heights. The traffic accident has already happened, so he'll likely execute the second option next," Qin Xiaochuan analyzed.

Guo Shiyi said, "Now we at least know the time period and the area where he made his move, so all we can do now is wait and see."

Qin Xiaochuan nodded. There were two ways to catch this Brother Kun. One was to wait for him in this rented house, and the other was to secretly follow Yang Yutong and wait for him to make a second move. He planned to tell Han Kexin about this place and have her find someone to monitor it, while he and Guo Shiyi would secretly protect Yang Yutong.

After making up their minds, Qin Xiaochuan and Guo Shiyi waited for Yang Yutong at the school gate after school and secretly followed her home. However, nothing unusual happened on the first day.

The next day, the two waited for each other again in the green belt not far from the school gate.

"Do you think the other side might give up their plan? After all, after what happened last time, they might go into hiding to avoid trouble." Guo Shiyi stared at the gate. It had been a long time since school ended, and there were hardly any students left at the gate. Yang Yutong seemed to leave school very late every day.

"It's not impossible. We don't even know their motives yet." Qin Xiaochuan leaned against a cypress tree with his hands behind his head. "We don't have any other choice right now. We'll follow them for two days. If that doesn't work, we'll have to talk to Kexin and ask her to protect Yang Yutong while we slowly look for clues. I think we can definitely get more information about them from the Gray Bar."

"She's out," Guo Shiyi suddenly said.

Qin Xiaochuan turned his head and saw the thin girl walking out of the school step by step. The two watched her walk past the green belt, then walk to the road in front of the school, and then turn left onto the main road where the accident happened last time. There she met Teacher Zhou again.

Qin Xiaochuan and Guo Shiyi followed behind as if nothing had happened.

"It seems like Teacher Zhou often appears here," Guo Shiyi said. The two pretended to chat casually, but their eyes kept glancing at the girl in front of them.

"This is actually quite normal. I once saw a very interesting study from abroad. They selected several road sections and took photos at the same time for several consecutive days. Then, ten years later, they went back to those road sections and took photos again. They compared the photos taken ten years apart and found a very interesting phenomenon."

"What phenomenon?" Guo Shiyi asked curiously.

Qin Xiaochuan glanced at her and said, "There are many people who appear in two sets of photos across 10 years. Not only that, some of them have similar poses and clothing styles, making it seem as if nothing has changed in the past 10 years except for their age and appearance."

After listening, Guo Shiyi couldn't help but say, "This experiment sounds interesting. It shows that there are many people in this world who do repetitive things all the time: get up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to work, get off work, eat dinner, take a walk, and go to sleep, day after day, year after year."

"It sounds like society is a giant machine, and each of us is a part of that machine, working tirelessly to keep it running forever," Qin Xiaochuan said.

"So this Teacher Zhou is also the kind of person in the photo," Guo Shiyi interjected.

Qin Xiaochuan smiled and replied, "Yes, people with more stable jobs tend to have this trait. Look at Teacher Zhou's figure, doesn't it feel familiar, like I've seen him somewhere before..."

Qin Xiaochuan's voice suddenly stopped, and even the smile gradually disappeared from his face.

"What's wrong?" Guo Shiyi looked at him, puzzled.

Qin Xiaochuan didn't answer her question. Instead, he quickly opened his phone and pulled up the set of photos he had taken in Kun Ge's rented room. Some of the photos were of the ones on the table.

Qin Xiaochuan's eyes narrowed slightly, and he said, "We've got the wrong person."

"What do you mean?" Guo Shiyi took his phone, examined the photos carefully, and after a moment, her eyes widened in disbelief. "Could it be that their target isn't Yang Yutong?"

"Yes, I was wrong from the start. I thought the truck driver and the car driver had the same goal. In fact, these are two separate cases, so their targets are very likely not the same person." Qin Xiaochuan said, then opened a photo that showed both Yang Yutong and Teacher Zhou. "When we first saw this photo, we naturally assumed that the other party's target was Yang Yutong."

"It is precisely because of this misunderstanding that when we see other photos, we assume they are just scene photos, and the people in the scene photos are just background. But if you look closely, you can find that Teacher Zhou is in three of the photos," Qin Xiaochuan said, pointing to the photos.

"So, since Teacher Zhou didn't show up yesterday, the murderer didn't make a move?" Guo Shiyi said.

The two exchanged a glance, as if they both realized something, and quickly followed after Teacher Zhou as he was about to turn onto another side road.