Chapter 70: Chapter 69: The Missing Anchor (1/2)
The next morning at the Abnormal Administration Bureau.
A young man in civilian clothes, carrying breakfast in his hand, walked up to Chen Zhenglong who was resting his head on his desk and hesitated to speak softly, “Captain Chen.”
“Any news?” Chen Zhenglong, who had been napping, suddenly sat up and stared at the young man with bloodshot eyes, asking urgently.
The civilian officer put the breakfast on the desk, and seeing Chen Zhenglong’s haggard look, couldn’t help but say, “Captain Chen, why don’t you rest for a while? The Sanitation Surveillance Bureau doesn’t have any inspection results yet, it won’t hurt to wait a bit longer.”
“Nonsense.” Chen Zhenglong didn’t even glance at the breakfast. He glared and loudly refuted, “If they can’t find anything, what about you? Didn’t you notice any trace while surveying the public’s opinion online?”
Seeing Chen Zhenglong’s outburst, the young man felt sowhat timid and quickly pulled out a USB drive, “There are so leads, Captain Chen. Why don’t you eat so breakfast while I copy the files?”
“No need, you go ahead, I’ll just wash my face.”
Splashing cold water on his stubbly face, Chen Zhenglong felt much more awake. He grabbed a towel, roughly wiped his face, and hurried back to his desk.
“Captain Chen, take a look. We gathered all the public sentint from the past month, and there were a total of 2358 ntions related to rats. Among these, 73% are complaints about the increase in rats, 3.5% are discussions about training plans for contractual rat pets, and 1.5% are other related topics,” the young clerk turned the computer to Chen Zhenglong, pointing at the data on the screen.
Chen Zhenglong, holding onto the back of his chair, reached into a bag and stuffed a bun into his mouth, staring intently at the screen, “What about the remaining 22%?”
The young clerk noticed Chen Zhenglong’s action, smirked slightly, but still honestly continued, “The remaining 22% are basically the newest public sentints from the last ten days, all talking about the decrease in the number of rats.”
“That’s it, aside from data analysis, are there any other clues?” Chen Zhenglong waved his fist, a hint of excitent in his voice. It seed like the rumor that Xiao Feng ntioned was right, the rat population in the city was indeed experiencing issues.
To ordinary people, this news might just be casual conversation fodder.
But as the head of the Abnormal Administration Bureau in Su City, he keenly sensed sothing unusual, as they hadn’t had ti for rat extermination this year. Seeing such an abnormal spike in the rat population surely indicated so unforeseen circumstances.
An image of a man with silver hair and a tall thin figure crossed his mind, then he shook his head slightly.
Although his gut was almost certain that the abnormal rat numbers could be linked to that escaped man, in their line of work, they relied on evidence.
“Captain Chen, Captain Chen,” seeing that he hadn’t responded for a while, the civilian officer shook his hand in front of his eyes.
“Oh, sorry, I’m a bit tired. Where did I leave off?” After finding the clue, Zhenglong’s mood improved greatly, and he took out another bun and stuffed it into his mouth, his speech slightly indistinct.
“You asked if there were any other clues, and I said yes, then you didn’t respond,” the civilian officer replied straightforwardly.
“Don’t go into details, just show the clue.” Chen Zhenglong’s eyes twitched, wasn’t this kid too earnest?
“Oh, then Captain Chen, take a look at this video.” The clerk pressed play, and the computer screen went pitch black.
A second or two later, a young girl’s voice ca from the video, “Is anyone there?” After a brief pause and apparently receiving no response, the girl muttered, “What the, no one’s here even after I started broadcasting.”
“One Eye, co out and help navigate.”
“Plop.” A ripple stirred in the video, followed by the sound of sothing heavy landing, and soon after, rat noises could be heard.
A strong flashlight then turned on, and the video, shot from a first-person perspective, revealed the surroundings to be a sewer. The girl, possibly scared, kept turning the cara to light up different areas with the flashlight, and each ti a large rat appeared.
Aside from the sticky footsteps, a girl’s heavy breathing could be heard in the background music, as she seed to be struggling to walk.
“Welco Big Black… where are we exploring today? Hehe, give a gift to Big Black and I’ll tell you.”
At that mont, it seed more viewers had joined the live stream, and the girl greeted them skillfully, her voice tinged with excitent.
“Thank you for the motorcycle, Big Black. Today, I am going to explore the underground palaces found beneath every city, the sewers… Scared? How could I possibly be scared? I am a City Explorer… Ah!! Who’s there!”
The girl who was interacting with her viewers suddenly let out a scream and frantically moved the cara in another direction; the video shook violently, and nothing could be seen except the light from a powerful flashlight.
“Fuck, what is that? Co out right now!” Liu Yu kept cursing in the video to bolster her courage, a thod reportedly used by outdoor strears to ward off ‘filth’ during live streams.
Suddenly, it was as if the girl’s throat was grabbed; the cursing stopped instantly, she held her breath in tension, and the video fell silent.
“Tap, tap, tap”
The screen was pitch black, yet a strange noise was heard, echoing through the empty sewer. It sounded like soone was tapping on the floor with little stones, which was exceedingly eerie in the quiet surroundings.
The eerie noises continued intermittently, and the girl cautiously moved, with faint sounds audible in the video as she stepped on the sludge.
“Ah!!!”
“Pause!”
Chen Zhenglong suddenly spoke up, startling the clerk who fumbled hurriedly to hit the pause button, but the video ended right there; he turned back and gave an awkward smile.
“Move the progress bar back 3 seconds.” Cheng Zhenglong didn’t pay him any heed, his eyes fixed intently on the screen.
As the progress bar was moved back, faint red glints could be seen in the top left corner of the dark screen… like several cold eyes.
Chen Zhenglong stared at the screen thoughtfully, rubbing the stubble on his chin with a large hand: “How was this video obtained, and where is the person who recorded it?”
“The woman who recorded the video is Liu Yu, from a single-parent family; her father is often away from ho due to his alcohol addiction. Liu Yu is a junior Combat Training Master who, due to poor family conditions, made a casual contract with a rat. After graduation, she struggled to make ends et and signed up with a small live streaming platform, claiming online to be a City Explorer and streaming her explorations of abandoned buildings.”
The clerk roughly introduced the recorder’s information and continued, “About four days ago, Liu Yu went out to stream and never returned. Her father ca ho for liquor money only to find his daughter missing. As to the video, since she was a minor strear and hardly anyone watched her streams when she started, the live streaming company suppressed the incident.”
“Wasn’t anyone sent to investigate?”
“Head Chen, all our brothers are positioned throughout the city; we simply cannot spare any manpower.” ntioning this made the civil servant feel a surge of frustration: “Besides, her father didn’t even file a report. This video was only discovered accidentally when we were retrieving public opinion clues, due to Liu Yu’s pet being a rat. It was finally recovered overnight from the video archives cleaned out by the tech departnt from that live-streaming platform.”
“I understand, you can go now,” Chen Zhenglong said, rubbing his forehead with a headache.
After the clerk left, he sat on the chair, watching the video again carefully, his expression shifting unpredictably.
Monts later, Chen Zheng appeared to have made a decision as he frowned and restored a number from the blacklist on his phone.
“Let’s et, we need to talk.”
Reviews
All reviews (0)