Chapter 96: Reasonable Inference

Chapter 96: Chapter 96: Reasonable Inference

The chief of police for the Southeast City District was definitely an important figure there.

He had covered up the gang’s move on Master Chang’s junkyard. He’d also let all the gangsters who were brought in go free. The silencing of the police officer Master Chang knew must have been his doing as well.

’This chief is no good.’

Xiang Yi felt no psychological burden whatsoever about finding and killing him.

He left the hotel completely unnoticed, once again riding the same crotch rocket toward the police station.

In the dead of night, the bike’s flashing lights might have seemed conspicuous, but that very conspicuousness helped conceal Xiang Yi’s own features.

Xiang Yi wasn’t trying to cause a scene. A few patrol cars that passed by only gave him a casual glance before driving off.

The streets near the police station no longer had the small alleys found closer to the suburbs.

After parking, Xiang Yi simply stood next to a closed storefront, eating while he waited. No one bothered him.

He waited for about ten minutes.

A face Xiang Yi had just seen online walked out of the police station lobby and headed for the parking lot.

"Finally out."

Xiang Yi and Shi Tie got back on the crotch rocket, falling back about half a block to tail the car the chief was driving.

The police chief, Tao Huo, was bound to have good counter-surveillance instincts, so Xiang Yi didn’t plan to follow him for long.

After just two intersections, he took advantage of a red light to get off the bike early, giving Shi Tie a short command.

Shi Tie twisted the motorcycle’s throttle all the way, sending it hurtling toward Tao Huo’s car.

The chief saw a vehicle rapidly approaching in his rearview mirror and immediately slammed on the gas to try and evade it.

However, a loud CRASH rang out, just as expected.

Shi Tie’s crotch rocket slammed into the left side of the car’s hood, and both vehicles were severely deformed.

The car’s airbag deployed instantly.

At the same time, the traffic light overhead began to flash.

"Traffic collision detected. The Traffic Management Bureau has been automatically notified. Please move your vehicle to the side of the road and wait patiently."

The police chief pushed aside the slowly deflating airbag and yelled at Shi Tie, "You damn punk! Do you even know how to drive?!"

He seemed to have genuinely mistaken Shi Tie for some reckless street-racing kid.

But just as the words left his mouth, Shi Tie suddenly moved.

It shattered the car window with a single punch. Its massive hand clamped over the lower half of Tao Huo’s face, preventing him from crying out as it hauled him out of the car.

Tao Huo’s hands beat against Shi Tie’s arm, but he was no match for Shi Tie’s strength.

Xiang Yi rushed over and placed a hand on the motorcycle. The repair Spiritual Energy activated, and the shattered front of the bike was restored to new in an instant.

Tao Huo’s eyes widened instantly. As if realizing something, he gradually stopped struggling.

Seeing this, Xiang Yi was about to hop on the motorcycle but suddenly realized something. He sprinted to the base of the traffic light pole that had just issued the warning and touched it.

He let out a faint hiss, returned to the crotch rocket, and the two men and one Corpse Ghost quickly vanished down the street.

When the traffic police arrived, all they found was an empty car stopped in the middle of the road.

「The Suburbs.」

Xiang Yi had Shi Tie let the man down from the bike.

Shi Tie dropped Tao Huo on the ground. Tao Huo coughed incessantly from the putrid stench on Shi Tie’s hand.

Shi Tie had already given his terminal to Xiang Yi.

Unfortunately, unlike Guo Hu, Tao Huo didn’t seem to be the type to leave clues on his terminal.

Xiang Yi casually tossed the terminal back to Shi Tie and leaned in front of Tao Huo. "Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"Cough... I do."

"How?"

"Someone... cough, cough... asked me to pay close attention to recent bounties for work, but they didn’t want me to post the bounty directly on our system. So I memorized your face."

"Do you know why I came for you?"

Tao Huo slowly got to his feet and straightened his disheveled clothes, acting less like a prisoner and more like he was at a formal meeting.

"For someone unrelated to me to suddenly show up, it can only be because I did something I shouldn’t have."

"The only thing I can think of is what happened yesterday during the day."

"A group of gangsters went to the junkyard and were brought to me. Then someone told me to let them go. Not long after I released them, three military-grade orbital satellites were hacked, and the junkyard was razed to the ground."

Xiang Yi was surprised by Tao Huo’s honesty. "Since you’re willing to lay out the whole story, you must be well aware of the reasons behind it."

"Actually, I don’t know the full details. The Iron Shell Company had no plan to hack the satellites. Someone else interfered."

"Who would interfere? Who would dare?"

"The person who put the bounty on you."

"As far as I know, it was someone from the company who put the bounty on me."

"No organization is a monolithic entity. Some people want you dead, but others have their eyes on different prizes. Like me, for example."

"I never arranged for the police to track you. You should have been able to experience that for yourself."

’What Tao Huo said was interesting.’

He was answering Xiang Yi’s questions while also presenting facts to show that he wasn’t the one who wanted him dead, trying to extricate himself from the situation.

His words were plausible. Xiang Yi really hadn’t been tracked by the police, for the most part. The only time was when he was acting suspiciously and got spotted by a plainclothes officer.

However, Xiang Yi didn’t immediately take Tao Huo’s words as lies or truth. Instead, he continued to think, connecting it to his past experiences.

He had, indeed, always lumped the prison and the Iron Shell Company together.

But in reality, the company and the prison really did need to be considered separately.

The manhunt he was subjected to had been arranged by the prison from the very beginning. It was the prison, not the company, that wanted to completely bury the "crimes against humanity" charge leveled against him.

It was just that the prison’s initial assassination attempt had failed and, worse, had blown the situation wide open.

The starship crash and the resulting hundreds of casualties had drawn the attention of the Iron Shell Company, the power behind the prison.

’The prison definitely doesn’t want more people to know about my existence.’

’Otherwise, couldn’t the prison just tell the company, and the company could then openly declare that someone convicted of crimes against humanity had escaped their subordinate prison and ask the Anka Government to hand me over?’

’If they refused? Then Iron Shell could send their own people, giving them a legitimate excuse to deploy personnel onto the planet. Why would they need to be so covert about it?’

So, since the company hadn’t done that, it proved Xiang Yi’s theory was correct.

The prison was indeed trying to bury everything related to him even deeper.

Coincidentally, the Iron Shell Company had discovered an opportunity to secretly take control of Anka Star. They had focused all their energy on infiltrating the planet, thus overlooking the trouble the prison had caused earlier.

It was even possible they were deliberately led to overlook it.

’A single prison couldn’t possibly have the power to pin someone with a "crimes against humanity" charge. The whole affair was probably orchestrated by a high-ranking executive or someone similar within the Iron Shell Company.’

Since the events of the previous day, many things had become increasingly clear to Xiang Yi.

Although everything he’d just thought through was just speculation, he was seventy percent certain it was the truth.

But even if this was all the prison’s doing, he still had to take action against the Iron Shell Company.

Because while the company might not know what the prison was doing, the prison, conversely, could leverage the company’s connections.

Just like yesterday—how could a mere prison have the ability to hack military satellites?

Only by using the company’s power could yesterday’s events have happened.

And once the company was impacted, the power the prison could borrow would inevitably shrink as well.

’So right now, it doesn’t matter whether the police chief knew or what he did.’

’What’s important is that his very existence helps the Iron Shell Company infiltrate the Anka Government. He will become one of the tools the prison uses to continue hunting me, and he is also a key node in the Iron Shell Company’s network for infiltrating Anka Star.’

’So he has to die.’

Of course, Xiang Yi didn’t act immediately. Instead, he asked, "What benefits did the Iron Shell Company promise you? And what did they ask you to do?"

"The benefit is that I get to keep my position as chief after they take over Anka Star, and I’ll be able to climb to an even higher position later on."

Tao Huo watched Xiang Yi’s expression as he answered, "What they asked me to do is cooperate with their informants. Normally, they don’t ask for much."

"How many people are connected to the Iron Shell Company? How many have already decided to side with them?"

"I don’t know how many, but there are a lot. But even if I answer all your questions, I’m probably not making it through the night, am I?"

"That’s right."

Xiang Yi didn’t think he could deceive Tao Huo, so he admitted it.

"But you should think about it from another angle."

"If you die and take all their secrets to the grave, I won’t be able to find them. Won’t they just get to continue living their comfortable lives?"

"But what about you? Why not find some people to go down there with you?"

"I know you’ll hesitate, but if you refuse me, the ones accompanying you won’t be the people you know. It’ll be your family."

"Your terminal may not have the content I was looking for, but it does have your family’s contact information..."

"I can promise you one thing: as long as your family doesn’t come looking for trouble with me, as long as they don’t take over your job of working for Iron Shell and just disappear from my sight, I won’t bother them."

"Also, I can give you time to write a last will."