Embers Ad Infinitum

Shang Jianyao thought about it carefully and gave the "best" suggestion:

"Ask directly later."

"..." Jiang Baimian thought for a few seconds, "Let's forget it. What if it is a secret sect that cannot be known by others? We must respect other people's privacy."

Shang Jianyao's train of thought had already gone in unknown direction, and he said to himself:

"The ritual of that sect is to whip yourself with a whip, drip yourself with candles, prick yourself with needles, and cut yourself with a knife?"

The more Jiang Baimian listened, the more something seemed wrong:

"Why does it feel weird..."

Is this the legendary masochistic sect?

She thought "hmm" for a long time and came up with another explanation:

"Maybe Boss Ugo uses similar pain to suppress the state of only biological instinct?"

I don’t know where he learned these methods from…

While the two were discussing, Ugo's door opened with a creak.

He put on a linen shirt, his blond hair was very wet, and his face was slightly pale.

The vomit and various debris on the cement floor of the room have also been cleared away.

Just as Shang Jianyao was about to speak, Jiang Baimian glared at him, so he forcibly changed the topic:

"Boss, have you ever seen a cat that looks like a ghost?"

Ugo raised his eyelids slightly and replied coldly:

"I've never seen a ghost."

Jiang Baimian breathed out silently:

"It's an aberrant creature that has sneaked into the city. We have accepted a mission and are looking for it and its companions..."

She roughly described the appearance and characteristics of the Sleeping Cat and the Nightmare Horse.

Ugo shook his head:

"If I encounter such an obviously aberrant creature, I will try to hunt it down."

"Have you ever seen a child? He likes to play games and wears tomato scrambled eggs. Oh, you don't know what tomato scrambled eggs are. It's a set of red and yellow things." Shang Jianyao asked.

Ugo looked at him and asked:

"Is this also an aberrant creature?"

"No, this is my friend. He should also have come to the First City." Shang Jianyao explained sincerely.

Ugo thought for a moment and said:

"never seen it."

He answered a few more questions from Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian, without mentioning a single word about what happened in the room.

Jiang Baimian stopped as soon as he saw what was going on and led Shang Jianyao out of the hotel.

She looked back at the surveillance camera at the door:

"Later, let Lao Ge go through the surveillance videos during this period. It would be great if there are sleeping cats, nightmare horses or Xiao Chong. Well, he is the most efficient."

"Then what do we do?" Shang Jianyao asked.

Jiang Baimian pointed in one direction and said:

"Go to the home of the first patient in this 'unintentional' epidemic.

"The first patient is always the most special and often reveals something."

The first patient of this "accidental disease" epidemic was named Aisha, who lived on the fourth floor of Apartment No. 19, Strip Street.

Her husband is a stevedore at the dock, and she has no fixed job, so she can undertake clothing accessories and certain parts to support the family and take care of their two children.

——In the Green Olive District, there are many similar part-time female workers, mainly in the ready-made garment industry, because the production lines of a large number of factories are relatively old and have not been modified. Many small accessories for clothing, such as flowers in different parts and special shapes. Buttons, etc., require workers to use their hands to complete.

It's not complicated, it's just that there are a lot of them. It's not cost-effective for the factory to hire a large group of people specifically for this. On the one hand, there are fixed salary expenses every month, and on the other hand, the next batch of clothes may not be needed. This kind of processing can be completed by perhaps four or five people paired with machines.

Therefore, owners of small and medium-sized garment factories choose to find contractors, who will distribute the flowers, buttons and other accessories that need to be processed on a piece-by-piece basis, allowing women like Aisha who do not have a fixed job to work. Home is finished.

The contractor only needs to do two things. One is to find skilled workers to train Aisha and others before distribution and teach them how to do it. The other is to pay a part of the fee to the corresponding gang, which not only prevents people from sabotaging it, but also can help They intimidate those part-time female workers, lest they sell the materials they were handed out, which would cost them both money and their lives.

The strip street is not far from Ugo Hotel. It only took Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao five minutes to reach their destination and enter the apartment No. 19.

It's very humid here. Winter is bone-chillingly cold, and summer is like a large steamer. Fortunately, it's not the hottest months yet, but Jiang Baimian feels a little stuffy.

Along the stairs with mottled handrails, the two arrived at the fourth floor and knocked on Aisha's door.

"Who?" A young boy's voice came out from behind the dark red wooden door with many scratches and peeling paint.

There was undisguised caution in his tone.

Shang Jianyao replied seriously:

"I said I came here to make friends with you, do you believe me?"

"I don't believe it." The little boy behind the door replied without hesitation.

Jiang Baimian had already thought of an excuse and said with a soft voice:

"We are relic hunters, the adventurers in the story. We are investigating a strange cat. I want to ask you if you have seen it."

"What kind of cat..." A more immature little girl's voice came out.

The little boy quickly interrupted her:

"Don't talk to strangers. Dad said there are bad people outside and will sell us out! Only when he comes back can we open the door."

The little girl stopped making sounds.

Jiang Baimian took advantage of the situation and asked:

"What about your mother? She's not at home?"

At this moment, she suddenly felt a little guilty, feeling that she was exposing the child's wounds.

The two children behind the door were silent for a while before the little boy answered:

"Dad said that mom was sick and went to a far away place, and she can't come back until she recovers."

Phew... Jiang Baimian breathed out and prepared to ask further questions.

At this time, Shang Jianyao asked on her behalf:

"Have you seen how mom got sick?"

The little boy's tone became very low:

"I saw it..."

"Did she get sick at home?" Shang Jianyao asked.

The little boy was a bit crying:

"No. That day, she went to Aunt Anna's house to get flowers to make, and she still hadn't come back by noon. Thea and I kept waiting for her, and we were so hungry...

"Then we heard noises on the street, so we went to the window and looked outside, and then we saw our mother. Her eyes were red and she kept shouting that she was very sick..."

Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao already knew what happened next - Aisha injured several people, evaded the pursuit of the security guards, and was shot to death near Labei Street.

Shang Jianyao asked again:

"Did she have those flowers around her?"

"No." The little boy answered first, and then emphasized, "I can't talk to you anymore!"

Shang Jianyao took out a few "Ralphie" candies and placed them in the gap at the bottom of the door:

"Thank you for your answers, this is your reward.

"This kind of sugar will give you a little diarrhea. Don't eat too much, or you will get sick."

While he was talking, Jiang Baimian also squatted down and picked up three of the "Ralphie" candies.

She shook her head at Shang Jianyao, and said with a strong voice:

"Children here are not able to resist sweets, so they will definitely eat too much."

She immediately smiled at the closed door and said:

"Each person only has one, so you can't steal it."

She stuffed two "Ralphie" candies in turn and confirmed that they were taken by the little boy and the little girl respectively.

"I'll just lick it a few times. I won't have diarrhea, right?" the little girl asked innocently.

"I'm not sure. Why don't you wait until your father comes back and ask him?" Jiang Baimian maintained the tone of talking to children.

The little boy's "Hmm" voice was a little loud.

Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao got up one after another and left Aisha's house.

"Judging from Aisha's son's answer, she should have received the batch of handmade flowers she needed to make before she fell ill..." Jiang Baimian analyzed as he walked down the stairs.

This is because Aisha’s house is not far from the subcontractor Anna’s house, and it takes no more than fifteen minutes to walk. Even including the training time, she must have walked back before she became ill. This is also the result of the Sheriff’s investigation.

And judging from the fact that the batch of handmade flowers were not scattered around her, it was most likely that she suddenly suffered from an "unintentional illness" on the way back.

The Sheriff in charge of this matter did not investigate clearly on this point. It seems that the batch of handmade flowers were all picked up by passers-by, and it was impossible to determine the specific location where Elsa's "unintentional illness" occurred.

Speaking of this, Jiang Baimian suddenly turned around and glanced at the door of Aisha's house.

She sighed and said:

"After the 'Wuxin Disease' attack occurred and she turned into a beast, she kept leaning all the way here..."

Shang Jianyao did not respond.

Jiang Baimian quickly adjusted his condition:

"We will simulate Elsa's route later to see where she will pass by. Now let's visit the residents on the floors below. These are the people Elsa may encounter when she goes out."

"Maybe it's someone from above who happened to meet Aisha in the corridor." Shang Jianyao helped refine the details as usual in group discussions.

This time, his thinking was not so jumping.

"Well." Jiang Baimian breathed out again, "Then let's all visit."

For the next half hour, they knocked on doors door to door and met all kinds of residents.

There is a relic hunter who was injured while adventuring in the wasteland of the North Shore; there is a family where the husband is busy in a factory and the wife works part-time as a street girl; there is an empty room at this time; there is a person who saved a sum of supplies and went through all kinds of hardships to enter the First City, and then returned to the original city. There is a couple who have not obtained citizenship and are living a very hard life; there is a middle-aged man who is suffering from illnesses and has lost all his relatives because of long-term drinking of untreated water and eating red river fish...

In the end, two things settled in Jiang Baimian's mind:

Narrow, dark staircase; no one over fifty.

"Let's go." Jiang Baimian left the apartment first.

She and Shang Jianyao followed Aisha's possible route to the home of subcontractor Anna. Along the way, they were like real police officers, questioning the residents on both sides, trying to make sure that Aisha fell ill. Place.

After patient investigation, the two people roughly locked in an area.

The seven or eight-storey apartments here are built one after another, making the streets quite narrow.

Jiang Baimian raised his head and looked to both sides, and asked casually about Shang Jianyao:

"Do you have any idea?"

Shang Jianyao replied seriously:

"Wait for the power outage."

PS: I got a small cotton-padded jacket and was successfully promoted, hehe. After staying up all night, I really can’t do it anymore, so I go to bed at a regular time. I have to be busy in the next week to adapt to the changes in my life role. There may only be one update at noon every day, and then it will resume two updates, but the single update on weekends will also officially start. , thank you everyone~