Searching for Qing Chen

"Do you know who did it?" Lu Yuan asked.

As soon as he said that—

The living room fell silent. The air in the room seemed to turn into heavy water, weighing down everyone's movements and slowing them.

Qing Chen, in the kitchen, instinctively held his breath as well.

After adjusting her sitting posture, Jiang Xue slowly said, "I don't know who did it either. Maybe someone was standing up for justice? Why are you investigating this?"

Jiang Xue already knew perfectly well that they had come to investigate Qing Chen.

But no matter what, she did not want them tracing it back to Qing Chen, because that young man had been avenging her daughter.

The image of the boy carrying an entrenching shovel through the night, his split knuckles, felt as though it were right before her eyes. For the first time, she had felt safe because of someone outside her own family.

Lu Yuan smiled and explained, "Please don't misunderstand. We aren't a law enforcement agency, so we're not trying to do anything to this person who stood up for justice."

The Kunlun member beside him said, "That's right. It's just that, based on the criminals' descriptions, we found that this person's timing was extremely tricky, and his ability to set up an ambush was beyond that of an ordinary person. So we wanted to find him and see whether he might be a time traveler."

Lu Yuan added, "We aren't certain that he is a time traveler either. It's just that we pay attention to anything unusual these days."

The two of them seemed to have rehearsed it beforehand, playing off each other perfectly.

At that moment, Li Tongyun obediently said, "After what happened yesterday, Mom and I stayed home the whole time and didn't go out, so we don't know who did it."

Qing Chen froze in the kitchen.

Most people in this world had an unconscious assumption: children did not lie.

Li Tongyun suddenly speaking up to explain undoubtedly made the story more convincing.

For a moment, Qing Chen thought that this little girl might not be so simple.

Back then, when she had wanted to take shelter at his doorstep, she had been timid, yet impossible to refuse.

Now that she had become a time traveler, she had even kept it from her own mother.

None of this was accidental.

Jiang Xue and her husband had argued and suffered domestic violence for years. Children raised in such families were highly likely to differ from ordinary people—either withdrawn, prematurely mature, or marked by other psychological traits.

He himself had grown up in that kind of family environment, and Li Tongyun was the same.

For some reason, Qing Chen suddenly felt as though he had encountered his own kind.

The kind that hid beneath a calm exterior while raging fiercely inside.

It was his intuition.

Li Tongyun suddenly asked, "Uncle, didn't that uncle or aunt who stood up for justice help us? Why are you looking for them? Are you trying to arrest them? Are you bad people?"

"No," Lu Yuan's companion explained awkwardly. "Don't misunderstand, little one."

Lu Yuan explained, "Then perhaps it really was someone who stood up for justice. Let me explain once more: we mean no harm. Kunlun has only just been established, so we need to find and recruit like-minded, capable people."

"Mm, I understand," Jiang Xue said.

"Also, certain organizations in the Inner World, as well as some consortiums, have discovered the existence of the Outer World. According to our statistics, twenty-one time travelers have died under mysterious circumstances after being tortured, and more than a dozen have clearly stated that they have been imprisoned by Inner World organizations. Ms. Jiang Xue, I hope you'll stay vigilant and not let them discover you," Lu Yuan warned. "Although these are all covert operations, they are enough to remind us that exposure is extremely dangerous."

"Alright, I understand." Jiang Xue nodded. Hearing those figures from Lu Yuan, she felt a little frightened as well.

So having one's identity exposed in the Inner World was this terrifying.

Just then, Lu Yuan's companion's phone rang. He opened it, took a look, and said, "He Xiaoxiao has appeared again."

Jiang Xue asked in confusion, "He Xiaoxiao is the person who posts guides on Douyin?"

"Yes." Lu Yuan nodded.

Li Tongyun obediently asked, "Uncle, who is that Brother He Xiaoxiao? He seems to know so much."

Lu Yuan grew interested. "You know about He Xiaoxiao too, little one? We're looking for him as well, but he's very skilled at hiding himself. We still haven't found out who he is. Logically speaking, he should have left behind some clues, but now every trace related to him has been erased... I've said too much. We won't disturb you any longer. Goodbye."

Jiang Xue stood up and said, "I have trouble moving around, so I won't see you out."

"No need," Lu Yuan said with a smile as he walked to the door. Then he suddenly looked at the entrance and asked, "Huh? Whose sneakers are these by the door?"

Jiang Xue calmly replied, "My husband's."

Li Tongyun added, "That's right, my dad's."

"Oh, sorry about that." With that, Lu Yuan opened the door and left.

After the door clicked shut, Jiang Xue and Li Tongyun finally let out a breath of relief at the same time.

Qing Chen came out of the kitchen. "Sorry for causing you trouble."

"Don't say that. We're the ones who caused you trouble," Jiang Xue said. "If something hadn't happened to us, you wouldn't have gotten dragged into this."

"Mm. What do you want to eat? I opened the refrigerator just now and found that there aren't any vegetables left," Qing Chen said.

Jiang Xue had Li Tongyun take two hundred yuan from her wallet. "We need to buy more groceries. How about some pork ribs? You and Xiaoyun are both still growing. You need to eat some meat."

After thinking it over, Qing Chen accepted the money and headed out.

The old stairwell was covered in little advertisements, its walls shedding paint worn away by time.

He stood in the shadows on the stairs, his fingers tapping against the iron railing with a rhythmic tap-tap-tap.

The sound carried a strange rhythm, as though his fingers could think.

The next moment, Qing Chen first went home to change his shoes before heading toward the market.

But before he had even left the residential complex, he spotted a black SUV parked by the roadside. Someone inside was quietly watching him, waiting for him to pass by the vehicle.

Lu Yuan's gaze swept Qing Chen from head to toe, lingering especially on his shoes.

The two men in the car watched silently. Only after Qing Chen had walked away did Lu Yuan suddenly say, "Not him."

"You knew there was someone else in that apartment, seemingly hiding from us. Why didn't you just rush in and take a look? Why go through all this trouble?" the other man asked in confusion.

Lu Yuan said helplessly, "Boss Zheng just gave instructions: now that Kunlun is being established, we need to maintain good relations with time travelers rather than use heavy-handed methods."

"I think it would be better to recruit all the time travelers into the organization first."

Lu Yuan shook his head, rolled down the window, and lit a cigarette. Orange-red sparks and drifting smoke curled through the car.

He exhaled all the smoke from his lungs in one breath. "Kunlun doesn't accept just any riffraff. The boss has also told us what we'll be doing in the future. If they aren't one of us, it won't work."

"What do we do now?" his companion asked.

"We wait here a little longer. If he doesn't show up, then forget it." Lu Yuan crushed out the cigarette. "A new era has begun. Some people are destined not to be ordinary. Maybe we won't even need to find them—they'll appear on their own."

Only after Qing Chen reached the Jiandong Road Agricultural Market did he slowly take out his phone and search for the name He Xiaoxiao on Douyin.

Lu Yuan's conversation at Jiang Xue's home had revealed a great deal: even Kunlun did not know He Xiaoxiao's identity, and he had not been recruited by Kunlun.

Moreover, he had methods for erasing his own traces.

In today's online society, how difficult was it to erase all traces of yourself?

Your registered phone information and your identity records were almost entirely interconnected online, searchable everywhere.

With Kunlun's ability to restrict travel, how could they possibly fail to find the identity information of a game streamer through technical means?

Unless he possessed technology—or an ability—that surpassed this era, something the people of the Outer World could not yet understand...

Well, the double Monthly Ticket event has already begun. Two chapters first, and there'll be more tonight!

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