Chapter 169: Informants

The Ling brothers had indeed left to follow Barty using that minivan of theirs, but the one driving it was not one of the sibling trio. At the moment, on a mountain road, some dozen of kilometers away from the Blackwater Lake, was another surveillance vehicle, parked at the side, watching everything that was happening on the lakefront.

Zhou Yuqing drove the hovercraft onto the surface of the lake; Ling Xiao, who had torn a space in the water, was following her closely.

The rippling sound made by Zhou Yuqing’s finger on the water surface had alerted Ling Xiao, and he transmitted this rhythmic sound to the command center. Both Xia Fei and Ling Yun could not help but be surprised when they heard this.

“That’s a message!” Ling Yun exclaimed. “For her to make such rhythmic sounds of differing lengths, it most definitely is a message! Could she be sending a message to someone?”

Aside from tailing Barty every day, the surveillance team also had someone dedicated to shadowing Zhou Yuqing, but they had not discovered anything suspicious at all these past few days. Were it not for Xia Fei’s sudden change of strategy, having them shift all their focus on investigating and tailing Zhou Yuqing, there was a very high chance that they would never learn all these.

“Let’s record every coded message for now, then we’ll get to deciphering all later,” Xia Fei proposed solemnly.

“Yeah.” Ling Yun nodded deeply. Finally getting a clue after spending the last few days monitoring so closely had made him very excited. It was just that nobody had expected that this breakthrough would not come from Barty but rather that sly woman!

“What a clever method. Turns out that she goes to the pier to buy fish every day just so she can communicate with people from the outside; her method of using the water ripples to transmit messages is just brilliant. No wonder none of our people discovered anything this whole time.” Phantom shook his head as he commented.

Xia Fei nodded. Zhou Yuqing had truly calculated this to a fine degree. The people shadowing her would not get into the water to keep monitoring her, making this deep lake the best tool to pass messages. A woman who could come up with such a method surely was not anyone simple!

All of a sudden, a signal came from somewhere completely different as if replying to Zhou Yuqing’s message.

“There’s someone in the lake!” Xia Fei urgently slid beside the communicator and spoke to Ling Xiao, the one doing the tailing. “We can confirm that Zhou Yuqing’s method of communication to the outside is to have the accomplice hide themselves in the water first, then the two will make use of its soft ripples to communicate and transmit messages. There should be an accomplice of hers somewhere in the body of water right now. Search it carefully; see if you can spot the person.

“If you don’t have the confidence, don’t risk revealing yourself. This isn’t the time for us to close our net on them yet; after all, we haven’t gotten enough evidence on our hands,” Xia Fei commanded firmly.

“I understand. We’re casting a long line to catch the big fish.”

Ling Xiao’s voice could be heard from the other side of the communicator. Because his hidden space was completely under his control, he need not worry about revealing himself when he talked.

“Yes! Do your best to stick to this other person; see where they disembark,” Xia Fei said.

“Roger that.”

Lighting a cigarette, Xia Fei contemplated over this for some time. Hearing the tiny sounds over the monitoring system was like a riddle that deeply fascinated Xia Fei, so much so that he wanted to solve it.

“How about this: I’ll go wait at the Blackwater Lakeside and see if I can find any trace of those men. Stay here and continue your surveillance. Wait till they are done communicating and immediately pass the encrypted messages they send to each other to the code-breaking center for decrypting,” Xia Fei suggested.

“Ling Feng and Philip are at the lakeshore. Both of them are speed ability users. Let’s leave the trailing matter to them. Best if you stay here and take charge of the overall situation,” Ling Yun rejected.

It was too bad that he had said all this just a bit too late; Xia Fei had already opened the door and blasted off. Speed was not the only factor in tailing someone; the person doing it must know how to hide themselves as well. Those Plumagers very easily discovered Ling Feng the last time he attempted to follow them, and that was because he did not have a concealment technique like Breath Control.

Though Xia Fei was a tad slower than Ling Feng in terms of his speed, he had the Breath Control technique to protect himself. He was far more efficient than Ling Feng when it came to tailing and pursuit, so he was ultimately still the most suitable for this task.

…

Zhou Yuqing was lying on the boat, lackadaisical, with one hand dipped into the lake. Any outsider would assume that she was just a bored madam enjoying the sun and lake around her, and no one would even suspect that there was actually a secret in that lake.

Her finger was moving rapidly, receiving a reply soon after she had sent her initial message. Zhou Yuqing’s eyes were shut, interpreting what the other party had sent through the slight ripples she felt with just her palm.

These two conversed in such a manner, clearly well-practiced in this method of communication. After some time, Zhou Yuqing pulled her hand out of the water and used a silk handkerchief to wipe her hand dry, increasing speed to her hovercraft as it went off toward the fish market by the pier.

In that black lakewater, a cunning and agile shadow swam off very quickly toward the shore like a loach.

There was a stream beside the lake. The water of the lake came from underground, so it would slit up if this stream did not exist. This stream flowed outward, merging with a large river some seventy kilometers away. The existence of this rivulet meant the excess lakewater could all be brought out, maintaining a consistent water level in the lake.

The black shadow very swiftly swam into this small stream, and after flowing dozens of kilometers, this water came along a shallow shoal covered with gravel. The current here was swift, making further progress impossible.

Poking their head out to take in the surroundings, that black shadow quickly climbed out and dove into a forest to his right. Taking off their diving suit and scuba gear, the figure stored all the equipment into a spatial ring and changed out to a black-leather jacket, walking out from that forest casually.

There was a hoverbike hidden in a ditch by the forest trail, which had a pile of dried yellow leaves covering it. The person in the leather jacket swept off the leaves and lifted the hoverbike out from the ditch with one hand. It needed to be mentioned that this model of hoverbike weighed at least five hundred. Anyone able to lift this with one hand could be deemed as someone with considerable strength.

After driving along a winding road on that hoverbike and making sure that there was no one following them, this person drove toward an old house somewhere on the outskirts of the city.

….

Xia Fei was several hundred meters away when he came to a stop, positioning himself by a corner of a wall as he watched that leather-clad person from afar.

This house that the person was entering looked very old, with its walls mottled and peeling. The huge metal alloy door was covered in rust, while all the windows had been sealed from the outside, making it impossible for anyone to see anything happening from within the house.

There were not many of such dilapidated houses in the prosperous capital ring. After all, anyone who could afford such a big house would not fail to spend millions of star coins to maintain it every year.

After stopping at the entrance and waiting for a while, the rusted door automatically opened. The man drove in and that big door precariously closed behind him.

Xia Fei lit a cigarette and used his microcomputer to contact Ling Yun, who was at the command center.

“The house on 161 Pontiac Avenue, immediately get me all the information on it. I want to know who owns it, and better yet, the blueprints for the place.” Xia Fei told Ling Yun.

Ling Yun nodded, his finger tapping away quickly on the screen. The Adjudicator Union had immense power, even able to gain access to the government database without the permission of the Alliance officials, so of course doing such a check on a house was well within the organization’s capabilities.

Very soon, the information pertaining to the house was transmitted to Xia Fei’s microcomputer, detailing that the property used to be under a businessman. Because he went bankrupt, all his assets had been liquidated and sold off to repay his debts.

This particular house was presently owned by an auction firm. The family of seven committed suicide in this very house back when that businessman went bankrupt, and such an event was a great taboo to people, which was why over the decades since, no one had sought to buy the house, and the current state of dilapidation was a result of the years of neglect.

“Xia Fei, you’d better not act on your own. Shall I get third bro to support you?” Ling Yun asked.

Xia Fei shook his head. “Your third bro had once clashed with the Plumagers, so I’m afraid the enemy might recognize him. How about we do it like this; Get Philip nearby as reinforcement. I’ll call on his aid if there’s a need, and before that we will maintain radio silence. Wait for my command.”

“Understood.” Ling Yun nodded.

After memorizing the blueprint of that house, Xia Fei’s figure suddenly disappeared from the corner, arriving outside the backyard wall in the blink of an eye.

This backyard wall was almost four meters in height, with plenty of green creepers growing along its surface. Such a height was hardly an obstacle to Xia Fei. He hid in a corner and tried to listen for any movement or sound in the backyard, quickly getting up and over the wall after he confirmed that there was no one on the other side.

The backyard was overgrown with weeds and wild plants, the entire place looking completely rundown. Xia Fei hid himself in the tall grass as he slowly inched toward the living room’s rear window.

All the windows were hammered with thick, wooden planks. Xia Fei found a gap between some of these planks and peeped at the living room inside.

The living room was dark and gloomy, and Xia Fei could not hear any sound from within. Just as he was about to turn and leave, he heard the creaking of a door opening.

He turned his eyes back onto the inside of the living room and vaguely made out someone standing right in the middle of the room. Though Xia Fei had cultivated the Beast Spirit Codex up to possessing superhuman vision, he was still unable to make out the face of the person inside the living room completely.

“You’re back.” A thick yet hoarse male voice rang out. From the direction where this voice came from, this person must be hiding in the shadowy corner of northwest.

“Yeah.” The leather-clad person, the new arrival, took off their jacket, casually tossing it onto the ground before grabbing a chair to sit in.

“Is Butterfly still doing okay?”

“She’s fine. Those guys are all watching Barty, not her. Though she is slightly worried about increasing the variables if we drag this matter further.”

“Oh, why does she think so?”

“According to Butterfly, Barty actually doesn’t really know much. She’s already doing her best, but the information she csn fish out from him is becoming less and less. She surmised that people from the Jian family are already starting to take precautions against Barty, which is why the things he can learn aren’t decreasing. If this continues, though we may have succeeded in shifting their attention to Barty, it can very well reduce his usefulness.”

“Hmm, that’s fine. We still have two other informants. Barty can just be at ease with being our scapegoat; let Butterfly continue to keep him hooked and find out what little information we can from him. We’ll be fine as long as he isn’t alerted.”

Xia Fei was shocked hearing this. There was no doubt these two were Plumagers, and Zhou Yuqing was one of them, too!

Worse was the fact that they still had two other informants within the Jian family aside from Zhou Yuqing!

The conversation continued very simply. Soon, the living room became silent once again. Xia Fei thought about it and did not try to enter the house but retreated several hundred meters from the place, instead. Now that he had finally found some leads, he was not about to act rashly and alert the enemy.

Anxiously establishing a video-call to Thuram, XIa Fei knitted his brows. “Uncle Thuram, looks like the manpower you’ve given me still isn’t enough.”

Thuram chuckled. “You’ve got quite the appetite. I’ve already sent seven of my most capable men to you; how many more do you want now?”

“A lot more,” Xia Fei gravely answered.