American homeless people, surviving in the city

Chapter 164 Lucas's Dilemma

Seeing that Lin Qi's expression was getting worse and worse, Sanjar seemed to realize that it was not good to say so many things to a patient that would put psychological pressure on him, so he quickly shut his mouth.

His expression was somewhat awkward, but he seemed unsure of what to say to change the subject. In the end, he could only pat Lin Qi on the shoulder and offer some words of comfort: "Well, that's about it. But I was just saying. Don't overthink it. Just focus on getting better."

"We'll figure something out together after you're discharged from the hospital."

"Get some rest. We're waiting for you to come out of the hospital and help us dominate the boxing matches again."

Sanjar offered Lynch a few words of comfort, exchanged a few pleasantries, and then stood up, said goodbye, and left the ward.

He came in a whirlwind and left in a whirlwind, leaving Lin Qi with an even stronger sense of urgency and unease.

From any perspective, the influence and power of cults... were far greater than he had imagined. Every visitor demonstrated the cult's influence in various ways. And he knew that after the Maple Valley incident, he had definitely come into the cult's sights.

A sense of unease welled up in Lin Qi's heart again. The shadow of the cult seemed to be more profound than any threat he had faced before.

But what he didn't expect was that just a few minutes after Sanjar left the ward, the door was pushed open again.

Although he had previously admired the door to this ward, noting how well the hinges were lubricated and how barely a sound it made when pushed open, Lin Qi, whose nerves were on edge, was still startled by the slight noise of the door being pushed open.

He quickly looked towards the door, where the nurse looked at him blankly, noticing his inexplicable agitation, and said softly, "...Mr. Lynch, someone has come to visit you again. Do you need..."

This was the third time Lin Qi had heard these words. His mood had changed from "Finally, someone has come to visit and chat with me" to "Why is someone here again? Is there some bad news again?"

Even though he was nervous, he had no reason to refuse a visit, so he asked the nurse, "Who's here this time?"

"The visitor's name is Lucas, and he claims to be your friend!" the nurse replied crisply.

Lynch's eyes lit up immediately upon hearing Lucas's name.

Lucas is finally back! We can finally know how things have gone these past few days!

"Please come in quickly!"

The nurse left as instructed, and soon Lucas entered the ward for the second time. He was still wearing very ordinary casual clothes, looking no different from usual.

But when he entered the ward, Lynch immediately noticed that something seemed wrong with Lucas. Lucas looked worried, his brows...

His head was furrowed, and his shoulders seemed to slump, as if he had suffered some major blow during the days he had been separated from Lin Qi.

Upon seeing Lucas's condition, Lynch immediately realized something was wrong, but before he could decide to ask Lucas what had happened, Lucas spoke first.

He forced a smile, his voice sounding very tired: "...Hey, it's been a few days, how's your recovery going?"

Lin Qi had no interest in listening to the repetitive pleasantries anymore. He went straight to the point: "I'm doing fine, but you look listless. What's wrong? Is there a problem? About the video?"

Lucas sighed deeply, rubbing his temples as he slumped into his chair, saying listlessly, "Yes, you guessed right, but it's not just about the video... I've run into some unexpected troubles in various aspects."

"I went to the Seattle Police Department and found Officer Chen Kelei as you instructed. Everything went smoothly at first. After learning that you were the one who asked me to go to him, he was very friendly to me. And after learning the purpose of my visit, he showed great interest in the video footage I had taken and said he would try to start an investigation immediately."

"So I exchanged contact information with him and went home to wait for his message. I've been busy these past few days, editing and uploading videos—but that's another story. Anyway, after some time, when I decided to contact Police Officer Chen Kelei again..."

When I was in office, I suddenly lost contact with him.

"At first I thought he was just busy and would probably reply to me soon. But soon, a few days passed and I couldn't contact him anymore. He had completely disappeared."

"He wouldn't answer my calls or reply to my messages. I went to his workplace to look for him, but his colleagues told me that he hadn't come to work for several days."

"It wasn't until this morning that I received a message from Officer Chen. He said he had recently encountered a big problem and asked me not to contact him for the time being."

"I spoke to the Lopez family about this, but they don't seem to be paying attention to it for the time being. So, the path to contacting Officer Chen has come to an end. I still haven't seen those documents and files that you said you left at Officer Chen's house."

As he spoke, Lucas scratched his hair in frustration.

...Is Chen Kelei in trouble?

Lynch's heart tightened upon hearing Lucas's words.

However, before he could ask further questions, Lucas continued, clearly not yet finished recounting his troubles: "...If failing to contact Officer Chen was merely an unexpected event outside my plans, then the problems I encountered with releasing the video were completely beyond my expectations, shattering my plans and disrupting my arrangements."

"As you know, I filmed a lot of footage in the valley and the cabin, including those people imprisoned in the basement, the cabin, the statue, the blood pool... I know that these video websites are extremely sensitive to censorship now, so I used all the editing skills I had learned to edit the footage into several versions and uploaded them to various video websites, intending to test the limits of what the websites' censorship could accept little by little."

"But I never expected that, in the end, not a single one of my videos would pass the review."

"I racked my brains, watching every minute and every frame of the video I edited over and over again, but I just couldn't figure out why the video wouldn't pass the review. I know the original video might be a bit gory, but the final version of my video was already full of mosaics, and without subtitles, viewers wouldn't even be able to understand what was happening in the video—the voices were all changed as well. But all of that was ultimately useless."

"I tried all sorts of methods—changing the title, switching platforms, even uploading in segments... but all of them failed. Everything I did was pointless. Either the videos simply couldn't be uploaded, or they were blocked instantly after being uploaded."

"I have completely failed. I am powerless. I cannot do it."

Finally, Lucas clutched his head in anguish: "Although I don't know exactly why, this path is probably completely blocked!"

Lynch listened to Lucas's account with a furrowed brow, his expression deepening. By the end, he completely understood Lucas's confusion. Based on the clues provided by Antonio and Sanjar, he had every reason to suspect that Lucas's video release was delayed...

The reason for going out wasn't a technical issue at all!

It must be the powerful backer of the Rainbow Body Society who intervened, blocking all news about the Maple Valley incident on online platforms!

At the same time, Lin Qi immediately understood why he hadn't seen any related news reports on television during this period.

The invisible hand behind the Rainbow Body Society has probably already firmly controlled the American public opinion field!