Pokémon Detective Case Files.

"She found out from the organizers of the exchange event," the detective immediately added, using the information he had overheard. "The organizers sent her a text message telling her that her exchange partner was actually a dangerous Pokémon abuser. At the same time, her phone received several bloody photos of a Leopard from a stranger, which made her completely believe in Leopard's current condition. As soon as she got home, she began to angrily prepare to murder it."

"What a terrible cause... wait a minute... didn't the thug already decide to exchange the leopard for someone else? Even if she cared about her original partner, she might not be so angry as to kill someone directly." Officer Jenny suddenly discovered a suspicious point in the already solved case.

"Oh, this?" The detective waved his hand. "Although it's not the main point, I can explain it. It's a byproduct of solving the arson case."

Officer Jenny listened attentively.

"Although the prisoner's style of dress is somewhat chaotic, judging from her avant-garde attire, this hoodlum with no legitimate income is quite well-off—"

She was unemployed yet had plenty of money, and on top of that, she had an unconventional, almost idiosyncratic, appearance...

"Based on my deduction, the reason this scoundrel is living a life of ease is because she frequently trades her Cool Leopard with others and profits from it. A few days after each trade, she will use the excuse of 'missing her original spirit' to get her Cool Leopard back from the other party. Meanwhile, the wealth of the person whose spirit was traded will unknowingly decrease over those few days."

"You mean the female thug frequently used the swapping sprites to create opportunities for the cool leopard to steal?"

“Very clever.” Hugo nodded with satisfaction. “That’s why she has such deep feelings for Leopard, and that’s the only reason she would give up her only Pokémon to trade.”

They were not just master and servant, but also long-term accomplices in crime.

“I didn’t know about this, which means the thugs probably tried their best to cover it up during the interrogation…” Officer Jenny’s mood couldn’t help but sink as she thought of the sordid cause behind the bloody case. “Would keeping it a secret reduce her sentence?”

"I don't think so. The cumulative sentence for this level of serial theft wouldn't exceed one year."

Hugo's answer was both professional and ruthless.

"I think she probably wanted to give Cool Leopard, who had committed theft, a slightly cleaner identity so he could be adopted while she was in jail."

Hugo reasoned, then, oblivious to the situation, advised the police officer in front of him, "Miss Officer Jenny, we absolutely cannot allow this resume fraud to happen. You should report the situation to your superior later."

"No way, my colleagues would say I'm heartless if I did that."

“Flying Cloud City, I finally understand why you are so corrupt and filthy…” The detective feigned regret, exaggerating his acting as he looked out the window, but did not express any strong objection.

The police station was brightly lit, and compared to the crimes brewing in the darkness outside, this moral consideration seemed so insignificant.

Chapter 012 The Blind Spot in the Night Sky

"I see! There's definitely something wrong with the organizers of this exchange program!"

Officer Jenny snapped out of her reverie about the female thug's motives for murder and keenly realized the problem.

"Based on the current information, the deceased was not someone who would abuse Pokémon! Although the Leopard had injuries from battles at the time of the incident, there were absolutely no signs of serious abuse. Moreover, the deceased's Fried Pig had even stood up for its former owner in a battle. If the college student were truly a sadistic person, this kind of thing would not have happened."

“There are many explanations for the behavior of ‘Chao Chao Zhu’,” the detective said critically. “Recent behavioral psychology seems to have proposed a theory that some kidnapping victims develop special feelings for their kidnappers. These feelings can cause the victims to develop affection, dependence, or even assist the kidnappers.”

"Do you think there's such a phenomenon in the case?" Officer Jenny was speechless and asked cautiously.

“In fact, no. I also tend to think that the victim was completely innocent.” Hugo, leaning against the stair railing, spread his hands, which drew Officer Jenny’s gritted teeth.

“I agree with your analysis of the deceased,” Hugo said to the policewoman, “but I haven’t figured out who harmed him or what their motive was. The only thing I’m certain of is that there must be an even more shocking crime hidden behind this.”

"Is it intuition? You detectives actually believe in this kind of thing?"

"It's a vague, subconscious judgment gained from years of criminological research... well, this term is even less accurate than intuition."

"Alright! Now listen to my thoughts!"

Officer Jenny then took over the detective's deduction: "I have a hypothesis—the person who really wanted to murder the victim was actually the organizer of the exchange event. He deliberately gave misleading information to the thug the day after the exchange to incite her murderous intent, using her as a tool to kill the victim. What do you think of this reasoning?"

The policewoman eagerly turned her gaze to the detective, only to find Hugo lost in thought, shaking his head and muttering nonsensical phrases like "organizers...exchange meeting...photos...conflict..." in the dimly lit hallway.

"Damn it, I can't connect the dots!" The detective inexplicably became angry.

However, Officer Jenny, who was being ignored, was even angrier than him and shouted, "Hey, listen to me!"

Hugo's eardrums were suddenly attacked, and he was so frightened that he jumped up.

Unfortunately, at that moment, he was leaning against the handrail of the stairwell. After his feet left the ground, his center of gravity shifted backward, and under the influence of gravity, his figure fell backward, headfirst, towards the next flight of stairs.

Officer Jenny, the instigator, was terrified and quickly grabbed the detective's legs as he struggled to maintain his balance in mid-air.

Officer Jenny and the horizontal stair railing became the two fulcrums supporting Hugo's body, lifting him up before he completely lost his balance, thus saving the detective from the misfortune of falling headfirst.

"Hehe, haha, hahahaha."

Hugo was held by the policewoman's legs, his whole body suspended on the horizontal handrail like a balance beam, yet he was emitting a chilling, neurotic laugh.

“Hugo, great detective, it was my fault for suddenly shouting. If you've been through something, let's talk it out. Don't do anything rash... Now, don't move around. I'll slowly pull you back... Good boy, good boy, you're perfectly safe. Don't panic..."

Officer Jenny never imagined that one day she would be doing her old job in the police station's security department—comforting mental patients and dissuading suicide.

“Officer Jenny, your reasoning doesn’t make sense. If the organizers really intended to kill the victim, then the success rate of this scheme to use someone else to do the dirty work would be too low. The organizers couldn’t completely control the actions of the people attending the exchange, and if they had intervened more directly, the thug who had already confessed would definitely have implicated the culprit—after all, that would have significantly reduced her charges. The fact that the thug didn’t confess means that the murder was entirely her doing.”

The detective's voice seemed to come from a distant place, whether it was hell or heaven, or something even worse—like the sky above the courtyard outside the stair railing.

"Yes, yes, yes! You're absolutely right!"

Seeing that the detective was about to slip again, Officer Jenny grabbed his leg and pulled him toward her, but the detective didn't cooperate at all and continued to chatter on, maintaining his balance beam posture.

"So what was the organizer's purpose in sowing discord? What benefit would it bring him to have thugs kill college students? At this point, we can look at the issue from a different perspective."

The detective looked up at the layered staircases and the square ceiling at the end of the courtyard, using his physical state to make people see things from a different perspective, which was almost ridiculously reasonable.

"His goal wasn't to kill the victim, nor was it to have the murderer kill; the organizer's real goal was chaos!"

"Confusion?" Officer Jenny, clinging to Hugo's leg, finally noticed Hugo's reasoning.

"Create conflict, escalate tensions, and breed chaos—that's the purpose of the exchange organizers, huh—"

Hugo returned to Officer Jenny in a sit-up position, his sudden close proximity almost making the policewoman scream.

"Do you remember what happened at the police station today?"

“It’s hard to forget even if you want to.” Officer Jenny released Hugo’s leg, let out a long sigh, and answered with a bitter face.

"Disputes are rampant in the city, the police department is understaffed, everyone is running around, and in the end everyone is exhausted and injured. There are also piles of reports to write. I guarantee you won't find a single energetic Feiyun City police officer in the entire month."

"Have you ever considered that all these disputes might involve a specific activity?" the detective asked persuasively.

"An exchange meeting?" The policewoman's eyes lit up.

"Yes, the difference between the exchange and other events is that it allows him to legitimately collect information on the trainers who participate, and then legitimately pass that information on to other trainers. It's a perfect way to create conflict."

Hugo spoke eloquently, becoming increasingly engrossed in his speech.

"The combination of anonymous emails and forged photos may just be one of the many bizarre methods of sowing discord. Having obtained all the personal information of the attendees, they have countless ways to cause conflict between any two trainers who have traded Pokémon with them."

Officer Jenny's eyes widened: "You mean all the conflict cases the police mediated today were actually the work of this organizer?"

"The vast majority, right? I listened to some of today's cases in the office. Although most of the conflicts involved complete strangers, the pattern of provocation that sparked conflict due to information from unknown sources was almost identical to what the female thug encountered."

Sitting on the railing, swaying back and forth, the detective was engrossed in counting on his fingers.

"Last night, a trainer with six gym badges came to the door of a stranger's house to provoke him. He claimed that he had been receiving the same vicious challenge letter every day for a week, and the address listed was this very house, the residence of a retired trainer. After the police spent a full team of officers to stop the fight, they discovered that the two people did not know each other at all. The challenging trainer had previously traded Pokémon at a Pokémon exchange event, and the retired trainer had also visited the exchange event and purchased high-level healing items used by expert battlers."

And then there was this afternoon, a chaotic ten-on-ten group battle broke out on a street. After a hard-fought battle by the police, who finally managed to calm the crowd down, it turned out that the two trainer groups each claimed that one of their key members had been kidnapped by the other, believing that the other wanted to use this as leverage to take over the other's group—but that was completely untrue. The two missing people were a couple on a date, and when the battle broke out, they were sitting in a movie theater with their phones off. And their movie tickets were a free gift they received at an exchange event…”

Officer Jenny couldn't hold back any longer: "Why would the organizer do something so despicable? Could he be a pleasure offender?"

"His ultimate goal is you."

Officer Jenny pointed to the tip of her nose: "Us?"

Hugo pointed to the ceiling: "Police station."

Outside the window was the neon-lit night view that Feiyun City was so proud of, but the lights could not illuminate the night sky outside the police station. The sky was still as dark as the ceiling at the end of the stairwell.

The detective spread his arms wide and spoke as if reciting a poem:

"When the city lights are on, the stars of the night will hide, and that's when the deepest secrets will surface. When the police in Feiyun City are all busy running around, the real crimes will naturally have an opportunity to happen."

He jumped off the handrail, stood in front of Officer Jenny, and asked the policewoman:

"Speaking of which, has there been any large-scale cash flow in Feiyun City recently?" the detective asked.

Officer Jenny thought hard for a moment, then thought again, and finally replied, "I don't know, but I think it's necessary for the police chief to know about this."

.

While the detective and the policewoman were performing acrobatics in the stairwell, a large truck slowly drove up to the vicinity of the entrance to the Feiyun City Financial Bank in the darkness of night.

"Boss, your plan is perfect!" A burly man with dark skin looked at the bespectacled middle-aged man driving with admiration.

"We just casually organized an exchange meeting and managed to get all the trainers' personal information. We also completely outmaneuvered the cops in Feiyun City. Now those cops and their Pokémon are exhausted and injured, and even most of the guards who were supposed to be watching the bank here have been transferred away. Now, in the middle of the night, if we go and rob the vault, it's practically a sure thing."

The big guy spoke with an air of intellectual deficiency, seemingly full of confidence about the upcoming operation.

The driver was more cautious, saying, "We still need to be careful. Our target this time is the half ton of gold that was just put into the financial bank's vault. It will take a long time for the machine to dig through the vault wall, and we still have a high chance of facing a manhunt by the Feiyun City police."

"What's there to be afraid of?" The burly man pounded his chest with his thick hands, making a loud thud.

"We've prepared a full twelve super-powerful Pokémon. Heh heh, even if that Gym Leader from Flying Cloud City comes, his little bugs won't be able to beat us! Those cops must be exhausted by now, how many of them can actually fight? At worst, we can still fight our way out."

The driver adjusted his glasses but didn't respond; he had a bad feeling about this.

Beyond the blacked-out car windows, the headquarters of Feiyun City Financial Bank was right in front of them; this was the heart of Feiyun City.

Less than 200 meters away, there is a two-story building called "Yuxi Residence" that stands out abruptly.

For some reason, even though Hugo, the only current resident of the house, was not home, light was shining from the windows on the first floor.

Chapter 013 The Infallible Robbers

Ham, a middle-aged man, is nearsighted and has changed jobs many times over the years. His most recent job is generally referred to as "bank robber".

This niche and unique job is actually not easy. In terms of physical strength, one must be able to fight and be tough, and run away like the wind. In terms of culture, one must plan and scheme, and have a big picture in mind.

At the same time, staff members often need to perform multiple roles.

Beforehand, one must gather intelligence, scout the location, and understand the bank's engineering design and security situation; during the operation, one needs to infiltrate and disguise like an actor, engage in psychological warfare with bank employees like a negotiation expert, dodge traps like a gymnast, prepare bombs like a chemist, and shake off pursuers like a race car driver; afterwards, one must constantly guard against betrayal by accomplices and subsequent police investigations, and if one's identity is not well concealed, one's image may even be printed on a wanted poster...

Although this job is very hard, if successful, a single operation can bring in a huge amount of wealth that an ordinary person could never achieve in a lifetime.

—If it can be successful.

The ecosystem of the bandit profession can be summarized in one sentence: the bold get rich, the timid starve, those who steal a hook are punished, and those who steal a country become kings.

In the past, there was the young Boss Sakaki—a man who rose through the ranks of the yakuza, leading his henchmen to sweep through major banks in the Kanto region as if on a roll call. Accompanying him was an incredibly powerful Beedrill, which first flashed with a cold light, then unleashed its stinger like a dragon. Its unparalleled strength made all the guards and bodyguards avoid it like the plague.

Under the leadership of this great leader, the gang, now known as "Team Rocket," has entered a golden age. Smuggling and extortion are routine, and breaking into vaults is as easy as strolling through a garden. They have quickly built the first cornerstone of a giant black market empire.

However, that group ultimately suffered from their flamboyant behavior and disbanded two years ago during a joint operation by Pokémon Leagues and Interpol in multiple locations.

Currently, there's the Aquarion Fleet, which is gaining momentum in the Hoenn region. These people operate as a gang, and their crimes are always successful.

The leader, Shui Wutong, is meticulous in his thinking. To outsiders, his crimes seem like a dream. The victims of his robberies often only come to their senses several days after the crime, but by then they are powerless to recover their losses and can only lament the Shui Fleet's lucrative achievements.

Suspiciously, despite committing numerous crimes, the Water Fleet has shown no signs of expanding its influence, probably because it is engaged in some large-scale project with significant upfront investment.

The path of crime, paved with blood, is already studded with stars.

After making up his mind to become a robber, Ham carefully studied the valuable robbery cases left by these industry bigwigs, absorbed and digested the essence of their crimes, and also consulted local industry veterans. Finally, he devised a perfect criminal plan.

However, Ham discovered that, throughout history, both in China and abroad, all the great bandits who ultimately achieved success and became legends in the industry were often also exceptionally skilled trainers with powerful Pokémon to support them.

Ham's own Pokémon were too weak to silently defeat the bank's guards or escape from the police's encirclement.

Therefore, in order to make up for his lack of combat power, Ham invited his childhood friend, who was a manager at a security company in another city, to join the criminal gang and plot something big together.

Just as Ham had predicted, his childhood friend, who had always been a bit of a rascal, hit it off immediately and happily joined the newly formed crime squad. Even more surprisingly, his friend had somehow managed to "borrow" a full twelve Pokémon from his former security company—Pokémon that were said to be able to rival the main force of a gym leader.

This is a wonderful surprise!

With the addition of a powerful security supervisor, Ham's team finally overcame its lack of combat strength, achieving a leap forward in overall capabilities. Like a roaring tiger sprouting wings, or a fire-breathing dragon gaining the ability to "store water," the team had finally filled its last gap!

Now, let the spectacular crime unfold.

.

Ham's team's plan proceeded smoothly until they entered the bank vault.

When Ham and his burly-haired companion took down two bank guards and used an illegally modified industrial drill to break through the thick outer wall of the vault, they believed they had one foot in the door of a successful robber when they saw the layers of gleaming gold bars stacked behind the drill.

The thought of living a life of luxury and debauchery after converting the gold bars into cash made the two of them drool with happiness.

"Haha, we only encountered two guards along the way. We must have used our tricks to exhaust those cops. They must be fast asleep now, completely worn out! Thanks to that, we haven't triggered any alarms yet. I reckon by the time we leave the city, the police might not even realize the bank has been robbed!"

Even now, Ham's companions are still cheering for his plan. What a simple-minded fool! He gets excited and shouts over nothing if he uses his brain even a little bit.

However, the previous tactic of luring the tiger away from the mountain was indeed vicious. After all, it was a criminal plan designed by a big shot in "that organization." It was truly an extraordinary fart from an old god.

Whenever Ham thought about the anonymous emails he was asked to send, targeting different trainers and inciting them to kill each other, he felt a chilling fear, like a thorn in his back—what kind of demon, with such profound insight into human nature, could write such inflammatory and evil words...

Ham had no intention of correcting his companion's misplaced admiration at this point. In fact, he hoped that his companion would gradually build up his image as a wise man in his mind. After all, the higher his partner's evaluation of him, the lower the possibility that he would rebel for money.