New Ability Every Ten Days: Becoming a Vampire Made Me Too OP

Whether because his conscience was clear or because he had come prepared, Lu Yingshi remained highly cooperative throughout the questioning. When asked about warehouse No. 32, he answered every question promptly and without hesitation.

The problem was that he barely managed his assets. The warehouse had simply been a gift from a wealthy businessman on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. Since then, his eldest disciple, Wang Xiaohu, had been managing it.

Wang Xiaohu had accompanied Lu Yingshi, so Yu Xian and the others questioned him as well. However, he could not provide any useful leads. These days, warehouses were rented out through an app called "Treasure Tenant." Owners simply posted their properties online, and they did not need to meet prospective tenants in person.

After the two men were escorted out, Zhang Shou asked, "Do you think they were telling the truth?"

Bluebird broke down the situation. "There shouldn't be any problems. While the Lion Gate isn't exactly a top-tier sect, it has a huge commercial portfolio. A mere warehouse gifted by an outsider isn't something Lu Yingshi would waste his time tracking."

Yu Xian said, "Alright, let's go meet Hu Weijie's family members and see if they can provide any useful information."

If Hu Xian'er and her daughter also knew as little as Lu Yingshi and Wang Xiaohu, then this lead would also effectively be dead.

The group entered the reception room across the hall. When Hu Tu'er saw Yu Xian walk in, her eyes lit up. She jumped to her feet and exclaimed happily, "Handsome guy! It's you!"

Bluebird became curious. "You two know each other?"

Yu Xian cast a rather speechless glance at Hu Tu'er. "We go to the same school. Our paths crossed exactly once."

With eyes sparkling and a tone completely devoid of sorrow, Hu Tu'er looked at Yu Xian. "Handsome Guy, I want to make a report. My dad is missing."

Zhang Shou asked, "How many days has it been since he went missing?"

Hu Tu'er's mother, Hu Xian'er, answered, "Officer, Brother Jie went missing the very day his supervised release ended."

Although Hu Xian'er was a married woman with a seventeen-year-old daughter, she looked incredibly young. As she stood beside her daughter, the two of them looked more like sisters. On top of that, she carried herself exceptionally well. There was a breathtaking charm to her every movement, an allure an ordinary young man had absolutely no chance of resisting. If one absolutely had to put it into words, seeing her made it perfectly understandable why Cao Cao was so fond of married women.[1]

Yu Xian nudged the dazed Zhang Shou with his elbow before turning to Hu Xian'er. "Brother Jie? Aren't you his wife?"

Probably not wanting Yu Xian's gaze to linger on her mother for too long, Hu Tu'er beat her to the punch. "Handsome, my mom has always called my dad like that since I was a kid."

Yu Xian didn't dwell on the matter. After all, it could easily just be a little private quirk between the couple. He asked, "Alright. Can you tell us whether Hu Weijie showed any unusual behavior before he disappeared? Anything out of the ordinary?"

Hu Tu'er shook her head. "No. My dad's always been pretty quiet and reserved. He doesn't have much of a presence at home. Besides, he used to disappear all the time anyway. He'd be gone for a while and then suddenly come back."

Bluebird frowned. "So why do you think he's missing this time?"

Hu Tu'er cast a confused glance at Yu Xian and the others. "Because you guys are looking for him. In the past, Mom and I never knew where he went either, but I figured you officers probably did. Now even you're looking for him, so he must be missing, right?"

That actually made a surprising amount of sense. There was absolutely no way to argue against that logic. Gong Qian and the others fell silent, not expecting such a straightforward answer.

Yu Xian cleared his throat. "Actually, we don't know whether Hu Weijie is missing or not. We're looking for him because we want to ask him about something. Do either of you know whether he ever rented warehouse No. 32 at Cloud Warehouse?"

Hu Tu'er shook her head, curiosity written all over her face. "Never heard of it. Why would he rent that warehouse?"

They fell silent again. We want to know the answer to that question ourselves.

When Bluebird turned to her, Hu Xian'er shook her head. "I don't know either. Brother Jie is a wanderer by nature. Every time he comes home, it's just to rest for a while. Tu'er and I don't really know what he does when he's out there."

Zhang Shou couldn't help asking, "He doesn't even support the family financially?"

Hu Xian'er explained, "The bathhouse our family owns was a gift from Brother Jie. As long as I keep the bathhouse running, Tu'er and I never have to worry about money, so we've never asked him for anything."

She had always managed the bathhouse on her own. Hu Weijie had never taken part in its operation.

Still unwilling to let the trail go cold, Yu Xian thought for a moment. "Do you have any of Hu Weijie's belongings at home? Clothes, perhaps? Or something he used regularly?"

Hu Xian'er shook her head. Hu Tu'er, however, spoke up. "There's a pair of his slippers."

Yu Xian's face darkened instantly. He no longer felt like saying anything. His original plan had been to use his enhanced sense of smell to search for clues. But sniffing someone else's slippers was not something he was willing to do.

A minute later, they escorted the mother and daughter out and found themselves standing at the entrance of the branch office, staring at one another. As expected, the lead had gone cold.

Back in the office, Zhang Shou dropped into a chair. "Could Hu Weijie just be... cleaning up?"

There was a lot of strange but surprisingly accurate jargon floating around online. In the underworld, a cleaner was someone who disposed of bodies, erased evidence, and removed traces of crimes. The work itself was often referred to as "cleaning up." After finishing a job, cleaners would usually lie low for a period of time, only reappearing once the attention had died down.

Bluebird considered the possibility for a moment before nodding. "That's definitely possible. A typical cleaner would have a safehouse of their own. Perhaps we can contact every Public Security Bureau in the city and ask their officers to help search for him."

The members of the Public Security Bureau were ordinary people. Most of the time, they only handled cases involving ordinary citizens. But when it came to finding someone, they actually had an advantage over supernatural beings due to their numbers.

Zhang Shou offered another theory. "What if Hu Weijie is already dead, and someone else used his phone to rent warehouse No. 32?"

Yu Xian glanced at his phone. "Warehouse No. 32 was rented before the lockdown, and the rental was registered under Hu Weijie's name at that time."

Zhang Shou groaned. "Ugh, this is impossible. We don't have a single useful lead. How are we supposed to investigate this?"

In contrast, Gong Qian wasn't worried in the slightest. Only after Zhang Shou looked like he was about to roll around on the floor in frustration did she speak. "I think you're all forgetting something. We're not members of the Public Security Bureau. We don't have to investigate cases step by step. We're the Wickedness Purging Squad under Qilin. When we run into situations like this, we can simply request assistance."

Zhang Shou was skeptical. "The problem is that we don't have any leads. Would asking for help even accomplish anything?"

Gong Qian confidently replied, "Of course. At the very least, we now know that Hu Weijie was the one who rented warehouse 32. We just need to request a location lock from headquarters. Once they use the River Diagram and Luo Script to track him down and send us the coordinates, we'll be able to find him in no time."

Yu Xian frowned. "A request like that is expensive. What if we end up losing more merit points than we gain from solving the case?"

The River Diagram and Luo Script were a special Dragon-rank artifact. The artifact's true form was a gigantic turtle shell engraved with a map of Huaxia. Using it, Qilin's headquarters could locate virtually any target within the borders of the nation.

The drawback was that activating the artifact consumed an enormous amount of spiritual energy. As a result, any squad requesting its services had to pay a substantial amount of merit points. If the reward for solving the case turned out to be small, the squad could actually end up operating at a loss.

Under normal circumstances, most squads avoided requesting the River Diagram and Luo Script whenever possible. They would rather spend more time investigating on their own than waste valuable merit points.

1. 曹操 (Cáo Cāo) was a powerful warlord of the late Eastern Han dynasty. In Chinese popular culture, he is often joked about as someone who favored married women or widows, largely because several historical and literary anecdotes portray him taking interest in women connected to defeated rivals or other men. The most famous example is Lady Zou, whose affair with Cao Cao in Romance of the Three Kingdoms led to Zhang Xiu's rebellion. ☜