The Mantis Stalks the Cicada

The first two teams' investigations pointed straight to the question of the time of the crime.

Arctic Ice and Peter Pan, however, remained mysterious, and even their replies were extremely brief.

Arctic Ice said only one sentence: "Investigating."

Peter Pan's was: "Haven't started yet."

The more casually these two brushed it off, the more Lin Qiye's head hurt.

After all, the two of them had not broken the law, but heaven knew whether they might cause some huge mess if they stayed around too long.

The more Lin Qiye thought about it, the worse it felt. Guided by the thinking of these master sleuths, a sudden strange idea came to him.

What if the case had happened during another time period?

Even if it was deep in the night, it was impossible for there to be absolutely no one around. Late-night snack stall owners, sanitation workers, vegetable farmers selling at the early market at three in the morning, youths partying all night—perhaps among these people, someone knew something, but had not thought of it in that direction.

Also, where had the drowned girl gone that night?

Why had the people who had come into contact with her not stepped forward to explain?

As long as these questions were solved, it would be a major breakthrough for cracking the case.

High-IQ deduction was something the Intelligent AI currently could not do, but finding information related to the girl through big data should not be a big problem.

"Collect all information related to the drowned girl across the entire internet. Focus on those who had contact with her before her death."

[Instruction received. Filtering and analyzing data.]

[Through the drowned girl's personal space and chat communities, the following was discovered.]

[The deceased had a narrow social circle and mild autism. Most of her friends were schoolmates, as well as her parents' relatives and friends.]

[However, she had a strong preference for music. In private, she had also registered an alternate account, disguising herself in her personal information as a twenty-three-year-old singer. The alternate account had only four contacts, all of them music-related individuals.]

This was a good lead. A girl with dreams, full of longing for the future, trying to come into contact with the adult world.

He had to provide the clue to all the participants immediately, to speed up the investigation.

Lin Qiye was very nervous. Watching the show was fine, but now that he had to get involved, he found it a little hard to adapt.

At this moment, Lin Qiye felt as though he was about to split into two people.

One was an ordinary university student who had made a little money by trading stocks.

The other, however, had to play the role of a mysterious mastermind hidden in the underground world.

His real self was lying on a beach chair, seemingly listening to music and sunbathing. His university buddies were playing poker beside him, and his girlfriend was working on her competition piece.

His illusory self, meanwhile, was a mysterious and all-knowing mastermind behind the scenes, holding a deduction competition based on a real case.

On the Theory Forum, Gray Hand once again posted a thread.

[Notice regarding the bounty deduction game entering its second stage.]

[Because the contestants have triggered a hidden segment, the organizer will release a new clue: Xiaoya's online friends.]

[Contestants, keep your phones with you and wait for notification.]

[At the same time, partial information on the contestants will be announced. Their usernames are: "Dust," "Taisui Mountain," "Sherlock Holmes," "No Hair," "Arctic Ice," and "Peter Pan."]

The appearance of a new clue, along with the exposure of everyone's identity information, pushed the competition to a climax.

Immediately after, In the police station's forensic autopsy room, the White-haired Old Man "Dust" and the Eyeglasses Man "Taisui Mountain" took out their phones and listened to the message.

The Tall Beauty "Sherlock Holmes" and the Bald Middle-aged Man "No Hair," who were conducting visits on the streets, also took out their phones.

After the four of them finished listening, looks of delight appeared on their faces, and they each began investigating in their own way.

As for the last two contestants, their anonymous phones also rang inside luggage bags in an airport locker, but the calls were received by other numbers through call forwarding.

The strong Bearded Man "Arctic Ice" put his phone into his trouser pocket and silently followed behind the Tall Beauty and the Bald Man.

In an Internet cafe, the most mysterious one, "Peter Pan," sat in a corner, his phone placed to the side, both hands tapping nonstop on the keyboard. Suddenly, he stopped and said in standard Mandarin, "Found it."

The contestants launched into fierce competition.

With the help of the police, "Dust" and "Taisui Mountain" found three of the four friends.

They questioned and investigated them.

During the questioning, the three admitted that they had all seen through Xiaoya's disguise to the innocence and immaturity underneath. They had added her as a friend only as a joke.

But they also flatly denied having any contact with Xiaoya on the day she disappeared.

The remaining friend had not logged on for a long time, so there was temporarily no way to obtain his situation.

Yet he was found by "Sherlock Holmes" and "No Hair."

These two followed behind the investigators. After discovering that the first three friends had no value, they simply spent money to buy the information from a hacker and hurried over.

But after they knocked open the other party's door.

A tall, powerfully built Bearded Man appeared behind them.

The bald man took a step back and asked tentatively, "Are you Arctic Ice, or Peter Pan?"

"Arctic Ice." The burly Bearded Man leaned forward and pressed a hand against the door, saying with cool, oppressive force, "Don't worry. This round is an intelligence contest, so I'll try not to use violence."

Arctic Ice stood one meter ninety-five tall, his muscles sharply defined beneath his tight clothes, giving him an overwhelming sense of strength.

The bald man obediently backed up another two steps.

The tall beauty, however, hesitated.

The Bearded Man added, "I don't go easy on women. The last woman who went against me took fifteen punches to the face. You can imagine what that feels like."

Fifteen hits from fists the size of clay pots—would there even still be a face left?!

The tall beauty's expression changed drastically, and she stepped aside without the slightest hesitation.

Throughout the entire process, the man inside the room tried to shut the door, but no matter what he did, he couldn't budge the door pinned by the Bearded Man.

The door was pushed open with ease. Arctic Ice grabbed the man inside by the collar and tossed him onto the sofa, then said, "I need translators. You two come in too."

Immediately afterward, "Sherlock Holmes" and "No Hair" also entered the room.

Although Lin Qiye couldn't see any of this, he experienced it through his ears as if he were listening to an audiobook.

As things reached the most critical moment, Lin Qiye, who had been skewering meat, couldn't help sitting up straight.

The monitoring audio came through his earphones.

Arctic Ice asked, "What's your name?"

Sherlock Holmes translated it once.

The man replied, "I-I'm Zhao Deshan. What do you want?"

"Four years ago, you added a friend named Xiaoya on QQ, didn't you?"

"I-I don't know."

"I'm very glad you don't know. I'll make you remember."

There were sounds of impact, of someone being thrown around, cries of pain, and the dull thuds of clay-pot-sized fists striking flesh.

By the time Arctic Ice stopped, Zhao Deshan had become honest.

"Hero, spare me! I'll talk. There was a girl named Xiaoya. She wasn't very old, but she pretended to be mature. She said she sang very well and kept wanting me to take her out to perform."

"What does 'perform' mean?"

"It means singing in bars and karaoke lounges. She didn't sing well, and I couldn't bring myself to refuse, so I agreed to take her out that night to have a look. Later, around one in the morning, we went to get a late-night snack. She said she didn't want to go, and then she left by herself."

The female version of Sherlock Holmes flew into a rage. "Scum! Don't think I don't know what you wanted to get from her. A little girl, and you actually felt fine letting her go home alone. Her death is on you too."

Another burst of painful cries followed, and after that, Zhao Deshan had no further role to play.

Arctic Ice was blunt. "The champion this time has to be me. This concerns a very important bet. I need to take the prize money back to my company and prove my brain is better than theirs. So, are you willing to help me?"

"No Hair" was very honest. "What happens if we don't help you?"

"Nothing much. It's just that I'm a very vengeful person, and I give tiny little lessons to people unwilling to help me. I know you're the head of a logistics office in some European security department, and this beautiful lady should be a special-service agent. If I beat you both up badly and then dump you in the busiest park in Huaxia, I hear there are lots of old people here who like dancing at night. They might kindly send you to the local police station to file a report, and take some interesting photos to post online while they're at it. If those photos make it back to Europe and your colleagues see them, what kind of feedback do you think you'll get?"

"You... shameless."

"I am indeed shameless. You can't do my kind of work properly if you care too much about your dignity. Take your time and think it over."

In the end, it was only a reasoning competition. "No Hair" and "Sherlock Holmes" compromised, agreeing to help this vicious man who refused to play by the rules.

After listening to the surveillance audio, Lin Qiye removed his Bluetooth earphone, but his heart was blooming with delight.

He hadn't expected these people to have such a funny side.

It looked like Arctic Ice should have victory firmly in hand.

No!

Lin Qiye suddenly remembered one detail. Where was Peter Pan?

He put the Bluetooth earphone back on.

"Any trace of Peter Pan?"

Peter Pan logged onto the Dark Web forum to check our second-round clue, and I used that opportunity to find his current online location.

After that, Peter Pan used hacking techniques to obtain the address information of the fourth friend. He didn't go there directly. Instead, he used his own hacker channels to sell that information to "Sherlock Holmes" and "No Hair."

The good news is that his new phone is connected to the internet, and I've already hacked into it.

Holy crap, Lin Qiye exclaimed inwardly.

A real case of the mantis stalking the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.