Chapter 42: Guess Why I Let You Live?

After a thrilling and intense firefight, Cen Lian walked past four SWAT officers whose eyes were filled with admiration, heading straight toward the drug traffickers who had been wounded or killed.

The reinforcements had already arrived by the time he fired two shots to eliminate two text bubbles. Now, a force of forty to fifty officers and men was crammed into the underground passage, looking formidable and well-prepared.

Wu Qiushan glanced over and began inspecting the ground for any other traces.

He could not be certain that this was everyone who had hidden in this passage, nor could anyone know whether the person they intended to escort had already escaped in the chaos.

Cen Lian squatted down and looked at a man in his forties who looked like an ordinary, middle-class office worker.

Among the wounded, he had sustained the lightest injuries. Dressed in drab, dusty clothes, he looked thoroughly unremarkable.

However...

Cen Lian approached him with a smile.

"Did you think you managed to dodge it?" He looked straight into the middle-aged man's eyes.

The man still stared back at him with a look of blank ignorance.

"I'm just an ordinary worker. I know I shouldn't have been doing odd jobs for them, but I don't know a damn thing about anything else," he continued to argue craftily.

Cen Lian smiled faintly and pointed to the corpse beside him.

"Would you like to take a guess why you're the one with the lightest injuries, to the point where you don't even need to be hospitalized?" His smile gradually deepened.

Yao Shaojun felt a chill run down his spine.

He had originally thought his disguise was thorough enough to trick these police officers into believing he was just an ordinary worker, which was why they hadn't shot him.

"Yao Shaojun, it's not time for you to die yet," Cen Lian smiled, looking completely harmless. "We wouldn't dare let you die before we've emptied out everything in your stomach."

Yao Shaojun: ...

"Speaking like that really makes you sound like a psychopath," Wang Yuanteng, who had just rushed over from behind, helped Cen Lian slap handcuffs onto Yao Shaojun. "Is this the ringleader?"

"One of them," Cen Lian corrected him with rigorous precision.

Wang Yuanteng sized up Yao Shaojun. "If you hadn't pointed him out, I really wouldn't have been able to tell anything was off."

Yet he did not press Cen Lian further on how he had managed to identify Yao Shaojun; that was, after all, the man's greatest specialty.

He stood up, watching the remaining living drug traffickers being led away one by one as forensic investigators carrying their toolboxes began entering the scene.

"You know, this place really does look a bit like a tomb tunnel," he muttered, looking back and forth. "It's right beneath a mountain, and it's so narrow and cramped."

Wang Yuanteng's casual remark caught Wu Qiushan's attention.

"Didn't you say these people are big believers in *feng shui*? Could there be some specific meaning behind them digging a path right through here?" he asked Wang Yuanteng.

As a self-proclaimed folk master of *feng shui* and metaphysics, Wang Yuanteng simply walked with Cen Lian all the way to the end of this escape tunnel.

"There actually is a meaning," Wang Yuanteng stood at the other exit of the tunnel, which was now guarded by police. "Whether they dug it this way intentionally or not, according to *feng shui* principles, they've severed the spiritual pulse of this mountain."

"Spiritual pulse?" Cen Lian had never heard of such a thing.

Wang Yuanteng explained it to him earnestly.

"It means the *feng shui* layout here has been shattered by this tunnel running straight through the entire mountain. They originally intended to secure smooth sailing and a convergence of wealth, but now both the *feng shui* and the fortune have been completely scattered by this passage. While I don't really believe in this stuff myself, it's hard to tell what their boss—who deeply believes in *feng shui*—would think if he found out."

Wu Qiushan had followed them out.

"You actually don't believe in it?" He had thought Wang Yuanteng's fluent and articulate explanations meant he genuinely believed in *feng shui*.

"I can't afford to believe in this sort of thing," Wang Yuanteng pointed to the badge on his uniform. "I researched these things out of boredom back when I was a student. Later, after joining the precinct, I used this knowledge to catch quite a few charlatans and wandering swindlers. Eventually, I was seconded to the bureau and even used these skills to crack a ring of tomb raiders."

"And then the bureau completely poached your establishment quota," Wu Qiushan finished the last part for him. "No wonder you weren't from a police academy and yet managed to get into the bureau."

Wang Yuanteng chuckled quietly, concealing his profound achievements and fame.

With the case having reached this stage, whatever followed had nothing more to do with them.

For a large-scale drug trafficking syndicate like this, there were countless loose ends to deal with—such as their lower-level distribution networks, the origins of their precursor chemicals, and how many more innocent people they might have murdered.

According to Wu Qiushan, the case had been listed for direct supervision by the ministry, and subsequent investigations would be taken over jointly by the municipal public security bureaus of Yunzhong and Kanan.

"The narcotics squads in the city and the district are going to be busy," Cen Lian yawned, feeling the combined effects of coffee and adrenaline beginning to wear off as his forced alertness started to fade. "If nothing else, at least we can go back and sleep now."

Wu Qiushan nodded, his own upper and lower eyelids beginning to fight a losing battle against sleep.

...

Cen Lian slept for a day and a night in the guesthouse arranged for them in Yunzhong City.

When he finally woke up, his WeChat already had 99+ notifications, though his calls and text messages remained quiet.

It seemed that no high-ranking officials were looking for him just yet.

Cen Lian rubbed his eyes and began checking his messages one by one.

Pinned at the very top was a WeChat message from Yuan Chenxi.

As the internal affairs officer for the Third Squad, Yuan Chenxi spent most of her time collecting and distributing information, so whenever there was an active case, he would pin her chat to avoid missing any crucial updates.

However, according to Yuan Chenxi herself, that WeChat account was strictly for work, and none of her colleagues were added to her personal account.

Her philosophy was simple: during her time off, she didn't want to see a single work-related message from a colleague.

The message from Yuan Chenxi was brief, consisting of a short paragraph and two reports.

"Brother Cen, the DNA comparison results for Chen Nan's previous case are out. The other two DNA profiles found in the vehicle belong to a woman named Zhu Yao and a man named Qin Xingguo. Both are previously reported missing persons, confirmed through comparisons with their immediate family members."

Attached below were two DNA comparison reports along with their corresponding household registration information.

Cen Lian had already seen the name Zhu Yao in a text bubble when he discovered the first quarter of Chen Nan's dismembered body, but he had never encountered the name Qin Xingguo before.

Judging by the surname, he should be from Guangxi Province.

That wasn't particularly surprising; Guangxi had plenty of mountainous areas and quite a few recorded meteorite falls. In fact, some meteorite hunters in Cen Lian's social circle were based in Guangxi.

It seemed he would need to ask around if anyone knew them.

This case had been temporarily interrupted due to the pending DNA comparisons, but now that the headless corpse case had concluded with the unearthing of a massive drug-manufacturing and trafficking ring, their attention could finally shift back to it.

After all, compared to an old cold case from years ago, failing to solve a freshly occurring case was always the bigger problem.

After reviewing the household registration details of the two individuals, Cen Lian scrolled down through a few more messages, mostly sent over the past hour or two by Wu Qiushan and Tang Hua, asking if he wanted to grab something to eat together that evening.

After replying to them one by one, Cen Lian got up to freshen up, noticing in the mirror that the dark circles under his eyes had faded slightly.

Splendid, it appeared he wouldn't be working himself to death from overwork anytime soon.

Cen Lian offered a bleak, wan smile.