Chapter 61: Civil Affairs Bureau
Shoutout to nyanmaru for the commission!
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“Not the main body… Ah.”
Lin Lan looked disappointedly at the screen’s ranking. According to his cousin’s previous inference, the seven-year-old Xie brother was tangling alone with the murderer in their residential building:
“I think the seven-year-old Xie brother’s mental strength is already impressive enough! But he’s still fourth. Who on earth is first?”
The faint blue light emitted from the No. 4 on the screen reflected in Chu Feng’s dark pupils.
He wasn’t surprised by this result. Even though the 24-year-old Doctor Xie was ranked third, and although the seven-year-old Hour Xie’s mental capacity far exceeded that of a seven-year-old child, he didn’t do anything substantial like Doctor Xie did.
The top-ranked Little Xie in the city must have done something significant.
The system spirit didn’t know about Little Xie’s deeds. It drooped its head, its tuft of hair looking anxious. “We need to hurry! We only have 71 hours left…”
Before it could finish speaking, Lin Lan suddenly interjected, “Hey! Didn’t you say… you were going to provide us with a list of suspects? Where’s the list?”
Lin Lan remembered that the system had promised to help them sift through the data and compile a list of suspects. The No. 1 in the rankings was bound to be among these suspects since the characters with high combat power had their rankings encrypted by the virus, resulting in their data sequences having a few extra characters.
Lin Lan looked at the system with suspicion, questioning the efficiency of the spirit’s work.
“You said it was difficult to sift through the data before, it took time. At that time, you only found the seven-year-old Xie brother, right? Okay, but now you should have found them all, right? Where’s the list? Don’t tell me we have to wait again…”
“Of course, I’ve found them!” The spirit got angry, its tuft of hair standing up like a little fairy’s magic wand, then drooping down dejectedly. “I did find them… but…”
“No ‘buts.’ Stop beating around the bush. If you’ve got the list, you should’ve shown it to my cousin already!”
The spirit shot Lin Lan a disdainful glance, ignoring him and flying over to its master, Chu Feng. Di—
It made a sound, and a blue light emitted from the tip of its tuft of hair like a little fairy’s magic wand, then a list fell into Chu Feng’s hands.
The spirit said, “There are several people on the list, and we only have 71 hours left. We don’t have time to check them one by one! Master, master, do you have any particular suspicions?”
— This question had been asked to Chu Feng by the system at the very beginning of trying to solve the virus. The spirit seemed to realize that the “main body” might not necessarily be one of the strongest-looking individuals. Even the master might not know the secrets of his husband.
The spirit’s tuft of hair hung down in front of its forehead as it hovered on Chu Feng’s shoulder.
Lin Lan also leaned over, and Chu Feng looked down at the list of “main body” suspects, which included all the characters whose combat power had been encrypted:
24-year-old Doctor Xie
20-year-old First-Year Student, who registered for marriage with him, Xie Shiyu
18-year-old High School Senior Bully Xie Shiyu
17-year-old High School Junior Bully Xie Shiyu
…..
“Seven-year-old, First-grade Xie Shiyu.”
Chu Feng: “…”
Lin Lan glanced at it and exclaimed, “!! What kind of suspect list is this! Except for Dr. Xie, it’s just listing out all the Xie brothers from ages 7 to 20! No wonder you, you system, were hesitating to show it!”
“What can I do?” The spirit exclaimed loudly, its fur all standing on end. “At least… at least I’ve excluded those over 20 for you!”
Lin Lan rubbed his temples. “We only have this much time left. How can we crack them one by one! Excluding Dr. Xie and the seven-year-old Xie brother, there are thirteen suspects on here!”
“Twelve,” Chu Feng corrected. “The ten-year-old Xie Shiyu has already been identified as the weakest, right?”
Lin Lan looked down at the list, seeing the ten-year-old third-grade Xie Shiyu, the fragile brother whose mood kept dropping:
“That’s strange! Why is the weakest combatant included?”
The system spirit said, “This is probably a smokescreen. The virus isn’t that stupid. It doesn’t just encrypt the rankings of the highest combatants; it also encrypts the data of other ordinary characters to confuse us.”
“Then which ones on this list are genuinely powerful, and which ones are just thrown in to confuse us?” Lin Lan asked.
“… ” The system fell silent.
Lin Lan stared at the system quietly, a look of disdain in his eyes that seemed to say, “Your list is useless.”
The spirit was annoyed. “Don’t look at me like that! I told you before making the list! You can’t rely all your hopes on me. I’m just a system, and I don’t know Xie Shiyu!” It huffed and flew over to Chu Feng.
“Master, master! Do you see anything enlightening on this list?”
Chu Feng: “Apart from Dr. Xie, the rest are all between 7 and 20.”
Coincidentally, it was the age range from when he met Xie Shiyu until they got married.
“Oh!” The system spirit suddenly realized. “So, Little Xie was extraordinary before marriage but not after?”
“… “
Chu Feng thought to himself, thankfully, Xie Shiyu, after marriage, wasn’t among them. Otherwise, he’d probably be annoyed to death by this talkative spirit tonight.
In silence, the spirit realized what it had just said.
“I didn’t mean that! What I meant was… um… combat power is linked to mental strength, so…”
Chu Feng understood what the system spirit was trying to say. After marriage, Xie Shiyu’s mental state gradually became calmer, and he no longer exhibited the aggressiveness he had before.
Chu Feng reached out, and the spirit timely handed him a pen. Chu Feng crossed out the 24-year-old, 7-year-old, and 10-year-old Xie from the list.
“Now there are twelve left, and we have 71 hours left. That’s less than 6 hours on average to crack one!”
— Not enough time. The system spirit’s internal computing power told it that at the speed its previous master decoded character secrets, they definitely wouldn’t make it.
Chu Feng also knew they didn’t have enough time. Among these people, only he had a chance to decode Xie Shiyu’s secret, which required him to gather clues in the real world. Even if he didn’t eat or sleep for seventy hours, he wouldn’t catch up. And if he encountered another seven-year-old Xie, he would spend a whole day just sitting on a high-speed train back to the Youth Palace lawn digging for “treasure.”
“Cousin, can you think of anything? Which of these twelve Xie brothers looks the most suspicious?”
Chu Feng had chewed over his memories several times, but he didn’t think any of the Xie Shiyus seemed off. Or rather, Xie Shiyu wouldn’t show any obvious signs of abnormality, leaving a deep impression on him after so many years.
Perhaps back then, there might have been something strange, but as time passed, those small strange feelings would dissipate with the peacefulness of everyday life.
Considering this, even if none of the Xie Shiyus on the list seemed abnormal, they were all worth suspecting.
Chu Feng remained silent.
Lin Lan said, “I still think the school bully Xie brother is the most suspicious. He was so aggressive on the bus.”
The system said, “The seventeen and eighteen-year-old Xie school bullies also seem like they have strong combat abilities. The nineteen-year-old repeating student is also suspicious, having experienced the gauntlet of the college entrance exam; their mental strength must be impressive.”
“Yeah, yeah. So, let’s start with the school bully!”
Chu Feng didn’t blindly agree with them. He had an intuition that things weren’t so simple.
If you just looked at surface combat power, he had thought previously that the 25-year-old CEO Xie might be stronger than Dr. Xie, at least on par. But in reality, the CEO Xie was in a happy marriage, with a stable and calm mental state, not even appearing on the suspect list, while Dr. Xie’s mental state was aggressive due to outsiders trying to ruin his marriage, prompting him to take action.
—–7-20 years old, why was Xie Shiyu so aggressive before marriage, attacking all day long?
Chu Feng believed that this aggressive attitude must have been triggered. At that time, Xie Shiyu wasn’t just dealing with others like when he was seven; he was taking action like Dr. Xie.
—Otherwise, it couldn’t explain why Dr. Xie was so skilled.
Both Lin Lan and the system were waiting for Chu Feng’s decision. The spirit tentatively asked, “Master, should we go to the high school section?”
Chu Feng shook his head. “Let me think.”
If the real culprit wasn’t Xie Shiyu from high school, searching everywhere like this would only waste time. Choosing the right direction for investigation would yield better results than blindly searching.
“What about starting from twenty years old?”
A voice sounded in his ear.
Chu Feng turned around and saw the iron-gray windbreaker and the fluttering white bandages. The regulator X appeared silently behind him.
“…How did you get in?”
X: “Your Dream City is in a state of emergency.”
When the regulator activates S-level protection for players, as soon as a player enters the game, the regulator immediately receives a message and proceeds to protect them throughout.
Chu Feng: “…”
These past few days were focused on decryption, and he completely forgot about the regulator’s protection. Chu Feng suddenly felt something was off—
Sure enough, X held up his phone, intentionally or unintentionally showing Chu Feng their recent chat:
[“Sorry, something came up at work. I have to deal with it first!”]
[“My boss called me. I have to go. Let’s chat next time!”]
Chu Feng: “…”
X: “Playing games at work?”
Chu Feng: “Is that not allowed?”
X smiled but didn’t say anything more, no longer exposing the little beauty.
Returning to the main topic, Chu Feng pointed to the twenty-year-old Xie on the list and asked X, “Why do you think we should start with him?”
“Nothing.” X: “Just thinking, shouldn’t getting married to you be a happy thing? Why is he on the list?”
X deliberately didn’t use the general noun “getting married is a happy thing” but instead used the specific verb “getting married to you.”
Chu Feng’s heart skipped inexplicably. X’s voice was husky, with a somewhat charming flavor. If it weren’t so husky, it would even resemble Xie Shiyu.
“Marriage isn’t necessarily a happy thing; it’s quite troublesome.” Chu Feng lowered his head, only looking at the list in his hand, avoiding X’s gaze.
But X didn’t hesitate to stare at Chu Feng. “Have you thought of something?”
“No.”
Chu Feng did think of some things, but he didn’t want to say them in front of X.
Marriage wasn’t as simple as writing a note and exchanging a kiss, like early love in student days. Legal relationships weren’t as casual, especially when they were twenty at the time, he was in his second year, and Xie Shiyu was in his first year, not an age suitable for marriage.
At that time, everyone thought Chu Feng was crazy. Looking back now, Chu Feng was only grateful they married early; otherwise, if they waited until they were twenty-four or twenty-five, two or three years into their marriage, they would reach 27—when Chu Feng would have forever lost Xie Shiyu.
Next to him, Lin Lan saw his cousin’s silence and suddenly remembered. When his cousin said he wanted to marry Xie, the whole family was in an uproar! It wasn’t easy for his cousin, and thinking about it, Brother Xie at that time didn’t have it easy either.
“Then… cousin, should we go to the university city to find the twenty-year-old Xie?”
The system spirit timely brought up the information about the twenty-year-old Xie Shiyu: “There are a total of five characters for the twenty-year-old, located in Dorm 602…”
“No need to go to the university.”
Chu Feng raised his hand to stop the system and said, “Let’s go to the Civil Affairs Bureau.”
X raised an eyebrow, finding the choice of location intriguing. He naturally knew that marriage wasn’t easy; meeting the parents, having a wedding, house, car, bride price, aunts and uncles… How many couples ended up unhappy because of marriage and eventually broke up?
Going to the Civil Affairs Bureau either meant happily getting a marriage certificate or…
“Are you two fighting?” X asked.
Chu Feng felt annoyed that this guy guessed right! Life in reality was trivial every day. On the day they got their marriage certificate, the two had a big fight outside the Civil Affairs Bureau.
Actually, the reasons for the argument were trivial. Sometimes, emotions get out of control, especially when the other person is someone you deeply love. If it were a stranger or someone you weren’t close to, you could maintain composure at all times. But when it’s the person you love the most, emotions become uncontrollable.
Chu Feng turned his face away, silent. He didn’t want to talk about how he and Xie Shiyu argued in front of other men, especially not in front of X. He simply said, “It’s not an argument. Just… some differences of opinion, we discussed it.”
X acknowledged with an “oh”, automatically interpreting Chu Feng’s words as: “We had a big fight.”
Five minutes later.
Chu Feng stood at the entrance of the Civil Affairs Bureau in Dream City, checking the time. Twenty-year-old Xie, who was getting his marriage certificate, would appear here promptly at three o’clock every day, repeating his actions from when he was alive.
“At 14:56,” X reported the time, taking a casual step forward and standing shoulder to shoulder with Chu Feng at the entrance of the Civil Affairs Bureau.
Lin Lan, who was standing behind them, glanced at the Civil Affairs Bureau and suddenly couldn’t look away. The combination of X and his cousin was… just too perfect.
Perhaps it was because of X’s towering height of 192cm, Lin Lan’s casual glance almost made him hallucinate that it was Xie Shiyu and his cousin.
At 15:00, the twenty-year-old Xie appeared right on time. Chu Feng walked towards him, but this Xie Shiyu seemed to ignore him.
The twenty-year-old Xie Shiyu stared fixedly at X, who had come with Chu Feng. He smirked, his expression stiff with a hint of malice, and questioned Chu Feng, “So, who are you marrying?”
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