A brave man may not live, but he cannot die

Chapter 227 CST Monday UTC+8: 2:30 PM
Back in his room, Quinn found a suitcase by the bedside.

It wasn't the large suitcase he brought from the academy, but rather the suitcase belonging to "Team Leader Zhang".

The suitcase was locked, and it was a rather trendy and rare combination lock for that era. Quinn certainly didn't know the combination, but the lock was useless to him.

He could use force to dismantle it, but that would be too unbecoming of a "thief." Quinn picked up a wooden chopstick he used to eat snail rice noodles, found the right angle, and poked it into the tightly closed suitcase zipper. The old-fashioned zipper structure was opened a little by the chopstick, and then he pulled down along the gap, and the suitcase opened.

Quick, quiet, the combination lock watched helplessly like an incompetent husband.

With just a glance, Quinn reached into a hidden compartment in his suitcase and pulled out a detective's badge—his intuition told him that the most valuable item was in that location.

In 1999, the Ministry of Public Security had not yet issued regulations for unified police officer certificates. The "investigation certificate" was the police officer certificate of Jianghai City. Quinn opened the cover and saw a blurry, yellowed photo for some unknown reason.

It looks like him, but a closer look reveals the difference—Ankuya once praised Quinn's jawline as sharp and beautiful, but the man in the photo has a square face.

Zhang Rui, Criminal Investigation Department of Jianghai City Public Security Bureau. His position was not listed, but his police badge number followed by a series of numbers.

The box contained mostly changes of clothes, and judging from the size of the clothes, "Zhang Rui's" height and weight seemed to be similar to his own—maybe slightly overweight.

She was married. This was deduced because there was a red bag in the box containing pairs of socks neatly arranged by the day, with the pairs wrapped inside out. The clothes on top of the box were clearly haphazardly piled up; Zhang Rui wasn't that meticulous.

There was also a PHS (Personal Handyphone System) phone in a hidden compartment of the box, with a police badge on it. It was probably a government-issued phone that was placed in the box to prevent pickpockets.

Quinn was no stranger to this novel old relic; he knew what the pre-smartphone era was like. He pressed and held the "*" key to turn it on, but unfortunately, there was no signal at all. In this era when 2G wasn't even fully widespread, this was what it was like to have a phone indoors without windows. Quinn scrolled through his contacts and text messages, but didn't find much of value.

After repacking his suitcase and putting his phone in his pocket, Quinn sat down in a chair and began staring blankly at the cigarette butts in the ashtray.

Gradually, he started to crave one.

The death of his father was seen as a family disgrace by his grandparents, and the two elderly people could never get over the grief brought by their son. Guilt, regret, and disappointment were all mixed together, but for young Quinn, his father's death was not so hard to face.

It's probably similar to the feeling when I was a child, I fell down and my grandfather slapped my hand, and the village dogs chased me all the way.

Because the child had hardly ever seen his father, his sadness was merely brought out by the adults and was not profound at all.

Quinn only learned about most of the details of the case later. His father was caught in a transaction and the evidence was stolen, but he refused to confess his accomplices. All the testimonies said that he committed the crime alone and took charge of all the methamphetamine cases in Jianghai City at that time.

Then comes the death penalty, of course—smuggling, drug trafficking, and personal use. Any one of these charges is enough to warrant being executed ten times over.

After that, a seemingly peaceful ten years passed before Jianghai City saw another victim die from high-purity methamphetamine.

Quinn stared at the case files he had brought back.

The arrest of suspect Qin Weizheng... what a twisted abyss of humor.

Was all of this because of me, or was it always like this in the abyss, and I just happened to be there?
Was my original surname Qin? I thought it might be a surname like Xuanyuan or Zhuge Liang, a famous historical figure.
Quinn patted his cheeks and dumped all the cigarette butts from the ashtray into the trash can. He couldn't just stand there doing nothing.

This reminded him of the time traveler who trembled behind the curtains.

"Little Liu." Quinn knocked on the door next door. He heard hurried dressing sounds coming from inside. A moment later, his subordinate, Liu, the Deputy Director of Jianghai City twenty years later, opened the door. The young man, still looking somewhat childish, asked sleepily:

"Captain Zhang, what's wrong?"

Where does Qin Wei live?

"Uh, I think it was something like... Jinlaicai Hotel, room 3103?" The young man's memory was quite good. "Isn't the Guangxi police keeping an eye on things? We just need to wait for news."

"Then let me ask you, how do you write your work report after you go back?"

"Write it truthfully, like, 'We cooperated with the Guangxi police to apprehend the suspect,' or something like that?"

Are you out of your mind?

Quinn sneered: "They're cooperating with us, not the other way around—we're operating under the guidance of the Jianghai City police, understand?"

Where is the guiding framework?

"At the snail rice noodle shop downstairs from the suspect's hotel." Quinn was giving a lecture to the new recruits: "In the past, delivering two bowls of noodles to someone meant you were deeply involved; asking the suspect if they had eaten today meant you were closely monitoring them; and before leaving, having them listen in meant they had to listen with their ears. That's how you establish a framework for guidance, isn't it?"

"What if a reporter asks for details?"

"Details of the case cannot be disclosed."

"Team Leader Zhang, Gao."

Xiao Liu thought to himself, "No wonder you're a leader."

"I'll go scout out the location first. You can rest today."

"Thank you, Captain Zhang!" Xiao Liu and Zhang Rui clearly had a good relationship; he didn't refuse, and yawned wearily, "Four whole days on those old-fashioned green trains, not a single night of proper sleep. When will the bureau have the money to buy sleeper berths? You seem to have a lot of energy."

So, it seems the two of them just arrived here.

Quinn pondered to himself, why was he stuck at the very beginning of the event the moment he opened his eyes?
Where should I park the car?

"Didn't you park the car?" Xiao Liu turned around to get the car keys. "Why are you so confused? Why don't you take a nap too? It's in the parking lot behind the hotel, under the low wall and blue iron shed."

Although the hotel was old-fashioned, compared to the vast majority of medieval-style inns in Temuran, where even a gas connection and hot water were considered high-end, the modern materials and technology were so nostalgic. The city had been too eerie when he last entered the Abyss; now, back in familiar civilized surroundings, looking at the fire hydrants and escape routes in the corridor, pressing the metal button on the elevator, Quinn felt a sense of déjà vu. It hadn't been long, less than half a year.

Beibu Gulf City is a seaport in the southwesternmost corner of Guangxi Province, adjacent to Mong Cai, Vietnam. In a decade or so, it will become a nationally renowned city of gods and men, with tens of thousands of unlicensed Toyota Crowns thronging the Beibu Gulf Expressway at midnight. It is known in the community as a duty-free paradise, a refuge for the distressed, and the promised land of the god of pork trotter rice.

But on the eve of the 21st century, this was just an ordinary small town in the southwest, doing some fishing business by relying on the seaport, and also doing some foreign trade because of its proximity to Vietnam. Beibu Gulf City was not at the bottom of Guangxi Province's economic ranking, but it was not doing very well either.

Stepping out of the hotel, one could hardly see any modern high-rise buildings. Instead, Lingnan-style archways, which gradually became cultural symbols in later generations, were everywhere. The city center was filled with gray dust and construction site walls, with port roads being paved in full swing.

Traffic was exceptionally chaotic as a result, with everyone driving their own cars. The streets were mostly filled with bright red motorcycles, weaving erratically across the road. At this time, the locals were still mostly communicating in their dialects. The noisy city sounds mixed with the dazzling sunlight made Quinn somewhat absent-minded.

If it weren't for the sun in the sky and the three layers of the abyss, which were so enormous and awe-inspiring as to cover the heavens, Quinn might have really doubted whether he had returned to Earth.

This sun appears even larger than the sun in Temüller on Earth's surface, yet its light is not dazzling, making it particularly eerie—if the sun were truly this close, Earth would have been scorched to death long ago, and there wouldn't even be enough time to install planetary engines to escape.

Hotels of this era typically have clocks for various time zones hanging on their walls, along with an electronic clock aligned with UTC+8. Quinn stood at the hotel entrance for ten minutes, observing the movement of the clocks and the sun. He realized that this place was different from the third layer of the Abyss—the flow of time had not been altered; it was normal time.

The flow of time in the third layer of the abyss is unusually fast. The traffic lights, billboards, and convenience stores that operate semi-automatically without power sources seem to Quinn more like an "incomplete" Earth civilization—the laws of physics and time are distorted.

But this Beibu Gulf city is "complete," at least for now, everything about it is identical to Earth except for the sun in the sky.

Quinn wasn't just standing foolishly at the hotel entrance for ten minutes. He took out his phone, which had no signal in the room, raised the antenna, and turned left and right while holding the phone up to look for a signal.

Logically speaking, this isn't like the 1960s or 70s when even finding a cell tower was difficult, and this isn't some remote, impoverished rural area. The signal shouldn't be this bad in the city, but Quinn held it up for ten minutes, and the signal icon on his phone's pixelated screen was still spinning.

Sigh, no mobile, no internet, no power, no signal, I miss you, satellite phone, no cell phone. It's all because of the suppression from the deepest abyss that the Mate 60 was unavailable in Beibu Gulf City in 1999.
What? You can't even buy apples? Oh well, that's alright then.

Quinn went around to the back of the hotel and quickly found the parking lot—half of the shed was a parking lot, and the other half was a wasteland for raising chickens and ducks, which clucked noisily. The boundary between the city and the countryside was not so clear in this era.

This vehicle was likely assigned to the two men by the Guangxi Provincial Public Security Bureau. To maintain secrecy during the operation, it was not displayed with a police license plate. It was a classic Mitsubishi SUV with a high-horsepower diesel engine, demonstrating the importance the authorities placed on coordinating the mission in Jianghai City.

Quinn approached the car door, which was still the old-fashioned key-operated door. The moment his gaze fell on the keyhole, knowledge of theft, such as how to pry open the door and how to start the car without a key, popped into his mind.

Quinn was surprised that the knowledge granted by his extraordinary abilities could also be applied to Earth's technology.

Perhaps it's just that this car has a relatively simple structure?
After Quinn got into the car, he first searched the seats and storage compartments, and sure enough, he found a large stack of case files from the Jianghai City Public Security Bureau.

Quinn began flipping through the pages one by one.

In late 98, a Hong Kong businessman died suddenly while dining at the Pearl Hotel. Testimony from those at the table indicated that he had only drunk one glass of wine. Subsequent tests of his hair and post-mortem fluid came back positive. Police then re-examined his belongings and found a bag of blue crystals highly suspected to be synthetic methamphetamine at the bottom of a cigarette pack.
After the test results came out, they were sent to the Ministry of Public Security for matching. The addictiveness and purity of the drugs were almost among the highest in cases involving addiction in the 1990s.
A search of the home revealed 45 grams of methamphetamine crystals and three glassware containers in the wine cellar.
When questioned, family, company, and friends all knew nothing.
In February 1999, the police received a tip from the wealthy businessman's driver, alleging that his widow was also a drug addict and severely addicted. The reason for the tip may have been related to a marital dispute between the widow and the driver; she refused to change the businessman's son's surname.
Based on clues provided by the driver, the police conducted a month-long surveillance operation on the widow and finally caught her at the scene of a drug deal—in a suite at a well-known international hotel in Jianghai. The transaction took place five minutes after the widow went upstairs, when a suspicious-looking man came downstairs to check out.
Police raided a hotel suite under the guise of a prostitution operation and found the widow of a wealthy businessman unconscious and convulsing. Forty grams of methamphetamine, a lighter, and a glass container were found at the scene. Her unconsciousness was attributed to excessive excitement.

The man did not register his identity information when checking into the hotel and gave a false name. Fortunately, the hotel had a surveillance system, and after searching for half a month, the police initially identified the suspect as Qin Weizheng, an unemployed man.
The 1999 print is very blurry.

The screenshots from the surveillance footage were printed in the documents as part of the evidence. Quinn could only make out that it was a tall man wearing a fur-lined military overcoat in March, looking very cold, with the collar tightly wrapped around his neck.

The hotel lobby looked familiar to Quinn.

The image of the girl's smiling face resurfaced in my memory.

"Don't let its rustic appearance fool you, this marble floor has hosted presidents from the White House. Why are we here? When my dad bought this hotel, he changed the security cameras. I mean, I can delete the evidence that we were here. Of course, we booked a room together to do our homework! What are you thinking?"

Quinn remained silent and turned to the next page.

He finally saw a high-resolution photo. The suspect's black-and-white headshot almost filled the entire A4 sheet of paper. It was a photo of him when he joined the state-owned enterprise. His grandmother always lamented that if he hadn't resigned, he might have been allocated an apartment in the city, or even become a founding employee of that company that would later go public.
Quinn felt like she was looking in a mirror.

He looked at the man in the photo.

He has a very masculine jawline, sharp and handsome, and energetic eyes. His slicked-back hair with gel is different from his usual style. Anyone who looks at him would think he's a good young man.

Quinn's evaluation would be more than just "not bad," but it certainly wouldn't be "young man."

He just stared at it with his head down, like a student at the bottom of the class staring blankly at the most boring book in a sweltering classroom. What was he looking at?

Finally, he turned the page.

"Tsk, what terrible taste."

The rest of the content was unremarkable, mostly consisting of things that Xiao Liu had mentioned during the meeting.

Quinn put the documents back in their place, turned around, and got out of the car.

He doesn't plan to drive there.

As an assassin, he was not afraid of the Abyss Superhumans who might be hiding among the crowd, posing as Earthlings.

Because Quinn is a native Earthling, if he wanted to, no one could find him.
"Aaaaa!! You damned abyssal scourge, if you don't untie these ropes, I'll send my familiar to kill you, Quinn! Help!!!"

The beautiful calls of the Taymourne birds drifted from next door.

Quinn's face froze; behind the wall was a farmers' market.

"You damn tortoise, this parrot's squawks like a magpie. Shut up! If I can't tame you, I'll cook you! Keep squawking and I'll catch you and make soup—"

(End of this chapter)