The voice sounded heartfelt and sincere. She was genuinely worried.
Director Mao was in a difficult position. She explained that we hadn't found anyone, but the caller refused to give up, sounding desperate, as if she had nowhere left to turn and was clinging to her last hope.
I asked Director Mao where she was now, only to learn that she wasn't at the Workers and Peasants Sixth Village neighborhood committee. She was at the police station. The woman had gone there to ask for help, and Officer Gu had contacted Director Mao, who then got in touch with me.
This had nothing to do with the demolition office, but the woman insisted on finding Greenleaf. She must have encountered some kind of supernatural incident. I suspected she might have been one of Greenleaf's former clients.
When I arrived at the police station, I saw Director Mao and Gu in the lobby.
Ever since we stopped actively searching for Greenleaf, the demolition office and Gu had been in touch less often.
Gu greeted me, then looked helplessly at the dejected man.
He barely glanced at me. His head was lowered, and a gloomy air hung over him.
I took several looks, making sure I wasn't imagining it—that it wasn't just his posture or woebegone expression making him seem that way.
It was a very real aura.
I even thought it seemed familiar, like a kind of yin energy I'd encountered before, yet somehow different.
"...That's how things stand. We can't do much, either. The police station looked into it ages ago, but we couldn't find anything," Gu sighed.
Director Mao looked just as helpless. "You spent quite a while looking into this before. Did you find anything?"
"Um..."
"Oh, right. This man says he went to them before and hired