Chapter 959

The team's office location wasn't too far away; it was a place without a sign at the entrance but with a People's Armed Police guard post—the Imperial Capital is full of such units, which is why the municipal construction is such a mess. This place wasn't a Khrushchev-style apartment building, but it wasn't much better—a rigid four-story square block topped with an incongruous Chinese-style heavy-eaved roof, truly ugly to a certain degree.

The building materials were quite authentic; one look and you could tell it was a reinforced concrete structure from the fifties or sixties. Bai Lang arrived at the entrance and looked the building up and down—there was even a garden area around it, and even an irregular pond shaped like a winding moon, and of course, a Chinese-style pavilion, the main theme being complete lack of coordination.

"It really is ugly to a new level." Bai Lang showed his work ID to the armed police at the entrance and the guard room they were responsible for—actually, there was no need, as there was facial recognition. He walked in, climbed a few steps, and entered the building. "The materials are truly solid, terrazzo floors, and this thickness must be a meter—including the poured concrete."

This building was constructed as a fortified stronghold, to serve as a support point during urban street fighting—the moment Bai Lang stepped inside, he knew. The space inside the building wasn't small; there were two elevators in the lobby on the first floor, and it was obvious there were two basement levels. The elevators were also semi-open iron-grille types, looking old but with a much larger safety margin than those modern elevators.

Bai Lang saw the reception room, but there was no one inside. On the wall, however, there was a floor plan. The first floor was just the lobby, cafeteria, and restrooms; the second, third, and fourth floors were all offices and auxiliary restrooms. It wasn't just offices for team members, but also offices for various logistics departments, looking no different from a typical police precinct.

The space under the eaves on the top floor was actually a storage room, while the two floors below were mainly used for physical exercise and special ability training, and of course, firearm and weapon practice.

Don't look at the fact that there was no one here now; in fact, there were cameras everywhere. The people here had long known of his arrival. No one came out to stop him, which meant Bai Lang was allowed to move freely. He saw Captain Bai Jie's office on the map, so he took the elevator to the third floor.

"Hey, Captain Bai Jie, do you accept good loot?" Just after saying this, Bai Lang threw the items he had 'exploded' out of the school onto the woman's large desk. Bai Jie almost jumped up, "Fuck you! Is this something you can just throw around?" These things all emitted an eerie aura; fortunately, under normal circumstances and in broad daylight, these things were safe, and it was only after being absorbed into the body that they became dangerous.

"The state recovers these things, right? So name a price." Bai Lang said indifferently, pulling over a chair and sitting down. Bai Jie glanced at him, "I won't ask where these things came from. Here, see if this price is acceptable—according to the grade, these things all have relatively fixed recovery prices, unless it's a truly useful and rare ability..."

The recovery price wasn't low. For the state, isn't money just paper printed out? It didn't even need printing; it just required tapping a keyboard on a computer. "Did you receive it?" Bai Jie asked. Bai Lang checked his phone casually, "Mm, it's in the account."

"Then remember to pay attention to your phone these next few days; the next mission will be issued to you—most likely some kind of investigation." Bai Jie signaled that Bai Lang could leave. This man had just received a payment of over ten million, and Bai Jie didn't really want to talk to such a person—her salary plus the gains from missions only amounted to a hundred thousand or so at a time, and only occasionally would she get loot that could sell for millions...

The expenses were also not small; many things couldn't be reimbursed by public funds—these all had quotas, and beyond the quota, of course, one had to spend one's own money. Besides, the pressure in this line of work was too great; in daily life, didn't one rely on 'buy, buy, buy' to relieve it?

Bai Lang returned to the guesthouse—interestingly, this was free for people like them, while the other few people staying here, not being public servants, had to pay for accommodation. It wasn't expensive and could be offset by serving the public. His phone rang, and upon looking, it was an investigation mission, "Take a special bus at a certain station at 4:30 AM?"

The brief below stated that someone had reported the bus as abnormal, but so far there had been no casualties, so Bai Lang needed to go and assess it; if he could solve it, he should just solve it along the way. In the room, there was a special work computer that could connect to the internal database, so Bai Lang simply started searching for similar situations like a normal worker.

"Mm-hmm, previously they were all 'ghost bus' cases mixed with midnight last-bus incidents. It's more like ghost buses sending away lost souls appearing in reality for unknown reasons, or the situation of an accident vehicle repeating the moment of the accident. Mm, some survived, and some went missing right then. Basically, the survival-to-missing/death ratio is about one to two; this is truly dangerous."

These were all written down by synthesizing the memories of multiple survivors and processing personnel—many survivors couldn't remember everything at all; the people were scared out of their wits, damn it. And the processing personnel could remember more, but it wasn't very comprehensive; these ghost domains always damaged a part of a person's memory.

This time it was a bit special; it was actually in the morning, and so far there were no casualties. "Suddenly disappearing..." This was the only special point. "Just don't turn into a midnight killer bus for me." What Bai Lang found quite interesting was that someone actually rode this bus to the end. While on the bus, they saw it was a zoo, but upon getting off, they found there was nothing there, just an undeveloped plot of land.

And that state was also very strange. Everyone knew how many zoos there were in the Imperial Capital, but a zoo appeared in the suburbs, and the people on the bus at the time didn't feel it was strange at all. It was only after getting off and discovering there was nothing there that they suddenly felt it was strange and hair-raising.

"This is very interesting. What's included here is likely not just a weird ghost bus; it might even involve a so-called rule-based ghost domain." This type of ghost domain is usually more dangerous and unsolvable, but as long as one doesn't violate the rules, it's usually relatively safe. Bai Lang was very interested; he had long wanted to try whether he could pass the so-called zoo creepypasta by beating it up.

For Bai Lang, there was nothing that couldn't be solved by beating it up. Presumably, this so-called rule-based creepypasta could also be passed by beating it up; anyway, just beat whatever he saw. At worst, wouldn't it be easy to just destroy the venue? Thinking about it, there probably weren't any fierce ghosts in this world capable of withstanding his beating. ===== CHAPTER 960 =====