Murder Case (3)

"Oh my God!" Hearing this, Pei Shao was finally thoroughly shocked. "No wonder those people cried out in alarm just now. If the victim's family wasn't lying, then could the murderer be...?"

Pei Shao suddenly shuddered and cried out inwardly, Could it be a robot like Castle? That Toilet Transformer with such aggressive tendencies?

This is bad! I have to get this information to Castle right away. If it really was Toilet Transformer's doing, then the consequences will truly be unimaginable!

With that in mind, though Pei Shao was reluctant to miss Lin Meijing's dinner invitation tonight, he had no choice but to steel himself and walk back to tell her everything he had seen. Then he said, "Sister Meijing, I'm really sorry, but I need to go to the murder scene in Ningdong District immediately. If there's another chance, I'll treat you next time!"

After saying that, he rushed out of the hall in a panic and ran toward the entrance, drawing countless puzzled looks. But Pei Shao had no time to care about that now. As he ran out the door, he grumbled inwardly about that Toilet Transformer. Why did it have to choose this exact moment to do something so utterly mood-killing? His first "date" with Lin Meijing had ended like this. A woman as proud as Lin Meijing definitely would not ask him out again.

With a bitter smile, Pei Shao quickened his pace, waved down a taxi, and sped toward home.

Lin Meijing watched Pei Shao's back disappear from before her in an instant, then stood there blankly for quite a while before coming back to herself. Though she felt a tiny bit disappointed, she once again confirmed what she had just said. She felt that Pei Shao really was a little different from the other men she had met. At the very least, his sense of professional responsibility far outweighed the temptation of beauty. Otherwise, why would he rush off the moment there was news? Lin Meijing felt that, aside from the automotive feature, this issue of the magazine could certainly include a legal affairs column as well.

But although that was what she thought, Lin Meijing still felt slightly uncomfortable inside. Even she could not explain the real reason for that discomfort. After all, apart from work-related matters, Lin Meijing had rarely invited people to meals in private. Even when she invited successful businessmen to dinner for the sake of certain investigative reports, they would turn off their phones no matter how important their business was.

Deals that might cost them hundreds of thousands, or even millions, in just a few hours were probably worth less in their eyes than even a fake smile from Lin Meijing. Though Lin Meijing had never bragged about her looks, she had always been extremely confident in them.

Yet this time, Pei Shao's departure left her with a faint sense of loss. But was this feeling really just because her confidence had taken a blow?

Lin Meijing knew very clearly what she had felt in that brief instant—it had been an unprecedented sense of ease and happiness. At a loss, she looked at the remaining food on the table and the chair across from her where Pei Shao had been sitting moments ago, falling into a state of irritation and confusion she had never experienced before.

"You brat, you really just left me here like that! I'm your boss, you know!" Lin Meijing pouted, then could not help touching her cheek as she muttered worriedly, "Could it be that I'm already old at twenty-four?"

Pei Shao hurried home from the Imperial Oasis Hotel. Without even bothering to take off his shoes, he flung open the door and shouted at the top of his lungs, "Mr. Castle! Mr. Castle! Something terrible has happened!"

Castle, who was working at the computer, immediately turned around and made a "frowning" expression.

"Mr. Castle! Something really terrible has happened!" Pei Shao said bluntly between heavy breaths. "There's been a murder in Ningdong District. I suspect the victim was killed by that silicon-based being like you!"

"What evidence supports your argument?" Castle asked calmly.

After Pei Shao explained what he had discovered, Castle fell silent for a moment before saying, "Based on the analysis, there is indeed an 80% possibility..."

"At a time like this, who cares about possibilities?!" Pei Shao was sweating profusely with anxiety. "Even if there were only a 1% chance, we'd still have to go take a look! There's no time to waste. Stop talking and let's go, Mr. Castle!"

As Pei Shao sprinted with the speed of the wind, Castle, bouncing around in his pocket along the way, nearly had even his indestructible mechanical body shaken apart. Fortunately, the house Pei Shao rented was also in the east of the city, only about ten minutes from the murder scene.

After weaving through several turns, Pei Shao chose nothing but narrow, pothole-ridden backstreets and quickly reached the primary crime scene—the very street where they had seen the police cars on television.

"This is the place, Mr. Castle! Have you found anything?" As he spoke, Pei Shao scanned the area with his eyes, hoping to find some trace or clue nearby. But unfortunately, aside from the passing pedestrians and the brilliantly lit night streets, there was not even a hint of a metal fragment.

"What about you, Mr. Castle? Any clues?" After looking around for a while, Pei Shao found a secluded corner, lightly patted his pocket, and asked.

"Based on the light-energy signals it left on the ground, I can confirm that it is somewhere along the extension of a thirty-seven-degree angle, 2,513 meters to the northeast. The exact location cannot be detected, but its movement trajectory indeed ends here!"

Pei Shao stared in utter astonishment. Then he quickly asked, "What are light-energy signals?"

"This is troublesome to explain. Follow the route I give you first. We can talk while we pursue it!"

After adjusting his route and running for a while, Pei Shao wiped his sweat and said, "Now you can tell me, right, Mr. Castle? What exactly are light-energy signals? Why can you track its movements through them?"

"In the world of silicon-based lifeforms, aside from electricity and radiation energy, we possess a very special ability: automatically combining and arranging silicon-based atomic clusters. They can absorb light energy from nature to perform our own complex calculations and data analysis."

"My God! Doesn't that mean you silicon-based beings are naturally 'mobile computers' several times more advanced than a Pentium 4?" Pei Shao finally understood, at least somewhat, where Castle's bizarre abilities came from.

Just as Pei Shao was about to launch into another stream of praise, Castle suddenly said, "Stop! This is the place!"

Pei Shao stopped as instructed and discovered that he was standing in front of an old, paint-peeled building covered in signs of decay. Beside the entrances to more than a dozen units, a large "Demolish" character had been carved into each wall. It was obvious that this was an abandoned old building awaiting demolition.