A black Cadillac glided silently to a stop downstairs at Lin Mo's apartment building.
Lin Mo changed into casual clothes and shuffled downstairs in his slippers, still carrying an air of laziness about him.
He didn't even lock his door when he left, which was not a good habit.
He pulled open the car door and sank into the soft leather seats in the back. Sitting in the front were Liu Zheng and Old Bai.
"It's so early in the morning. What kind of case has our little search expert so worried?" Lin Mo waved his hand to dispel the smoke in front of him.
In the driver's seat, Old Bai didn't say a word. He silently rolled down the window a bit to let some fresh air in.
In the passenger seat, Liu Zheng took a vicious drag of his cigarette, the tip glowing crimson in the dim light. He exhaled the smoke heavily, his whole body exuding an air of dejection.
"Don't even mention it. Damn it, we've run into our nemesis this time."
"The other party managed to wipe their energy fluctuations completely clean. If Old Bai hadn't found some issues, I'd still be in the fucking dark right now."
The amount of swearing was enough to show just how much of a headache Liu Zheng was dealing with.
Old Bai didn't reply. He just skillfully turned the steering wheel and merged the car into the traffic.
Seeing Liu Zheng's half-dead appearance annoyed Lin Mo, so he simply raised his foot and kicked the back of the passenger seat.
"Spit it out. If you keep me in suspense any longer, I'm jumping out of the car."
Liu Zheng jolted from the kick. He knew that Lin Mo was a man of his word and would actually dare to do a leap of faith on the highway.
Not daring to dawdle any longer, he quickly pulled out a tablet, unlocked it, and opened a file.
"At eleven o'clock last night, a seven-car pile-up occurred on the Dongyuan Expressway. By the time we arrived, three people were dead at the scene."
The tablet screen showed a gruesome car crash scene, the wreckage of the vehicles twisted like fried dough twists.
"The strange thing is, the drivers of the first two cars and the two cars towards the middle-back all ran away. We checked, and all four of those cars had cloned license plates."
"A sandwich? What about the other two cars? That's only five cars in total."
"Those were the ones in the back that couldn't brake in time and crashed into them, but those two drivers are fine."
A flash of inspiration crossed Lin Mo's mind. Last night on the mountain, when Ma Li and Lin Jiajun were chatting, they seemed to mention that the traffic jam on the road was caused by a severe car accident.
It was most likely this one.
"Have the identities of the deceased been confirmed?" Lin Mo asked casually.
"Yeah. Although three died, we suspect there was only one real target."
Liu Zheng's face looked even worse. "An international student who just returned from Britain. The other two victims were his parents."
Lin Mo raised an eyebrow.
"An international student? What's his background?"
"A top student, studying for his Ph.D. over there. He came back this time to visit relatives and take care of some business."
Lin Mo tapped his fingers lightly on his knee and suddenly said something completely unrelated.
"Only those without money try every means to immigrate, while the rich send their kids abroad to study. This family must be quite wealthy."
"More than just wealthy," Liu Zheng smiled bitterly. "His parents have two companies under their names, and their combined fixed assets are at least thirty million and up."
In a place like Yangcheng, there really was gold and wealthy people everywhere.
Then why couldn't there be one more—me?!
Lin Mo grumbled inwardly, but he couldn't help asking the most realistic question out loud: "What about the inheritance?"
"What else? It's going to be a classic soap opera family feud."
Liu Zheng stubbed out his cigarette in the car's ashtray. "If that student were still alive, everything would be fine. But now that the family of three is all gone, those distant, opportunistic relatives are probably already swarming over like sharks smelling blood."
Hearing this, Lin Mo's fingers paused their tapping on his knee, and his eyes drifted for a brief moment.
However, he quickly recovered and suppressed those inappropriate thoughts.
"What does that student look like? Let me see."
Liu Zheng directly handed the tablet over.
Lin Mo took it, and with just one glance, his brows knitted tightly together.
It really was an acquaintance.
The student in the picture wasn't young; he was at least in his twenties.
Most importantly, Lin Mo had seen him on Chu Lintian's birthday.
That patriotic guy named Billy.
Good thing his surname wasn't Cao.
However, for a family of three to all die in a car crash, and with the people in the other cars running away, it was obvious that this was a deliberate murder.
Lin Mo leaned back against the seat, looking at the street scene rapidly retreating outside the window, his expression calm.
"I've seen this guy."
If it weren't for the seatbelt, Liu Zheng would have flown right out of his seat.
Liu Zheng whipped his head around, his eyes fixed dead on Lin Mo: "What did you say? Seen who?"
"Yeah, I saw him once, though I don't know him. But I heard that he brought back some of our books that were previously stolen and kept in a British library."
Hearing this, Liu Zheng's body shook with excitement. "As expected of you. The moment you step in, we have a clue."
The car soon drove into a hospital.
The bodies were not kept in the police station's morgue. This hospital was a partner institution of Yanhuang Awakening, handling the aftermath of special cases, which naturally included storing bodies.
There were also people from Yanhuang Awakening here.
Inside the hospital, uniformed personnel came and went. Upon seeing Liu Zheng, they all stopped in their tracks.
"Greetings, Captain Liu!"
Liu Zheng just nodded with a tight face in response, then pulled Lin Mo inside, walking hurriedly.
Lin Mo's divine sense, however, clearly caught the whispers behind them.
"What bullshit Captain Liu? He doesn't look like much. I heard he just got lucky and picked up a huge freebie in the Ning family case."
"Shh! Keep it down! A freebie? How many of our brothers did we lose in that case? I heard that him becoming captain was entirely due to a single word from Team Leader Dongfang. To put it bluntly, he has backing."
"Connections? Are you talking about that student who just walked by looking like a student?"
"Forget it, you wouldn't understand even if I told you."
Those sour remarks buzzed around like flies.
Lin Mo glanced at Liu Zheng next to him. The man's jawline was tight, his lips pressed into a thin line. It was obvious he heard this kind of talk often.
"What, not happy about your glorious promotion to captain?" Lin Mo teased.
Liu Zheng paused, let out a heavy breath, and said in a muffled voice: "Team Leader Dongfang directly issued the appointment. The authority of this captain position is actually just below the acting director."
That one sentence explained why those people were so jealous.
Reaching the heavens in a single bound always attracts criticism.
Most importantly, Liu Zheng never really had much strength to begin with.
Those who knew his background naturally felt he relied purely on connections.
Lin Mo patted him on the shoulder and said seriously, "It's fine, I have high hopes for you. After all, you've awakened the one-in-a-million 'Connections Fruit'. If you have any problems in the future, just solve them with your connections!"
"Do you think saying that will move me?"
Old Bai finally chimed in.
"You're obviously about to cry."
"Get lost."

e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.

d intelligence to keep the plot moving, and sometimes even the protagonists are forced into absurdly dumb decisions. Why does the A-list celebrity heroine in urban romance novels ditch the top-tier movie star and become a lovestruck fool for a pockmarked male lead? Why do the leads in historical tragedy novels keep dancing between love and death, only for the blind healer to end up suffering the most? And Gu Wei never expected that after finally landing a villain role to stir up trouble, she’d pick the wrong gender! No choice now—she’ll just have to crush the protagonists as a girl!

ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!

ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!