Chapter 147 — The Long-Awaited...

856 The Truth of the Plot "Young man, if your friend didn't kill anyone, then no one can pin it on him." The guard tried to console him. "We don't much care for that Hano Masao either, but a life is a life—we can't go around saying whatever we like."

"I understand. Thank you." Yang Yuting nodded and left the security office. As things stood, there was nothing more for Yang Ce to do; all he could do was wait quietly for the results.

The police's preliminary findings came out quickly, but when Yang Ce learned of them, he visibly froze for a moment—things were not as simple as he had expected.

The dagger buried in Hano Masao's body carried no fingerprints at all. Suspicious as that was, the surveillance footage showed that the man who had bumped into Zhang Bin from behind had been carrying no knife whatsoever at the time, and after knocking Zhang Bin down he had not paused for even a moment, striding straight on and vanishing from the frame.

In other words, this man was not the killer. Much as the circumstances of Zhang Bin's killing smacked of coincidence and bristled with suspicious details, the possibility that Zhang Bin was the culprit could not be ruled out.

Hearing the findings, Yang Ce was instantly dismayed—which meant Zhang Bin would not be leaving the police station anytime soon.

"What about that man?" Yang Mo pointed at the man on the surveillance footage who had bumped into Zhang Bin, unwilling to let it go.

"We've already checked with the hotel. He's checked out, and not long after the incident—we suspect he was in such a hurry because he was rushing to check out." The officer said, "From the footage, this man was a bit reckless, but he didn't actually do anything. We don't see any need to investigate him for the time being."

Yang Xu nodded reluctantly. The officer, seeing how low Yang Juehuan's spirits had sunk, consoled him: "Once the assistance period is up, if we still have no new evidence proving Zhang Bin is the killer, we won't keep holding him."

Yang Yuting nodded and returned to the hotel, though he was still uneasy. Zhang Bin was now firmly listed as a suspect; even if released, he would most likely be restricted from leaving Macau for the time being.

Macau. A concealed location. A small room with dim lighting.

A man was berating another man. A closer look would reveal that the man doing the berating was none other than the very "boss" Zheng Shaopeng had spoken of.

"Are your eyes growing out of your backside?" the boss said, his face dark as he glared at the man before him. "I told you to take out Yang Ce—what the hell did you go after this Zhang Bin for?"

"I—I didn't see clearly at the time. I was just hurrying past and bumped into him. How was I supposed to know the man was Zhang Bin?" The man kept his head down, not daring even to breathe loudly.

"Hmph. My grand plan, ruined by a pack of useless fools like you!" the boss snorted coldly.

"So do we keep the show going?" the man asked cautiously.

"The show? Like hell!" The boss's anger flared the moment he heard this. "What good does framing Zhang Bin do me? You're off this. Take your bedding and get lost—don't let me lay eyes on you again, you stupid pig!"

"Yes, sir," the man said gingerly.

Only after the man left the room did the boss knit his brows and heave a deep sigh. "Yang Ce, were you sent by heaven just to thwart me? Ever since you showed up, everything I've worked for has come to nothing."

This time the boss had meant to frame Yang Ce and land him in prison, never imagining that a flawless chain of schemes would go wrong at the very first link—his idiot underling had picked the wrong target and wrecked the whole thing.

All that effort down the drain, and Hano Masao had died for nothing—he would still have to pay a hefty consolation fee to the family. The boss was ready to explode with rage. Clearly, he would have to be more careful about whom he employed from now on; no more fools like this one.

Back at the hotel, Yang Puqi lay on the bed alone, going over everything that had happened that day—especially that suspicious man bumping into Zhang Bin that one time, which made Yang Ce deeply suspicious of him. The man had seemed to act unintentionally, and yet Yang Jiyan felt certain he was closely tied to the case.

The police would surely end up investigating this man, he believed—but whether the man would still be in Macau by then was another matter. If he vanished, it would go badly for Zhang Bin.

At that thought, Yang Ce gave a start: finding this man as quickly as possible might well help move the case forward.

Yang Ce had already gotten a clear look at the man's face from the police footage and had burned his appearance deep into his memory. But in a city as vast as Macau, finding a single person was extraordinarily difficult.

In Songjiang, Yang Ce could have called on any number of connections to help; in Macau, he could only fight alone.

It wasn't that there was no method—Yang Ce had in fact thought of a foolproof one, only it was far too complicated and far too much work. It was this: do nothing at all, lie on the hotel bed with his eyes closed, and using the hotel as the center, begin a sweeping, carpet-style search in all directions with his paranormal power.

It was the most effective and most reliable method Yang Ce could think of at present, but it would also cost a great deal of time and energy. It was not something that could be finished in a moment; Yang Ce would have to examine every person and every corner with care, and the time needed to survey all of vast Macau could well be imagined.

But Yang Ce truly had no other option. This was his only choice—he could only use this method to uncover the truth as quickly as possible and restore Zhang Bin's freedom.

It had to be said that sometimes Yang Juehuan's luck was rather good. Had it been Yang Duoji rather than Zhang Bin who had been taken in this time, then no matter what extraordinary powers he possessed, he would have had no choice but to sit quietly in the police station.

Prison break—Yang Mo did have that ability, but he wouldn't dare use it. This was not some TV drama; breaking out of prison was no child's play.

Now that he had thought of a method, it was time to act. Yang Yongjin did not want to waste a moment—the sooner the better.

Yang Ce lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and began to probe the surroundings with his paranormal power. Through the walls of the hotel, spreading outward little by little.

Next door, in the rooms, people were doing all sorts of things. Fighting, cursing, getting into bed, making love, sleeping, eating, shitting, pissing—in short, every strange and wonderful thing under the sun.

But Yang Ce had no time to watch these people's trivial affairs; he only looked at their faces, and once he saw they were not the man he sought, he dismissed them outright. And so, before he knew it, an hour had slipped by, and Yang Ce had only probed an area of about one kilometer around—already he was exhausted.

This was truly a taxing job. Yang Juehuan could not relax his attention for an instant; he had to maintain a state of constant vigilance, without the slightest oversight, or else one careless moment would let the man slip past—and then it would be all over.

Wait—Yang Ce suddenly realized that bulling ahead like this was no solution. At this rate, searching all of Macau would take twenty or thirty hours!

Macau wasn't very large, but the workload was enough to kill a man. And even if he searched every last inch, the target he was looking for might well have left Macau long before.

No—he needed a better plan. Yang Wenru frowned and began to think it over. Soon Yang Ce hit upon a safer approach, also using his ability to search, but with the search conducted in a different order.