Qiming Chapter 79

Chapter 79

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Five o'clock in the morning.

The temperature was only ten degrees. Gu Yunfeng sneezed loudly beside a garbage can on the street. When he looked up, he saw the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon. The sky was gradually brightening, and sanitation workers had begun dragging carts along the chilly streets, clearing away fallen leaves.

Xu Chengyue was holding a cup of hot coffee while studying a map, and Qin Wei, sitting on a bench under a streetlamp, yawned and nearly fell asleep.

They had found nothing all night. Although they had eliminated 60% of the buildings, 40% still needed to be checked. If they were a bit luckier, they might be able to find a living victim within the remaining two hours.

Their luck couldn't be that bad, right? Maybe the next one would be the one?

Gu Yunfeng rubbed his hands together, took a few steps forward, and stopped in front of a building called Huatian Tower. He looked up at the thirty-story building and was about to head towards the security office when his phone vibrated urgently in his pocket.

"Captain Gu, what's your status now? Have you found Mr. Fang?" Shu Pan anxiously pressed him, his voice louder than usual by two or three notches. In the background, Gu Yunfeng could faintly hear noisy voices and swearing.

"Not yet, I'm anxious too."

"Aiyo, please hurry up! My classmate, Fang Yuejia, hasn't slept all night and is going mad, crying and making a scene to find his dad. He's also saying we're incompetent and that he'll file a complaint against you."

"Incompetent? Yes, incompetent..." Gu Yunfeng muttered in agreement, pulling a face.

"There's nothing I can do about it. Try to calm the family down first. If he really wants to complain, let him, you can't stop him anyway." Gu Yunfeng rubbed his eyes. He was frustrated too, unable to find the person, but there was no way to make someone appear out of thin air. All he could do was focus on calming things down, even if it meant sacrificing himself.

"What did the kidnappers reveal afterwards?" he asked. Every four hours, the kidnappers had been leaking scandals about Zhiyin Biotech. It had been eighteen hours since eleven o'clock yesterday morning, so there should have been five leaks by now.

They had been driving around the city all night searching for people, so he hadn't had time to check the news. He was quite curious about what the last two leaks were and whether they could be more sensational than the first three.

"No idea," Shu Pan replied bluntly. "They've all been deleted."

"Deleted by Zhiyin Biotech?"

"Probably." Shu Pan lowered his voice, moved to a quieter spot, and then returned to his normal tone. "They're moving fast, they're treating this matter as more important than Fang Xing's life. Fang Yuejia has been in constant contact with various PR firms, and the media are frantically deleting posts. He doesn't seem nearly as concerned about his dad."

Shu Pan rolled his eyes as he spoke. "They're deleting posts at an impressive speed. I've checked all sorts of gossip forums and found nothing."

"Where were the last two leaks posted?"

"Same local forum as before," Shu Pan said. "The kidnappers were quite frustrated after the last account hack, so before posting this time, they specifically called Fang Yuejia ten minutes in advance to tell him which ID they would use."

He couldn't laugh or cry as he added, "Is he stupid? What's the point of telling Fang Yuejia? The guy just turned around and got people to watch and delete the posts. He should have called 110 instead, maybe they could have salvaged something."

"So there's no trace of the last two leaks?" Gu Yunfeng asked.

"Yeah, maybe I should camp out on the forum for a few days and see if anything comes up."

"Alright, let me know if you find anything." After hanging up, Gu Yunfeng rubbed his temples to wake himself up and sneezed again as he approached Xu Chengyue.

As he put down the phone, he suddenly felt like he was overthinking. What did the scandals about Zhiyin Biotech have to do with them? Their job was to catch the people who kidnapped Fang Xing. Whatever laws Zhiyin Biotech had broken or crimes they had committed were none of their concern.

But curiosity is human nature.

Feeling exhausted, he looked down to see Professor Xu handing him the half-empty cup of hot coffee. "Want some?"

He naturally took it, lifted the lid, and took a sip. When he looked up again, the sky was fully bright, with a single star still hanging in the sky, and the street was littered with sycamore leaves.

Qin Wei, wearing a black coat, had actually fallen asleep leaning on the bench.

"Old Qin can actually sleep like that," Gu Yunfeng commented while sipping his coffee, his expression complicated.

"Should we wake him?"

"Forget it, let him sleep a bit longer. We can go up and take a look." As he spoke, Gu Yunfeng pointed with his left hand at the office building in front of them, where the sign read Huatian Tower.

—————

The office building didn't seem to use any red materials either. Gu Yunfeng walked around the exterior of Huatian Tower, noting that the aluminium panels on the façade were in two colours: grass green and deep-sea blue, neither of which was red. He squatted down, disappointed, and looked up at the hundred-meter-tall building.

Where exactly was Fang Xing being held?

"Wen Xin just called," Xu Chengyue said as he walked over, his trench coat billowing slightly in the morning breeze, his gaze deep as he looked at Gu Yunfeng. "Ruihe Hospital has pulled up records of some patients who underwent craniotomies."

"Patients?" Gu Yunfeng raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the term.

"They didn't admit to conducting illegal human experiments, claiming these were routine surgeries." Xu Chengyue spread his hands helplessly, crumpling the paper coffee cup in his hand before tossing it into the trash.

"Among these 'patients' was a twenty-year-old male named Wei Yi. Three years ago, while he was in his second year of university, he was admitted to the hospital after falling into a coma due to a ruptured brain aneurysm and never regained consciousness. Two years ago, at the suggestion of the neurosurgery department at Ruihe Hospital, his family consented to this 'special' surgery, but it resulted in his death."

"Wei Yi had an older brother, five years his senior." Xu Chengyue extended his right hand to touch the building's façade, tilting a loose aluminium panel upwards by thirty degrees.

"According to staff at Ruihe Hospital, after Wei Yi's surgery failed and he died, his brother Wei Han brought a group of people and a knife to cause trouble at the hospital. He was later detained for fifteen days. During the altercation, he both inflicted and received injuries, leaving a scar on his forehead, a characteristic that matches the description of the kidnapper given by Liu Shifu."

"So, the person who kidnapped Fang Xing is likely this Wei Han?"

"Highly likely." Xu Chengyue nodded. "Wen Xin has already contacted the public security department that handled the case and they gave us Wei Han's current workplace. The address is..."

After reciting the address, Gu Yunfeng suddenly stood up, glanced around at the blue street signs, and pulled out his nearly dead phone to compare the map.

"Isn't that nearby?" he muttered, frowning as he looked up again at the tall building before them.

They were now standing in a commercial centre on the outskirts of the city. Within five hundred meters of Huatian Tower, there were over a dozen office buildings. Wei Han was an employee of the property management company for this commercial centre, stationed at an office building called Jufeng International.

This large commercial centre had only one building that matched their assumptions, a building with a multicoloured exterior, Huatian Tower. And Jufeng International was less than a hundred metres away from it, offering a perfect vantage point for someone observing from a height.

"The red building Fang Xing mentioned could very well be this one," Gu Yunfeng said, shading his eyes from the rising sun as he looked up at the aluminium cladding reflecting the sunlight.

The problem was, Huatian Tower didn't have a red exterior. It appeared green from the east and dark blue from the north.

He hadn't seen any red.

Xu Chengyue was still standing by the outer wall, on tiptoe, examining the vertical aluminium cladding from a downward angle.

A few seconds later, he suddenly took a few steps back, astonished, and walked quickly over to Gu Yunfeng. Grabbing his arm, he pulled him over to the wall. His strength was impulsive, powerful, and highly explosive.

"When you look down from above, the angle reveals the cross-section of the aluminium cladding. From this perspective, Huatian Tower is red."

The street was becoming busier, with more cars and pedestrians hurrying through the alleys, starting their day's work.

"If you can't see it, we can take the elevator to the upper floors of the adjacent building. Trust me, from a high vantage point looking down, it's definitely red."

Xu Chengyue unzipped his trench coat as the temperature rose under the morning sun. He was convinced that Fang Xing was trapped in a high-floor room with a window, and from there, he would naturally see the red Huatian Tower below.

Not green, not dark blue, but red from the bottom up.

There was only one hour left before the final countdown.

If they couldn't find Fang Xing within that hour, the newly-appointed CEO of the listed company might not survive. It was just the beginning of the rush hour, and more people were starting to appear around them. They had to quickly locate Fang Xing and the kidnappers before most people began their work.

Gu Yunfeng didn't hesitate. He nodded and started walking, and the two of them headed towards Jufeng International, where Wei Han was.

Qin Wei was still lying on the bench, snoring loudly, undisturbed by the passing crowds. Gu Yunfeng sighed, thinking that there was no point waking Old Qin, as he would likely be a hindrance in the upcoming operation. So, he sent him a text, asking him to cooperate in case they needed to take action later.

Unlike the open-access Huatian Tower, Jufeng International was under closed management. Entry required registration with a card. To avoid alerting the kidnappers, Gu Yunfeng and Xu Chengyue had to climb over the wall.

The last time they had climbed a wall was when they were tracking Qiu Lu to Ronghua Biotech, so they had some experience.

However, after Xu Chengyue had painstakingly climbed over and was standing in front of the elevator in the ground-floor lobby, about to press the button for the eighteenth floor, Gu Yunfeng caught his outstretched hand.

"We can't take the elevator," Gu Yunfeng whispered. "The kidnappers are likely in this building, but we're only sure they're on the eighteenth floor or above, right?"

"Mhmm, we'll have to search each floor one by one." After saying this, Xu Chengyue glanced at the time, an hour left. One hour should be enough time to take the elevator up to find Fang Xing.

But...

"Let's walk up," Gu Yunfeng suggested, pointing towards the emergency stairwell. "Taking the elevator will definitely get us noticed."

"Walk... to the eighteenth floor?"

"Is there a problem with that?"

‿︵‿︵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.

Angel: I'm with Chengyue on this one...

Translated: September 3, 2024 by Angel

Edited: December 5, 2024 by Angel