A Puzzling Email
Besides Officer Chen, other people also recognized Xiang Kun from various parody videos circulating online.
At noon, Yang Jie came out of the school laboratory, thinking about something as she prepared to go to the cafeteria, when her phone suddenly beeped.
The message was from my younger brother, Yang Zhuo: "I found my idol!!"
Yang Jie looked completely bewildered. This kid's idol? When he was little, it was Ultraman, and in middle school, it was Cristiano Ronaldo, Lei Jun, and Quentin Tarantino? He shouldn't be able to find the latter three, right? Did he buy an Ultraman toy? He's such a grown man...
However, Yang Jie soon saw the next message from her brother, which was a video.
After glancing at the video and noting its short length, and considering the data usage for the day, Yang Jie pressed play. She then saw a video of a bald man cooking, with background audio clearly taken from a movie.
"Hey? Isn't this the fortune teller?" Yang Jie immediately recognized him as one of the two "geniuses" she and her friend Zhang Qian had met at the bar who used fortune telling as an excuse to pick up girls.
What was his name again? Yang Kun? No, it seems to be Xiang Kun.
Then she immediately remembered that not long ago, she and her younger brother Yang Zhuo went to the same bar and ran into that bald, bespectacled guy again.
At that time Xiang Kun sang Jacky Cheung's "The Real Man" and received applause from the bar patrons. It was very infectious. After she took Yang Zhuo over to say hello, she relied on some details to see through the relationship between the two siblings. She showed a strong ability to reason and observe. Afterwards, she protected her companion who was in a conflict and left. She also had a kind of tough and taciturn aura. Yang Zhuo, who had just entered college, was so impressed that he looked at her with shining eyes and called her "idol".
Although Yang Zhuo's behavior of casually recognizing his younger brother as an "idol," Yang Jie had to admit that the "fortune teller" Xiang Kun was indeed someone who always amazed and impressed people.
When she first met him at the bar, she thought he was just a guy who pretended to be a charmer and picked up girls, someone who was just a little clever and knew some tricks. The second time she saw him, she thought that someone who could sing that song like that must be a very emotional person, and probably even smarter than she and Zhang Qian had imagined. But then, the way he confronted the young people in the bar before protecting his companions as they left revealed a fierce and experienced air about him.
Now, seeing the video her younger brother sent her on WeChat, Yang Jie felt a strong sense of his goofy side again. This guy really is versatile.
"Why aren't you paying attention in class? What are you doing watching videos like this?!"
"Sis! It's lunchtime!"
"Eat properly when it's time to eat!"
"..."
After scolding her younger brother a few times with some random excuse, Yang Jie didn't close the chat window. Instead, she scrolled up the chat history and forwarded Xiang Kun Zhang Qian, adding a funny, smirking emoji.
Guess what I saw online?
After discussing the "consulting company" case with Officer Chen, Xiang Kun couldn't help but think of the Yang City police's attention to Guo Tianxiang. Judging from the manpower the police had dispatched, the case must be quite significant. He wondered how it was progressing.
He had also used chewing gum to stick a Ballpoint Pen Tip that had established a "Super-Sensory Link" to the back of the surveillance vehicle. Although he could still sense it, he was almost certain that the ball ball and the car had long since separated—few people would ignore chewing gum stuck to the back of a car.
Xiang Kun pondered for a long time, but still couldn't figure out how to find out the progress of the Yang City police investigation while ensuring his own safety.
The reason I want to know these things is twofold: first, to know whether the police have suspected Guo Tianxiang's physical abnormalities, and what the official attitude is towards this;
Secondly, I want to know if the police have found Guo Tianxiang's whereabouts and whether they have any suspicions about Xiang Kun;
Thirdly, he wanted to know if the police were still keeping a close eye on him. If they had relaxed their vigilance, he actually wanted to revisit the places Guo Tianxiang had lived before, to help him search for and pinpoint Guo Tianxiang's complex memory fragments.
After some thought, Xiang Kun decided to take a roundabout approach and use the dreadlocked female hacker Mi Qiao, as a breakthrough point.
Observations in Yang City confirm that Mi Qiao has not been arrested by the police—of course, after half a month, it is still uncertain whether he has been apprehended.
However, we can draw some conclusions from her condition.
How can we determine her condition?
One method would be to contact Guo Tianxiang directly using his phone, but that would be too dangerous. The police would definitely be closely monitoring Guo Tianxiang's phone number, and his WeChat, QQ, email, and other communication tools would certainly be under surveillance as well, including Mi Qiao's.
Another method was that Mi Qiao gave Guo Tianxiang an emergency contact email address on "darknet".
Before heading to Yangcheng City, Xiang Kun's attention was focused on Guo Tianxiang's memories and past experiences; he wasn't interested in Mi Qiao and felt that contacting her would only bring trouble. After arriving in Yang City and learning that the police were investigating Guo Tianxiang and Mi Qiao, he dared not have any contact with Mi Qiao at all.
But now, after careful consideration, Xiang Kun decided to check that email address.
Normally, neither the police nor Mi Qiao should know that Guo Tianxiang was already dead. After Mi Qiao realized the police investigation and fled, she would definitely have contacted Guo Tianxiang. Given that her mobile phone and commonly used communication software were bound to be monitored, the most likely way she would have contacted him was through that email address.
By using the contact email address she sent, we should be able to roughly determine her current situation, and then assess whether further investigation is necessary based on the actual circumstances.
Of course, even with "darknet," Xiang Kun wouldn't access it directly at home.
Just like before his first encounter with "August's Kasumi," he made thorough preparations. However, this time he didn't go to the dumpling shop to use the coffee shop's Wi-Fi. Instead, he chose a backup location he had scouted before, again using the business premises' Wi-Fi and then going online in a nearby place without surveillance cameras.
He didn't skip any of the preparatory work, such as "bridging the gap," and then opened the email address on the darknet that Guo Tianxiang remembered.
Then he discovered that there was only one email in his entire inbox. He opened it, and it contained only two sentences:
"That vampire seems to have located me, what should I do?"
"The police are also looking for us, so don't contact us by phone."
The email was sent at around 1 a. m. on October 11th.
Xiang Kun had anticipated what Mi Qiao might say when she contacted Guo Tianxiang through this email address, and had subconsciously considered various possibilities, but to be honest, these two sentences were indeed somewhat unexpected.
The second sentence wasn't surprising; discovering the police were investigating them and fleeing beforehand was something Xiang Kun had already predicted. But the first sentence puzzled him greatly.
Thanks to the new helmsman "Qiu Yu", and thanks to book friends Twilight Scarlet, This Man is a Trap, Book Friends 20180830081619129, Mr. Yizhi, and Breathe Freely for the reward.