Chapter 600 - 500: Is This Guy a Special Forces Soldier?

Chapter 600: Chapter 500: Is This Guy a Special Forces Soldier?

In the park.

Shen Xin walked Celestial Skill on her leash, with Ding Yuwei strolling alongside them.

At the police academy, there was a course on covert surveillance.

The most common technique was for a male and female officer to pose as a couple.

When it was just colleagues, there was always a certain awkwardness.

But Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei were different. They were a real couple. Back in Dian Nan, they were always together, often walking Celestial Skill just like this.

Behind them, high up in the treetops, Er Long followed in silence.

In a parking lot in the distance, Yang Zeran and the other officer were glued to the live video feed, watching the pair intently.

Zhao Tianxing pursed his lips and pointed at the screen. "You can tell they’re an old married couple."

Yang Zeran nodded in complete agreement.

In movies and TV shows, cops posing as a couple on surveillance would be intimately linking arms, ready to embrace the moment their target looked back.

But in reality, it wasn’t like that at all.

He remembered his instructor for that course at the academy telling them not to be fooled by romantic dramas. The instructor had said that when he went out with his wife now, he couldn’t wait to be ten feet away from her.

So a real couple was just like Shen Xin and Ding Yuwei: Shen Xin walking the dog behind, and Ding Yuwei walking by herself up ahead.

If one of them stopped to admire the scenery, the other wouldn’t even turn their head.

Holding hands or linking arms was completely out of the question.

"Shen Xin, turn left up ahead," Yang Zeran said into the communicator, giving him a reminder.

Both of them were wearing micro-earpieces.

Leash in one hand, phone in the other, Shen Xin scrolled as he overtook Ding Yuwei and ambled to the left.

Ding Yuwei fell behind. She even stopped to take a picture of some landscaping with her phone. When she finished and turned around, she saw that Shen Xin had "vanished."

Unconcerned, she stayed where she was and kept taking pictures.

And Shen Xin, having turned left, didn’t seem to care at all that his girlfriend was lagging behind.

The man in sunglasses approached from the opposite direction, walking a golden retriever.

Overhead in the treetops, Er Long had a clear view of everything.

Yang Zeran stared intently at the screen, cautiously whispering, "Almost there, almost there."

Shen Xin stopped, seemingly replying to a message on his phone, while Celestial Skill sniffed around nearby.

As Yang Zeran’s voice said "Now" in his earpiece, Shen Xin finished his message, pocketed his phone, and turned, coming face-to-face with the man in sunglasses just a few steps away.

Their eyes met for a split second before naturally sliding away.

From that brief glance, Shen Xin got only a preliminary impression of the man.

He had a somewhat long, narrow face, thin lips, and a large pair of sunglasses that obscured the upper half of his face.

Shen Xin calmly continued walking toward him, leading Celestial Skill.

Next up was Celestial Skill’s part to play.

She was supposed to proactively approach the golden retriever. But this retriever was incredibly friendly; before Celestial Skill could even do anything, it eagerly came over and started sniffing her rear.

Perfect.

In the scenario Shen Xin had planned for Celestial Skill, she was supposed to start some trouble and see if they could get into a fight.

Let the two dogs fight, then observe the man’s reaction.

If the man was the polite type, Shen Xin would be polite too. They’d separate their dogs, he’d apologize, strike up a conversation, compliment the golden retriever’s features, and ask where he usually walked his dog, if he lived nearby, and so on.

If it was the other scenario—if the man was uncaring or cold—

Then Shen Xin would play the villain, complaining that the man’s golden retriever bit his dog and starting an argument. The goal was the same.

To see if this person was really just out walking his dog.

Unexpectedly, just as Celestial Skill was about to channel her inner drama queen and pick a fight with the retriever, she froze.

She ignored the golden retriever behind her, deliberately moved closer to the man in sunglasses, and gave him a quick sniff.

Then she immediately whipped her head around and barked urgently at Shen Xin a few times.

’It’s him.’

’The target.’

Shen Xin, who had been about to start his act, heard Celestial Skill’s thoughts and froze abruptly.

’What does that mean?’

’It’s him, the target... which target?’

In an instant, a jolt shot through Shen Xin’s mind. ’It couldn’t be... *that* target, could it?’

Lately, Celestial Skill only had one target: the suspect who stole the video recorder.

At that moment, Shen Xin was so stunned that he completely forgot to act. He instinctively looked up at the man in sunglasses before him.

It was too sudden, too unexpected.

It was like casually walking Celestial Skill down the street, bumping into a random stranger, and having her suddenly identify them as the culprit.

"Shen Xin, what are you doing?" Yang Zeran’s voice crackled in his earpiece.

Shen Xin didn’t hear him at all. His mind was completely blank.

He had spent five days working around the clock, racking his brains, unable to figure out who the culprit was or how they had disappeared.

And then this culprit had just appeared before him, out of the blue, without any warning.

No matter how calm he usually was, the sudden shock was too much.

Shen Xin froze for at least two seconds.

And during those two seconds, the man in sunglasses stared right back at Shen Xin.

He was wearing sunglasses, so it was impossible to see the change in his eyes.

Those two seconds of astonishment felt like both an instant and an eternity. Shen Xin’s mind suddenly cleared, and he instinctively looked down. He immediately yanked Celestial Skill’s leash and scolded, "What are you barking at?"

But perhaps because he was so shocked and caught off guard, Shen Xin felt his own words sounded unnatural as soon as he said them.

Just then, Ding Yuwei, who had been lagging behind, walked over.

Shen Xin quickly pulled Celestial Skill to his side.

She had suddenly detected a familiar scent but hadn’t received any instructions from Shen Xin. Right now, she had only one thought in her mind: to let Shen Xin know that she had found the target.

So Celestial Skill resisted, barking continuously at the man in sunglasses while also turning her head to bark at Shen Xin.

Her thoughts flooded Shen Xin’s mind.

’It’s him!’

’He’s the target!’

’Quick!’

"Stop barking," Shen Xin snapped, forcefully pulling Celestial Skill close to restrain her.