Under Chen Jing's orders, the entire investigation team immediately sprang into action.
Qin Ran was genuinely stunned. He kept a wary eye on the three armed personnel, deep apprehension showing in his gaze. With his experience and sharp instincts, he could naturally tell that these fully armed soldiers were different from the desperate criminals he had seen outside the city, and different from the Guard Department and patrol teams he usually dealt with in Satellite City.
He signaled with his eyes for his men not to approach and to wait obediently where they were.
When Lu Xin asked him about the place where he had killed Cui Wang and the place where he had dumped the body, he answered immediately.
"Proceed to investigate at once. Bring Qin Ran, the relevant individual, in case he is suspected of concealing the truth."
Han Bing's voice came through the earpiece.
After hearing her, Lu Xin immediately said to the armed personnel, "Get in the car."
Then he nodded at Qin Ran. "You're coming too."
The armed personnel immediately got to work. One went to start the vehicle, while the other two moved behind Qin Ran.
Qin Ran glanced at the cold submachine guns in their arms, then turned to look at Lu Xin. He suddenly gritted his teeth. No one knew what this man from the wilderness was thinking, but he did not say a word and simply followed them into the jeep.
As the vehicle reached the front courtyard, the nominal manager hurried forward and called out, "Boss..."
"You wait here!"
Qin Ran shouted to them through the window.
The armed personnel in the vehicle ignored Qin Ran's reaction, as well as that of Sifang Transportation Company—or perhaps they simply did not care.
Lu Xin also refrained from making any rash comments, since no instructions had come through his earpiece.
He could sense that the atmosphere between them had changed after the three members of the investigation team reported to him.
Although the investigation team had only three members, while Qin Ran had more than ten times as many subordinates in the company, the three armed personnel had clearly undergone intense training and acted with decisive efficiency. They were also fully armed. If a conflict really broke out, Qin Ran's men would probably be throwing their lives away even if they all charged at once. The gap between the two sides was simply too obvious.
Qin Ran had clearly noticed that disparity as well, which was why he had become so obedient.
Still, Lu Xin vaguely felt that the three members of the investigation team seemed somewhat wary of him...
For example, the youngest-looking soldier kept stealing glances at him whenever he thought Lu Xin was not paying attention.
But whenever Lu Xin's gaze met his, he would...
Lu Xin suddenly turned his head toward the window on the left. The young soldier by the window immediately whipped his head around.
He sat ramrod straight, rifle clutched in his arms!
The vehicle headed toward the southern part of the city. A large stretch of abandoned factories stood there, along with a maze of disordered paths. Waist-high weeds grew everywhere, and cement, dirt, and other debris had been piled up haphazardly. In the distance were some half-finished buildings, as well as towering steel frames that had rusted after being abandoned for too long. The entire area was desolate, without a single person in sight.
The roads were difficult to travel, but the jeeps they drove had been modified and were well suited to this kind of complicated terrain.
"It's just ahead."
Qin Ran pointed out the exact location from inside the vehicle. He seemed somewhat tense, and before he realized it, he had started talking more. "The deal took place behind that mound. That was also where I shot Old Cui. At the time, he looked as if he had been drinking heavily, but there was nothing else unusual about him... The body was disposed of behind that patch of grass. Packs of wild dogs often gather there."
"I recommend immediately conducting a mental-power scan of these two locations and the surrounding area within a three-hundred-meter radius."
Han Bing's voice came through the earpiece.
"Agreed."
Chen Jing followed closely. "Although the appearance of a Mental Pollution Source differs from an ordinary pollution incident, it still leaves clues. The most important thing in dealing with a Mental Pollution incident is to locate the source of the Mental Pollution Source. And that source often begins with an intense mental fluctuation. When a person is killed, their mental fluctuations become intense, and most postmortem mutation incidents begin at that moment."
"Of course, a small amount of data also indicates that some mutations are caused by the corpse being stimulated after death."
"..."
In fact, the three armed personnel in the vehicle were also wearing earpieces, so they had already heard the recommendations from the Information Analysis Team.
Thus, after getting out of the vehicle, they merely sought Lu Xin's opinion with their eyes. Seeing that he had no objections, they sprang into action.
Lu Xin knew this was an opportunity to learn, so he watched their movements attentively.
They skillfully unloaded a black case from the vehicle. After entering a code and unlocking its complicated locks, they opened it to reveal a completely silver device. It looked like a rectangular satellite phone, with four metal rods supporting a ring on top. It was an alarm device that resembled the metal detectors seen in old movies on television.
One of them stayed behind, while the other two took out specially made helmets. They were round and thick, with transparent face shields. What surprised Lu Xin most was that most of each helmet seemed to be made from a special kind of glass.
"The device they're using is a simple mental-power detector. It only began to be used recently."
Chen Jing continued lecturing Lu Xin over the channel. "Mental power is inherently invisible. Or rather, the mental power of ordinary people has difficulty affecting instruments enough to produce observable results. But when a mutated Pollution Source or a Mutant's mental power exceeds a certain threshold, combined with some new materials developed by the Eclipse Research Institute, detection becomes possible."
"However, these instruments are still in the research and testing stage. They can sense abnormalities in mental power, but they lack precision."
"As for the helmets they're wearing, they're protective equipment designed to shield them from abnormal Mental Pollution. The documents I gave you should have mentioned this: glass is currently the best material we've discovered for isolating the spread of the Mental Plague."
"..."
Lu Xin merely gave a low "Mm."
He did not dare admit that, in truth, he had focused mainly on the sections concerning wages and subsidies in those documents.
The investigation team soon finished scanning the two locations Qin Ran had identified—the places where he had killed Cui Wang and dumped the body—as well as the surrounding area. They even found some suspected bone fragments remaining from Cui Wang, but detected no abnormal mental power.
"Are you certain these are the two places you were talking about?"
Lu Xin turned to Qin Ran and asked him to confirm it once more.
Qin Ran's face was dark, and a trace of fear lay buried in his eyes. "This concerns my life. Do you think I'd lie?"
Lu Xin also felt that Qin Ran did not seem to be hiding anything. Nor did he doubt the investigation team's findings. When he looked toward the two areas, he had not noticed anything abnormal either. They were nothing like the café or the first time he had seen Qin Ran, when he could clearly see strange creatures resembling mutated chunks of flesh. There was no obvious abnormality here.
This was when the importance of the Information Analysis Team became clear.
Lu Xin asked directly, "What do we do?"
"If there was nothing unusual at either the site of death or the site where the body was dumped, then we have to consider other factors."
Corporal Han Bing analyzed the situation calmly over the channel. "First, how exactly were those people affected?"
"Every Pollution Source has a certain range of influence. Only those who enter that range can be contaminated."
"According to the information currently available, those people had no ties to one another and did not know each other. Yet they all became members of the 'Avengers.' This means that the paths of these unrelated people must have intersected during their lives..."
"The place where their paths intersected is very likely the source of this pollution incident."
"I recommend organizing personnel to investigate the identities and past routes of those 'Avengers'!"
Before you continue