Chapter 201 - 146: Capital City? Capital City

[Ding! Congratulations, Host, for scripting the ’He Came From Hell’ plot twice.]

[Calculating reward...]

[Immersion Rating: 89%]

[Congratulations, Host, you have received a reward: Taste of Thoughts.]

[Taste of Thoughts: A true epicure can taste the longing a chef pours into their food and perceive the complex shifts in their emotions.]

[Perhaps you can, too.]

[Note: (When you taste food connected to a case, you can perceive the emotions the culprit has imbued it with.)]

December 7th.

At eight in the morning, Xu Huo opened his eyes in his room at the city bureau. He rubbed his head as memories flooded his mind like a torrent, overwhelming his senses.

A moment later, a skill on his panel flashed briefly.

[Stable Consciousness!]

Xu Huo immediately felt much better. The scattered fragments of memory, once a jumble of conflicting perspectives, began to sort themselves into a coherent order in his mind.

’Taste of Thoughts?’

Xu Huo looked at his newly acquired skill, a strange feeling creeping over him.

’Tasting something related to a case provides a few emotional clues.’

’That’s incredible.’

It was, indeed, incredible.

The first step of any police investigation is crucial. Even when a case looked exactly like a crime of passion, investigators had to think carefully and rule out every other possibility before determining its nature.

And emotion was the biggest factor in that determination!

There was no helping it; police departments were always short-staffed. Even in his past life, a relatively large detachment could only mobilize a few dozen officers at a time.

They didn’t have the manpower to pursue multiple lines of inquiry simultaneously.

Furthermore, the golden window for solving a murder was only seventy-two hours—for some cases, it was as short as forty-eight!

Under these circumstances, if the initial assessment was wrong, even if the team realized their mistake and changed course at the thirty-hour mark—just over a day in...

...the case would be all but unsolvable.

But this skill changed everything. Now, even without overthinking, Xu Huo could simply take a small taste, use the resulting emotions to pinpoint the central conflict, and from there, deduce the motive for the murder!

However...

’Are things related to a case ever going to be... tasty?’

The corner of Xu Huo’s mouth twitched as he recalled the human-flesh cutlets Sun Jiang had made during the Linlan City case.

Jeez, coated in egg wash and breadcrumbs... so good the kids next door would be crying for a bite, right?

You can’t eat that stuff!

And it wasn’t just this case. What other cases would possibly involve something edible?

’I can use it as a last resort, but for now... it’s not that desperate.’

Xu Huo shook his head, deciding not to dwell on it any longer.

He walked out of the room.

The moment he opened the door, a blast of biting wind felt almost solid as it struck his face. It seemed to scrape something away, sharpening his senses and waking him up a little more.

He turned to see a window in the hallway that had been left open, walked over, and shut it.

Then he headed to the station’s cafeteria.

The case was wrapped up and closed.

The cafeteria was more crowded now. It wasn’t like before, when you’d be lucky to see more than a handful of people at mealtimes.

"I bought you some. Knew you’d be up at your usual time, rain or shine,"

Li Jianye called out, waving him over.

Xu Huo nodded and sat down beside him.

"How’s Sun Jiang?"

Xu Huo asked, looking up at Li Jianye as he ate a meat bun.

"Hah, what do you think?"

Li Jianye shook his head and stuffed a mouthful of food in his mouth. He’d been living on instant noodles for the past two days and was sick to death of them. Now that he could finally eat a proper meal, he was making up for lost time.

"He’s going through the system, what else?"

"Tsk. Monk Du’e got the fifty-thousand-yuan reward, so he’s got money now. But... it looks like he’s picked up two more little followers. His group of eight kids is now a group of ten."

Li Jianye mumbled through his food:

"Niuniu’s leg is a tough case. It’s a long-term thing, depends on how her recovery goes."

"Xiao Bai’s eyes were treatable. The surgery’s done and was a success. Once the bandages come off in a couple of days, his vision should be back to normal."

Xu Huo nodded silently, sipping the congee from his bowl.

Yesterday, Sun Jiang had confessed to everything.

It turned out Xu Huo really had been in the same area as him a few months ago. Sun Jiang remembered seeing him, but Xu Huo hadn’t noticed Sun Jiang at all.

"I never would’ve guessed that kid was connected to that old case, too,"

Xu Huo said, shaking his head as he ate.

"Tell me about it. And to think, Sun Pengyu died too soon. If he’d lived, it’s likely two of these tragedies could have been avoided,"

Li Jianye added with a sigh.

If the investigation hadn’t uncovered the truth, he never would have imagined that the death of a single homeless man from illness could directly lead to two separate cases and the loss of more than ten lives!

"And then there were the debt collectors,"

Li Jianye added.

Back then, after Chen Hong gave birth, she didn’t let the couple take the child away.

One reason was that they couldn’t get in touch with her. The second was that if the child had been taken away then, he would have likely been officially registered.

And once his name was on the household registry...

...those debt collectors would have been relentless.

They had been fuming that Sun Pengyu’s death meant the end of their payments. With a registered son, however, they could simply wait for the boy to grow up and force him to continue paying off his father’s debt!

Chen Hong must have considered this.

What she couldn’t have expected, however, was that her son would have a terrifyingly high aptitude for learning.

And for someone with such a high aptitude to spend eleven years in prison...

It was a tragedy.

"What about Monk Du’e? Is he still out there begging?"

Xu Huo changed the subject to Du’e.

"Chao Zi took him away. No idea what for,"

Li Jianye shook his head. "He has fifty thousand in cash now. The city bureau was scarily fast with that reward money, so he doesn’t have to worry about food or clothing."

"Like I said, the government is also covering the two kids’ surgeries, so his financial burden isn’t that heavy at the moment."

"I wouldn’t be so sure about that,"

Xu Huo said, shaking his head.