CHAPTER 34: CHAPTER 34 FRAUD

Twenty minutes later, Feng Yao hung up the phone, his face as dark as the bottom of a pot.

"So how did it go?"

"Now I know who the hacker behind him is. I was baffled—the other side could even tamper with surveillance footage without anyone in the Scorching Sun Department noticing."

Damn it, it was someone from the Scorching Sun Department all along!

The people who caught him and the ones who helped him escape,

even the person who handed him the Wooden Armor Mask—

every single one of them was from the Scorching Sun Department!"

"Uh..." Wen Yan was dumbfounded on the spot. He never imagined the whole crew were moles.

"I did everything possible—I made them wear noise-canceling earmuffs, and nobody was allowed to approach until he was fully unconscious."

And even so, it still blew up in our faces.

Who could have thought this guy started preparing at least half a year ago? God knows when and how he got in touch with them, secretly brainwashed a few Scorching Sun Department field agents, even managed to nab a top network tech in the process.

He claimed he was part of a secret internal unit, that the action was in fact under orders from the new minister.

That Wooden Armor Mask is laced with deadly poison; ordinary people and normal means simply can’t remove it from corpse #51. Only someone immune to corpse poison, who can absorb the toxins, is able to handle it.

Originally, sealing it in the old ice warehouse and letting time wear it out was the best outcome.

But now, the new minister has reportedly been parachuted into Nanwu Commandery, carrying an extremely high-priority mission that needs the Wooden Armor Mask.

Fetching the mask was such a pain in the ass, so they orchestrated this whole act. After all the drama, the hopping corpse was destroyed, and the Wooden Armor Mask was "reasonably" retrieved by the Scorching Sun Department."

"Uhh..." Wen Yan for once was truly stunned. If Mo Zhicheng didn’t have some special ability, would even the team buy this?

"Those guys still think the mission is real! Word is, the minister’s face is so black it’s practically dripping pitch. He’s eating the blame for this one."

"And what about that Mo Zhicheng?"

"Gone. Disappeared along with the Wooden Armor Mask; not a single trace left."

Wen Yan glanced at the hopping corpse in the car. The hopping corpse’s gaze was fixed northwest.

But Virtue City was south. Even if Mo Zhicheng could fly, there’s no way he could show up where they were, northwesternly, in such a short time.

Wen Yan pointed at the hopping corpse.

"Let him lead the way."

This time, Feng Yao didn’t argue, nor did he hesitate. He just tacked on one line.

"At daybreak, we’ll have to burn him."

Zhang Laoxi rode in the pickup’s bed, calling out directions based on the way the hopping corpse’s head twisted, while Feng Yao drove.

They drove for half an hour; already dozens of kilometers from Virtue City’s center when the hopping corpse’s head finally adjusted, turning to point at a fork in the road.

They followed the direction it indicated, the road getting ever more remote, until they circled a small mountain—and confirmed the place the hopping corpse wanted was on the mountain.

Over twenty minutes later, beside a small pit, Wen Yan stared at a bit of human bone sticking out, then at the hopping corpse looking up from the mountain’s base. A torrent of questions in his mind now seemed suddenly answerable.

"If my guess is right, this is the real Mo Zhicheng, isn’t it?"

"We discovered Mo Zhicheng had a unique brainwashing ability, so we naturally assumed that was his only ’power’. It never occurred to us that he might not be Mo Zhicheng at all."

Wen Yan glanced down the mountain. This was just a plain little hill by the road, isolated, no villages nearby; the burial site wasn’t even a hundred meters from the road.

He looked again at the hopping corpse staring this way, and suddenly understood why Mo Zhicheng—the fake—had made things so complicated.

Because he was never the real Mo Zhicheng. Not the hopping corpse’s son.

He didn’t dare take anything directly from the hopping corpse.

He probably knew better than anyone that even if he could fool others for a while, he couldn’t fool them forever. You can’t brainwash a hopping corpse without a mind. The moment they met, the hopping corpse would tear him apart first.

His scheme all along was to borrow the Scorching Sun Department’s hand to destroy the hopping corpse.

Or, to force the Scorching Sun Department, as quickly as possible, to eradicate the hopping corpse.

Feng Yao made a call to send people to retrieve the body, to see if there was any usable sample left for DNA testing.

After the team arrived, they brought the hopping corpse and the gathered remains back to the funeral home together.

As long as the hopping corpse could see the skeleton, he stayed quiet and stopped struggling.

At the funeral home, Wen Yan watched as the hopping corpse, wrapped in yellow cloth, stood there silently, its hollow eyes locked on the bones laid out on the stainless steel table. The blood under its eyes had already streaked down into two crimson lines.

From its mouth, you could still faintly hear its mumbling.

"I... have to help... my... son..."

Seeing this, Wen Yan stood there in a daze. Some blurry memories began surging up.

Once, in that phantasmal stone forest, he had touched countless steles, each representing a profession.

He spent a long, long time making his choice, only after eliminating all the others did he finally pick Natural Enemy as his class.

But the other steles he’d touched before also revealed much—he’d seen the fate of nearly everyone: violent death.

Now, as he watched, a déjà vu swept over him, memories rising to the surface.

A woman in a blood-red wedding dress, face as pale as paper, cradling a dying man whose whole body was soaked in blood and whose breath was fading.

The man reached out a hand and pressed it between the woman’s brows; the next moment, he breathed his last.

And from the woman’s hollow eyes, two lines of bloody tears streamed down, leaving twin crimson marks on her cheeks.

Wen Yan snapped out of it and looked at the hopping corpse again. The blood stains on its face had already seeped into the flesh, leaving two indelible bloody traces across its cheeks.

Based on the intelligence so far, it was clear the fake Mo Zhicheng had been preparing for a very long time.

Yet after Wen Yan showed up, he was obviously the better, safer, more successful pawn. The fake Mo Zhicheng shifted the target onto him.

But something must have happened that forced the fake Mo Zhicheng to abandon him and return to the original plan.

With someone that ruthless, that’s the only explanation.

Wen Yan took a slow breath, turned, and walked away.

He went all the way to the director’s office, found the director who hadn’t slept all night, and got straight to the point.

"Director, I want to keep that hopping corpse."

"What?!" The director’s eyelids twitched furiously.

"Director, this time—whether it’s the funeral home or the Scorching Sun Department—every move we made went exactly according to their script."

Every step perfectly anticipated, every decision and deployment, just what they expected.

Of course, I’m not saying the decisions you guys made were wrong.

It’s just...

Director, you must realize: it was more likely than not that I would have been the one lying on the ice table."

The director’s expression softened a little. He personally made Wen Yan a cup of tea, and spoke unhurriedly.

"You think that client died in your place?"

"It’s not that..." Wen Yan shook his head. He knew full well the fake Mo Zhicheng had been brainwashing his father for who knows how long, all with the intent of killing.

"My very first day here, I ran into a phantom trying to get into the old ice warehouse.

A couple days later, something had its eyes on me. That I could enter the old ice warehouse might not have been a secret to certain people."

This time he took the mask from the old ice warehouse. Next time, if there’s anything else he wants from there, I’ll be his only target."

I don’t feel safe. I also know, at this point, it’s impossible to hide or quit.

I want to end this once and for all—then maybe I can finally sleep in peace."

The Scorching Sun Department is indeed strong, but those at the top have higher-priority matters to deal with."

This time, everyone Feng Yao called in—those four agents were all compromised months ago, already turned moles."

I still think, to truly solve this, we have to rely on that client."

Mo Zhicheng went to insane lengths for this, even personally risking everything, just to force the Scorching Sun Department to kill that client."

I, for one, refuse to let that client be burned."