At that, Yan Feifan scratched his forehead and said with a slight lack of confidence, "Um... passing through walls."
"Passing through walls?"
Lu Ding found that interesting. "How did you awaken a talent like that?"
"Well, back when I was at home, I ran into a supernatural incident. A wall swallowed me, and I wanted to run, to escape. Then I accidentally slipped out, and that was how I awakened the talent to pass through walls."
Yan Feifan spoke as he drove.
"Since you can pass through walls, can you burrow through the ground?"
"I can, technically, but I can't swim, so I'd sink."
"Hahahahahaha!"
Lu Ding's laughter filled the vehicle.
Yan Feifan hurriedly said, "I'm scared of water. I nearly drowned when I was little, but I'll learn."
"All right, keep up the good work, and remember to learn how to swim. I'll bring you along on my next mission too."
Lu Ding's promise instantly made Yan Feifan's eyes light up!
Rather than looking for someone else, Lu Ding thought Yan Feifan was a pretty good choice.
It was mainly his personality: a little cowardly, but smart. Someone like that wouldn't have too many ideas of his own.
He could be trusted with odd jobs.
Besides, he could pass through walls and burrow through the ground. Who knew? That might prove very useful someday.
"Really, Brother Lu? I'm actually pretty useless. I can't fight, I can't scout, I can't do anything. I only passed the assessment by exploiting a loophole."
"That just means you're smart. Besides, if you're on a mission with me, would you even need to fight?"
"If it came down to you fighting, neither of us would probably get away."
Yan Feifan thought about it. That did seem to make sense.
Soon, they reached a milk tea shop at an intersection. Yan Feifan said, "We're here, Brother Lu. This is where Dong Yong worked his summer job."
They got out of the jeep, with Yan Feifan leading the way. The instant they stepped into the milk tea shop, a faint, rank stench crept straight into Lu Ding's nose.
Up ahead, Yan Feifan saw no sign of Dong Yong in the shop.
After ordering two hand-pounded lemon teas, he took the opportunity to ask, "Hey, miss, where's the guy who used to work here? Last time I saw him, he was really putting his back into pounding those lemons. Why isn't he here today? Making a girl like you do all that pounding must be exhausting."
What did it mean to be smart? This was what it meant.
The shop was already short-staffed, and hand-pounded lemon tea took a lot of effort to make.
If he asked directly, there was no telling what their relationship was like. She might hide something.
But now he had brought out a point of friction.
The young woman making the lemon tea immediately said irritably, "You mean Dong Yong? He quit. The rules say you're supposed to give half a month's notice, but he handed in his resignation yesterday and just left. Now I'm the only person in the shop. I have to make the milk tea and handle the orders. It's so annoying!"
As she spoke, she put even more force into her hands, as though she wanted to vent all her resentment on the lemons.
Yan Feifan picked up where she left off. "Man, that's really inconsiderate of him. He doesn't follow the rules at all. How could he bear to leave such a pretty girl working herself to the bone? Let me buy you a milk tea to cool off. My treat."
Before the girl could speak, Yan Feifan paid for an extra cup of milk tea.
Hearing the payment notification, the girl felt a little embarrassed.
"No, no, you don't have to. Our shop has a rule against accepting things customers buy for us."
"It's fine, it's fine. It's just a cup of milk tea. You're so pretty, even if you can't drink one on the job, I bet people line up to buy you one after work. That guy, Dong Yong or whatever his name was, is the only one who doesn't understand that the pavilion closest to the water catches the moonlight first."
Yan Feifan was already good-looking. With his good timing and smooth tongue added to the mix, the girl blushed instantly.
Following the topic he steered her toward, she kept chatting.
"As if. He wouldn't be interested in me. When he left yesterday, I happened to see him chatting with a gorgeous woman. Not long afterward, a car came to pick him up-a sports car, no less. I thought he was just working here like me. Who knew he was a rich young master getting a taste of ordinary life?"
With both hand-pounded lemon teas finished, the young employee looked at Yan Feifan expectantly, her eyes also darting uncontrollably toward Lu Ding beside him.
One was smooth-talking, with refined, pleasing features. The other hadn't said a single word and relied entirely on sheer good looks. Just standing there, he had finer features than the models on television, and presence to match.
She had thought that since this smooth-talking handsome guy had bought her milk tea, he would at least ask for her contact information.
Who knew he would turn around and leave, absorbed in fiddling with his phone?
Back in the vehicle, Yan Feifan read from his phone. "Brother Lu, I asked the bureau's mission support staff to check the surveillance footage for this stretch of road, along with the car that picked Dong Yong up that day."
At that moment, Lu Ding truly felt that recruiting Yan Feifan as an assistant investigator had been an exceptionally sound choice.
He really knew how to get things done.
Lu Ding didn't even need to open his mouth. Yan Feifan could anticipate what he wanted, carry it out swiftly and decisively, then show him the results.
The feeling simply couldn't have been more satisfying.
"Did they find anything?"
"They did."
Lu Ding didn't even need to look himself. Yan Feifan said, "The footage shows Dong Yong getting into a black sports car yesterday morning. That sports car is registered to the Ji Group. By comparing footage from the road surveillance cameras, they established that the driver yesterday was the Ji Group's eldest young lady, Ji Feiyu."
"The Sky Eye System caught Ji Feiyu and Dong Yong meeting on Mountain Goods Old Street on August seventeenth."
"The supplementary information also says Ji Feiyu has a younger sister, Ji Yanshuang. She seems to have provoked something unclean, but her hospital tests came back normal. Later, they consulted a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, who said her yang energy was depleted. She's been taking medicine ever since, and good medicinal ingredients from wildlife explicitly banned by the state sometimes turn up at the mountain goods market."
"Along with all sorts of other things."
"The information also says that on August eighteenth, the day the family massacre at Apricot Blossom Residential Complex was discovered, Dong Yong was summoned as a suspect. Not long after he arrived, Ji Feiyu came to vouch for him. Since he also had an alibi, the local authorities didn't give him a hard time."
Hearing all this, Lu Ding once again experienced how terrifying the machinery of the state was. How much time had even passed? They could have dug up his ancestors going back eighteen generations.
Beside him, Yan Feifan grew more excited as he spoke. "And today, the Ji Group's chairman, Ji Hong, invited a spirit-medium disciple with genuine ability to look into Ji Yanshuang's problem. Man, Brother Lu, there's something I'm not sure I should say."
"Go ahead." Lu Ding's tone was calm.
"Dong Yong is practically the template for an urban supernatural novel protagonist."
"If Dong Yong really has Old Lady Black with him, then when he met Ji Feiyu, he would definitely have been able to see whatever had rubbed off on her from living with Ji Yanshuang. Following the plot of a novel, Dong Yong would definitely point it out."
"Later, when Dong Yong was summoned, she went to vouch for him. By this stage, that means Ji Feiyu had started taking his words seriously. Following the clichéd plot, Ji Feiyu would definitely want Dong Yong to help drive away whatever was haunting her sister."
"Today, a spirit-medium disciple showed up too, and one with genuine ability at that. When Dong Yong makes his move, how could the immortal patron an ordinary spirit-medium disciple carries possibly compare to the Old Lady Black Dong Yong carries? Then it'll be showing off and face-slapping time."