Desperate people, accept the seed of my soul!

"boom!"

Lightning pierced through his chest!

This time, it was no longer precise torture, but pure destruction.

The electric current instantly disrupted the heart's rhythm and burned out all the nerve centers.

Tao Yongnian's body convulsed violently for a moment, then went completely limp, his eyes wide open, dying with his eyes still open.

A charred hole remained in his chest, its edges carbonized, and the bone inside was faintly visible.

Liu Zhen withdrew his hand, and the electric arc in his palm gradually extinguished.

He glanced down at the corpse, then looked into the depths of the alley.

There, the shadow shifted slightly.

A man wearing a dark gray trench coat emerged from the darkness.

He wore black-rimmed glasses and had a refined demeanor, yet he exuded an indescribable melancholy.

It was Meng Zhaowen.

Meng Zhaowen didn't look at the corpse, but walked to the wall and gently stroked a vine growing from the crack in the brick.

The vines seemed to be infused with some kind of life force when touched by his fingertips, and began to grow wildly at a speed visible to the naked eye.

[Awakening of the Earth Spirit]

[Using its own life force as a medium, the user awakens and resonates with the spirituality of plants. Through contact, the user infuses plants with bio-energy, enabling them to complete months of normal growth in seconds, while simultaneously imprinting a spiritual mark—the fully imprinted vegetation becomes an extended sensory organ, capable of reconstructing light and shadow vibrations into audiovisual information, silently deploying invisible sentinels. The user can also inject a violent life force into existing vegetation within their field of vision, causing it to grow abnormally: vines dance wildly, whipping and tearing at the enemy's skin; branches intertwine to form cages to trap the enemy; roots break through the soil, severing the enemy's path. The number of imprints and the scale of the violence depend on mental and physical strength; overuse will deplete the plant's life and the user's own, resulting in headaches and dehydration at best, and muscle breakdown and heart failure at worst. Furthermore, prolonged empathy with plants may gradually lead to a loss of humanity, succumbing to the solitude of plants. —"Every leaf is my eye, every vine is the fist of the earth."]

Slender vines, like a swarm of snakes, emerged and quickly coiled around Tao Yongnian's corpse, secreting a transparent, sticky substance.

The vines quickly tightened, enveloping the corpse, and under the corrosive effect of their secretions, they decomposed the flesh and blood, along with the clothing, into harmless nutrients that seeped into the ground.

Even the bloodstains on the ground were quickly swallowed up by the moss.

The whole process was quiet and eerie, as if nature itself was carrying out a silent cleansing.

Only a few damp traces remained on the ground, which would soon be dried by the night breeze.

Liu Zhen withdrew his gaze, and the eerie blue arc of electricity at his fingertips was completely extinguished.

He turned around and looked at the man who emerged from the shadows.

"Thanks to your plant monitoring," Liu Zhen said. "Guangyang City is so big; without eyes, I wouldn't have been able to find Tao Yongnian at all."

Meng Zhaowen walked to the wall and gently brushed her fingers across the retreating vines.

As he touched them, the wildly growing plants withered and turned to dust, as if they had never existed.

"Plants are the most sensitive nerves of the earth," Meng Zhaowen said softly. "They sense vibrations, capture light and shadow, and can even remember the emotional fluctuations left in the air. I planted 'seeds' in this area in advance, and they told me that Tao Yongnian had passed through this alley at this time every day for the past three days."

He turned around and looked at Liu Zhen: "That's why we were able to locate him."

Liu Zhen nodded: "Your method is more effective than surveillance."

Liu Zhen withdrew his gaze and looked at the empty concrete ground where the vines had fallen: "What do you think of what Tao Yongnian said before he died?"

"A man like him wouldn't lie even when he's about to die." Meng Zhaowen pulled a notebook out of the inside pocket of her trench coat. "And he's not the only one saying that."

"Before he died, he implicated Zhao Hongtu, the chairman of Longteng Power."

Liu Zhen's eyes turned cold: "Hmph. Zhao Hongtu."

Meng Zhaowen flipped through his notebook and glanced at it. "Over the past few days, I've set up plant monitoring points throughout the city. The key information captured there corroborates Tao Yongnian's own confession. Zhao Hongtu can't escape."

Liu Zhen frowned: "I've worked at Longteng for fifteen years and met Zhao Hongtu a few times. He always sat in the office and didn't get involved in the actual work."

"That's why he's clean." Meng Zhaowen pushed up his glasses. "The public image of a philanthropist, a major taxpayer, and a provincial councilor—that's all for show. I investigated him for three years, and all the dirty deeds that couldn't be made public ultimately pointed to him. He doesn't have dirty hands; he only gives orders."

Meng Zhaowen raised her head and looked at the bustling yet indifferent city night view outside the alley entrance.

"Zhao Hongtu's information control is extremely strict, with layers of separation. Tao Yongnian is just an executor; there are protectors above him." Meng Zhaowen pushed up his glasses, the lenses reflecting the distant neon lights. "That 'big shot' is even more deeply hidden; we need to go through Zhao Hongtu to find clues."

"I have intelligence." Meng Zhaowen took out a folded invitation from his pocket and handed it to Liu Zhen. "In a few days, Zhao Hongtu will be attending the 'Guangyang City Power Development Forum' as the organizer. This is a rare opportunity for him to leave his heavily guarded private territory."

Liu Zhen accepted the invitation, which had gold lettering and the date printed on it.

"Four days from now," Meng Zhaowen said. "We can't delay. News of Tao Yongnian's disappearance will spread tomorrow. Zhao Hongtu is inherently suspicious, and the longer we wait, the more likely we are to be exposed. Once he retreats into his shell, it will be ten times harder to dig him out."

Liu Zhen gripped the invitation tightly, the paper making a slight creaking sound in his hand.

"Four days is enough."

……

Two days later, at the headquarters of Longteng Power, in the top-floor office.

Tao Yongnian has been missing for 48 hours.

Zhao Hongtu sat behind a large mahogany desk, holding an unlit cigar in his hand.

The office lights were off, only the neon lights of the city streaming in through the window cast dappled shadows on his face.

The phone screen lit up briefly, then went off again.

That was a message from a trusted confidant: no one was home at Tao Yongnian's house, the car was in the garage, and the bed hadn't been moved.

Zhao Hongtu tapped his fingers lightly on the table, the rhythm slow and heavy.

He has a habit of thinking things through before taking action.

Tao Yongnian would send him a "personal briefing" every week, but he didn't this time.

This briefing is never processed through the company system; it is purely confidential and contains accounts and personnel arrangements that cannot be made public.

Zhao Hongtu began to list the possibilities one by one in his mind.

Ran away?

Not like.

Tao Yongnian has been with him for twenty years, and his daughter and wife are still alive.

Running away means abandoning everything, which is not in Tao Yongnian's character.

Unless someone finds something even more incriminating.

Tied up by business rivals?

Longteng is indeed vying for land in the new district recently, and its competitors are very strong.

But why did the other party kidnap Tao Yongnian?

Tao Yongnian is not part of the core decision-making team, so binding him won't get you anything.

Will those involved return to retaliate?

Zhao Hongtu leaned back in his chair and began to recall the things he had asked Tao Yongnian to do over the years.

The holdout residents in the new district who were slated for demolition three years ago, the supplier who was forced to refund money last year... all of them had motives.

But the problem is: those people don't have that ability.

Tao Yongnian's whereabouts were not public, so how did they find him?

Found it! How do you make a living person disappear completely?