"Hello."
"Hello, Mr. Song Zongming. I have some questions about the disappearance case." Zhou Ming looked at the neatly dressed man in front of him and got straight to the point.
"Of course, please come in!" Song Zongming sighed and stepped aside to let Zhou Ming enter the house.
Zhou Ming was very satisfied with the other party's cooperative attitude, as it meant he wouldn't have to resort to coercion.
Zhou Ming entered the house and looked around, noticing that Song Zongming's home indeed had a distinctly different layout from other residents' houses. Although his house also had iron plates, his living room clearly had a touch more warmth than other homes.
Other residents' houses rarely had spatial divisions; one could see the kitchen from the living room, but Song Zongming's house was different.
Zhou Ming walked into the room, his fingers tracing over a whitewashed oak table. There were few scratches on the tabletop, and in the center sat an exquisite vase, out of place with the wilderness style, holding a few plastic yellow flowers. A wooden partition separated the living room and kitchen, and several beautiful oil paintings hung on the walls.
It had a very lived-in feel, showing no signs of the pressure of wilderness life. Just as his boss said, he was quite unusual.
"Excuse me, do you live alone?" Zhou Ming asked while observing his surroundings.
"My wife is also here; she's upstairs, but her health is very poor, and she's been bedridden for years, so it's not convenient for her to meet guests," Song Zongming replied with a shy smile.
"Mr. Song, you have excellent taste. This house is beautifully decorated."
"Because her range of activity is limited to this room, I wanted to decorate it as nicely as possible so she would feel better. Please wait a moment; I'm making lunch now. If you don't mind, stay and eat with me." Song Zongming invited Zhou Ming, his voice soft but comforting, as if radiating sincerity.
He walked into the kitchen, picked up a set of exquisite kitchen knives, and began preparing pork. He had been an excellent chef before resigning, so these simple home-cooked dishes were child's play to him.
Zhou Ming followed him into the kitchen and looked around. The kitchen was cleaner and tidier than he had expected. Aside from the unavoidable grease stains on the walls, all the other kitchen utensils were neatly arranged, as if each had its own designated place.
"You recently resigned from the restaurant. Why?" Zhou Ming asked casually.
Song Zongming sighed, pursed his lips, and after much deliberation, said:
"You'll understand me. There was a disappeared person working with us at the restaurant. I just couldn't stand that environment. To see a perfectly normal person doing two people's work, while in the eyes of the boss and himself, it was two people working—can you imagine that feeling?"
The bright red pork in Song Zongming's hands was sliced into uniformly thick strips, neatly arranged on the cutting board. Suddenly, his knife paused in mid-air, and he frowned, turning to look at Zhou Ming: "To put it bluntly, working there felt like working with a bunch of lunatics. I felt like I was going crazy too."
After speaking, he shook his head and then gave a bitter smile: "Senma Town is finished. The administrators are gone. This place is no longer livable."
"Are you planning to move soon?"
"Yes, I don't want to live here anymore."
Song Zongming skillfully sliced the meat, put a little oil in the pan, and began to carefully fry it.
Zhou Ming stared at the meat strips gradually turning white in the pan, nodded, and said, "I didn't come for anything else this time, just to ask about your colleague."
"Please ask," Song Zongming said with a smile.
"Among your colleagues, does anyone have any grievances with Wang Er's family in town?"
The knife paused for a second time, and Song Zongming looked up at the ceiling, as if deep in thought.
He pondered for a moment, then finally shook his head: "I'm sorry, I'm not very familiar with Wang Er; we only exchange nods. It seems the other people at the restaurant also have an average relationship with him. I remember Wang Er often came to the restaurant with Zhang the Drunkard; they were quite close. You could go ask Zhang the Drunkard."
Zhou Ming nodded. He had no more questions. Regarding Song Zongming's personal information, he had already fully gathered it from other staff members. He trusted others' evaluations of someone more than the person's own statements.
"Dinner is ready. Stay and eat with me." He plated the stir-fried pork with green peppers and carried it towards the living room.
"No, thank you. Um... could I speak with your wife for a few moments?"
Song Zongming gently placed the stir-fried pork with green peppers on the table, picked up the towel draped over the chair back to wipe his hands, and finally looked at Zhou Ming, showing hesitation for the first time.
"Please wait a moment; I'll go upstairs and see how my wife is feeling today."
"Alright."
Zhou Ming sat down, waiting patiently.
Five minutes after the other party went upstairs, he heard footsteps descending again, and then Song Zongming poked his head out from the stairwell, softly saying, "Come up, Hidden Ones, she's in good spirits today."
"Thank you."
He followed Song Zongming into a bedroom on the second floor. As soon as he entered, he smelled a slightly sour odor.
"Mr. Hidden Ones, I'm so sorry, my medicine smells a bit unpleasant," the woman on the bed greeted weakly.
"It's fine."
Zhou Ming looked at the other party. As the townspeople described, she had golden hair and fair skin, lying there looking very weak.
But perhaps due to the ravages of illness, she didn't look as beautiful as the restaurant owner had described. Her cheeks were very thin, and her apparent age was certainly much older than her true age. Moreover, she didn't particularly resemble a foreigner; apart from her golden hair and fair skin, she had no other foreign facial features.
"I thought your wife was a foreigner," Zhou Ming said casually.
"You misunderstood; it's just what the local residents think. But when she was healthy, she did look a bit like a mixed-race person." Song Zongming looked at his wife with a smile, and she smiled back at her husband. Then she turned her gaze to Zhou Ming, looking at him gently.
"Mr. Hidden Ones, what do you want to ask me?"
"Nothing much. I heard you don't go out much, so I came to see you."
"To see if I've disappeared?" A weak smile appeared on the woman's lips.
"You're very humorous, but I suppose one could think that way." Zhou Ming couldn't help but laugh, breathing a long sigh of relief.
The investigation seemed to be over. His constantly spinning brain could finally relax a bit, but unfortunately, there seemed to be no new discoveries.
The last household environment, Song Zongming's, had also been thoroughly investigated. Although the tall, thin boss kept saying Song Zongming was strange, after all these visits, Song Zongming was actually a very normal person. He was just overly polite and humble, more focused on spiritual pursuits than others in the wilderness, which made him seem strange.
But in Zhou Ming's eyes, Song Zongming was the most normal one. When he visited Bai Jin's garden and Wan Penghong's home before, his worldview was completely refreshed.
Bai Jin himself was a thirty-year-old Fat Man, yet he had a young and beautiful woman willing to live with him, and another older woman of average looks, likely a slave he had picked up. The relationship between the three of them was very subtle, their minds seemed somewhat pathological, and their family dynamics were in a very extreme and bizarre balance.
If one day these three suddenly killed each other and died in their home, Zhou Ming wouldn't be surprised.
As for Wan Penghong's home, it was slightly more normal, but it made Zhou Ming feel even more disgusted. When he visited, he happened to catch Wan Penghong beating his wife. The woman was skin and bones, covered in bruises, cowering under the table, trembling and crying incessantly. Wan Penghong, who had been fierce and brutal, immediately became subservient once Zhou Ming entered the room.
Just as his boss said, this guy was a complete coward. If Zhou Ming didn't consider himself a normal person, he would have killed this man.
However, given the extremely oppressive and harsh living conditions in the wilderness, it was understandable that everyone might have some minor mental issues.
Zhou Ming sighed, holding up the documents he had been recording for days. These handwritten drafts were as thick as a dictionary.
For half a month, Zhou Ming had been like a cockroach foraging in a garbage dump. He had exerted all his effort to dig deep into every clue his nervous antennae could reach.
Finally, all the essence was condensed into this folder. If there truly was a truth, it should be hidden within. As long as he could decipher the connections between these pieces of information, the truth of the bizarre disappearance case would inevitably come to light.
...Zhou Ming often encouraged himself this way, but rationality told him hope was slim.
Although many clues were obtained from half a month of investigation, they were chaotic and disorganized, with no connection to each other, and impossible to delve deeper into. This made one suspect whether these clues were deliberately released by that intelligent anomaly as false bait to mislead him.
The mysterious disappearance case, shrouded in mist, seemed to become clearer with the investigation, but he knew that in reality, the mist had only grown thicker.
In Zhou Ming's mind, the culprit behind the disappearance case gradually became demonized.
That shapeless, not-quite-human anomaly had shown Zhou Ming a large number of clues in its unique way. These clues spread out in all directions like an octopus's tentacles, extending until they disappeared into endless darkness.
But that was not a darkness Zhou Ming could enter. He could not only not see through it, but he also didn't know how to approach the other party.
"Boy, why the long face?"
"Teacher, I'm wearing a mask."
Crow had appeared behind Zhou Ming at some point. She raised her black-gloved hand to loosen her collar and patted Zhou Ming's shoulder.
"The scent of your frustration is absolutely awful, I could smell it from a mile away... I say, are you ready to get to work?"
Zhou Ming glanced up at her, stating calmly, "There's only the final analysis left. If I determine there's no chance of success, then I'll start by leveling the tavern and restaurant, as you suggested before."
"Hmph! If you can really do that, I'll be merciful and give you a C-rank, whereas the original B-rank is the price for wasting a month of your time," Crow said mischievously, as if deliberately trying to provoke Zhou Ming's sensitive nerves.
But unfortunately, Zhou Ming remained as calm as he was when he first arrived in Senma Town, holding up the documents in his hand.
"Teacher, I'm going back. My detective mission isn't over yet."
"Heh heh, go on, humorous D-rank detective," Crow laughed.