Chapter 1734: Bad Things
This was Xu Huo's newly acquired trait, "Target Lock," which allowed him to track and locate others within the same district for up to half a year. As expected, even the inspection instruments of the Hailes Group couldn't eliminate the trait's effect. Now, the young believer had successfully carried the locator inside.
Xu Huo kept an eye on the connection of the trait, waiting until the believer lingered at a certain spot for an extended period, then he basically confirmed the location.
The idea of enshrining the dead within Hailes' headquarters sounded absurd, but it actually made a lot of sense. For one, people like Mr. Wei had intended a century ago to permanently commemorate those who died in the mines. For another, there were hidden secrets behind this matter, and the officially announced death toll was false. To avoid unnecessary trouble, hiding this affair deep within the company's core was also a better choice.
Additionally, that generation of Hailes Group leaders a hundred years ago seemed to have treated this as a fixed religious ritual to be passed down.
Now, a hundred years later, let alone players from other zones, even the locals of Zone 019 might not fully understand why these "pieces of evidence" were being kept. Hailes Group had caused the mining accident for some reason and then tampered with the data—that itself was a crime. As criminals, wouldn't the best course of action be to destroy all evidence? Not just today, a hundred years later, but even a hundred years ago, they could have cleaned it all up without a trace.
Yet, based on the information known so far, the people who caused the mining accident seemed to possess a strange kind of conscience while committing heinous crimes. This was very odd. There was also an obvious but easily overlooked detail: the Zone 019 government had defined those who died in the mines as "sacrifices."
One had to wonder if there was another meaning behind that word.
"What do we do now?" Jiao Hongyuan asked anxiously, seeing that the young believer hadn't come out for a long time and they couldn't get in themselves.
At this stage of the investigation, whether or not Xu Huo entered the Hailes Group headquarters didn't make much difference. Of course, it would be better to see the "Dwelling of the Dead" with his own eyes, but it was fine if he couldn't. The information he needed was on Mr. Wei.
Just as he was about to head back, Jiao Hongyuan suddenly received a call from Meng Xiaoman. The moment he answered, his expression changed, and he repeated, "Mr. Wei is missing?"
"Didn't he go to the hospital? How could he suddenly disappear?"
As he spoke, he opened a holographic projection, making the call public. Appearing in the projection were not only Zhao Yiming and Meng Xiaoman but also Zhu Zhongliang and his two companions.
"Yiming and I sent him over. Yiming was called away by the doctor, and I went with the nurse to handle the kinship registration. When I came back, he was gone! Only the three of them were in the room!" Meng Xiaoman pointed at Zhu Zhongliang's group, her voice barely containing her anger.
"This has nothing to do with us," Ke Youming quickly explained. "When we got there, the room was already empty!"
"What about the other informant?" Xu Huo asked Zhu Zhongliang.
"Couldn't find him. Said he went on a trip and won't be back for a while."
"Don't tell me you saw our progress was good and got scared you'd fall behind, so you deliberately sabotaged us?" Meng Xiaoman said with malicious intent.
Zhu Zhongliang frowned, about to retort, but Xu Huo cut them off. "We're going to Mr. Wei's residence now."
With that, he ended the call and headed to the residential area with Jiao Hongyuan.
When they arrived, Zhao Yiming and the others were already there. After meeting up, Xu Huo asked first, "Who took Mr. Wei? Have you confirmed with the hospital?"
Meng Xiaoman shook her head. "There's no real-time surveillance in the ward. It requires the patient's and family's consent to activate. I was actually in the middle of handling that."
"It's our fault for not thinking it through. We thought there wouldn't be any trouble in the hospital."
They weren't lying. Xu Huo turned to Zhu Zhongliang's group. "How did you find out that Zhao Yiming and Meng Xiaoman had gone to the hospital?"
The three were silent for a moment. Zhao Yiming suddenly stared at Zhu Zhongliang. "Did you plant something on us?"
Zhu Zhongliang couldn't deny it; otherwise, there was no explanation for how they had arrived at the hospital so quickly.
"We absolutely had no ill intentions..." Shen Fei tried to explain, but Meng Xiaoman cut him off. "No ill intentions? If you had no ill intentions, why didn't you contact us before coming to the hospital? Sneaking over on your own—you wanted to get information out of Mr. Wei first, didn't you!"
The three couldn't argue. After a moment, Zhu Zhongliang said, "I admit I wasn't entirely aboveboard in this matter. Since I wasn't involved in the main process and was just following Xu Zhi's lead, I was worried you'd cut us out to clear the instance, so I used a tracking item on Zhao Yiming."
"But Mr. Wei's disappearance definitely wasn't our doing. If it were, why would we still be at the hospital?"
"Even if it wasn't you, you're not blameless!" Jiao Hongyuan said grimly. "Now Mr. Wei is gone, and a perfectly good lead is lost!"
Blaming each other was pointless. Xu Huo asked again, "Were you followed when you came back?"
Shen Fei's expression shifted slightly. "While we were looking for the Hailes employee, we were followed by a player for a while, but we shook them off quickly."
They hadn't taken this seriously. In a zone full of players, being tailed by a stranger or two was too common to investigate every single time.
"That was our oversight," Shen Fei said sincerely. "We've held everyone back."
"The premise of cooperation is maintaining trust after agreeing on what each person needs to do. Otherwise, cooperation can't continue." Xu Huo looked at them expressionlessly. "Our cooperation ends here."
Shen Fei quickly said, "We'll find a way to locate Mr. Wei. Even if we can't, we can look for the other informant. Why fall out over this?"
"Is that so?" Xu Huo looked at him. "Are you sure the other informant really went on a trip?"
The expressions of the three changed to varying degrees. Zhu Zhongliang was about to say something, but Xu Huo raised a hand to stop him. "It's just cooperation. We have no obligations to each other. But if you think you can mess things up and still ride on our coattails, you've got another thing coming."
"Don't make it sound so harsh," Shen Fei said, slowly dropping his anxious facade and looking at Xu Huo. "No one wanted this to happen. Isn't the most important thing now to find Mr. Wei? We've been cooperating for a while. If we split up now, you won't have enough manpower."
Before Xu Huo could react, Zhao Yiming and Meng Xiaoman were both angered into laughter. "Shameless people are everywhere, but people as shameless as you are rare. You call it cooperation, but what have you actually done? You cut corners even on errands. If you had gone to find the other informant, Xu Ge would have finished his business and returned to the hospital. None of this would have happened!"
(End of Chapter)