Chapter 318

Before Tang Mo arrived here, an assistant had brought over some "experimental items" of new technology, but an accident occurred midway, causing a small portion of the "experimental products" to go missing. The accident was coincidental, that's the conclusion Tang Mo reached after looking into it, yet some people involved also took advantage of the chaos to snatch some experimental items, and Tang Mo certainly doesn't want these items to throw unexpected wrenches into his plan.

Compared to the box Tang Mo just took out, those experimental items still have some shortcomings; if professionals used specialized equipment to test them, they could detect the differences from natural diamonds. However, following the simple identification methods mentioned in the newspaper, Zheng Tan couldn't tell them apart at all. Knowing this, Zheng Tan felt somewhat relieved—it wasn't that his ability was lacking; these things are genuinely hard to distinguish as real or fake. Of course, if, as Tang Mo said, the final product is indistinguishable from diamonds mined naturally, then it wouldn't be considered counterfeit; it would be genuine diamond, though its price would be only one-third that of natural mineral diamonds.

Regardless, Tang Mo's point is that, to him, those test items aren't worth much money; he doesn't care about that money, what he's concerned about is whether there might be some other conspiracy behind this that could disrupt his grand business plan.

"The lock-picking technique of the thief isn't like that of an ordinary petty thief," Tang Mo said. That's why, when he couldn't temporarily find the target, he came to the old man for help—after all, people around here who have some technical skills would likely know a bit about this.

The old man nodded after hearing Tang Mo's words, "Two days." Meaning he would contact Tang Mo within two days.

"Alright. Then I'll trouble Uncle Kun."

It seemed Tang Mo still wanted to stay here and have a meal with the old man, but Zheng Tan saw that Xiao Jiu wasn't around and didn't want to linger either; the two of them didn't discuss diamonds further afterward, mostly Tang Mo just talked about his past experiences and business developments, and staying longer wouldn't yield much useful information for Zheng Tan, so he simply left.

After returning to Chu Hua Da Xue, Zheng Tan didn't run around recklessly; the curfew had just been lifted, but he still needed to show himself, so he went straight to Jiao Ba's office to sleep, waiting until the appointed time to go home together for a meal.

The next day. Zheng Tan went to the small grove at the edge of the campus and took another look; unlike last time, although the area appeared unchanged and the undergrowth showed no signs of trampling, Zheng Tan smelled a strange scent in the bushes. Someone must have come by last night. At least two people. One was one of the two individuals Zheng Tan had seen that day. The other had a very unfamiliar scent; Zheng Tan likely hadn't met them before.

Carefully distinguishing the lingering scent in the undergrowth, the people who came last night didn't go to the tree hole where Zheng Tan used to stash his phone. They didn't even walk over there; after coming here to look around, they circled the bush patch once, then headed back out.

Zheng Tan lingered in the small grove for a while, then lifted his leg and ran toward the old tile-roofed area; the weather was nice and the sun was good. When he arrived at the old tile-roofed area, he saw several cats lounging on the roofs of the old tile houses, dozing off. Upon seeing Zheng Tan, those cats also lay lazily, too bothered to glance at him again, squinting as they licked their paws, groomed their fur, napped, and went about their own business.

Zheng Tan slipped into the storage tile house from an angle where those cats couldn't see him, because he didn't want the cats to spot him climbing in through the window—cats are overly curious, and he couldn't guarantee they wouldn't suddenly get the urge to imitate him and tumble inside to cause trouble.

The inside was just as it had been when Zheng Tan visited yesterday; he opened the drawer and looked at that bag of stuff, which was most likely the missing diamonds Tang Mo was looking for.

Why would someone lug around so many diamonds for no reason? Even if these diamonds have a few flaws, they're still plenty attractive to ordinary people.

Zheng Tan had no intention of taking these items out now to hand over to Tang Mo or the Blind Old Man; he wasn't sure whether doing so would land him in trouble, so he decided to just do nothing for the time being.

After stashing the items, Zheng Tan emerged from the tile house, thinking that the two people who stole the diamonds might be the same two he'd seen that night; however, the way those two handled the diamonds didn't seem particularly concerned—could it be that they thought the diamonds were fake when they stole them?

He shook his head, no longer wanting to dwell on those thoughts. Let Tang Mo and those people worry; he himself would just go about his own business.

After walking out of the house, Zheng Tan climbed onto the tile roof, leapt from one roof to another, stretched his body, and ran and jumped about with gusto. One cat even thought Zheng Tan was playing with them; it had been licking its fur, but after seeing Zheng Tan's parkour, it came running after him.

Click!

The sound of a camera shutter rang out.

Zheng Tan jumped onto the roof of a two-story tile house; this two-story building was only slightly shorter than the three-story new buildings nearby. He hadn't noticed anyone there earlier, and while running he hadn't paid much attention, but upon hearing the camera shutter sound he realized someone was standing here.

That person looked like a graduate student on campus, holding a DSLR camera and taking pictures of the cats around the old tile houses; when Zheng Tan stopped to look over, that person happened to point the camera at him and snapped a few photos.

Besides Zheng Tan, the person's photography subjects also included other cats and some scenery from time to time; after shooting, they sat on the edge of a flowerbed in the old tile-roofed area, pulling from their backpack a notebook computer that looked extremely thin and light. People using such ultraportable laptops are rare these days, and this laptop had no brand logo, so Zheng Tan couldn't tell which make it was.

Normally at this time the old tile-roofed area is deserted, very quiet, with nobody coming by to disturb.

Zheng Tan swatted away the cat that had come up pestering to play, then leapt onto the tile roof behind that person.

That person was reviewing a set of photos taken by the camera; many of the images looked familiar to Zheng Tan, though some took a moment to match up, and he generally felt the photos looked a bit better than the actual subjects, with a touch more atmosphere.

Due to the reflection and angle of the laptop screen, it wasn't easy to see clearly from above, so Zheng Tan went down from the roof, jumped onto the flowerbed, and looked at the images on the computer from about a meter away; among them were some recent shots of the old tile-roofed area, most of which were of cats.

The person seemed to sense something, tilted their head to look diagonally behind, and upon seeing Zheng Tan they were a little surprised; noticing that the cat in front showed no fear, instead staring intently at the laptop screen, they moved their finger off the notebook and picked up the camera.

Zheng Tan realized what the person was thinking, raised his hand intending to block it a bit, but while a human hand could cover most of a face, a cat's paw couldn't shield a cat's face.

Click!

The sound of a camera shutter rang out.

Zheng Tan didn't want to stay here and keep being photographed. He turned, jumped down from the flowerbed, and ran off.

Yet another artsy weirdo, Zheng Tan thought. That person was probably from the school's art department or just someone who enjoys photography; earlier that morning, on the way to the International Academic Lecture Hall, they'd seen an announcement for a photography art conference on the outdoor electronic display, so even if they weren't a student of the art school, they might have come to attend the conference.

Zheng Tan didn't give much thought to the person he'd just encountered. "Just taking photos, whatever." Besides, lots of people on campus regularly use their phones to photograph the school's cats. Moreover, cats don't have portrait rights; domestic law only grants citizens portrait rights and does not protect the portrait rights of pet cats, dogs, or other animals.

While Zheng Tan was pondering the cats' portrait rights on his way home, inside a restaurant about a ten-minute drive from Chu Hua Da Xue...

Tang Mo looked at the newly received investigation materials; this was information that Uncle Kun had just sent someone to deliver, the thief had been found, but those experimental items were indeed lost.

The thief was a repeat offender; he'd been arrested during a nearby cleanup operation last year and had only just been released from detention not long ago, when he happened to stumble upon an accident and made off with some diamonds. However, when he pried open the box containing the experimental items, he found the diamonds inside were too numerous, his first impression being that they were fakes—who could have that many genuine diamonds? Still, for people like him, counterfeit goods could still fetch the price of genuine ones. At the time, someone nearby rushed to the accident scene, but he didn't have time to examine them carefully, and he also feared being discovered. The large crate holding the "experimental items" was too heavy to carry off, and since the contents weren't real goods, abandoning them would be a shame, so he simply grabbed a handful and made a quick getaway.

Due to the thief's habit, he would first hide the stolen goods somewhere, wait for the heat to die down, then return to retrieve them to avoid being spotted. When the Blind Old Man's people went to look for him, that person was in the process of tallying recent gains with his nephew; the old man had sent someone to meet the thief who'd taken the "experimental items" to collect the goods, only to discover that the items were already gone.

Tang Mo tended to believe this outcome; however, knowing there was no deeper conspiracy behind it put him much more at ease. If he really couldn't find anything, there was no point in continuing the search—he would focus on the present matters. He handed the folder in his hand to the woman beside him, then turned his gaze toward the entrance.

"Sorry I'm late, I attended a meeting and then got pulled into chatting for a while before coming over." A young man with a backpack walked over and sat in the chair opposite Tang Mo.

This person was exactly the photography enthusiast Zheng Tan had seen before.

"Thomas, when did you and Kelly come back to the country?"

"Just got back a couple of days ago." Tang Mo replied.

The three chatted while eating; after the meal, Tang Mo looked at the person opposite him, "Yang Yi, what did you shoot today?" Judging by their appearance, they must have taken plenty of satisfying photos.

Yang Yi took out his laptop, pulled up a set of photos, "On the Chu Hua Da Xue campus I photographed some cats; they looked quite like the photo scenes I had seen before, so I just snapped them."

"Really? Let me have a look."

Yang Yi handed over the laptop in his hand; Tang Mo flipped through the set of photos on it, which included today's shots as well as some old photos copied in. There were also several scanned old photos on it, looking like photographic works from the **10s of the last century, with several cats moving about on tile-roofed houses, appearing leisurely. The photos taken today were also of that kind of red tile-roofed house, with several cats lying on the roof, squinting their eyes licking their fur or dozing off comfortably.

As he kept flipping, Tang Mo's finger paused; in a photo displayed on the screen, a black cat stood on a high place, slightly tilting its head, looking down at the camera side with an air of disdain, not startled by the sudden intrusion of the lens. It wasn't that Tang Mo was overthinking; he felt that if he were in the lens's position, that cat would also glance at him with an expression saying "What the hell are you?".

Flipping to the next photo, Tang Mo looked at the cat in the picture stretching its paw as if to block something but not even covering a quarter of it, and the pair of cat eyes above the raised paw, showing obvious impatience and displeasure; he chuckled, "Yang Yi, I didn't expect you to run into this guy." (To be continued...)