Chapter 836: Manpower

Zhang Yao stormed out of the security room and headed straight for the surveillance room on the first floor of Building No. 1.

He wanted to check the surveillance footage to see which bastard had stolen his food delivery.

As it turned out, the surveillance cameras were still broken.

So he ran over to the surveillance room in Building No. 2, only to find that those cameras were broken too.

The entire apartment complex only had these two locations where surveillance could be checked, including the cameras at the main entrance.

There was nowhere else to go.

“God damn it! What the hell are they doing?! The cameras have been broken for this long, and they still haven't fixed them?”

Zhang Yao had known all along that the apartment's surveillance cameras were perpetually broken, but he'd never cared before. Broken was broken. None of his damn business.

But now that the problem had landed squarely on his own shoulders, and he actually needed those cameras, he started cursing.

He found Manager Wu Wen.

He asked Manager Wu Wen why the apartment's surveillance cameras had been broken for so long without being repaired.

Manager Wu Wen of Building No. 1 was completely unflappable.

He sipped his goji berry tea, unhurried and calm. “I haven't been here long. This kind of mess, you should take it up with Wu Meiling.”

So Zhang Yao went to find Manager Wu Meiling. She was chatting and laughing with a young security guard.

Zhang Yao said, “Manager, how long have the apartment's surveillance cameras been broken? What's the deal with not fixing them?”

Manager Wu Meiling paused in surprise at his words, then smiled and said, “Oh, that. The apartment's surveillance system got hit with a nasty virus. I've already reported it to the higher-ups. Don't worry. It'll be fixed soon.”

Zhang Yao slammed both hands down on the desk inside the management office.

The ballpoint pen on the desktop jumped from the vibration.

Zhang Yao gritted out each word harshly. “Well, did you know that some bastard stole my food delivery tonight? Because there's no surveillance footage, I can't find out which asshole it was!”

Wu Meiling covered her mouth with her hand in exaggerated shock. “Something like that actually happened?”

Zhang Yao let out a cold snort. “What did you think? And another thing, why did you guys set up those delivery racks in the first place? If the delivery people had just brought it to my door, my food wouldn't have been stolen!”

At the root of it all, it was those new delivery racks they'd put up a few days ago.

Packages were one thing.

Those package lockers had been around for a long time anyway.

And besides, except for a few specific couriers who still delivered to the door, everything else went into the package lockers.

So now that everything went into the lockers, it didn't really matter.

But what about food deliveries?

They just left them on those delivery racks, in those open cubbies where anyone could just grab whatever they wanted. It wasn't like the package lockers, where only you could retrieve your stuff.

“There's nothing I can do about that. It wasn't my idea to set up those delivery racks. It came from Alice Apartment's upper management.”

Manager Wu Meiling was equally helpless.

“I don't care! You're the manager! I'm giving you two choices right now. First, get rid of those delivery racks. Second, get the surveillance cameras fixed immediately!”

Zhang Yao pounded the desk with both hands, the thumping noise echoing through the room. Who knew if his own hands hurt or not.

Manager Wu Meiling nodded along, saying, “Of course, of course.”

Only then did Zhang Yao let it go and leave Building No. 2.

But even after leaving Building No. 2, Zhang Yao wasn't pinning all his hopes on Manager Wu Meiling. He swore to himself that he would personally catch that bastard who stole his food.

...

Time passed to a little after 8 PM.

The sky was pitch black. A deathly stillness hung in the air, as if something terrible was about to happen.

Neither the moon nor the stars showed any of their usual brilliance.

This meant that anywhere without light was exceptionally dark.

Although it was getting closer to summer, making the days longer and the nights shorter.

But in Nancheng City, whether it was winter or summer, the sky was completely dark by a little after 8 PM.

Huang Kaiyu rode a gray electric bike back to Alice Apartment from outside.

Earlier, he had accompanied Huo Yun to Aisen Town in Germany.

The reason was that he wanted to meet Lucas.

But in the following days, he hadn't seen much of Lucas. Instead, Huo Yun had been locked up in the police station because of that murder video.

Fortunately, the final tests proved that the videos were all AI-generated, so Huo Yun was released. After his release, he and Huo Yun had slowly made their way back to Hua Country and back to Nancheng City's Alice Apartment.

He and Huo Yun had returned to Alice Apartment only two days later than Jiang Ran.

After getting back to Alice Apartment, he had gone straight to his old place in the demolition zone to check on the cats and dogs he kept.

During the time he'd been in Aisen Town, Germany, he had asked some other cat and dog lovers in Nancheng City to come feed them. Of course, he paid them.

These days, purely relying on love to keep things going couldn't sustain much for long.

He went back to the demolition zone to check on his cats and dogs and found that they had been taken excellent care of while he was away.

So he felt reassured.

He was returning to Alice Apartment so late today because he had been at his old place in the demolition zone, taking care of the cats and dogs, keeping company with those furry little creatures.

After entering Alice Apartment, he rode his bike all the way to the bike shed.

This bike shed was just like the ones in many residential complexes now, equipped with charging ports for electric bikes.

At this moment, there were only a few electric bikes or bicycles in the shed. So Huang Kaiyu found a spot, parked his electric bike, pulled out the charger from under the seat, scanned the QR code with his phone, and plugged it in.

“When am I going to buy a new electric bike with a lithium battery? These lead-acid batteries just can't go very far. And they take forever to charge.”

The spot where Huang Kaiyu was standing happened to be right at the edge of the bike shed's roof coverage.

Just then.

Drip!

A liquid flowed down from the roof of the shed and landed on his forehead.

“Is it raining?”

He touched his forehead with his right hand.

He remembered that there hadn't been any rain forecast for the past few days.

He had checked the weather report. Unless the weather report was wrong again.

He pulled his right hand back and, under the dim interior lights of Alice Apartment, saw a streak of bright red on his index and middle fingers.

“It's not rain?”

He quickly stepped backward. As he retreated, he pulled out his phone from his pocket, turned on the flashlight function, then moved to a certain position and shone the light up at the roof of the shed.

Because the roof was a bit high, and the phone's flashlight wouldn't illuminate clearly if he backed up too far, Huang Kaiyu could only see the spot where he had just been standing. Drops of red liquid were continuously dripping down from that spot, finally falling to the ground.

Huang Kaiyu walked back into the shed, unplugged the charger from his gray electric bike—which was more like an electric scooter—pushed it out to the edge of the shed's roof coverage, set down the kickstand, and then carefully stood up on the seat.

Using his phone's flashlight to illuminate the area, now that he was this close, he finally saw the source of the liquid.

On top of the bike shed's roof, a severed human hand lay quietly. The stream of red liquid was flowing out from that hand, then dripping down drop by drop.

Huang Kaiyu's pupils contracted sharply.

His hands trembled uncontrollably.