No Matter What, Follow Them First

The license plate indicates the vehicle's origin, and the rear badge and other features reveal its model and approximate year. Below the license plate, there's a thin line of advertising text displaying the 4S dealership's name and phone number. Although it was mostly covered in mud, only a few numbers and two Chinese characters were visible. Knowing the area, finding that Toyota 4S dealership or secondary dealer shouldn't be difficult.

Then, you can start by checking the user data of that 4S store or dealership to see if you can find it. Comparatively speaking, this is easier and less risky than going directly to the vehicle management office.

However, this was still somewhat troublesome, Xiang Kun still wanted to find a simpler and more direct way.

He continued to carefully recall the details of the two men's appearance and clothing, the content of their conversation, and the various aspects of the car.

Then he recalled that there was a row of stickers on the back of the car that were half missing, with four and a half letters remaining. The first four were CHEC, the second C had a dot in front of it, and the half letter after the C was easily recognizable as an O.

Therefore, that sticker was most likely originally a website address, ending in ". COM", presumably a website similar to WWW...

The sticker on the car likely belongs to the website of the company that originally purchased the car. Of course, it could also be a private car that has that website sticker on it for some reason.

From their conversation, it's clear they were planning to leave by plane and were on a business trip for the "company." The Prado's license plate belonged to this city, so it obviously wasn't their usual car. It's likely that the "company" arranged the car for them after they arrived, or they found it themselves.

Could it be a car rental platform?

Since there was still some time before boarding, Xiang Kun started searching based on these criteria. After a while, he did find a website that basically met the requirements. However, this website was not a car rental website, but a car maintenance and repair website with offline chain stores. The website's offline stores were mostly located within the province, mainly in two cities, and the coverage was not wide. The total number of stores did not exceed double digits.

In that case, perhaps this car was serviced at a shop affiliated with this website and received some kind of discount, which is why it has this sticker?

However, while browsing the website, Xiang Kun unexpectedly came across several promotional photos. The photos showed repairmen sent out by the shop to provide "rescue" services, checking a customer's car for problems on the roadside. The repairman was a handsome, clean-cut young man, and the car owner was a beautiful and lovely woman; it was clearly a staged advertisement.

However, what Xiang Kun noticed was an SUV in the photo, used as a vehicle by maintenance personnel.

It was a white Prado. Although I couldn't get a picture of the license plate, and it looked much newer than the one the two people were driving that night, the marks on the lower part of the C-pillar indicated that it was the same car.

In other words, the Prado wasn't serviced at that website's maintenance shop before the sticker was applied; it was originally a vehicle owned by that shop?

Why were they able to drive that car? How did they manage to borrow it?

However, judging from the tone of their conversation, Xiang Kun felt that it was unlikely they would borrow the car through his connections. Since they were on business, the car was most likely arranged by the company or they would pay for it themselves.

The company they're referring to is probably not this car repair and maintenance company, as all of its chain stores are located in areas accessible by air.

Xiang Kun recalled the promotions and advertisements he had seen on the website's homepage, and after checking them, he discovered that the company had been acquired by "Shenxing Technology" last year.

No wonder the homepage is full of ads, it looks so typical of an internet company, with various promotions such as "get a free dashcam with your car maintenance", "get maintenance vouchers and cash bonuses by recording your driving habits", "get a gas card by experiencing the AI car butler dashcam", and "get free engine oil by tracking detailed fuel consumption".

Xiang Kun naturally knew about "Shenxing Technology." This company was a model of quietly developing cutting-edge technology. Although it was not as well-known as giants in fields such as instant messaging, games, e-commerce, and mobile phone manufacturing, many of the things they made had extremely wide applications and were indispensable to many electronic devices. They were unique technologies even worldwide, with very strong patent barriers and extremely high profits.

Xiang Kun recently saw a news report that "Shenxing Technology" was testing a property management solution that combines drones with AI. They had already obtained licenses and permits and were conducting a trial run in a pilot community.

Even earlier, "Shenxing Technology" had published many different research results, some of which have already been put into application.

However, they rarely manufacture consumer-grade products themselves. Most of the time, they use their developed technologies and patents to collaborate with other well-known and established manufacturers to launch products. Therefore, they often have high brand recognition in professional fields, but relatively low brand recognition among the general public.

Moreover, Xiang Kun vaguely felt that "Shenxing Technology" didn't seem to want its reputation to be too great. After releasing various products and research, it would immediately disappear without a trace, and its executives and bosses rarely spoke out.

What would a company like "Shenxing Technology" do with acquiring a car repair and maintenance business?

If you simply want relevant data, you can directly cooperate with these companies or acquire other related app or internet companies to obtain the relevant big data. Do you think that the current method yields more effective and comprehensive data?

So, were those two people sent by "Shenxing Technology"?

The "company" they were referring to, was it "Shenxing Technology"?

Of course, it's also possible that they simply obtained the car through some unknown means, and had no connection whatsoever with the original repair and maintenance company or the "Shenxing Technology" behind it.

However, Xiang Kun was more inclined to believe that "Shenxing Technology" had discovered vampires and Mutated Creature.

An announcement came over the loudspeaker in the waiting area: boarding for Xiang Kun's flight had begun.

Although there is no direct evidence that the two people who left in the Prado that night were working for "Shenxing Technology," Xiang Kun is not going to sue them in court, so he doesn't need solid evidence; he only needs to rely on his own judgment.

So if he suspects "Shenxing Technology," then he might as well just investigate "Shenxing Technology."

Upon investigation, Xiang Kun discovered that "Shenxing Technology" was involved in so many fields.

From AI drones to programmable robot toys, from VR and AR gaming devices to medical assistive devices, from autonomous driving to emerging car manufacturers, from security equipment to the express delivery industry, they have it all. Now they've even ventured into the car repair and maintenance service industry, with acquired and invested companies all over the country.

Moreover, "Shenxing Technology" is not a listed company, so there is not complete information about many things. You have to look up information from the news they release themselves, and even from the news they release, there is already so much.

Xiang Kun was dazzled by what he saw, feeling that the company's development direction and strategy were too arbitrary and bizarre.

The plane was about to take off. Xiang Kun off his phone, sat in his seat, and looked out at the scenery of the airport runway. The names of the companies that "Shenxing Technology" had acquired and invested in flashed through his mind.

There were many companies he had seen or heard of before, but he never imagined that "Shenxing Technology" was behind them.

For example, there's a courier company called "Runs Really Fast." Although Xiang Kun had never used their service, he was deeply impressed by them because their name stood out so much among courier companies like X-Feng, X-Tong, and X-Bang, making them unforgettable.

When Xiang Kun was researching, he saw the name of this courier company and had a strange feeling about it.

At first, he thought it was because he knew the courier company before and had a strong impression of its name. But he soon realized that there must be other reasons.

So he carefully searched his memory for information and images related to the "Runs Really Fast" courier company. Then he remembered that when he went to Yang City before, he wanted to "revisit" the place where Guo Tianxiang lived to anchor and compare it with Guo Tianxiang's complex memory fragments to help him find useful information. He had seen a van with the "Runs Really Fast" courier logo on it outside the building where Guo Tianxiang's clinic was located.

Later, when he went to Guo Tianxiang's residence in Yang City and the residence of the dreadlocked female hacker Mi Qiao, he saw "Runs Really Fast" delivery vans around their buildings.

He knew that this courier company had a very advanced sorting and warehousing management system, but it had not expanded on a large scale. It only had a small amount of business in a few first- and second-tier cities in China, and most of it was in cooperation with enterprises. Private business was very rare, and its scale was far smaller than those courier industry giants.

However, as a first-tier city in China, it's not unusual for express delivery vehicles to be "Runs Really Fast" to appear in Yang City. In addition, since everyone's attention was focused on the people being monitored by the police at the time, Xiang Kun didn't find anything strange about it.

But now, looking back, Xiang Kun suddenly realized something was amiss—it wasn't normal for their vans to appear at all three locations simultaneously, given their "Runs Really Fast" business volume. They primarily dealt with corporate clients, and those three locations didn't actually have a concentration of businesses with such a large volume of business.

If "Shenxing Technology" had been researching vampires and Mutated Creature from the beginning, then their awareness of Guo Tianxiang's abnormality, the unusual encounter between Host Xue and the other two in the Qinling Mountains, their dispatch of people to monitor the places where Guo Tianxiang and Mi Qiao would appear, and their sending of people to the Qinling Uninhabited Zone to collect samples and search for wild boar carcasses would all make sense.

So, is "Shenxing Technology" involved in so many fields and has people in various places to assist them in investigating the Mutated Creature appearing in different regions?

Judging from the conversation between the two people that night, although they had signed a confidentiality agreement or something similar, they didn't seem to know much, nor did they understand their purpose in doing so or what the things they collected were for.

So, assuming "Shenxing Technology" is the "company" investigating these matters, how did their executives find out? Was it at the behest of the boss?

Xiang Kun had previously researched that Lu Cheng'an, the founder of "Shenxing Technology," started out running a mechanical parts processing factory and made a lot of money before gradually moving into the high-tech industry. A few years ago, this over-seventy-year-old Mr. Lu was among the last 100 on the Forbes list. Moreover, because "Shenxing Technology" is not listed, many people believe that the media's estimates of his net worth are too conservative.

However, Lu Cheng'an is even more low-key than his company. There is very little video footage or information about him, and he has never given an interview in the past twenty years. It is always the company's professional managers who deal with the media.

Could this Boss Lu actually be a vampire?

Xiang Kun wondered to himself.

Although there is no direct evidence to prove his speculation, he has already listed "Shenxing Technology" and Lu Cheng'an as targets that require close vigilance and attention.

Regardless of how confident one is, getting a result first, and then slowly verifying and modifying that result, is Xiang Kun's consistent approach.

The plane arrived in Star City smoothly. It was easy for Xiang Kun to find the Little Chubby Girl; he just needed to sense the Coin and the A4 paper.

However, he arrived in Star City too late, and the Little Chubby Girl had already been picked up from kindergarten by her mother. His plan to bump into her again by the kindergarten gate had to be canceled.

Could they bump into each other somewhere else? Xiang Kun could easily do that, since, according to his senses, the Coin and the A4 paper were constantly moving, indicating that the Little Chubby Girl had been carrying them the whole time.

But wouldn't that seem too deliberate? If they bump into each other again at the kindergarten gate, he could say he passes through this area every time he's in Star City on business, so it's normal to run into each other again. But if they bump into each other in other places as well, then it seems a bit too coincidental.

While Xiang Kun had already used his sense of the Coin to call a car and navigate to a shopping mall. Not long after getting out of the car, he saw Shiling's Mother holding her Little Chubby Girl's hand and strolling around on the first floor of the mall.

Xiang Kun followed slowly at a distance, keeping his attention on the two women and eavesdropping on their conversation.

"Shiling, stop playing with Coin. How about Mom buys you Ice Cream? Do you want Chocolate or strawberry?" Shiling's Mother, who used to always stop her daughter from eating Ice Cream, was now actively tempting her.

Liu Shiling looked up at her mother and said curiously, "Mom always says we shouldn't eat sweets before meals? We haven't had dinner yet!"

"Uh..." Shiling's Mother was speechless for a moment, not knowing whether she should be happy that her child had become sensible. After all, in the past, even if Liu Shiling was almost asleep and couldn't keep her eyes open, she would immediately jump up again if you told her there was Ice Cream.

The Coin in Liu Shiling's hand tumbled incessantly as she looked at the dessert shop in the distance and said, "Mom, let's come after dinner. I want Chocolate flavor. Mom, let's have rabbit for dinner. I want the dry-pot rabbit that Baldy Uncle makes. I haven't had it in so long, I really want some."

Seeing the sparkle in her daughter's eyes when she talked about food, and the familiar way she unconsciously licked her lips and swallowed after speaking, Shiling's Mother breathed a sigh of relief.

Upon hearing this, Xiang Kun immediately recalled the mall "map" he had seen at the entrance when he entered the mall. He then quickly took the escalator from another direction and headed to the third floor, where restaurants were clustered—there was a chain restaurant there famous for its Sichuan-style rabbit meat.