S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 5 Chapter 41

Inheritor of the Three Murderers 10 – Running Dangerously

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Inside the SCI office, Jiang Ping was investigating the participants of the marathon this time.

Because it was a city marathon, the number of participants reached twenty thousand. Together with the onlookers and the people cheering, this section of the street was conservatively estimated to have a flow of more than a hundred thousand people.

In addition to the organisers of such a large event, the police would of course also be involved, and higher-level security departments would send professionals to maintain order, including special police and plain-clothed police officers.

Lu Fang contacted the official in charge of security for this event, and when the other party heard, what? A dangerous person had entered the marathon crowd? They immediately sent a specialist over with almost all the "information" they had.

The specialists this time were two police officers from the security department, one called Chen Si, one called Lu Xiaolan, a man and a woman. They weren't very old, Chen Si was in his thirties, and Lu Xiaolan was in her twenties, and they were both very smart and capable.

When the two walked into the SCI office, they saw this scene...

The large empty space in the middle of the office was filled with all kinds of printing paper, piled up as high as a small mountain. In the pile of paper, Zhan Zhao and Bai Chi were flipping through their books at an inhuman speed. Zhao Jue was sitting with his legs crossed on the side of the desk folding paper aeroplanes, and the entrance of the office was filled with paper aeroplanes... Zhao Jue folded one and threw it towards a different angle, but the strange thing was, those paper planes turned around in the air... eventually flying to where the door was and getting stuck in a pile.

The sound of Jiang Ping tapping on the keyboard was about twice as fast as the rhythm of the second hand on the wall clock, steadily crackling non-stop. While the others were away, a beautiful white lion was lying on the entire three-person sofa, sleeping.

The two of them were shocked when they saw the lion. Even if Lisbon tilted his face back, yawned and shook his mane, they still wouldn't believe that he was alive!

Chen Si and Lu Xiaolan looked at each other – Everyone in the police force had heard of SCI's reputation, and the basic evaluation was that it was a place where geniuses were concentrated. At this time the two people's thoughts are almost the same, the so-called genius on the left lunatic on the right, it really is just a line of separation ah...

Standing dumbly in the doorway, there was a ding sound, and the door of the elevator behind them opened.

Bai Yutang walked in with one hand in his pocket, holding the car keys in the other, and saw the two people at the door, slightly stunned.

The two people at the door turned around to see him and were also slightly stunned.

The corners of Lu Xiaolan's mouth curled up. SCI's high face value was not just a legend ah... with just a glance, there were so many handsome men!

Bai Yutang noticed the security department IDs they both wore on their chests and reached out to shake their hands, "Bai Yutang."

"Oh... Captain Bai!" The two hurriedly shook his hand.

Bai Yutang invited them into his office.

In the office, Zhan Zhao raised his head and raised an eyebrow at Bai Yutang – Looking for your dad?

Bai Yutang made an expression that indicated – I'll tell you more about it later.

Zhan Zhao nodded, and his eyes moved back to Chen Si and Lu Xiaolan.

"Dr. Zhan." Chen Si had long heard of Zhan Zhao's great name and hurried over to shake his hand.

Zhan Zhao struggled to straighten his hand before he was able to shake hands with Chen Si across the large pile of information.

Lu Xiaolan curiously squatted on the ground to examine those papers and found that they were all printed personal data, which should be the information of the twenty thousand marathon participants.

"Reading them one by one like this?" Lu Xiaolan exclaimed, looking up to see Xiao Bai Chi, who was looking up from the pile of information. She blinked and couldn't help but ask him, "How old are you?"

Bai Chi blushed and shrank back to continue flipping through the information.

"Already an adult." Jiang Ping handed Bai Chi the last stack of information printed out from the nearly burnt-out printer, "The last hundred of them."

Bai Chi took it and flipped through it with a clamour.

Chen Si curiously asked Bai Yutang, "Is it useful to look at them like this?"

Bai Yutang handed a list to Chen Si.

Chen Si took it in confusion and found that it was densely packed with the names and numbers of the participants... Each participant had to carry a number plate, and when they ran, everyone wore uniform tracksuits, so they could only identify people from their numbers.

"Ask him a name." Bai Yutang said.

Chen Si asked Bai Chi a name.

Bai Chi then reported the five-digit number behind that name.

Lu Xiaolan and Chen Si glanced at each other, finding it unbelievable that the two of them had randomly picked four or five names to ask Bai Chi, and Xiao Bai Chi was able to not only report their numbers but even their basic information.

The two of them looked at Bai Chi in a dazed state, and one thought flashed in their heads – The legendary child prodigy! A living one!

"Did you find that person?" Bai Yutang asked Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao shook his head, "That person hasn't been found yet, but some more serious problems have been discovered."

Bai Yutang frowned.

Chen Si and Lu Xiaolan were finally coming back to their senses – More serious? How serious would that be?

"If one day, you open the list of contestants and find that I'm also in there, how would you feel?" Zhan Zhao asked Bai Yutang.

Bai Yutang was silent for a moment and looked at Zhan Zhao, "You? Participating in the marathon?"

Zhan Zhao nodded.

Bai Yutang said, "It's just the same name, right..."

"It's definitely me!" Zhan Zhao said.

Bai Yutang nodded, "Are you sick? Or have you been kidnapped or controlled by someone or... anyway, you would never take the initiative to participate in a marathon!"

Zhan Yutang nodded, satisfied with Bai Yutang's judgement. He reached out and picked up a stack of probably dozens of pieces of information and shook them at Bai Yutang, "There are these thirty to forty people here, people who are in the same situation as me... that is, people who would never take the initiative to participate in a marathon, but who have signed up to participate in this marathon."

Bai Yutang took the information and looked at it, while asking Zhan Zhao, "Could it be an impromptu decision, or is there a reason for it?"

"Even if there was, for example, their favourite person is participating so they also come to participate, they suddenly find that their health is not good and they need to enhance their exercise, or maybe they want to lose weight, etc... Excluding all of the possibilities, at most, only half of them can be eliminated." Zhan Zhao said, "That means there are still a dozen to twenty people who have no reason to participate in the marathon, but they are going to!"

"Why would these people come?" Lu Xiaolan was curious.

"The right question!" Zhan Zhao nodded and raised his chin to Jiang Ping.

Jiang Ping tapped the keyboard a few times while saying, "I hacked their emails to check their recent communication records."

Bai Yutang walked over.

"I found that they've all received emails from the same email address." Jiang Ping clicked on a few to show Bai Yutang.

"Are they all gibberish?" Lu Xiaolan also came over to look.

"Isn't it strange that everyone received nonsense emails?" Jiang Ping said "Dr. Zhan cracked the pattern of the garbled code and found that it was a combination of codes, which turned out to be the address of a storage box in a shopping mall as well as a set of barcodes. As long as you go to the mall and point the barcode on your cell phone's screen at the code reader of the storage bag box... you'll be able to take out what's stored in the box."

Bai Yutang felt something was amiss, "What was stored in it?"

"I pulled up the mall's surveillance." Jiang Ping shook his head and said, "Almost every day, a person wearing a hoodie and glasses that hid all of their facial features went to put something away, and then a different person picked it up. All they ever took was a small black suitcase."

Bai Yutang asked Jiang Ping to enlarge the photo of the suitcase.

Jiang Ping zoomed in to show Bai Yutang.

Bai Yutang was frowning when a voice came from behind him, "It looks like a case for model pistols."

Everyone turned around and saw Ma Han and Zhao Hu returning.

Ma Han had a hobby of collecting gun models, so he was more knowledgeable in this area.

"Model pistols?" Bai Yutang had a bad feeling.

"I checked the recent internet records of these people again." Jiang Ping said, "They've all coincidentally consulted the use of handguns, and they've all watched a hidden video that requires a password to download."

Saying that, Jiang Ping clicked on that video to show it to the crowd.

They saw that it was a detailed video that taught people how to use a handgun, starting from loading the gun and unloading the magazine...

Chen Si's head buzzed, "Hey hey, what is this for?"

"Worst case scenario," Zhan Zhao briefly added, "there are twenty suspected psychopaths armed with real guns who are mixing into the marathon."

Chen Si and Lu Xiaolan drew a cold breath...

"Arr... arrest them!" Lu Xiaolan was anxious, "Hurry!"

"I've already given the list to the police officers in that precinct, and have already sent officers out to search." Before Zhan Zhao finished speaking, the phone rang.

Jiang Ping answered the phone and said a few words before hanging up, shaking his head at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao was helpless, "Together with the previous few calls, the situation is pretty much the same. The officers went to the homes of these suspects and didn't find the people or the guns, but they did find quite a few bullets, as well as that case."

"Oh no!" Lu Xiaolan jumped up, "The race starts in a little over an hour, those people should already be in the queue!"

"It was already packed when we went to the site just now to check it out." Zhao Hu picked up the remote control to turn on the TV. Sure enough, all the major TV stations were broadcasting live coverage of the S City marathon. When the camera lens swept across the street, the twenty thousand participants had already arrived at the starting point one after another, some of them were seriously going to compete, and some of them were purely joining in the fun. One or two of them were dressed up in flamboyant and strange costumes, and the organisers had prepared a lot of balloons to be released. The scene wasn't chaotic, but it would be too difficult to find twenty people in the sea of people!

Chen Si's face went white, "I thought we only had a criminal with a high IQ in hiding, how did it all of a sudden escalate to finding twenty armed criminals..."

"Captain Bai, what should we do?" Chen Si asked Bai Yutang.

"We know the numbers, we can find the people." Bai Yutang said, "The best way is to catch all the people before they cause a riot."

"But there are so many people gathered now, what if something goes wrong now?" Lu Xiaolan asked.

"It shouldn't." Zhan Zhao however, shook his head, "These people should have a specific target in mind."

Bai Yutang thought for a moment and asked Zhan Zhao, "G said that the inheritor is there, is this attack targeting that inheritor, or is it being planned by the inheritor?"

Zhan Zhao crossed his arms and shook his head, "I don't think any of G's words are credible."

"Ahem."

While the crowd here was discussing, they heard Zhao Jue, who was still folding paper aeroplanes, suddenly cough from the desk over there.

Everyone turned around to look at him.

Zhao Hu was standing at the desk with the remote control and watching the live marathon on TV, and turned his face to ask Zhao Jue, "What's your brilliant opinion, Master Zhao?"

Zhao Jue glanced at Zhao Hu and said, "G's words are absolutely not credible! There's only one reason for him to tell you that information, which is because he wants to use you!"

Bai Yutang looked at Zhan Zhao.

Zhan Zhao nodded, "But regardless of whether we will be used by him or not, we still need to stop this tragedy from happening."

Bai Yutang nodded and asked Chen Si, "Can you contact the organisers to control the camera positions?"

"Of course." Chen Si nodded.

Bai Yutang pointed at Zhan Zhao and Bai Chi, "You two scan the people from here, Jiang Ping, you use that new what's-it-called portrait recognition programme you've got as well, let's find those twenty people."

Jiang Ping nodded in agreement and told the people from the technical department to move twenty monitors up and set them all up.

After this side got busy, Bai Yutang hooked his hand to Ma Han, Zhao Hu and the others, "Let's go."

"Go do what?" Zhao Hu was curious.

Bai Yutang said, "What else? Run a marathon."

The crowd's mouths opened wide.

"Don't tell me you can't run." Bai Yutang pushed open the door and went downstairs, taking out his phone to make a call as he entered the elevator...

Zhan Zhao perked up his ears and heard Bai Yutang say into the phone before the elevator doors closed, "Brother, let me borrow the twins for a bit..."

......

The marathon was about to begin, and the atmosphere was tense.

The monitors had already been installed, and one wall of the SCI office was filled with forty-inch monitors. All of the TV stations corresponded to a few monitors, and they were monitoring the entire marathon course.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Chi tilted their faces and were looking at the crowd on the monitors.

In the forensic room, Gongsun brought Ma Xin and Xiatian to watch, and Zhao Jue stopped folding paper aeroplanes and stroked his chin, looking up in a daze.

Chen Si and Lu Xiaolan were so nervous that they didn't dare to take a breath.

At this time, from the monitor, Bai Yutang and the others could be seen appearing. They were divided into three groups, one at the front, one in the middle and one at the end of the group, waiting for Zhan Zhao and the others to provide the location of the suspicious people through their earpieces before making arrests.

Bao Zheng brought a large number of police officers to the side of the track. Bao Sir was suffering from a stomach ache, the chaos hadn't stopped since G had appeared, and he didn't know which one between him, Zhao Jue and Bai Ye was the disaster star, or maybe they were all disaster stars, and now it was a trio of disasters overlapping each other!

......

Finally, after the starting gun sounded, tens of thousands of colourful balloons rose into the sky, and the competition began... The crowd surged forward...

Zhan Zhao took the walkie-talkie and shouted to the crowd, "Run, run! The first suspect is three hundred metres directly in front of Hu Zi!"

Bai Chi also spoke, "Luo Tian, the one wearing a red vest about two hundred metres in front of you as well!"

"Ma Han, do you see number 14037 about five hundred metres ahead of you? The one wearing yellow!"

"Yutang, there are two directly ahead, one more than a hundred metres and one around three hundred metres, hurry up and chase them! A few have already run ahead!"

......

And so the SCI crowd ran helplessly down the marathon course...

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: February 5, 2024 by Angel

Edited: May 9, 2024 by Angel