Chapter 68 - 67: [Yo! Isn’t This the Slacker Trio?]
"Captain Zheng, can you please tell me what exactly is wrong with my daughter?" Liu Rui sat in the living room, meeting with three members of the Cleaners.
"She’s lost her soul," a flamboyant man with a diamond stud earring spoke after taking a sip of tea. A man and a woman were seated to his left and right, respectively.
As for the other three men in suits, they were still standing rigidly in place.
As bodyguards who were also Qi Practitioners, they were faring somewhat better.
They were in much better physical shape than ordinary people.
The manager of the Royal Garden Villa District, on the other hand, was in a rather pitiful state.
He had stood all last night, and now through the entire day today.
Not a drop of water had passed his lips, let alone any food.
He was already starting to tremble, and if he weren’t forcing himself to stay upright, he would have collapsed long ago.
"A person has three spiritual souls. Losing one leads to listlessness, losing two makes one difficult to awaken, and with all three scattered, the person dies. A person also has seven mortal souls. The fewer you have, the weaker you become, and you’re bound to be plagued by terrible illnesses. Miss Liu’s symptoms clearly indicate she has lost two of her spiritual souls.
That’s why she appears to be asleep and can’t be woken no matter what you do. The most urgent task now is to find out what caused Miss Liu to lose her souls. Only then can we find the right remedy to awaken your daughter."
"Master, Huang Tao and Li Zheng have brought someone over. They say they’re here to see the Young Miss," the British Butler said as he walked in, his head lowered.
Captain Zheng and the other two members of his team found the scene completely bizarre, no matter how they looked at it.
’Calling someone ’Master’ in this day and age?’
’I guess we just don’t understand the tastes of the rich.’
Of course, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen people far more ridiculous than this.
"Let them in." Liu Rui nodded. He knew these two young men; they were both descendants of Shanghai’s wealthy business circles. Hearing that his daughter was in trouble, they immediately found someone to help. He couldn’t possibly refuse their kind intentions.
The butler nodded and walked out again.
A moment later, he led three people into the living room.
The moment He Xiaotian stepped inside, he exuded an immense, oppressive pressure on everyone present.
It couldn’t be helped. He was over two meters tall, with a body full of corded muscle that stretched his clothes taut.
A complete and total muscle monster.
Anyone would feel intimidated!
Everyone in the living room, including the three men in suits standing rigidly in place, was sizing him up.
A hoodie and a face mask.
’What kind of fashion trend is this, dressing like that on such a hot day?’
"X!!"
"Well, well, if it isn’t the slacker trio?" He Xiaotian chuckled when he saw the three people sitting on the sofa.
It was precisely the man with the earring, Zhao Lei, and Zhou Yun.
"You know each other?" Liu Rui asked.
"Ahem... We do," Captain Zheng, the man with the earring, coughed and said, looking rather embarrassed.
’The memory of them slacking off through the whole Z County incident was still vivid.’
"That’s even better. As long as you can solve Nannan’s problem and wake her up, the donation to the Shanghai Police Department will definitely not be a small sum. As for this gentleman..." Liu Rui looked at He Xiaotian. X was a codename, and it would be a bit impolite to use it upon their first meeting.
"Just call me X. I’m not going to tell you my real name anyway," He Xiaotian said nonchalantly.
"Alright, X. As long as you can wake Nannan, I certainly won’t be stingy."
OK!
He Xiaotian loved talking to people who were straightforward and, more importantly, loaded.
"Xiaotao, Xiaozheng, thank you for still thinking of Nannan."
Liu Rui was very shrewd. He used money to get the Cleaners and the mysterious He Xiaotian to work for him.
And he didn’t forget to thank Huang Tao and Li Zheng, either.
The whole process went smoothly.
He Xiaotian wasn’t surprised that there were none of the clichéd, melodramatic tropes from novels, where Liu Rui would constantly mock and distrust him, only for him to prove the man wrong and "slap his face."
As a businessman, and a successful one at that, he would never pass judgment on someone he had just met.
Not judging a book by its cover was a basic survival skill.
His own father, He Sheng, had been a smooth operator in Z County, hustling his way to a fortune of tens of millions; that small example was enough to see the whole picture.
Besides, even if Liu Rui looked down on or distrusted He Xiaotian in his heart, he would never let it show on his face.
He could be cursing He Xiaotian’s eighteen generations of ancestors in his mind and still make him feel as pleasant as a spring breeze.
Speaking the language of men to men, and the language of ghosts to ghosts, was an equally essential skill.
"You two, tell the officers from the special task force what happened last night," Liu Rui said, pointing to his bodyguards.
He Xiaotian: "???"
At the same time, he glanced over at the slacker trio.
Captain Zheng and his two teammates felt that suspicious gaze and couldn’t help but turn their heads away.
Back in Z County, they had introduced themselves to the public as a special task force.
"Last night, Lv was on night watch. The two of us were off-duty and resting. In our sleep, we felt a dense, negative energy, so we immediately got up and headed for the source. When we got to the Young Miss’s door and pushed it open, we found that Lv had vanished completely, and the Young Miss was lying on the bed, as if in a deep sleep."
"That’s it?" Captain Zheng asked.
"Yes."
"..."
He Xiaotian and the others fell into a collective silence.
’What the hell kind of report was that?! How are we supposed to work with this little information?’
"There should be security cameras here, right? Have you checked to see if the missing Lv ever left the villa?"
"We checked. He never left. According to them, Lv vanished right from inside the Young Miss’s room."
’A major incident!’
Those three words flashed through Captain Zheng’s mind.
’Would a tycoon like Liu Rui hire useless good-for-nothings as bodyguards?’
’For all they knew, that bodyguard’s strength might have been greater than all three of them combined!’
And yet, a Qi Practitioner like that had vanished from the room without a sound, not even letting out a scream.
’So?’
’Were they supposed to just stand aside and slack off again?’
’No!’
’He was a team captain of the Cleaners! If he failed miserably time and time again, how could he still have the face to remain in the organization?’
"Excuse me, but I just want to know if you have any reliable clues. Let me be clear, I don’t do the brainy stuff. You just find the source, and I’ll take care of hammering the evil spirit or whatever weird thing it is to death. That’s it."
He Xiaotian knew his own strengths and weaknesses. Before he got his Golden Finger, he was just an ordinary medical student.
Even with the Experience Points system, at best he was just a college student who knew martial arts.
Asking him to be like Sherlock Holmes, peeling back the layers of mystery to find the truth behind the incident, was asking for the impossible.
Hammering ghosts—now *that* was his specialty!
As soon as he finished speaking, Captain Zheng and his team stared at He Xiaotian with looks of utter resentment.
’Don’t you dare ignore us, you bastard!’
’*We’re* the professionals when it comes to hunting ghosts.’
’If we have to rely on you for this, then we really should just resign.’
"The mirror. The mirror on the wardrobe in the room has the heaviest concentration of negative energy. We suspect some kind of evil spirit may have launched its attack through the mirror."
"The mirror?!"
Captain Zheng and his two teammates were instantly stunned. It seemed the situation was far more serious than they had imagined.
