Chapter 321: Male and Female Parchment (10/15, Autumn Subscription)

Money talks—rich and willful!!

Fang Yue couldn't help but feel sour to his bones!

Other people buy parking spaces—this one just builds a heliport!

Granted, it's a temporary heliport for helicopters, but it's still outrageous.

And from what Bai Xiaoya implied, she didn't stop at just this one heliport—they were spread across every district of Jianghai City, and even beyond Jianghai City…

Thinking about it that way gave him chills. The force behind Bai Xiaoya was unfathomable.

Roughly speaking, if the United Front was a first-rate power, then the strength behind her was at least top-tier second-rate!

Of course, this was only Fang Yue's guess. To know what level it actually was, he'd have to find out who exactly was backing Bai Xiaoya.

After getting off the helicopter, A Ming led the two of them downward.

Along the way, they could see many people dressed in black, guarding every floor of the abandoned construction site, even the stairwell entrances.

This defensive force was truly formidable.

"Ming-ge!"

"A Ming-ge!"

"Ming-ge, the guy's downstairs."

A Ming nodded and led the two of them further down.

They didn't stop until they were nearly at the middle of the floor.

"Miss, the guy's right there."

A Ming pointed, and there was a man in a suit, blindfolded, with a rag stuffed in his mouth as a gag, squealing and whimpering.

At that moment, Fang Yue had an intense sense of déjà vu, feeling like he was the most stereotypical villain from a TV drama—next up would probably be brutally interrogating the kidnapped guy with fists and kicks.

"You do the questioning, I'll just listen from the side… hmm, wait a moment."

Bai Xiaoya calmly gave A Ming a look.

The next instant, A Ming pulled out the small knife he carried, drew it from its sheath, and stabbed straight into Chen Yang's chest!

The blade went in white, came out red.

Hiss!

Blood splattered out, staining A Ming's suit jacket. A man beside him immediately took off his own suit and handed it over.

A Ming slipped off his suit jacket, wiped the dagger clean, then put on his subordinate's suit, and afterward respectfully approached Bai Xiaoya.

"Miss, it's handled."

"Mm."

Watching Chen Yang writhing on the ground in agony, rolling back and forth, clearly wanting to scream but only able to let out muffled low whimpers, Fang Yue felt even stranger.

"You… what did that stab mean?"

"To make him behave. If he won't talk fast, he can just miss the window for best treatment. So whether he lives or not is entirely up to him."

A Ming explained briefly.

The reasoning wasn't wrong, but the method was genuinely brutal.

Shaking his head slightly, Fang Yue stepped up to the pitiful Chen Yang and pulled the rag from his mouth.

"Don't scream…"

Fang Yue had barely started to warn him when Chen Yang didn't scream at all—his forehead was drenched in cold sweat, enduring the searing pain.

But the fact that he didn't scream clearly meant A Ming and the others had "warned" him beforehand.

"B-big brother… whatever you want to ask, just ask quick, I'll spill everything, I give up, I really spill everything!"

Chen Yang's whole body was trembling; blood had already dyed most of his clothes red.

But he really could endure it—he just spoke a little haltingly.

"Let me ask you—did you hire the Ping'an Bounty Company to steal the parchment?"

The moment Fang Yue finished speaking, Chen Yang shuddered violently, and fresh blood from his chest spurted twice onto the ground.

He suddenly grew even more nervous, swallowed a few times, and instinctively said in a lowered voice, "H-how do you know about the parchment? Did you pick it up? Big brother, take my advice—give me the parchment, and I'll pretend none of this ever happened today. Otherwise you're all going to bring down a heap of trouble, very serious trouble. I'm not joking!"

That anxious yet sincere tone sounded as if he were stating a fact, not making a threat.

"You don't need to worry about who has the parchment. I just want you to tell me—was the order to Ping'an Company placed by you?"

Hearing Fang Yue repeat the question, Chen Yang fell silent. After a moment, he said fearfully, "Big brother, I have a wife, I have kids… I only did this for my job. Don't kill me… please don't kill me!"

"Yes, or no?"

"…Yes! I placed that order, but I was just the errand boy. I—I don't even know what the parchment is!"

"You don't know? Then it was Wang Sanbao who had you run the errand and place the order?"

Wang Sanbao was the nominal boss of the Trash Technology Recycling Company.

Hearing the name Wang Sanbao, Chen Yang flinched so hard his body shook: "Y-yes, it was him. He told me to do it."

"Then keeping you alive serves no purpose. Wang Sanbao is just a puppet too. To find out who actually wants the parchment, we'll still need to investigate layer by layer up the chain."

"I know! I know!!"

Chen Yang, hearing Fang Yue say that, was so scared he hurriedly shouted.

"What do you know?"

"I know… who wants the parchment. It's not me, and it's not Wang Sanbao—it's Ma Shaoku. Someone called Ma Shaoku is looking for the parchment."

Ma Shaoku?

"Do you have any proof? Why do you say Ma Shaoku is the one who wants the parchment? Who is he?"

"I-I don't know who he is, but after the parchment went missing, he regularly wired me money, told me to keep quiet about it, and then had me investigate the parchment's whereabouts with everything I had.

And the strange thing is, after all these days, Wang Sanbao never noticed the parchment was gone, and no one else ever said anything about it. It was as if the parchment had been delivered to its destination smoothly according to the original process.

"Later I found a way to use some clever talk to pry out information, and only then did I learn that Ma Shaoku used a counterfeit parchment of the same material to replace the real one, and this operation has gone undiscovered until now! Everyone still thinks the parchment is the real parchment, not knowing that the real parchment has already slipped out into the world."

Fang Yue's brow furrowed.

The target seemed to surface.

But… can this guy's words be trusted?

Fang Yue glanced back at Bai Xiaoya; the latter's brow furrowed slightly.

"Ma Shaoku is Qiu Dugu's partner, and also an official member of the 【United Hand Society】."

Saying so, Bai Xiaoya pulled up a photo on her phone.

It was a middle-aged man smoking a cigarette, his face weathered, looking utterly bored.

"Again?"

Fang Yue's face showed a bitter smile; this was truly troublesome.

He didn't want to provoke a single member of the United Hand Society.

Now it seemed the moment he provoked one, he'd provoked two.

After thinking for a moment, Fang Yue asked, "Why would Ma Shaoku do this? If he's a member of the 【United Hand Society】, and the partner of your boss's boss's boss, Qiu Dugu, then why would he hide the matter of the parchment, and even forge a fake one?"

"I-I don't know, maybe it was to sell it for money, or maybe for something else. I watched the dashcam footage from that time; the people inside were looking for the parchment, and during the packaging process, the parchment would be placed into a box made of special material. Other people couldn't open it, and had no reason to open it.

But in the dashcam footage, those two clearly had opened the box, and probably even used the parchment, which is why the parchment vanished into thin air in the end. As for the car accident, that was probably the biggest accident; everything else was likely within Ma Shaoku's calculations.

Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that he just happened to have a replacement parchment, with an appearance and material almost exactly the same?"

【There's actually another me in this world? Let me see if it's a male or female parchment!】

Don't cause trouble!

Fang Yue was asking about key information, and the parchment suddenly jumped out to cause trouble.

After mentally scolding the parchment, Fang Yue asked, "Words without proof are useless. Do you have any evidence on hand? Are you in contact with him? Or any other proof that what you're saying is true?"

(End of this chapter)