Chapter 1731: with translation of chapter title

NO. 345: Still the first time walking through the front gate

"You want to give a statement?"

Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya asked.

"Documents." Aomo said, then glanced at the approaching police team not far away.

"You need to hand over the work to them?"

"Well then..."

"I'll go." Xiongxiong shrugged and walked past the two.

"Juanzhang, please continue communicating with Mr. Lindun."

Apparently not intending to break the façade put up at debut, the green-haired, unicorn-horned elder sister still maintained a businesslike demeanor, but little Aomo had an intuition that this person was secretly smiling.

It felt very unfamiliar.

Little Aomo's life had never relied on intuition, nor had there ever been room for spiritual perception to be triggered, but at this moment, this indecipherable feeling carried a sort of fated judgment that was strikingly clear.

He felt that it was probably the thought inertia of Aomo Lindun as an individual, but this inertia… is it accurate?

Carrying this hesitation, he manipulated the puppet to look again at Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya, who also turned her head, and both caught a glimpse of something strange and subtle.

If resonance can be found, that might be right, but it's not important now; what matters is that Miss Xiongxiong, whether she's secretly laughing or not, everyone's work mode is still ON.

"Only a little is known; the integrated capacity is just 15G, and the filtered effective content is only 281MB—I've sent it all to you."

"Received," the moment the other party finished speaking, the consciousness that had never been disconnected from the network received an email notification; little Aomo slightly nodded, then asked, "Have any confiscated goods been turned in?"

"You should ask those locals," Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya glanced at the ranch workers and company staff pretending to be enthusiastic in welcoming the large police contingent, "the interrogation room is very clean, right, anything else?"

"Nothing else, this sudden overtime feeling isn't really something to complain about."

"If there really is a problem, it's definitely something we can't shirk; Huijie would probably say the same after hearing it." Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya looked toward the deputy director beside her who had not interjected and whose gaze kept scanning the surroundings, appearing especially vigilant.

"Of course."

Obviously, her scanning around didn't hinder her attention to our words; she responded promptly without hesitation, and further elaborated: "Mr. Lindun, don't think that investigating this abrupt case is a burden for us; if there are hidden dangers, they must be dealt with—this principle holds everywhere as a matter of course."

"That's what you say, but your workload here must be considerable, right?"

"How did we end up discussing this?" Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya interjected, the twin ears protruding from the custom-made hole in her hat also slightly swaying, "but can I take it that you still have something to attend to over there?"

"Strictly speaking, these are still matters with no evidence yet; when direct proof is needed, I will ask for your help."

"Remember what you said about asking for help, okay, Chief Chen—let's go to Xiongxiong's supervision spot; she looks pretty feisty."

After Huijie Chen gave a slight nod to Aomo, her words as she followed Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya away remained clear to the keen hearing of Aomo's puppet: "Being able to enforce across departments and regions doesn't mean one will be welcomed, and the treatment isn't surprising."

Even if the law permits, there still exists a customary collective will that can obstruct the path.

The police circle is like that, the business circle even more so; but this time, Aomo Lindun is instead representing the customary side, as a mercenary demanding from the corporation behind the monster ranch the spoils won from his legitimate self-defense.

"—You against a mercenary's attempted murder, then legitimate self-defense, should leave something behind, right?"

This is both the law endorsed by the mercenary outpost and the customary practice within mercenary circles.

Admittedly, business conglomerates are not part of the mercenary circle, but the vast majority of them will face the situation where their own trained units are ineffective, or even have no trained units at all, forcing them to hire mercenaries to handle certain matters.

In such a situation, reputation is very important.

Originally, the commissions from conglomerate companies already carried a significant competitive element; if a mercenary group judges that you can reap less profit here than elsewhere, regretting it later would be too late, wouldn't it?

Based on this, the negotiations between the Little Demon and the General Bureau have been relatively smooth.

After all, he still has an achievement that is rarely mentioned, not particularly outstanding compared to others, but within mercenary circles it carries some weight.

The head of a B-rank mercenary agency.

The agency has no more than ten members; though tiny in scale, it has reached B-rank. Back then, this promotion caused quite a stir at mercenary outposts everywhere, but nowadays it's hardly noteworthy.

But that's only because the agency's mercenaries rarely show up at mercenary outposts.

They also seldom intersect with other freelance or group mercenaries.

The title itself still carries weight, enough to represent this considerable right. It allows the Little Demon to smoothly retrieve illegal militants' arms in her dealings with that director, and also enables the puppet she manipulates to appear smoothly in a gray-area building of a mirror-market.

Skipping the referral through connections, saving the proof of ability, and also avoiding a series of possible mishaps that are nevertheless cliché, the cost is merely that Aomo Lindun's agency head leaves a trace of having been here—this is a considerable risk for most legitimate professions; who knows what blame might be shifted onto you, or perhaps the police will show up tomorrow to investigate your background.

But for mercenaries, this is obviously just everyday fare.

Moreover, when you try to pass the blame onto mercenaries, you must also be wary that they actually have a pot.

So Aomo's puppet stepped into the hall with ease, and while passing the door, casually snatched a confusion-inducing mask and put it on his face.

The entire hall was filled with people of various appearances, some wearing masks or even a mosaic patch, and he became one of them, appearing to outsiders as a black-helmeted, black-sworded, tall and fearsome full-armored knight.

Obviously, this is the Beast King's guise.

It is also his favorite way to scare the snake by stirring the grass.

Even though the gazes here are all unrecognizable, a gaze is still a gaze.

He can even read Ultraman's expressions, and those here who appear as silicon-based lifeforms, androids, or extraterrestrials are no great difficulty.

However, this level of stimulation is merely done offhand.

Although he had already exerted himself to sweep his view several rounds over the surroundings, preparing to later analyze the 'recording' over and over, in fact he truly did not expect this to yield any gain.

The interrogation raw footage and refined text sent by Bixiketuxe·Shihuaiya certainly listed many illegal items and the gang's self‑described backgrounds, but they never mentioned the concept of a 'cult'.

They are just like Aomo, coincidentally stepping onto the path of monster power as monster users, and immediately after obtaining this power they think about making money and making it more efficiently.

So the companies implicated in the confession go far beyond just that ranch; if the police decide to pursue this strictly, at least eight companies could be implicated together.

But these are obviously not within little Aomo's concern.

He only cares about the whereabouts of the Beast Cult.

If these people's lives naturally contain no trace of transmigrators or the cult, then his investigative line would be cut off.

For now, let's set aside the frustration and resentment, since the facts haven't reached that point yet.

Before that, there is still another line—the individual that teammates gave their all to send out, who successfully escaped.

Aomo then matched the possible locations obtained from the interrogation with the investigative points he had gathered from netizens in a flash of inspiration, and indeed found three identical places.

And the first one among them is here.

The login lobby of the digital bar counter at No. 313 of Mirror Surface Market.

It is both a gray area with its own rules, and merely serves a function similar to an internet cafe.

You can handle registration services at the counter here, independently choosing those sealed private rooms to access that tertiary network realm, the vast primordial expanse beneath the sea of networks.

At the same time, this place is also an inverted space overlapping with the main continent.

There is a very well-known appellation:

DarkArea/Hei'an area/domain

(End of chapter)