Hetu and Luoshu

Whether Lü Yingshi had a clear conscience or had come prepared was hard to tell. He was exceptionally cooperative, speaking freely and holding nothing back about Warehouse 32. The problem was that he rarely took part in managing the properties under his name. Warehouse 32 had merely been a gift from a wealthy merchant on his ninetieth birthday, and his head apprentice, Wang Xiaohu, had always been in charge of it. Fortunately, Wang Xiaohu had accompanied him for the inquiry, so Yu Xian and the others proceeded to question Wang Xiaohu as well. Unfortunately, Wang Xiaohu could not offer any valuable leads either. These days, listing a warehouse for rent only required putting it up on an app called Baozuke; there was no need to meet the tenant in person at all. After seeing the two off, Zhang Shou spoke up: "Do you guys think their story checks out?" "There shouldn't be any problem. Although the Lion Sect isn't a particularly powerful sect, it possesses plenty of properties under its name. Lü Yingshi wouldn't bother paying much mind to a warehouse gifted by someone else," Qingniao analyzed. Yu Xian said calmly, "Alright, let's go meet Hu Weijie's family and see if they can offer any leads." If Hu Xian'er and her daughter proved just as clueless as Lü Yingshi and his disciple, this lead would be dead in the water. The group entered the reception room across the hall. The moment Hu Tu'er saw Yu Xian walk in, her eyes lit up, and she stood up delightedly. "Handsome, it's really you!" "You two know each other?" Qingniao asked curiously. Yu Xian gave Hu Tu'er a rather exasperated look before answering calmly, "We go to the same school. We crossed paths once." "Handsome, I want to report a case—my dad's missing," Hu Tu'er said, looking at Yu Xian with sparkling eyes, not a trace of sorrow in her voice. Zhang Shou asked out of curiosity, "How many days has your dad been missing?" "Officers, Brother Jie went missing the very day the lockdown ended," Hu Tu'er's mother, Hu Xian'er, said. Although Hu Xian'er was a married woman and already had a seventeen-year-old daughter, she looked exceptionally youthful—standing with Hu Tu'er, they looked just like sisters. On top of that, she carried an extraordinary temperament, with breathtaking allure in every gesture; an ordinary young man could never withstand her charm. If one had to describe it, it was roughly: seeing her made one instantly understand why Cao Cao had such a weakness for married women. "'Brother Jie'? Aren't you his wife?" Yu Xian nudged Zhang Shou, who was staring in a daze, and looked at Hu Xian'er. Hu Tu'er, perhaps not wanting Yu Xian's gaze lingering on her mother, chimed in first: "Handsome, I've heard it since I was little. My mom's always called my dad that." "Alright. Could you describe how Hu Weijie was acting before he went missing? Any unusual behavior, for instance?" Yu Xian didn't press the matter, considering it might just be a bit of playful affection between husband and wife. Hu Tu'er shook her head. "Nope. My dad is a man of few words and barely has any presence at home. Plus, he used to disappear all the time in the past and come back after a while." "Then why do you think he went missing this time?" Qingniao asked, puzzled. Hu Tu'er gave Yu Xian and the others a confused look and countered, "Because you're looking for him! In the past, even if Mom and I didn't know where he went, you officers should know, right? But now even you are looking for him, so he must have gone missing!" That made a whole lot of sense. Completely impossible to refute. Gong Qian and the others were left speechless, having never expected Hu Tu'er's reasoning to be so simple. "Actually, we don't know whether Hu Weijie is missing or not. We're looking for him because we want to look into something. Do you know if he ever rented Warehouse 32 at Cloud Warehouse?" Yu Xian cleared his throat before continuing. Hu Tu'er shook her head curiously. "Never heard of it. Why would he rent that warehouse?" "..." Everyone fell silent; they wanted to know the answer too. Qingniao turned to Hu Xian'er, who also shook her head to indicate she was unaware. "Brother Jie is a wanderer. Every time he comes home, it's just to rest his feet. Tu'er and I don't really know what he does on the outside." "Doesn't he earn money to support the family?" Zhang Shou couldn't resist asking. Hu Xian'er explained, "Our family's bathhouse was a gift from Brother Jie. Running the bathhouse, Tu'er and I don't lack money, so we've never asked him for any." She had always run the bathhouse herself; Hu Weijie took no part in it. "In that case, does the house have any of Hu Weijie's clothes? Or things he used frequently?" Yu Xian asked after some thought, unwilling to let the trail go cold just like that. Hu Xian'er shook her head, but Hu Tu'er spoke up: "There's a pair of his slippers." "..." Yu Xian's face darkened, and he didn't want to say another word. He had planned to use his transcendent sense of smell to track down some clues, but sniffing someone else's slippers... forget it. A minute later, the four of them saw off the Hu mother and daughter. Standing outside the office doors, they looked at one another in dismay; sure enough, the trail had gone cold. Back in the office, Zhang Shou slumped into a chair and mused suspiciously, "Do you think Hu Weijie might be cleaning house?" The internet was full of strange tidbits of trivia that happened to be completely true—for instance, when cleaners disposed of corpses and erased crime-scene traces, it was known on the gray path as "cleaning house." Usually, after finishing that kind of job, cleaners would lay low for a while, only surfacing after the heat died down. "That's certainly a possibility. A cleaner usually has their own safe house. Or should we contact the Public Security Bureaus across the city and have all the security officers search for him?" Qingniao asked. Security officers were all ordinary people who, in most situations, only dealt with cases involving civilians. When it came to searching for a person, however, they were actually at an advantage over Transcendents, simply because... there were many of them. "Could Hu Weijie have already been silenced, and then the other party used his phone to rent Warehouse 32?" Zhang Shou speculated. Looking down at his phone, Yu Xian said, "Warehouse 32 was rented by Hu Weijie before the lockdown." "This is too hard! With zero leads, how are we supposed to investigate?" Zhang Shou wailed at once. Gong Qian, on the contrary, was in no rush at all. Only when she saw Zhang Shou practically on the verge of rolling on the floor did she speak up: "You seem to be mistaken about one thing. We aren't security officers; we don't have to take an investigation step by step. We are an Evil-Slaying Squad under Qilin. In a situation like this, all we need to do is request assistance." "The problem is that we don't have any leads. Would requesting assistance even be of any use?" Zhang Shou asked skeptically. Gong Qian said with complete confidence, "Of course it will. At the very least, we know now that the person who rented Warehouse 32 was Hu Weijie. All we have to do is apply to headquarters to pinpoint Hu Weijie's location. Once headquarters uses the Hetu and Luoshu to lock onto him and forwards the coordinates to us, won't we be able to find him?" "Submitting an application is very expensive. We'd better not take a loss when the time comes," Yu Xian frowned. The Hetu and Luoshu was a special Dragon-rank artifact. Its physical form was an enormous tortoise shell bearing a map of Huaxia, which Qilin Headquarters could utilize to lock onto any target within Huaxia. However, activating the Hetu and Luoshu required an immense expenditure of spiritual energy, so applying for its use as a squad cost a substantial amount of merit. If the merit rewarded after cracking the case was too small, the squad would end up operating at a loss instead. Under normal circumstances, squads avoided applying for it whenever possible, preferring to investigate on their own rather than waste merit.