From the end of the world

Chapter 98 Shadow Changer 1
It wasn't a good idea to have a conversation with so many people taking up space on the street, so we went to the big hotel opposite the nightclub and planned to choose a private room to sit down and talk.

Chang'an was being watched like a criminal by Zhu Shi and I, while Ma Zao was observing him with a vigilant look.

At first I didn't understand what Ma Zao was wary of, but after a while I realized that, unlike Zhu Shi and I, Ma Zao had never seen Chang An before, and had no preconceived feelings towards him. I guess she was suspecting that Chang An was the shadow-changing weirdo.

After realizing the direction she might be suspicious of, I also thought about it a little bit. It’s not that I really doubt Chang’an—or rather, it’s because I don’t really doubt Chang’an at all that I can think about the question of “whether my good friend might be a weirdo” with a relatively relaxed and almost “mental gymnastics” mentality.

The conclusion is "no", Chang'an cannot be the shadow-changing monster.

The Shadow Changer had been committing crimes a long time ago. Even if the victim in the room on the 15th floor was excluded, the Shadow Changer had been acting as a monster for at least three months. It was impossible for Agent Kong to hide his identity as a monster under Zhu Shi's nose.

Moreover, one only needs to observe Chang'an's palm carefully to understand that compared with the broken hand of the Shadow Changer, Chang'an's palm is obviously younger and thinner. Perhaps noticing this, Ma Zao's eyes also became slightly relaxed.

While the others were talking to the front desk, Ma Zao pulled my sleeve and whispered, "Zhuang Cheng."

"What's wrong?" I also lowered my voice.

"There are clues about the weirdo." She said seriously.

Hearing this, I immediately focused my attention, observing Changan and others in front of me, and asked, "Where are they?"

"I don't know." She actually said that.

I don't understand what she means. Since she knows nothing, why would she say there are clues about the weirdo here?

She said confidently: "Based on my experience, when I come into contact with strange events, if there is an accident along the way, even if the accident seems to be unrelated to the event itself, it is very likely to contain clues that can bring us closer to the core of the event."

How is it possible? Reality is not a fictional story, how can there be such a perfectly designed coincidence...

I really wanted to say this originally, but considering that Maza has a special physique that attracts events like the protagonist of an adventure story, she may really encounter similar coincidences frequently, and this is what happened now.

Thinking of this, I began to pay more attention to the unexpected incident involving Chang'an and the goldfish.

We entered the restaurant's private room and ordered a few dishes. Of course, Chang'an was the one who treated us. The cold dishes and drinks were served quickly, and after the waiter left the room, we began to interrogate Chang'an.

Zhu Shi asked fiercely, "So, what's going on?"

"Well... you see, I'm a man too, and I make mistakes occasionally..." Chang'an's eyes darted around, and he obviously didn't intend to tell the truth. "I used to party every night in that nightclub, but suddenly I had to stay at home, and I was really suffocated, so I couldn't help but go there to vent..."

Jinyu, who was sitting next to him, sneered when he heard this: "Why are you pretending? For the past two months, you always called me by name every time you came, but after calling me by name, you didn't do anything serious. You just dragged me to play games and watch movies in the room. Is this how you spend your nights?"

"Don't expose me!" Chang'an was anxious.

"I'm sorry, did I hear you wrong? You seemed to be saying that my friend frequently goes to brothels but never does anything frivolous, and he didn't mention anyone except you... It sounds like he always goes to brothels just because of you, and he doesn't even give up during this special period?" I said.

"Special period?" Jinyu frowned at first, then admitted, "Yes, he did target me. As for whether he liked me and wanted to have a relationship with me, I don't know."

"How did you show off to me last time?" I turned to look at Chang'an, deliberately repeating his past words, "Going to a nightclub to find a woman is to establish a pure relationship with only body and money, while if you find a female classmate, you have to talk about messy feelings - you didn't establish a physical relationship at all, right?"

Zhu Shi also looked at Changan: "In other words... you didn't actually play with women there, at least not physically?"

"Ahaha..." Changan looked away awkwardly and looked at Ma Zao, as if trying to change the subject, "By the way, who is this little sister?"

Ma Zao didn't respond to him. She just sat next to me without saying a word, drinking Coke with a straw attentively.

Seeing his brother acting so unbecomingly, Zhu Shi could only turn to Jinyu and speak in a polite yet distant tone: "Excuse me, can you explain the whole story to us?"

"Okay. Since you are his relatives and friends, I will explain everything to you. Then you can take him away and tell him never to go to that kind of place again." Goldfish nodded.

Hearing this, Zhu Shi's eyes softened a little, and she said, "Of course." "Wait, wait..." Chang'an stopped the other party when he saw Jinyu wanted to tell the whole story in person.

He looked at us, his expression changed several times, and finally he sighed and said to the goldfish: "I can't let you say that kind of thing in person, it's really too... Oh, I understand, let me say it."

"This matter should be related to the fact that you were kidnapped and beaten by strange creatures some time ago. Don't try to fool us or lie to us." I gestured to Zhu Shi.

Zhu Shi nodded to show that he understood. His eyes changed slightly and he entered the state of using "Buzhou Mountain" to distinguish lies.

The goldfish looked a little confused, as if it didn't understand what I was saying.

"I know, I will tell the truth..." Chang An said after organizing his words, "Do you still remember the rumor in college? It's the rumor that I often go to places of entertainment with my friends. Actually, some of it is just a rumor."

"You mean the part about 'frequenting in places of entertainment'?" I asked.

"It's about the part where I brought my bad friends with me." He denied it at first, then said, "To be precise, I was the one who was brought with me..."

He began to tell us what had happened.

I remembered Ma Zao's previous hint and listened carefully to his narration, trying to find clues related to the shadow-changing monster.

First of all, although Changan was my only friend in college, Changan was not like that. Although he had a bad reputation, he still had other friends.

Those were the bad friends he had made when he was a domineering young man. Just like him in the past, those friends were all powerful young masters who did not work properly. Although Changan was drifting away from them now, he had not completely severed his relationship with them.

From an outsider's perspective, one might think that he was not determined enough to change himself, but the relationship between people cannot be so clearly divided. Even if they were friends who never did serious things, there was still some youthful loyalty and entangled human feelings between them. When he had a fight with someone before, that group of friends had helped him a lot, and there was some genuine friendship among them.

Therefore, Changan couldn't refuse all their invitations from time to time, so he would occasionally show up. After a dinner party, one of them suggested going to a well-known entertainment venue among the local upper class.

If they said they were going to bully men and women, Chang An would leave on the spot. But if they said they were going to a place of entertainment, he would not resist.

His understanding of the brothel was roughly "a transaction between two parties". Although the mainstream society regarded it as immoral, he subjectively thought it was harmless, and he himself was never a person with moral cleanliness. Out of curiosity about the brothel and the encouragement of his bad friends, he followed the crowd and went in. The location was the wine tasting club.

Afterwards, he and his friends took the women they each nominated into different private rooms, and the one he nominated was Jinyu.

The two met for the first time at that time.

Like Changan, who was visiting this nightclub for the first time, Jinyu was also interacting with customers as a special worker for the first time. Her nervousness and resistance were so obvious that even a novice like Changan could see through her at a glance.

Although he was a novice, Chang An was not a pure virgin. He was not so stage-frightened that he could not take the initiative to attack the women in the nightclub. However, he had changed his ways after all, and when he saw the other party's unconscious resistance, he lost interest.

Even so, if he left without accomplishing anything, he would probably be looked down upon by his bad friends. So he decided to stay in the box for at least one night. During this time, he started chatting with the goldfish.

Perhaps because of his emotional breakdown, Goldfish couldn't help but speak in a deep way and also blurted out his motivation for working in a brothel.

Chang'an was mentally prepared at the beginning. In his opinion, it was not surprising that women who entered brothels to work had some unavoidable motives, such as their families owed a lot of money and they had to sell their bodies to pay off the debts; or it was possible that they were purely motivated by materialism and vanity, and despised their own bodies, and wanted to make money with their young bodies.

In his worst imagination, Jinyu might say that he was reduced to prostitution because the bad guys had a hold on him. However, he had only seen such things in some low-budget "action movies", so it was difficult for him to have a sense of reality that he would encounter similar things in real life.

However, the motive expressed by Goldfish was far beyond his imagination, and his heart exploded after hearing it.

The reason why Jinyu joined this brothel was not for money or to be used against someone, but because her biological father was a frequent visitor to this brothel.

She wanted to use her own body to frame her own biological father.

(End of this chapter)