At 7:30, the immersive movie playing in the base suddenly cut out, and the surrounding walls reverted to their original silvery-white color.
"Someone's here?" Chu Bamboo reacted instantly. He rubbed his cheeks and sat down casually in a chair.
Footsteps approached. Li Kang, expressionless, practically stormed into the base, stopping in front of Chu Bamboo and opening his mouth to speak.
But he said nothing.
"?" Chu Bamboo was confused. After a long moment, Li Kang finally said, "I brought you breakfast!"
Chu Bamboo caught the bun Li Kang tossed him but didn't eat it. After staring at it for a few seconds, he asked in a low voice, "What happened?"
Chu Bamboo and Li Kang had a complicated and nuanced relationship—a mix of senior and junior, friends despite their age gap, and frenemies.
And when a frenemy starts and stops talking to you several times, and even brings you breakfast unprompted—
Something was definitely wrong. And it wasn't something small.
Li Kang lowered his gaze. Chu Bamboo didn't press him, just stared at him with a blank expression.
"...Zhou Ze is dead."
Chu Bamboo went still.
"And what's more," Li Kang started, but cut himself off as his tablet vibrated. He immediately pulled it out and swiped it twice. His cheek twitched as he shot a cautious glance at Chu Bamboo.
"Breaking news. Five senior officials from the Redevelopment Zone Union are dead! Estimated time of death... between midnight and three in the morning."
Chu Bamboo didn't speak. He just closed his eyes.
Zhou Ze. General Secretary of the Redevelopment Zone Union. He was also the successor Chu Bamboo had hand-picked before stepping away. He had always handled the zone's affairs well—and though he'd never done anything to surpass Chu Bamboo, that in itself was a rare and valuable quality.
After all, there was no shortage of ambitious leaders who, upon taking power, would declare their intent to surpass their predecessors, only to make sweeping, disruptive changes. The probability of such people eventually causing a disaster was extremely high—a classic example being a certain unnamed Saint Monarch of the Sui Dynasty.
Chu Bamboo shot to his feet and said fluently in Chinese, "Nuwa No. 17, if I remember correctly, you're directly connected to all of Jinghai City's surveillance equipment, aren't you?"
"What are you talking about?" Li Kang was completely bewildered. He'd understood the first part, which sounded like a prayer, but the rest...
"Yes, Authority!" Nuwa No. 17 replied. "However, at present, this unit can only connect to authorized equipment belonging to the Jinghai City Government Offices. I do not have the clearance to access other devices."
"Pull up all intelligence and information on Zhou Ze and the other five deceased officials. Review all footage from every recording device near the locations of their deaths. Mark every suspect and dig up their identities." Chu Bamboo's voice was impossibly calm. "Immediately. Right now."
"Processing. Estimated time to completion: three minutes and twenty-seven seconds."
"Good," Chu Bamboo said, the single word an exhale. He already had a sharp inkling that whoever had moved against the union was most likely the same mastermind who had forced him to "reset" before.
A dead silence fell.
"...Wait! Just wait a second." Li Kang finally snapped out of it. His scalp was tingling, and his mind was reeling to an extent that was simply beyond words.
He felt that he would be less shocked if he saw his own dead father leap out of his grave right now—after all, in this world, there really were Cultivators who could command Ghost-Attribute Divine Techniques and reanimate corpses.
"Are you... communicating with a Divine Being? How are you..." Li Kang's words were jumbled. The more he thought about it, the less he understood and the more muddled his thoughts became.
'What's going on with Chu Bamboo? This makes no sense... Not even the city's chief executive can communicate with a Divine Being!'
'Wait, those strange sounds coming from Chu Bamboo's mouth... they weren't a prayer, but... a language??'
"Could it be... you're actually from the Royal Family? An illegitimate son? No, that can't be right..." Li Kang couldn't comprehend it. He'd only ever heard rumors that the Royal Family possessed the right to communicate with the divine.
But those were only rumors. In reality, there was no direct evidence that the Royal Family could converse with Divine Beings.
"You don't need to ask," Chu Bamboo cut him off, his gaze holding an expression Li Kang couldn't fathom. "Because even if I explained it, you wouldn't remember."
Li Kang's blood ran cold.
'Wait, is he talking about memory erasure? But aren't memory-erasure devices only supposed to work on non-Transcendent individuals?'
Li Kang instinctively took a step back. Although everything he knew told him it was impossible, Chu Bamboo had just pulled off this incredible feat right in front of him, forcing him to wonder.
"Search complete. Analysis complete. Commencing data organization. Sorting and categorization complete—"
The vast, silvery-white walls instantly transformed, a grid of small, squarish screens appearing, each smoothly playing a video. One suspicious individual after another was circled, and beneath them, detailed identity data was listed.
"Seven suspicious targets, two of which are untraceable," Chu Bamboo murmured.
All seven targets were bundled up from head to toe, completely concealing their figures. To be honest, though, that kind of getup wasn't exactly rare in the Redevelopment Zone.
As for being unable to trace them and find their real identities... that was also to be expected. The Redevelopment Zone didn't actually have any security cameras inside its borders.
After all, before Chu Bamboo had "flipped the table," the Redevelopment Zone had been a lawless territory that even the officials couldn't touch.
Even now, under Chu Bamboo's forceful intervention, the Redevelopment Zone had only just established a semblance of order; the government's ability to control it was still extremely limited.
Forget the Redevelopment Zone—even in official districts, camera density was abysmally low. You'd only find a slightly higher concentration near official strongholds like the Third District Government Office or in the wealthy districts.
To put that density into perspective, it was probably even lower than in the Real World's India.
To put it bluntly, even if they tried to roll them out in large numbers—setting aside the question of whether they even had that many cameras—if you dared to install one today, it would probably be pried off and stolen by tomorrow.
After all, these cameras were Ancient Relics. Even a broken one could be sold for an exorbitant price.
In fact, Chu Bamboo was already stunned that she'd been able to screen for suspicious targets at all. After all, if it were that easy, he would have just had Nuwa No. 17 run a big data search last night for anyone who might have broken into his home to assassinate him. To pull out suspicious targets from such sparse footage... all he could say was that Nuwa's capabilities were terrifyingly powerful.
'However, I can't completely rule out the possibility that the real killer isn't even among these suspicious targets Nuwa No. 17 found,' Chu Bamboo thought. 'The camera coverage is just too sparse. If the killer was cautious, they could have easily avoided them entirely...'