Chapter 30 Residential Building
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West City, Residential Building
When Lin Lan rushed over, he saw his cousin and Great God X standing together in front of a residential building.
From the back, the height difference between his cousin and Brother Xie resembled the combination of them, inexplicably seeming somewhat compatible.
Lin Lan shook his head, dismissing his strange thoughts, and surveyed the residential building in front of him.
This building was located in a very old and dilapidated area, likely the old district where Brother Xie used to live according to his cousin’s memory.
The old residential building had a dull grayish-white façade, stained by rain and beginning to peel off in some places, with moss and small vines growing on it.
Some windows were fitted with anti-theft wire mesh, resembling birdcages, while others were left without wire mesh, with square windows revealing dark green or deep blue glass.
Some windows were half-open, airing out colorful autumn pants and beddings. A glance over showed a very disorderly and chaotic scene.
Lin Lan’s family background was similar to Chu Feng’s, always living in elevator-equipped commercial housing since childhood, never having the opportunity to enter such old houses.
When Lin Lan used to return home every day, their small car would drive into the residential area and stop at the barrier at the entrance. After a press on the access control, they would enter the garden-style green residential area and directly drive into their underground garage. After getting off the car, the family happily took the bright elevator straight to their home, pressing the 28th floor button. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room faced the city’s river view, where they watched the city lights come on and the river flow.
Lin Lan had heard his father say when he was young that having a house with a view of the river was good. Water symbolized wealth, and being able to see the river outside the window meant that wealth was flowing in. Their river view apartment was in high demand, and it was only reserved thanks to the relationship with Chu Feng’s father back then.
Lin Lan had also been to Chu Feng’s house, which was even more luxurious than theirs, a two-story duplex penthouse on the top floor of the 32nd floor. There were no buildings around to block their view, and looking out from the floor-to-ceiling windows, the entire river view lay before their eyes. Chu Feng’s parents even built a small balcony in the study on the second floor for Chu Feng to relax in after studying.
Lin Lan raised his head again, looking at the place where Brother Xie had lived in his childhood.
This dilapidated residential building faced extremely unfavorably, built with its back to the sun. Not to mention seeing the river view, it was not even easy to see a bit of sunlight.
Lin Lan glanced at the back of the building. Behind this dilapidated residential building was another one, connected on the fourth floor by two intersecting stairwells, connecting the two buildings.
Lin Lan looked up, noticing that the top floors of the two buildings seemed to have vegetable gardens, with white foam boxes filled with soil, growing patches of lush green.
The distance between the two buildings was not far, and there was a wooden board on the top floor, besides the connecting staircase on the fourth floor, which could also be walked across from the top floor’s wooden board.
People were bustling about, and there were no surveillance cameras. It seemed quite unsafe.
Lin Lan looked down and saw a small courtyard between the first floors of the two buildings, unfortunately planted with a locust tree in the middle.
Lin Lan had heard his elders say that trees couldn’t be planted in a square courtyard, as it would trap energy, especially locust trees, which were very yin. Wood attracted ghosts, making the Feng Shui bad.
In the small courtyard, various families’ clotheslines were crammed together, hanging brightly colored clothes and underwear.
The old locust tree in the courtyard had a slightly crooked neck, its branches stretching askew. This building was in the shade, almost never receiving any sunlight. The courtyard was full of haze and moisture, with cotton quilts that couldn’t dry and malnourished trees.
Lin Lan shrugged, feeling that the whole building had a gloomy atmosphere, emitting an ominous feeling in the bright daylight of this midsummer.
“Now… do we… go in?” Lin Lan asked.
The black system spirit, with its propeller-like antenna on its head, hovered at the entrance of the residential building and proudly announced, “I have found the first [main body] suspect here! 7-year-old Little Xie!”
“D*mn, 7 years old?!” Lin Lan exclaimed, “Brother Xie is amazing! He’s so young and already the top fighter.”
He realized his words sounded a bit off. If Brother Xie was the top fighter at 7 years old, wouldn’t he become weaker as he grew older?
“He’s just a suspect,” Chu Feng added, “It’s not confirmed.”
“Oh, I see!” Lin Lan understood.
Thinking of the Conan he had watched for years, Lin Lan knew that there would usually be three suspects, with one being the real culprit, following the classic three-choice model.
Among them, the one who looked particularly fierce and suspicious at first glance was definitely not the culprit, nor was the one who looked particularly sweet and kind. It was usually the one who looked ordinary and unremarkable at first, the one who didn’t attract much attention, who was likely the culprit!
After watching thousands of episodes of Conan, Lin Lan had developed the ability to guess the culprit directly without needing to reason. He rubbed his hands together and asked the system spirit, “So how many suspects have you analyzed? Let’s catch them all and pick one. There’s definitely one among them who is the main body!”
X: “It has only analyzed one.”
“…”
Lin Lan was speechless. “System, are you kidding me? You spent the whole night analyzing only one suspect. How are we supposed to catch them all? What if this one isn’t the main body? We’ll waste more time.”
“What can I do about it? I’m not a quantum computer! Computational analysis isn’t that easy; it takes a lot of time. You can’t even finish your math exam papers yourself! Don’t blame me!” The system spirit retorted, feeling aggrieved.
“I need at least three days to find out all the suspects who could be the [main body], so instead of waiting to catch someone, you might as well start investigating now to save time!”
Last night, the system spent ten hours analyzing the first suspect, and quickly notified them to investigate in the morning. If the first suspect, 7-year-old Little Xie, turned out to be the [main body], then it would save them a lot of trouble!
“Alright.” Lin Lan said, “There should be quite a few Brother Xie’s living in this building. Which one is it? Let’s go up together and catch them.”
The system spirit fell silent again.
Chu Feng added, “It doesn’t know either.”
“What? It doesn’t know either!” Lin Lan exclaimed anxiously, “Then what are we supposed to do? System spirit, are you reliable or not?”
“There’s no point in getting mad at me!”
The system spirit was angry. “I’m not almighty, analyzing data is exhausting, my CPU is about to burn out! I spent all night comparing the character database in Dream City!”
Starting from the youngest Little Xie in the database, the system found that in the age group of [7 years old], there was an extra symbol in over ten thousand codes, which seemed to be used by a virus to encrypt the combat power rankings.
“Because 7-year-old Little Xie only appears in elementary school and residential buildings, I compared these two places and found that this encryption symbol appeared in the [residential building]!”
“So… we only know that the [main body] suspect is one of the 7-year-old Little Xies in the residential building, but we don’t know which one?” Lin Lan asked.
“Yes.”
“I really can’t with you, system. Can’t you give a definitive answer?”
The black system spirit wailed in grievance and plunged into Lin Lan’s arms.
Lin Lan was scalded, and he also cried out! The system spirit had been running all night without rest, and its whole body was burning hot, already running a fever.
“Do you know how hard it is to analyze data? It’s agonizing! Looking at those hundreds of thousands of lines of code, analyzing them one by one to see if there’s an extra character! Waaah…”
Chu Feng reached out and touched the system spirit’s antenna, acknowledging that modern technology’s computing power was limited, and the spirit’s body was burning hot from its efforts.
“It’s okay. You did well,” Chu Feng comforted the spirit, “Knowing this much is already good enough.”
He opened the “Little Xie Illustrated Handbook” app on his phone and navigated to the elementary school section, where there were a total of six 7-year-old first-grade Little Xies. Among the three Little Xies in the residential building, they were:
- Seven-year-old Little Xie who hugs cats;
- Seven-year-old Little Xie who observes swallows;
- Seven-year-old Little Xie who catches spiders.
Lin Lan leaned over to take a look: Wow, the classic Conan 3-choose-1 mode!
X glanced at it and reminded, “They all have something to do with animals.”
Chu Feng immediately understood what X meant. The [Ghost Virus] could not only infect character sequences but also animals in the city.
“So, should we go in and find these three Little Xie’s, then see which one has encrypted combat power rankings? That one would be the [main body] suspect?” Lin Lan suggested.
Chu Feng nodded.
Lin Lan said, “Once we find them… we need to decrypt the encrypted combat power rankings, like we did when we exposed Doctor Xie. We need to see if they rank first to confirm if they’re the main body. Ah, it’s really troublesome! System, you need to work harder!”
The system spirit glared at Lin Lan, almost burning out.
“Let’s find the people first,” Chu Feng said.
Chu Feng led the way into the residential building’s corridor.
The system spirit hovered on Chu Feng’s shoulder, Lin Lan followed as the second person.
X guarded the rear.
Lin Lan cautiously looked around. As soon as they entered, a chilly wind greeted them, and the dark corridor exuded a damp, musty smell.
The three of them started climbing the stairs. Lin Lan noticed traces of water on the stairs.
It looked like the leachate from a trash bin, thick and foul-smelling, flowing down the cement steps layer by layer. The dark water stains looked like…
Bloodstains left behind after a murder.
Lin Lan shrugged, feeling like he was overthinking.
The pitch-black rubbish water emitted a rotten stench, along with the musty smell of dampness. Lin Lan covered his nose, while Chu Feng didn’t, just furrowing his brows.
—When he was in first grade, he went to play at Xie Shiyu’s house with a classmate. As soon as they entered the corridor, they encountered such rubbish water and smell. Little Shiyu was used to it and didn’t mind, but the classmate immediately covered his nose and exaggeratedly exclaimed:
“The smell is awful!! Oh my god, I’m going to throw up! Bleh—”
Little Shiyu was taken aback for a moment, then lowered his head without saying a word.
Beside him, little Chu Feng didn’t cover his nose. His good manners taught him that it wasn’t polite to shout like that at such times; it would hurt others. Carrying his little schoolbag, little Chu Feng silently followed Little Shiyu up the stairs, ignoring the exaggerated classmate behind him.
Though the memory was like this, Chu Feng remembered clearly that after restoring this building, he had made some adjustments to some of the less sanitary areas.
Chu Feng only restored the exterior of the building in Dream City to match his memories, and the living conditions inside should have been very good, so it was impossible to encounter the situation of garbage water like today.
“Be careful.”
X, walking at the back, spoke up:
“There may be something going on in the building.”
Observing his surroundings, X loaded a silver bullet into his gun behind him. As he looked at the garbage water in front of him and the dilapidated walls, he suddenly felt a familiar yet inexplicable sensation.
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