Chapter 1761: The Person Who Doesn't Exist
In the game, any district is both a hunter and prey. Districts with little value might be left alone, but if someone wants to step on them, they have no room to resist. For a district like 019, which is developing rapidly in technology, it's certainly not somewhere anyone can casually mess with now. However, if the district starts falling into chaos from within, plenty of people would be willing to kick it while it's down and grab a share. It doesn't even need to involve major districts or player organizations—just bored outer zone players looking to make a quick fortune could inflict massive damage on them.
Maintaining peace is hard, but destroying it is simple.
"I don't plan to make this public." Matteo Doleiti sighed slightly. "A hundred years ago, I couldn't think of a proper way to handle it, and a hundred years later, I still have no solution."
"From this moment on, there is no one named Shashi Doleiti in the Doleiti family."
With that said, he cut off the connection.
As a retired person, Matteo had no authority to make decisions for the government. He could only provide as much convenience as possible. As long as the government publicly stated that the Doleiti family had no such person, the subsequent response would be much easier—even if the other side produced Shashi Doleiti's corpse.
But the district government didn't act rashly. Instead, they waited for the outer zone players' next move. If the other side only had a corpse and no other tricks up their sleeve, handling this wouldn't be difficult.
The district government was waiting. Matteo Doleiti was waiting. Xu Huo was waiting too.
The puppet Amber's greatest use was to attract attention, getting the people of 019 District involved in discussions about the mining disaster. Half an hour earlier, the government had reopened the Message Collection Terminal permissions, explaining that outer zone players had attacked the equipment storage site, causing the malfunction. The intelligent system maintaining the terminal had automatically identified and blocked certain words to prevent the outer zone players from obtaining more information. After inspection found no issues, they restored the settings.
This cooled down the boiling online discussions somewhat. Regarding the puppet Amber, the official statement was that the investigation was ongoing with no results yet. However, on the Message Collection Terminal, opinions gradually emerged that the outer zone players had come up with a bad move to find the "Ember Maiden," or were deliberately using past history to stir up opposition. Even the signature on the publicly displayed "Ember Maiden" painting was questioned as fake. The reasoning was simple: Master Solan was a person of noble character and couldn't possibly be connected to a corpse in such a miserable state.
The players who had distributed the puppet Amber had all packed up. The female player had also stopped making puppets and left Ember City. After noticing the declining heat of the topic on the Message Collection Terminal, these people grew impatient. Many felt Xu Huo's approach was absurd and his thinking naive. How could the 019 District government fail to control such speech? Even an ordinary district could manage that, right?
But Xu Huo believed 019 District was different—at least much better than 014 District. There wasn't an absolute overwhelming power imbalance between the district government and ordinary people.
So, after frequently changing locations, Xu Huo finally put on his mask after dark and posted a public message on the Message Collection Terminal, demanding an open dialogue with Matteo Doleiti and stating that he was keeping Shashi Doleiti's corpse safe.
Whether for the district government or Matteo, the best response to Shashi Doleiti was to ignore him entirely. The outer zone players would have to leave 019 District eventually—it was just a matter of time. But Xu Huo directly set the time for the next morning. Whether Matteo showed up or not, he was going to appear anyway.
This caught the government off guard. They had already privately contacted Xu Huo through the Message Collection Terminal, subtly suggesting they could negotiate terms, and even suspended their pursuit of him for a while. However, less than half an hour later, dozens of similar signal locations popped up on the Message Collection Terminal. After a round of screening, they did catch some suspicious players, but none yielded substantial results. Some of them were just troublemakers who jumped in for the excitement, unrelated to the players who had actually produced the puppet Amber.
Meanwhile, progress was made in Ember City. The "Ember Maiden" was a clue, and they quickly found the factory where the puppets were made. From the boss, they obtained a photo with the head portion torn off. However, they failed to catch the female player and her group who had kidnapped the boss. Based on traces left by these people in Ember City, they used instruments to analyze and found that after switching through more than ten cities in a row, the group suddenly vanished, completely disappearing from the Message Collection Terminal's analytical data.
It was far too easy for players to hide if they really wanted to. 019 District had plenty of mountainous areas, and not every mountain area was covered with armed robots and surveillance devices. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Xu Huo's time-limited demand made the district government realize that the other party might not just be after a high score and some benefits. But if he intended to stir up chaos by exposing the mining disaster, why hadn't he released more information afterward? According to the intelligent system's analysis, he likely had more data, so the government personnel assumed he did.
Just as they were hesitant to act, some players brought back good news. They had been to Dingding Flower Town and learned from some players about the gathering at the bar. Xu Huo's purpose was still unclear, but he had at least gathered over thirty players to handle this matter, and traces of some of them could be followed.
So that night, players from 019 District caught ten of them.
Unfortunately, they didn't have much more information. Although Xu Huo had given them contact methods, the only task he assigned them was to drop off the puppet Amber and the stone slabs. Even posting information using virtual locations was done with temporary jammers bought from hackers. These people had nothing to do with the rest!
But the upside was that they now had a communication channel.
Just as they were about to trace the trail to find the person, the entire chat group suddenly disbanded, and the initiator became a kite with a broken string again.
Xu Huo knew that group of players was unreliable, but he didn't expect them to be this unreliable. He had warned them in advance not to be targeted by players who had left, yet they still fell into the trap. They could handle basic disguises, but if someone hadn't been watching them from the start, they wouldn't have been caught so quickly.
No big deal.
Xu Huo traveled overnight to Qingcheng.
Based on the information from Old Sir Yue's materials, he found a small door in an old, run-down alley. The person who opened the door was a stunted short man with an adult face but standing no taller than Xu Huo's chest. He asked warily, "Who are you?"
"I want to ask 'Tiantian in the Ditch' teacher for a favor," Xu Huo said. "I heard she's very accomplished in communication technology, so I came seeking her out."
With that, he handed over a stack of White Notes.