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Chapter 285 Clues Confirmed
Lin Qing knew something was wrong. "You're lying."

"No, I really have the ability!" Zhang Zhiqi was overjoyed. "So this is what awakening feels like—this is power!"

He grabbed the iron railing and immediately pried open a large hole in it.

Lin Qing subconsciously took a step back, creating distance between herself and the other person.

Zhang Zhiqi stepped over the railing and immediately realized that the person in front of him seemed to be a size smaller.

"No...you're not that person! Who are you?"

"Did you come here voluntarily?" Lin Qing knew the act was over and quickly asked, "Or was someone tricking you into coming?"

"I...shut up! I'm going to kill you!"

Chen Xuan also sensed that the light representing the prisoner suddenly became much brighter, as if it had turned from a candle flame into an incandescent bulb in the blink of an eye.

Coupled with the ear-piercing noise of the twisting railings and the other party's angry curses, he realized that the situation was out of control.

The moment Chen Xuan ran out of the hiding place, he saw Zhang Zhiqi throw both fists at Lin Qing, sending her flying. The force was so great that Lin Qing slammed heavily into the wall behind her, smashing a hole in it, allowing more light to stream in!
The entire space began to tremble violently.

"You're all liars!" Zhang Zhiqi turned around and saw Chen Xuan appear, letting out a furious roar.

But his voice stopped abruptly the next second.

A thousand-fold sword pierced through his skull from directly above and embedded itself in the floor.

The container cage, Zhang Zhiqi's body, and the light shining into the darkness all crumbled one by one.

The dream collapsed.

Lin Qing let out a long breath, rolled out of bed, and looked at Chen Xuan in disbelief. "No way, was that guy in my dream really the prisoner locked up downstairs? I feel like his punch almost shattered my alloy frame!"

"He has awakened a new ability," Chen Xuan said, opening his eyes.

"What?"

“Zhang Zhiqi’s phantom gained abilities completely different from the previous curse in this dream…” Seeing Zhang Zhiqi blast Lin Qing away, Chen Xuan immediately guessed the reason: At this time, the prisoner was in the stage where his abilities were about to sprout, which was somewhat similar to Su Xingwan’s situation. Perhaps it was due to emotional fluctuations or a coincidence, but he suddenly awakened when facing Lin Qing, and even the life light he sensed with the Heavenly Cloud Technique suddenly became brighter.

In reality, Zhang Zhiqi's awakened ability is a curse of misfortune.

But in his dream, his new ability took a powerful and heavy approach.

It can be said that the two abilities are completely opposite in nature.

"You mean... the abilities they gain after being injected with this drug are completely random?" Lin Qing asked in surprise. "I thought that when a person awakens an ability, apart from external stimuli, it is also closely related to their personality and preferences."

"It's a pity that a dream is just a dream... If he could bring the things from the dream out, he would be much more useful." Chen Xuan said with some regret.

Just imagine... a person about to awaken has a chance to gain all sorts of abilities, and he can just wait and wait, using a barcode scanner or simply using his plundering ability to steal them one by one. That couldn't be more convenient.

"Wait a minute... this memory from the dream, won't it give Zhang Zhiqi another ability in reality?" Lin Qing asked with some concern.

"What happened?" At the same time, You Chi's voice came through the earpiece. "Zhang Zhiqi suddenly woke up, looking quite frightened. It seems he had a nightmare. If you need to continue putting him back to sleep, I'll increase the dosage of the anesthetic spray."

Even a phantom can affect real people.

Chen Xuan took out a barcode scanner, pointed it at Zhang Zhiqi on the monitor screen, and pressed the scan button. "It's okay, let him stay awake for now. The first round of interrogation is over."

"Okay. So... have you found any new leads?"

"No rush, I need to analyze this before I can draw a conclusion." After ending the call, Chen Xuan told Lin Qing his observations, "He hasn't gained any new abilities, this dream will at most only give him a fright."

"That's good." Lin Qing nodded. "The prisoner didn't fully confess the truth after all."

According to Zhang Zhiqi's confession, he was forced to be imprisoned in a cage and forced to acquire his abilities. However, it now seems that he had anticipated this situation and was instead begging the other party to give him the potion.

"But why didn't the police ask about this?" Chen Xuan asked, puzzled.

Zhang Zhiqi was clearly not the kind of sabote with unwavering convictions. His courage came with his abilities, and without powerful backing, he would undoubtedly be considered a coward who feared death. If revealing his superiors would lessen his suffering, he would certainly confess truthfully.

"Either Zhang Zhiqi really doesn't know about the mastermind, or he's been put on some kind of gag order," Lin Qing guessed.

"A gag order that works on the memory level..." Chen Xuan thought for a moment and felt that it was not impossible.

Since it involves ability, there's no point in dwelling on it any longer.

"Did you notice anything unusual just now?" he asked.

“Xiao Lü is conducting a comprehensive investigation,” Lin Qing confirmed. Her eyes flashed blue, indicating that her brain was performing a large amount of data processing. “So far, 321 feature points have been found, and the screening will take 150 seconds.”

Chen Xuan didn't consider himself a detective, but Lin Qing was a born detective—as a soldier heading to the future battlefield, her entire body was covered in sensors, recording even the slightest sounds, temperature changes, and air vibrations. While this data wasn't particularly helpful in combat, it could be retrieved for Xiao Lü to analyze individually, uncovering minute details that were easily overlooked during previous criminal investigations and interrogations.

A few minutes later, Lin Qing tapped her finger, "The result has been sent to your phone."

When Chen Xuan opened it, he found that only four clues remained after filtering.

"The light coming in through the ventilation opening was not natural light, and its frequency was 50Hz. Five frequency oscillations occurred between 5 minutes and 19 seconds and 6 minutes and 30 seconds, which is inferred to be a fluctuation in the main grid load."

"The ambient humidity is 85%, the temperature is 21 degrees Celsius, and the carbon dioxide concentration is high, which meets the characteristics of an underground enclosed building."

"The syringes left on the ground are sealed-fill type, which are uncommon custom products and have value in tracing their origin."

"The air circulating inside the environment contains alcohol and special fragrance ingredients, in proportions close to those of fragrances."

"What do you think?" Chen Xuan threw the question back at the other person.

“Power grid fluctuations are a very sensitive data point. A hundred years from now, we might be able to check the load changes in various urban areas, but in this era, we probably can’t do such detailed backtracking,” Lin Qing commented point by point.

"It's not surprising that these iron cells are located underground. It just means that the mastermind has a relatively large territory, or that the incident happened in the suburbs."

“The syringes were definitely transported through special channels. It’s not impossible to investigate if we really want to, but it’s obviously not something we and the Beijing Institute of Space Technology can do alone. It requires the cooperation of multiple departments across the country.”

Finally, Lin Qing's finger stopped on the fourth line.

"This is the only one we can investigate."

"Fragrance?"

"Judging from the ingredients, it belongs to the category of daily necessities additives, such as shower gel, shampoo... and even perfumes may use it," Lin Qing explained. "If it is a fragrance brought in by a person or clothes, it will dissipate in at most one or two hours. The fact that it can persist for a long time means that these ingredients are coming in from the ventilation vents, and there is a fixed source of diffusion nearby, so that the amount of evaporation can be continuously replenished."

Chen Xuan's eyes lit up, "A chemical plant?"

"It's not an ordinary chemical plant, but a daily chemical plant. Whether it's a plant that produces daily chemical raw materials or does packaging, it's possible that they have a large stockpile of fragrances."

“This is easy to investigate!” Chen Xuan said enthusiastically. “There are probably not many factories in Jiangcheng that do this kind of business. The Administration for Industry and Commerce has their records. We can just pull them out and hand them over to the police to visit them one by one!”

"I'm afraid that won't work." Lin Qing was somewhat worried. "If the authorities are mobilized, it will definitely alert the mastermind behind the scenes. If we don't find the right location immediately, it will be easy for them to clear up the evidence. Most importantly, they are likely to have ability users. If it comes to a fight to the death, Jiangcheng may have to add hundreds more innocent victims."

(End of this chapter)