After listening to Xia Yu’s words, Pei Yan sat back in his chair with a complicated expression, staring into the other person’s eyes and asked, "But does sothing like this really happen?"
"Not that it will happen! It has already happened and not just once, or who do you think the maze-like security layers at the bureau are protecting against?" Ye Jiumu absent-mindedly played with the lighter in his hand, chuckling bitterly. After speaking, he pulled open his collar and pointed to his chest, "You have this mark on you too, right?"
"I do, but isn’t this a disguise mark?" Pei Yan frowned slightly in confusion.
Liang Qian rubbed his stomach and said ruefully, "It used to be just a disguise mark, but now it has a tracking mark added to it, which ans no matter where we go, the bureau can successfully locate us."
"This is distrust towards us! The old fox didn’t ntion this before about the mark!" Pei Yan felt a trace of dissatisfaction rise in his heart upon hearing this, as no one likes living under the monitoring of others.
Wang Wenze leaned back against his chair, tapping the chopsticks against the bowl in the mist, and said, "Don’t bla the bureau too much. Speaking of defections, putting aside individual incidents, there have been three major incidents since the bureau was established. The first ti was a collective defection that resulted in the reorganization of the investigation bureau and core mbers being transferred to the military. The second ti, the second director had to resign with an internal retirent. The last and most serious ti led to significant casualties in the bureau, with thirty-seven colleagues sacrificing their lives in the pursuit operation, among them was the forr director Ren Changming. Have you t Director Gu?"
"Uh-huh, I have," Pei Yan chanically nodded upon hearing this shocking internal story.
Wang Wenze gestured on his face and continued, "The scar on Director Gu’s face was from that mission. Actually, if he had sought treatnt from Elder Lin at that ti, the scar could have been healed. But he didn’t; it’s his sha because the person who left that scar is still at large."
"Did you experience that incident?"
Liang Qian shook his head, lazily curled in his chair, and said with a smile, "How could it be? That was more than ten years ago, and how old were we then? At that ti, Captain Hu had just joined the bureau and he experienced it. It was through reverse case education and chatting with Captain Hu that we learned about it."
"Yes, and it was from that ti that the country beca increasingly strict in managing ability users, including us. But don’t worry too much; as long as we don’t break the law, that tracking mark won’t be activated." Ye Jiumu picked so lamb from the dish and was about to put it in his mouth, only to find it was cold, so he put it back on the pan to heat up slowly and said.
"Why do you think it’s all worth it?" After a long ti, Pei Yan sighed, clutching the label of the cola bottle in his hand, and said with emotion.
"Worth it...? Isn’t it all for money, for fa, oh right, and for so, the pursuit of the limits of power!" After hearing Pei Yan’s sigh, Xia Yu sat up from the chair, picked up chopsticks, grabbed a slice of beef, and placed it on the grill-pan, turning it over for roasting, continuing, "According to Captain Hu, our previous wages and benefits weren’t that good, just equivalent to the level of grassroots civil servants. It was only because of the counterasures taken by the authorities after these defections that we now have high salaries and benefits. Is it not sowhat ironic that our current welfare is improved because of those traitors?"
For a while, the only sound in the private room was the sizzling of beef being grilled on the pan. Xia Yu blinked, holding up the cooked beef, looking around, "What I said, did it kill the mood?"
"You still have so self-awareness!" Liang Qian said, unceremoniously using chopsticks to grab the cooked beef from Xia Yu’s chopsticks into his own plate. Then he poured a cup of beer and stood up, "Let’s not talk about depressing topics anymore. We’re all model youth in the bureau, and such issues shouldn’t concern us. Co on, let’s toast in celebration of Pei Yan’s success on the next mission!"
"Cheers!" "Cheers!"
That night, after returning to his dorm, Pei Yan lay on his bed recalling the al’s conversation, about the internal source, defection, scenes after joining the bureau, and things Instructor Hu had once told him. They played like a revolving lantern in his mind, thoughts swirling and hard to predict, until the latter half of the night when he groggily touched the spot of his chest mark and deeply fell asleep.
In a southern third-tier city on an old street, in a room on the third floor of a dilapidated building facing the street, Pei Yan wrapped himself in a big cotton quilt, shivering, staring at the electronic screen.
Three days ago, with great enthusiasm, Pei Yan followed Wang Wenze to this place via the Teleportation Array. However, within just one night, the damp and chilly climate in the south had cooled down the enthusiasm in his heart thoroughly. This weather made him, accustod to curling up indoors in a heating-wrapped setting to spend the winter, truly feel the power of what was called magical attacks by the southerners.
Wang Wenze brought in takeout from outside, with a newly bought heat lamp in the other hand. After setting up two heat lamps directed at Pei Yan, he clapped his hands, "Just bear with it, there’s no way, it’s the old neighborhood; there is no central heating or anything, we can only rely on this."
"Thanks, Brother Wang!" Pei Yan sniffed his runny nose, opened the steaming takeout, and slurped down a mouthful of chicken soup, the warm soup warming him up quite a bit.
While distributing chopsticks between the two of them, Wang Wenze asked, "How about the person?"
"Still the sa, eating, drinking, gambling! He’s been in the mahjong parlor since early in the morning until now, almost three o’clock, hasn’t moved at all." Without raising his head, Pei Yan continued to drink the chicken soup while disparagingly looking at the middle-aged man inside the mahjong parlor, his back facing the cara, sloppy with a cigarette in his mouth, holding mahjong tiles.
After Wang Wenze told him that this man was the surveillance target, Pei Yan was initially very excited. In this era where surveillance caras are everywhere, monitoring is a piece of cake for him. Through his abilities, he quickly mastered all the surveillance footage in the vicinity and automatically transferred them to multiple screens in this rented room.
But precisely because of this, he monitored the man’s daily activities almost every day without any blind spots. The man was not tall, had sparse stubble, and ssy short hair. After several magnifications of the front view, Pei Yan found out that the man looked quite good, with a touch of ruggedness from weathering storms. Seemingly he was quite handso when he was young.
His daily routines were quite "regular"; by eight in the morning, no later than half-past eight, he would leave his stand-alone unit, swaggering to a breakfast shop on the street for breakfast, then straight into the mahjong parlor to gamble all day. Around five in the evening, he would co out of the mahjong parlor to have dinner and drinks at a Sichuan restaurant by the roadside. After getting thoroughly drunk, he would stagger back ho to sleep, day after day, over and over.
"Brother Wang, who exactly is he? Is he an ability user like us?" After holding it in for three days, Pei Yan finally couldn’t hold back and asked.
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