Chapter 153 Home

Dong, dong, dong…

A knock on the door brought Zuo Yan, who was staring blankly at the TV, back to his senses.

He hesitated for a second, then walked to the door and said through the door panel, "Who is it?"

"Excuse me, sir, I'm a waiter from the bar." The voice outside was the same waiter who had spoken to Jue-ge earlier.

"Oh… what is it?" Zuo Yan replied.

"Excuse me, have you lost a cat?" the waiter asked.

Hearing this, Zuo Yan's expression changed slightly. He then approached the peephole and took a look; through the glass, he saw Victor, looking displeased, being held in the waiter's arms.

The next second, Zuo Yan opened the door without a word. He looked at the waiter and smiled awkwardly, "Hehe… sorry, I wasn't paying attention and he slipped out. I was just looking for him…" As he spoke, he reached out to take the cat. "So… where did you find him?"

"A Mr. Feng found him in the bar. Mr. Feng said you were his friend and asked me to bring the cat over." The waiter handed the cat to Zuo Yan as he spoke, "Here you go, sir. If there's nothing else, I have to get back to work."

"Okay, thank you." Zuo Yan took the cat and said politely, "I appreciate it."

After a brief exchange, the door closed again, leaving a man and a cat in the room, staring at each other…

"Spare me the chatter." Victor glared with dead fish eyes and spoke to Zuo Yan through telepathy.

"I haven't said anything yet…" Zuo Yan replied with a smile that wasn't quite a smile.

"That's right, I have moments of carelessness too." Victor knew what the other party was going to say, so he didn't even want to listen. "But… this time it really wasn't caused by my negligence…"

"Oh?" Zuo Yan could tell that he meant something, so he simply responded and waited for him to continue.

"Although, from an objective point of view, it seems like I was just unlucky, but… I have a faint feeling that Feng Bujue, who calls himself a 'detective,' is not as simple as he appears on the surface…"

…

Let's split the narrative and look at the bar.

"What's wrong? Buddy." Feng Bujue scrutinized Sam with a suspicious look. "You don't look so good."

After returning from the restroom, Sam's expression had become very strange. It wasn't the expression of someone who had successfully committed a crime, nor was it an emotion feigned for some reason.

Feng Bujue quickly saw through the truth behind this expression—an accident had occurred during Sam's criminal undertaking.

"I…" Sam only said one word, and then fell into hesitation and contemplation again.

Clearly, some unforeseen change had disrupted his original criminal plan, so all the prepared excuses and acting skills… had also lost their meaning.

Not everyone can react and improvise as frighteningly as Feng Bujue. As an ordinary person, when faced with a situation where saying the wrong half-sentence could lead to his demise, Sam naturally had to think twice and be careful with his words…

"Could it be… something bad on the phone…?" Seeing that the other party wasn't responding, Feng Bujue used guiding words to pry open Sam's mouth.

"Uh…" Sam's eyeballs rolled in his sockets. Then he picked up the small glass of strong liquor he hadn't finished on the table, tilted his head, and drank it all in one gulp. "Hah…" After downing half a glass of wine, he seemed to have made up his mind. "Brother Feng…" He looked at Feng Bujue and said, "Something… seems to have happened at my house."

[Current mission completed]

At the moment Sam uttered these words, the system voice also rang in Jue-ge's ears.

Feng Bujue took the opportunity to open the game menu and looked at the taskbar; at this time, the second sub-task under the main task, [Wait for the case to occur], had already been checked, and a third sub-task had been refreshed below—[Intervene in the investigation of the "John Herbert murder case"].

"What?" Feng Bujue was shocked when he saw this task. "'John Herbert murder case'?" He couldn't help but complain to himself, "Shouldn't this guy be the victim?"

Through his "visits" on the island that afternoon, Feng Bujue had undoubtedly heard about the Herbert family's inheritance dispute case, and it was at that time that he saw Sam's photo; therefore, Feng Bujue was able to recognize him when he met Sam at the elevator entrance.

And the reason that made Jue-ge and Victor conclude that "Sam might be involved in some kind of criminal event" was… they both saw the money in Sam's coat pocket.

It was a very, very thick wad of money…

So thick that it could no longer be stuffed into the inside pocket of his suit or pants pocket, so Sam had to put it in the outside pocket of his suit, trying to cover it with his hand as he walked.

Under normal circumstances, this kind of cover would be enough. Apart from pickpockets, no one would really stare at other people's clothing pockets all day long.

However, in front of characters like Feng Bujue and Victor, this was bound to be exposed.

Anyone who entered their line of sight would become like a "reasoning sample"; this was their instinct… They had developed a habit of "observing" and "reasoning," and their level of proficiency had reached a point that ordinary people would find difficult to achieve even if they tried hard to do so. For them, deduction was a regular sense of communication with the world, no different from breathing.

Therefore, that brand-new hat, that hurried gait, that thoughtful expression, that thick wad of cash, and the identity of "Sam Herbert" itself… these pieces of information, collected in a fleeting glance, had already evolved into the same conclusion in Feng Bujue and Victor's minds in a matter of seconds—this guy was up to something.

However, at that time, Victor had deduced more than Feng Bujue because he had a better understanding of the inheritance case.

In the following hours, that is, the period from when Feng Bujue entered the room to when he arrived at the bar, Jue-ge also used the phone on his person to further investigate the Herbert family's inheritance case online, and finally came to the same set of inferences as Victor, catching up with the other party's progress in terms of intelligence.

At this point, the two sides had reached the same starting line and had unanimously constructed a hypothesis of "the younger brother hiring a murderer."

However, the actual development of the matter was beyond everyone's expectations… including Sam himself.

"Don't panic…" Three seconds later, Feng Bujue had quickly calmed down, put on a particularly righteous and reliable appearance, and said to the man he had just met by chance, "What exactly is it? Tell me about it…"