Closing his eyes, Chu Bamboo gathered his thoughts for a moment before speaking again. "Uncle Li! Did you see those two..."
Chu Bamboo pointed to the two primary suspects that had been flagged, then verbally recounted the areas where Nuwa No. 17 had indicated they appeared.
"Use your authority to turn these areas upside down! See if you can find any suspicious individuals... Lead the team yourself! It's almost certain that if the killer is one of these two, then the real killer is a Transcendent!"
Chu Bamboo paused, then turned to Li Kang, adding with emphasis, "A very powerful one!"
"..." Li Kang stared at Chu Bamboo for a long moment, still unable to understand what he'd meant earlier about not being able to remember.
'And he was confused about something else—how did Chu Bamboo know the killer was a powerful Transcendent?'
'After thinking it over, he landed on the only possibility. The Oracle...'
Finally, Li Kang could only say, "I understand!"
"Right." After another moment's thought, Chu Bamboo strode quickly toward the exit corridor. "Nuwa No. 17, delete the backend data."
Li Kang watched as the base returned to normal, his mind replaying the utterly surreal events that had just unfolded before him. After a long silence, he gave a wry smile and patted his own cheeks. "What in the world is going on?"
Although everything that had just happened helped Li Kang understand why Chu Bamboo insisted on living in the Underground Temple Base... it only left him with more questions.
'I feel like I've been dragged into a case that could lead to utter annihilation,' Li Kang sighed. Someone who could communicate directly with a god—no matter how you looked at it, their identity was sensitive to the extreme.
Chu Bamboo's identity had always been sensitive, but this was a different degree of sensitivity entirely.
If word of this got out, if the elites in the Celestial Capital and the Imperial Capital found out...
Li Kang slapped a hand over his face. 'We're doomed. If Chu Bamboo is actually from the Royal Family, that would be one thing, but if he's not...' Li Kang felt like he couldn't breathe.
After all, for someone outside the Royal Family to be able to communicate with the god enshrined in the Grand Ancestral Temple... What are your intentions? Or perhaps, what are you capable of?
"To hell with it!" Li Kang clenched his fists, forcibly shaking the chaotic thoughts from his mind. His expression turned grim. "A Transcendent... It's all because of this damn Transcendent! If it weren't for him, I never would have seen any of this... And besides that, why did he have to go and do something so despicable?"
He practically spat the last sentence through clenched teeth.
He would rather have seen a bank get robbed than to see six members of the Resettlement Area Union, including the General Secretary, all murdered.
Chu Bamboo was a powder keg, but so was the Union.
If this wasn't handled properly, the entire Resettlement Area could explode. At that point... the consequences would be unimaginable.
...
「The Resettlement Area. Union Headquarters.」
The headquarters was located in an unfinished, three-story building within the Resettlement Area.
After the Union moved in, it had undergone some basic renovations, but they weren't luxurious. In fact, they could be called perfunctory. The interior was still exposed concrete, and many windowless openings were crudely patched over with cloth and paper.
When Chu Bamboo arrived, the place was already packed with people.
The Union's guard unit was patrolling with an assortment of melee weapons, their eyes bloodshot. They were clearly on edge.
Guan Fei, drenched in sweat, was trying to reason with them. "Brothers, I'm from the Resettlement Area, too! I know what the Union stands for! I respected General Secretary Zhou Ze as much as anyone, but everyone, you have to calm down!"
"Traitor! You're a traitor! All you do is stand there telling everyone to be patient! Patient! Those damn Vampires killed the General Secretary, and you're telling us to be patient?" someone finally exploded, cursing at him.
"I know, he's an officer now that he passed the exam! He looks down on us..."
"Find the killer right now! Kill them, and then we'll believe you."
"I... This... You..." The flesh on Guan Fei's large frame trembled with agitation. He felt he was at his wit's end. Some of the more agitated people in the crowd were already swinging their clubs at him.
Guan Fei didn't dare fight back. He could only endure the blows as he stumbled backward. If he actually fought back and escalated the conflict... the consequences would be unthinkable.
Just when he was on the verge of despair, he finally saw his savior. His voice went shrill. "Mr. Zhu! You're here!"
Instantly, all eyes in the crowd snapped over.
The atmosphere, which had been on the verge of boiling over, fell silent in an instant.
After all, this armed guard unit had been built from the ground up by Chu Bamboo himself.
Without the guard unit, without an enforcement arm, how could Chu Bamboo have made those factory owners so compliant?
And for that very reason, the crowd's reverence for Chu Bamboo was beyond question.
Instantly, the massive crowd surged forward.
"The General Secretary! He..." a kid who looked no older than fifteen or sixteen, dressed in a factory uniform and clutching a wooden club, his voice choked with sobs.
"It has to be those damn factory owners! Mr. Zhu, let's do it! Let's hang them all from the lampposts. Kill them all!" This came from a middle-aged man in his thirties or forties, clenching a bamboo spear and grinding his teeth.
"March! Protest! Retaliate! A blood debt can only be paid in blood," said a young man.
The scene was in an uproar, the crowd's fury surging.
The brief look of relief on Guan Fei's face froze solid. He started sweating even more profusely as he stared at Chu Bamboo with a nervous, almost pleading gaze. He had just realized something terrifying...
'If Chu Bamboo shared their sentiments, it was all over...'
'A single call to arms from Chu Bamboo would be enough to incite a response from the entire Resettlement Area... If that happened, it would have been better if he hadn't come. It would be better to just let this mob charge the factories and go on a rampage...'
'After all, if this crowd went on its own, at most they would destroy a few factories and kill a few of the wealthy. But if Chu Bamboo made a move...'
'In any case, with his limited imagination, he didn't dare to think about how such a situation would end.'
In response, Chu Bamboo said nothing. His icy gaze simply swept over every single person in the crowd.
Many people subconsciously took a step back. They sensed Chu Bamboo's displeasure and wondered if they had done something wrong. Some even shivered like mice seeing a cat.
"Nonsense!" Chu Bamboo forced the single word out through clenched teeth. 'Although the factory owners are indeed suspects,' he thought, 'the likelihood is extremely low...'
'It wasn't that Chu Bamboo looked down on them.'
'If it were that easy for Transcendents to interfere in the real world, he would have died when he was twelve!'
'How could he possibly have survived until sixteen or seventeen?'
'Something else must be going on!'
'Besides, even if it really was one or more of the factory owners, you'd have to pinpoint the exact suspects! Drag them out and interrogate them thoroughly. You kill them only after you have proof!'
'Kill them all? That's a death wish.'
'Do they really think the Jinghai City officials are just for show?'
'If things got to that point, it would be nothing short of a full-blown riot!'