Chapter 148: The Trench Coat Man, Testing the Waters

I was startled, and reached out to place my hand on Wang Yazhuo’s forehead. Wang Yazhuo stepped back, lifted her head, and asked what I was doing. I smiled and said, "I wanted to check if your brain got fried by the fever, to make you ask such a question."

Wang Yazhuo gritted her teeth. "Fang Han, what do you mean?"

The corners of my mouth curled up slightly. "Only someone whose brain is fried would ask a question like that."

Wang Yazhuo stomped her foot. "Fang Han, I am warning you, do not harbor any crooked thoughts about me." She took Xu by the hand and walked ahead. I glanced briefly at the direction where their figures had disappeared and immediately followed them. After arriving at the hotel, Wang Yazhuo hugged Xu and quickly fell asleep, but I remained wide awake.

In the dead of night, I vaguely heard footsteps in the hotel hallway, accompanied by the muffled sound of people whispering. I sprang up, crept carefully to the door, and pressed my ear against it to listen to the movement outside. However, by the time I listened closely, the voices had stopped.

I peered through the peephole. The hallway outside was very quiet, with the dim yellow lights shining steadily, revealing nothing unusual. Just as I was about to return to bed, the footsteps sounded again. I pressed my eye to the peephole once more, but this time, the outside suddenly turned pitch black.

I placed my hand on the doorknob, intending to go out and check the situation, when the view through the peephole lit up again. My jaw dropped in astonishment. The darkness in the peephole hadn't been caused by the hallway lights dimming, but by someone blocking the lens. The person outside seemed to be pressing their own eye right against the peephole, looking directly in at me.

I watched as that face slowly pulled away from the peephole.

The person was wearing a dark trench coat, the hood of which obscured the upper half of his face. I could only vaguely make out the bridge of his nose and the corners of his mouth. He kept his head down, hands thrust deep into his pockets, standing motionless outside my door. My guard went up, and I no longer dared to open the door rashly.

Through the peephole, I carefully observed the person outside.

Judging by his build, it should be a man. The view through the peephole was too blurry for me to see the lower half of his face clearly, yet I vaguely felt that this person outside didn't quite look human. The exposed portion of his face was covered in scars, appearing as if it had been scorched by fire, with all the flesh twisted together.

When he raised his hand, I was shocked to see that his fingernails were exceedingly long, sharp, and pointed, resembling the claws of a beast. That was not all. What finally convinced me that this person was utterly abnormal was the movement of his mouth. He seemed to be smiling, yet not smiling at all.

When he parted his lips, I caught sight of four ferocious, beast-like fangs.

The man raised a hand toward my door and made a gesture: he slowly pressed his palms together, as if conveying that no one could ever escape his grasp.

The moment I made sense of this gesture, the man suddenly turned sideways and vanished. When I opened the door, that strange individual was nowhere to be found. Fearing that Wang Yazhuo and Xu might be in danger, I did not pursue him. As I closed the door, I woke Wang Yazhuo and Xu. Wang Yazhuo asked what was wrong, and I told them everything that had just happened.

Speaking of this trench-coat-wearing man, I couldn't help but think of Xu's teeth.

Xu had eaten raw meat since childhood, making each of her teeth sharper than those of ordinary people, but human is human after all; Xu's teeth were still distinct from those of a wild beast. Yet the trench-coat man I had just seen through the peephole possessed four long, sharp fangs, along with fingernails identical to those of a predatory beast. It was too bizarre.

I had no idea who this person was. If he were in cahoots with the people who had tried to harm us previously, there would have been no need for him to show his face so brazenly and issue a warning to me. By performing those actions outside my door directly in front of the peephole, he must have deduced that the person inside was pressing against the lens to watch him.

Conversely, if he had no intention of harming us, he likewise had no reason to approach us and issue a warning.

disturbed by this strange encounter with the trench-coat man, none of us slept for the rest of the night. Early the next morning, instead of rushing to the police station, we went to the front desk and demanded to review the previous night's surveillance footage. After arguing with the hotel staff for a long time, we finally called Fatty Lu, who agreed to assist us. Only then did the hotel staff finally lead us into the monitoring room.

When the timestamp was wound back to the previous night, sure enough, a man wearing a trench coat was seen entering the hotel lobby. Visually estimated, he stood over one hundred and eighty centimeters tall; his build was neither particularly lean nor robust. It was very late when he entered, and since the hotel operated on an open-plan layout, the front desk clerk appeared to be resting at the time.

The trench-coat man entered the lobby at a brisk pace, showing no signs of sneaking around whatsoever. Yet the desk clerk remained completely undisturbed, which showed how exceptionally quiet his footsteps were. Notably, the man had also been wearing a face mask when he entered the lobby.

Continuing to watch the surveillance footage, the man bypassed the elevators and took the emergency stairwell. Upon emerging from the stairwell exit, he walked straight to my room door, removed his mask, and pressed his eye against my door. Just last night, I had literally engaged in a direct eye-to-eye confrontation with this very man, standing mere inches apart.

However, from outside the peephole, the activity inside the room was entirely invisible.

When the man departed from outside my room, he quickly put his mask back on. It seemed he had intentionally let me see the lower half of his face.

The hotel did not call the police because the man had not committed any egregious offenses.

On the way to the police station, Wang Yazhuo remarked that the man was bizarre and rather terrifying. After pondering for a moment, I said that upon returning tonight, we would change rooms and instruct the desk clerk never to disclose our new location to anyone. Constantly changing hotels and rooms was no permanent solution; I resolved to crack the case as quickly as possible. Once I uncovered what I needed to know, leaving Yu City would be the safest course of action.

Upon arriving at the police station, Fatty Lu asked why I had gone to check the hotel surveillance footage. I smiled and replied that I had lost something, which was why I wanted to check it out. Fatty Lu did not press further, mentioning instead that the police investigation had made some fresh progress.

Prompted by Fatty Lu's urging, the investigators had already ruled out many names from the compiled list, leaving only a little over twenty individuals, all of whom hailed from the same village as Qiu Lei and Qiu Xiao. Fatty Lu stated that several police officers from the detachment had already gone to Qiu Xiao's village, and he was waiting to take me along to have a look.

After leaving Wang Yazhuo and Xu at the police station with instructions not to wander off easily, I accompanied Fatty Lu. The location of Qiu Xiao's village was remote. With a cigarette clamped in his mouth, Fatty Lu drove as the road quickly became bumpy. He seemed to be in a rather good mood, entirely different from his previous worried demeanor, and even hummed a tune under his breath.

I tentatively probed, "Deputy Captain Lu, aren't you worried?"

Fatty Lu shook his head and poked his head out of the car window. "I was a bit worried at first, and we were juggling several cases simultaneously. But thinking about it, since the case is bound to be solved by me—the Ace Detective—in the end, what is there to worry about?"

I asked, "Are you that certain you can crack the case?"

Fatty Lu continued to chuckle. He turned his head and looked at me. "What? Do you think I, the Ace Detective, can't solve a case? Kid, let me tell you, ever since I became a police officer, every single case I've encountered has eventually been solved. Don't think my title as Ace Detective is an undeserved reputation."

After hesitating for a moment, I still voiced the confusion in my heart: "Is someone helping you?"

Fatty Lu slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a halt by the roadside.

He looked me up and down for a moment, wearing an expression that suggested he saw right through me.

"Kid, so you really thought my title as Ace Detective was unearned? You thought someone was standing behind the scenes helping me solve cases?" As Fatty Lu spoke, the flesh on his face quivered. I noticed that he looked somewhat nervous, and a bead of sweat the size of a bean had popped out on his forehead.

Noticing his reaction, I immediately shook my head. "Deputy Captain Lu, I was just speaking casually. Don't be nervous."

Fatty Lu spat. "Who's joking with you?"

Too lazy to continue the conversation with me, Fatty Lu stepped on the accelerator and drove the car forward again.

A full two hours later, the vehicle finally came to a stop outside Qiu Xiao's village. We walked inward and quickly located the few police officers who had arrived in advance.