Ming Po caught his breath and slowly stood up.
"Amazing..."
He muttered in awe, "What a massive health bar."
If the creature had ambushed him while his left hand was holding the cara and his right hand the flashlight, Ming Po really would have had a hard ti dealing with him.
Even now, with half his skull smashed in and all his joints shattered by Ming Po, the pale-skinned man was still faintly twitching.
He struggled to turn over and stand, but was completely unable to do so with his limbs broken. He could only lie on the floor like a beached fish, constantly flopping about in vain.
But clearly, he could no longer stop Ming Po's investigation.
Ming Po turned to pick up the flashlight, leaning down to inspect him carefully.
Aside from the wounds inflicted by Ming Po, there were no obvious injuries on the man. It was hard to tell how he had actually died.
He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of silk pajama pants. The pants had pockets, but they were empty.
'Could it be in his mouth?'
Ming Po pondered, forcing the man's jaw open.
Seeing the half-headed man still trying to snap at him, Ming Po backhanded his screwdriver and plunged it down with vicious force!
With a wet squelch, it nailed straight through the man's eye.
Ming Po clamped the flashlight between his teeth. Pressing down hard on the base of the screwdriver with his left hand, he picked up the hamr with his right.
Whack. Whack. He smashed the man's teeth, one by one.
Yet, even after systematically knocking out every single tooth, he found no clues hidden inside the mouth.
"Strange."
Ming Po mused, standing back up.
He stared down at the man for a while, deep in thought. 'Could it be tucked under his skin?'
But he did not have a knife. Slicing through the skin would waste too much ti.
This was the perfect chance to test the effects of his Title.
Deep within Ming Po's pupils, a vivid azure glow suddenly ignited.
In the dim bathroom, his eyes shone as brightly as a wolf's!
The active effect of the Title [Detective], activate!
The next mont, the entire world before his eyes turned pitch black. All sound was blocked out, leaving behind a realm of absolute silence.
It felt like a radar pulse sweeping outward.
The wallpaper, the sink, the toilet, the floor... As the scan washed over them, these objects gradually faded from view.
First went their colors and patterns, followed by their textures and physical forms.
In the end, nothing remained in Ming Po's vision but stark white outlines.
The whole world had been reduced to pure black and wirefra white.
Within this environnt, certain things stood out. The "man" on the floor was radiating a solid crimson glow.
That was likely the marker for "danger."
Other clues retained their shapes, emitting a soft white light.
Ming Po scanned the room with his flashlight.
The closest clue was a bath towel scattered on the floor.
He reached over and tossed it aside, revealing a black phone hidden underneath.
It was a classic PHS.
As the "radar" beneath Ming Po's eyes expanded, the phone rapidly lost its color and form, leaving behind only a brilliant golden aura.
Ming Po reached up to touch his forehead and deactivated the Title's active effect.
'So this is what the active effect ant by "heavily draining stamina"?'
Having it active for just a short mont left him feeling rather fatigued. It was about the equivalent of the exhaustion he felt from kicking open the security room door and smashing the desk.
The sensation was roughly comparable to the ntal drain of finishing a grueling math exam during a senior year night study session.
Even if he used it two or three more tis, it would not severely impact his reaction speed.
It was within acceptable limits.
However, his forehead was burning up, almost like a fever. When he touched his head, he could clearly feel that his hand was cold by comparison.
'Am I overloading?'
Taking a few seconds to compose himself, Ming Po tried turning on the phone.
To his surprise, it booted up with a cheerful jingle. Holding the device, Ming Po slowly walked out of the bathroom.
The battery was at a re 5%, triggering a low power warning the second it turned on.
Ming Po knew the drill—this remaining 5% could very well be a ghost charge.
Having been turned off for so long, there was no telling how much longer it could hold out.
But it was not a huge issue.
A 2G relic like this would struggle just to connect to the internet. If there was any information on it, it most likely was not stored in so cloud account.
Ming Po's fingers clacked against the keypad, quickly navigating to the SMS inbox.
In the drafts folder, he found exactly what he was looking for.
An unsent suicide note.
[I am really done for, Jia Rui. I am completely ruined.]
[It is all gone. Everything. Forced liquidation. Five million, all down the drain. I even owe another 500,000 in debt...]
[Do not co looking for . I need to clear my debts. I left a house in my hotown under your na. Do not hold a funeral for , or they might catch you. Take our child and go live there, the house is worth around 350,000. I also hid two gold watches at the bottom of the wardrobe in the hotown house, under the floorboards.]
The unsent ssage ended there.
Right after Ming Po finished reading, the phone automatically shut down, not even giving him the chance to check for other ssages.
"I see."
Ming Po looked back at the man still squirming on the floor.
This had to be the man from the news, the one who jumped off a building during the 2008 economic crisis.
He must have been trading stocks or futures, and likely highly leveraged.
Five million back then was a completely different concept compared to five million today.
Managing to scrape together five million in 2008 ant this guy had so serious weight behind him. Not necessarily in skill, but in sheer luck. After all, making that much and still daring to leverage everything on an all-in bet was nothing but pure greed.
This was not investing; it was gambling. The desperate, red-eyed kind.
If he had known how to diversify his investnts, perhaps it would not have ended like this.
Then again, if he had split his assets ten ways, he might have just watched them lose money in ten completely different ways.
The 500,000 he borrowed was likely the capital for his "last dance."
'Wait. No, that is not right.'
Ming Po frowned slightly.
He suddenly realized sothing was off.
'Hold on.'
'Oh no, my stream!'
This was the first ti since entering the ga that Ming Po felt a genuine spike of panic.
After all, their exit condition was to "complete the stream."
No one knew exactly how "completion" was defined. If his stream got banned, would it count as an instant completion, or would he be forced to wait until the ban was lifted?
Ming Po had no desire to be stranded here for too long.
His heart tightened. In a slight panic, he looked toward the bathroom sink and hurried over to check the cara.
He checked what could be recorded from that angle and let out a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness. From this angle, the cara could not capture what he had been tinkering and bashing away at.
At most, it only caught him turning around to smash that guy with a hamr.
'It is fine. No big deal.'
'Just treat him as a background extra.'
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