Author: 长洱 / Chang’er
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 63
The temperament of Wang Chao’s laptop was consistent with himself.
The carbon fiber case was covered with sticky notes, and anime stickers were plastered all over the keyboard film, clearly showing his interest. There was also a NERV* logo cut from a magazine that was glued to the upper left corner. In short, it was extremely cluttered but vibrant.
*Special organization from Evangelion.
On the laptop screen, it was currently all black except for a play symbol in the lower left corner. The rest was a reflection of Butler Chen’s face.
Perhaps because he was stimulated by the computer screen that was facing him, Butler Chen flattened the hem of his suit, pushed away the swivel chair, and walked to the door with an arrogant look as if to say he was not going to bother talking to common peasants.
However, he was stopped in his tracks.
The special forces officers from Interpol stopped him.
Two assault rifles crossed each other at the door. Chen Ping paused and tried to restrain his face from turning red. He turned around and pointed his chin at the leader of Interpol and said, “Restricting others’ freedom. Is this how Interpol operates?”
“Actually no.” Ren Xian shook his head wearily. “But I received an important lesson during my training. It roughly was, don’t fucking mess with your instructors because they will fuck up your evaluation report, and you’ll know what a hopeless future you’re in for.” Ren Xian spread out his hands, expressing helplessness.
“Hey, hey, hey. How can you say that so seriously? I’m not some vicious person.” Wang Chao laughed and hooked his finger at Butler Chen, signaling him to sit back down.
“What are you planning to do. This is Yongchuan, Xing Conglian. Let me tell you, don’t you dare be so arrogant!” There was finally madness in Chen Ping’s eyes.
Corresponding to that trace of madness, Xing Conglian replied calmly, “Me? Naturally, I just want to prove my innocence.”
The two special forces officers, guns in hand, gestured for Butler Chen to return to his seat.
Everything seemed to be temporarily quiet, like a sea under a cloudless sky without a trace of wind.
“Excuse me, you are?”
Xing Conglian turned to the leader of the operation team beside him and opened with a polite question.
“The leader of Severe Crime Unit C of the Interpol division in Yongchuan, Ren Xian.” Ren Xian didn’t know if he should salute first, but in the end, he decided to sit up straight and answer respectfully.
“Greetings, Team Leader Ren.” Xing Conglian nodded very familiarly, then pulled the conversation back to the topic at hand. He said straightforwardly, “I want to prove one thing. The drugs you seized in our hotel room were planted by someone else.”
“Please continue,” Ren Xian said.
“Since we have to prove ourselves, the timeline is very critical.” Xing Conglian’s tone was gentle, as if he were talking to an old friend. “I would like to ask Team Leader Ren, when did you receive the tip about possible drug possession in room 2801 at the Cohen May Hotel?”
Ren Xian was shocked when he heard this. In the current situation, he had switched from being the interrogator to the one being interrogated. It was reasonable that he could choose to not answer this question, but through some unknown influence, he still answered like a subordinate reporting to his superiors.
“11:44,” he said.
Xing Conglian nodded. He turned and had a slight smile as he looked at Zheng Dongdong, like a hunter looking at his prey. He asked, “So, may I ask Manager Zheng, is the surveillance camera on the 28th floor of the hotel working normally?”
Hearing this, Zheng Dongdong felt as if he had been pierced by a sharp sword. He was extremely nervous. Like a dying prey, he looked at Xing Conglian with fear. After a long while, he replied tremblingly, “Today… Today… the surveillance cameras on the 28th floor are undergoing maintenance.” As if to prove something, Zheng Dongdong added, “This is part of the hotel’s plan. I didn’t arrange it!”
This was the expected answer.
Xing Conglian raised his eyes slightly. His emerald green eyes stared at the hotel manager, who looked so weak that he could fall apart at any moment. He said calmly, “Oh, this means that the hotel’s surveillance cameras didn’t record the time when each of us entered and exited the room and whether any other strangers have too, right?”
“Who told you to hide drugs in your room. How can you blame our hotel?” Zheng Dongdong continued to argue.
“Oh, but I can prove that lamong the three of us, the last time we left the hotel was at 11:14.” Xing Conglian glanced at the teenager next to him, then said, “In other words, within 30 minutes, the cleaner of your hotel had complete access to our room, and in the process of cleaning it, discovered drugs, reported to you, called the police, and then gave the tip to Interpol, right?”
Before Zheng Dongdong could answer, Wang Chao pressed the play button on the laptop.
That was the elevator surveillance video of the Cohen May Hotel, which clearly recorded the time when a teenager with a red schoolbag entered the elevator.
As if catching a glimmer of light in the dark, Zheng Dongdong looked at the blurry surveillance image on the screen and shouted, “Who allowed you to hack into our hotel surveillance system? You’re breaking the law. Don’t you know this is a crime?”
Wang Chao sneered, then laughed again. “This is your hotel. Is it illlegal…?”
Xing Conglian supported his chin with one hand and moved his gaze to the old man who had been sitting silently in the corner.
As if perceiving something, the old man only said a few words. “Certainly not.”
The old man’s voice sounded old, but it was as if the wind was blowing through dead branches, releasing a sense of freedom in the twilight.
Hearing this, Butler Chen, who was sitting on the main seat, looked at the old man from the corner of his eyes in horror. He had been in the upper echelon of Yongchuan for a long time, so naturally he knew that the old man had a surname of Xing, which was the same surname as the great family that he served.
The family management system had been abandoned by the newer, emerging families. Only the old aristocracy still retained their feudal habits. Every year, the members of the side branch of the family would be sent out to inspect various places to collect rent and check accounts. Though the old man was sent to Yongchuan for inspection, it didn’t represent how high his status was in the Xing family, but in the eyes of the Yongchuan business community, he held enough weight.
A sufficiently weighted person meant that even if a sentence was lightly written, it also meant a kind of statement.
Chen Ping lowered his head and held his hand tightly. All his thinking had changed from how to deal with Lin Chen and Xing Conglian, to when exactly the Chen family had offended the Xings. Generally, ancient families always had a law of self-existence; the most important was to remain neutral and good to others. Therefore, people would hardly ever see any Xing family members make any kind of statement regarding politics, finance, or even hostile enterprises. They were always humble and polite, yet they were of a height that no one could touch.
So why did the Xing family suddenly appear here and show their attitude?
Chen Ping began to really panic.
“The hotel’s access control system should be quite reliable, unless it was violently dismantled…” When Xing Conglian said this, Team Leader Ren, who had just violently dismantled the door lock to their room, lowered his head. He retracted his gaze and continued, “So during the period of time when we were away, those who can enter and exit the room must have an access card, such as a hotel employee.”
Zheng Dongdong resembled a prey with a hunter’s knife around his neck. Because he foresaw a desperate future, he began to struggle one last time. “You—what are you insinuating? It’s clear you hid the drugs, and now you’re accusing the hotel of planting them!” His voice became louder to the point where it was so shrill, he seemed to run out of breath.
Zheng Dongdong’s performance was too tense. His nerves were so tight that they were like an extremely taut piano string that could be severed at any moment. It was clear that Xing Conglian was just stating a logical reason. The onlookers, who didn’t know the truth, looked suspiciously at the hotel manager, who seemed to be going out of control.
Perhaps it was because of those eyes that were too sharp, or maybe it was because his elite pretentiousness finally crumbled in front of the person he hated the most, but Zheng Dongdong shook his head frantically while muttering to himself, “No, no… You don’t have evidence… You don’t have evidence!”
“Oh, actually, I have evidence.”
Xing Conglian maintained his usual calmness.
Beside him, Wang Chao finally couldn’t hold back the smile on his face. Like floodgates being opened, the water rushed out of the dam and into the sun. The teenager laughed so loud that he could hardly stand up straight. “If your technique is garbage, don’t mess around with planting and framing others. Technology. What men need is technology!”
Little comrade Wang Chao stared at everyone in the room and smoothly brought up another video file from the desktop that no one could recognize. He then opened something that looked like a surveillance file and said, in a slightly apologetic tone, “The sound and picture are a little out of sync. Everyone, please forgive me~”
Under the shocked gaze of everyone, a surveillance video with four frames slowly played on the screen.
Unlike the poor image quality of ordinary surveillance cameras, the clarity of the video was so high that even the iris petals on the carpet could clearly be seen.
If anyone had ever stayed in the most expensive suite of the Cohen May Hotel, they would clearly know that what was being captured was the interior of the executive suite on the 28th floor.
A screen in the upper left corner recorded everything that happened in the living room.
At 11:14, a teenager carrying a red schoolbag hurriedly left the room.
At 11:20, the cleaner began to enter the room and start cleaning. According to the cleaning process, she first began to clean up the garbage on the tables. Just as she was dumping the remnants of food from the dishes into the garbage bag, a slightly fat figure in a suit entered everyone’s sight.
The cleaning lady hurriedly turned her head and saw the hotel manager standing behind her. She was so scared that she was at a loss for words. She didn’t know why the manager, who was busy with everything, would suddenly come and inspect her work.
The female cleaner lowered her head and heard the manager say, “What are you nervous about? Just keep doing your job, and I’ll watch.”
The manager’s voice was arrogant and slightly shrill. Naturally, it was coming from the mouth of Mr. Zheng Dongdong, whose face was now ashen.
The picture in the upper right corner recorded the process of Zheng Dongdong leaving the living room with his hands behind his back, passing through the corridor, and arriving at the bathroom door.
He pushed open the door and shouted in a loud voice, “Why hasn’t the bathroom been cleaned yet? Look at how dirty it is in here! Come here!”
When the female cleaner heard the call, she hurried to the bathroom. She was scolded by the manager, then she locked herself in the bathroom and started to clean it.
After a moment of blankness, the door of the master bedroom in the lower left corner was pushed open.
On it, Zheng Dongdong was tiptoeing into the master bedroom. He had put on white gloves at some point, and he pulled the blanket away in disgust. He took out a bag from his pocket, tore it open, and poured the green leaves inside on the bed. He then pulled the blanket back up and walked out of the room as if nothing had happened.
Not long after, the female cleaner finished cleaning the bathroom and came to the master bedroom. The moment she opened the blanket, Zheng Dongdong happened to walk into the room again.
He saw the dry green leaves on the bed, and his face became tense. Acting like a real professional, he pushed the female cleaner away, squatted down on the bed, picked up a handful of broken leaves, put them close to his nose, and sniffed them. Then he pretended to be shocked as he shouted, “It’s marijuana! Call the police!”
As he spoke, he took out his phone and took a photo of the scene very professionally.
At this point in the video, Zheng Dongdong’s fragile nerves finally broke as the surveillance footage ended with the hotel manager’s vengeful smile.
In the conference room, it was as quiet as an ice cellar.
Lin Chen looked at everything in front of him and could only feel that this seemed to be a plot point in some absurd drama.
Zheng Dongdong actually went into the hotel room where they were staying and secretly planted marijuana to frame them. Was it because Xing Conglian knew this from the beginning, so that was why he had been so calm from the very start?
However, it was just marijuana. The level of this drug shouldn’t be worthy of having Interpol dispatched, right?
Furthermore, marijuana was a contraband. Where did Zheng Dongdong get this stuff, and where did he get the idea to plant them in their hotel room so he could frame them?
There were too many questions, but all these were not as important as the one that made him feel most incredulous. “Why are there surveillance cameras in our room?”
Naturally, a hotel wouldn’t install cameras in private places like a hotel guest room. This surveillance video had almost no blind spots and was obviously designed by either Xing Conglian or Wang Chao. He suddenly remembered the weird siren that ran non-stop in the conference room not long ago. The alarm device on the door lock was probably not something that came with the hotel access control.
How many security measures did these two people add to the place where they were staying?
When he heard this question, Xing Conglian reacted quickly. He pinched the back of Wang Chao’s neck and pulled him up in front of Lin Chen and said solemnly, “Why are you planting so many tricks in the place where we live?”
The teenager turned his head and looked at his captain with an incredulous gaze, as if he couldn’t believe there was such a brazen person in this world.
At this moment, Xing Conglian smiled. Wang Chao’s head just happened to be blocking his face, so the threatening meaning behind his smile became unscrupulous.
“Because I’ve been in this business since I was a kid, so I’m especially insecure… Hehe.” The teenager quickly turned his head to look at Lin Chen as he said those words.
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