Fate Trading System – Chapter 243

Plan A

Mist Map 16

Game

Liao Qingjie and Su Xin took a car and left the small town.

When Liao Qingjie was outside and had a signal, she made a call to the Captain.

“Hey, it’s me. Alive and kicking, but something still happened. The girl who came with us was killed by the murderer. That girl wanted to kill the witness, then ran off. Probably had a falling out with the murderer… How should I know how they fell out? She was pretty much breathing her last when I arrived. I saw the murderer, but he was too cunning and escaped. He still has a hostage.”

Su Xin listened to Liao Qingjie talk while waiting for the car.

They had already thrown away the sleeping bag. Apart from a mobile phone and a little cash, they had nothing else on them. Su Xin had a knife, and Liao Qingjie had two guns.

“It’s hard to explain clearly to you now. We’ll talk more when we get back. But the situation right now is actually still critical. The murderer is very likely to strike again. We still don’t know the list, and the murderer still has a hostage. You guys be on alert first.”

After Liao Qingjie finished speaking, she listened to the response from the other end, acknowledged with a couple of “Mm-hmms,” and hung up the phone.

At that exact moment, Su Xin’s phone rang appropriately.

There was no caller ID. Su Xin answered the call.

“Interested in playing a game with me?”

“No.”

“But you have to play the game with me.”

“Then state the rules.”

Su Xin turned on the speakerphone, and Liao Qingjie came over to listen.

“Let me count, how many are left? Besides you, there are still six. I will tell you where I will kill the next person. If you can get there before then and save them, I will tell you the answers to those questions I mentioned before. Of course, revealed one by one. If I told you everything at once, the game would lose a lot of its fun, don’t you agree?”

“Are you sick? Those are living people! Six years ago, they didn’t know the situation and just wanted to save you!”

“Self-righteous kindness, yet it destroyed everything I had.”

The young man’s voice was faint, unhurried, not at all like someone discussing such a serious matter.

Su Xin felt a headache coming on. There was no way to argue right or wrong in many matters because the standpoints were different.

From the murderer’s perspective, they ruined his life. From the perspective of that group six years ago, they were acting bravely for a just cause.

How could there be so much empathy¹ in this world? Su Xin couldn’t force herself to say she was right, but she absolutely wouldn’t admit she was wrong either.

Right and wrong were unclear, impossible to articulate.

“Then can you come kill me first?”

Damn it, just kill her first, okay! Requesting the first cut!

“How could I do that? The finale, of course, must appear last. I want you to witness this process, bit by bit.”

“If I get it wrong the first time, will you stop afterwards?”

“Of course not. You’re not that naive. If you get it wrong the first time, just keep guessing, keep going.”

“What if all six people die?”

“I will come to welcome you, let you join me, and proceed to the place where the gods reside.”

“If I succeed in saving someone once, can I choose which question’s answer I get to know first?”

“Of course not. The initiative in this game is in my hands. Which answer I tell you is naturally my choice.”

“What about the location? Will it change?”

“Of course, it will. There are six people, not clustered together. Finding them still takes time. That concludes all our game rules. Do you have any other questions?”

What the hell kind of game was this?

“Why me? There were eleven people back then, why choose me?”

This was a question that puzzled Su Xin greatly, and also one that perplexed the original host, Bai Yan.

There were clearly so many people, why choose to torture her?

“You forgot… I knew you would forget. This counts as a secret too, I suppose. When you successfully clear one round of the game, I will tell you.”

The call was disconnected. Su Xin remembered to record it. Her mood right now was utterly crap, and she really wanted to curse someone out.

“He’s really too arrogant.”

Liao Qingjie was also displeased. She always had a sense of danger, like dealing with a love rival. Although she knew the murderer couldn’t possibly be chosen, she just wasn’t happy. Plus, that murderer was thinking of taking Su Xin down with him.

“Simply condescending.”

Simply put, he didn’t take the police seriously, too brazen.

“The car is coming. Let’s head back first.”

“Mm-hmm.”

After a whole day of rushing around, Su Xin and Liao Qingjie arrived back in the familiar city at night. Without taking much of a break, the two headed straight for the police station.

“You’re back.”

The Captain actually thought they might be delayed inside for ten days to half a month. He didn’t expect it to be just two or three days, and that so much had happened during that time.

“I’ll explain the situation. You eat first.”

Liao Qingjie had picked up two takeaway meals on the way and carried them straight into the police station.

The Captain’s mouth twitched. She really wasn’t holding back.

Liao Qingjie roughly explained the cause and effect, leaving the Captain still somewhat bewildered.

“The girl who went with you died, killed by the murderer? And at the scene, another person died, possibly on the murderer’s side, but there was conflict?”

“Possibly. That’s our speculation.”

“The murderer is an adult male with a scar on his face? Not only does he have accomplices, but he also has a hostage? The hostage is a young woman in her twenties, and her condition was very bad when she was controlled?”

“Yes. That half of his face isn’t just scarred anymore; it’s highly recognizable.”

“The murderer said he wants to play a killing game?”

“Correct.”

Su Xin handed her phone over, and Liao Qingjie played the previous recording.

“How outrageous! How outrageous!”

The Captain slammed the table directly, repeating himself twice in agitation.

“Who gave him the confidence!”

If the Captain had a beard, he would be fuming with rage² right now.

There were no leads in these recent dismemberment cases. They could only determine it was the same perpetrator. The motive and tools were known, but they just didn’t know where the person was, what they looked like, or what they did.

The Captain was already worried sick about this matter, losing hair over it. This wasn’t just about his career; it was more about protecting the people’s safety. But now, that murderer was actually getting more and more arrogant, even wanting to play a killing game?

The Captain felt that if he had a heart attack, it would definitely be because that murderer angered him to death.

“Right now, we can only focus on prevention.”

“But we can’t be too passive either, letting him hold all the initiative. Later, someone will take you to describe the face. Anyone whose face you saw, regardless of who it was, investigate.”

This was getting out of hand³.

Su Xin hadn’t finished her meal. Liao Qingjie carried her own portion and went with Su Xin to provide the description for the sketch.

The police used their information network⁴ to search, but strangely, no identity matched.

“Are you sure the murderer had this face?”

The policewoman’s fingers danced on the keyboard, clicking the mouse.

Although not 100% identical, it was already a high degree of resemblance.

The equipment had also recorded the murderer’s sound waves. While the evidence wasn’t entirely sufficient, it was more than enough.

But they just couldn’t find any related information.

“There are two possibilities. One, when you saw the murderer, he was disguised, so what you saw wasn’t his real appearance at all. The second possibility, he might be an unregistered person⁵, without an ID card or any other identity documents, not recorded, so the information network is blank.”

“I think the latter is more likely. Perhaps some people who stay on that mountain live and die without ever having an ID card.”

Su Xin mumbled, chewing her food, her words slightly unclear.

The policewoman didn’t say anything further, just posted a wanted notice with the description on the information network.

Next was searching for the hostage. This was much easier, as she was a person with a legal identity.

“Lin Qiaoying⁶, female, 28 years old, from J City, H Province.”

H Province was the neighboring province, and J City wasn’t very far. By high-speed rail, it would only take four or five hours.

“Cross-province again… I’ll go contact the people over there.”

The Captain scratched his hair and headed towards his office.

Su Xin and Liao Qingjie exchanged a glance, then moved again, sitting in the rest area to eat quietly.

“Got it sorted. They said they’ll send the information over later and are willing to cooperate with our work.”

The Captain let out a long sigh of relief, looking very pleased.

“Oh? They were that easygoing?”

Liao Qingjie wiped her mouth with a napkin, put the trash in the same plastic bag, and then threw it into the trash can.

“Just explain things clearly, and it’s fine. Nobody wants this kind of trouble landing on them, but if you’re that unlucky, you can only actively resist.”

The Captain didn’t waste his breath⁷. The other side said they’d help, so they’d help. That murderer didn’t have any damn connections; being so provocative, of course, they had to join forces to put him in his place⁸.

“Are you two waiting here or going back first?”

“We’ll head back first. Let me know when there’s news.”

“Okay.”

“You should send people to deal with the bodies on that mountain first. It’s quite a scene there, probably the murderer’s main base. The murderer is someone from some tribe that continued from ancient times to the present. I don’t know if the murderer will go back there, but you should send people to check.”

“Okay.”

The Captain nodded.

What the Captain hated most when handling cases was encountering people with special statuses—very troublesome, and the problems were hard to resolve.

Su Xin didn’t have much chance to speak; Liao Qingjie had said everything.

There were some things Su Xin didn’t mention, like the Mist Map, the strange symbols she discovered, and those four sounds.

NA KI MO DO

What did these four sounds represent? Could they represent the four symbols she found? If so, what meaning did they hold? If not, what connection was there between them?

“We do have some tacit understanding, huh.”

Su Xin spoke on the way back.

“Are you talking about the drawing and those symbols?”

“Yup.”

“I won’t tell him. Because it’s not beneficial to the case, it would only add to the trouble.”

Liao Qingjie said.

“Of course, the main thing is that we have great tacit understanding.”

She admitted it quite shamelessly.

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