Chapter 86: The Fourth Live Broadcast!

Around eight or nine in the morning, I had just finished practicing the Heavenly Eye facing the rising sun when urgent knocking came from downstairs.

I hurried downstairs. The moment I opened the door, two fully armed police officers rushed inside and subdued me without a word.

"What's going on? Impersonating police is illegal!" I had never seen either of the officers who burst into the room. Judging by their uniforms, they were armed police.

"Are you Gao Jian?" A middle-aged man walked in from outside. He pulled out a color photo, compared it to my face, and raised his hand. "Target confirmed. Apprehension complete."

The two officers pinned me against a police car from both sides. Bai Qi ran over, baring his teeth, but I quickly yelled to stop him, "Watch the house! Don't run off."

After seeing their uniforms and equipment, I had already given up resisting.

They were armed police, fundamentally different from Tie Ningxiang.

Criminal investigators handled criminal cases, functioning much like regular public security officers. Armed police, however, belonged to the armed police forces, making them equivalent to soldiers.

There was a world of difference in their combat capabilities and authority. In other words, if I fought back against a criminal investigator, I would be detained for a few days at most. But confronting armed police during an active mission was a completely different matter—it would be considered a provocation against the people's army.

'Could it be that Brocade-Robed Daoist Priest with the impressive background? Does he want to eliminate me to get to Tie Ningxiang? Or did Jiang Chen die in the hospital, and the Jiang family framed me for some fabricated crime as revenge? Or maybe the Underworld Live Show was exposed? No, it's probably that the corpses in the Xinhu High School Incineration Trench were discovered, and the police pulled my fingerprints.'

As I went over the possibilities, a fine sweat broke out on my forehead. Pulling a single hair moves the entire body. I had far too many dark secrets, to the point where I genuinely had no idea why the armed police were arresting me now.

'This is bad. If they interrogate me, where do I even start?' I looked out the window. After fifteen minutes on the road, I suddenly sensed something wrong. 'We're heading toward the Southern Suburbs. The Public Security Bureau isn't in this direction. Are they going to silence me in broad daylight?'

I lowered my head and jiggled the handcuffs. These standard-issue modern cuffs had an anti-picking mechanism with a two-millimeter lock core. It would be hard to slip even a steel wire inside.

But just because a wire wouldn't fit didn't mean I couldn't find something better suited for the job.

Using the momentum of the car taking a turn, I shifted my body forward and slipped a crisp one-yuan bill out of my pocket.

"Behave!" The two armed officers watched my every move. Picking a lock right under their noses would be incredibly difficult.

Keeping my head down, I said nothing. I appeared to have my hands clasped together, but in reality, only eight fingers were visible. My ring fingers were tucked inside my palms, rapidly folding the paper bill.

If they really meant to silence me, I absolutely could not just sit there and wait to die.

Twenty minutes later, the police car pulled into a high-end residential area in the Southern Suburbs filled exclusively with detached villas.

"Why bring me here?" At the southern edge of the neighborhood, I spotted a few familiar faces—Tie Ningxiang, Chen Feng, and the Jiang family secretary who had delivered my wedding invitation.

"Why are you all here?" I had just prepared to greet Tie Ningxiang when the middle-aged man in the passenger seat stopped me.

"Did anyone tell you to speak?" He had a square face that looked stern and meticulous, though it also gave him a somewhat rigid air.

"Captain Chen, Gao Jian is only a suspect. You can't treat him like this." Tie Ningxiang yielded to no one; seeing my hands cuffed, she marched straight over.

"I am fully in charge of this case. Your Criminal Investigation Brigade is only here to assist."

Through their exchange, I realized the square-faced man was Chen Jianguo, the armed police captain and Chen Feng's father.

"You, come upstairs with me. The rest of you, stand guard outside. No one is allowed in!" Chen Jianguo gave Tie Ningxiang a deliberate look. Before coming here, he had heard from his son about my relationship with her.

Forced upstairs, I was still completely baffled. It wasn't until we entered Jiang Fei's bedroom that I finally asked, "Captain Chen, you didn't arrest me bright and early just to bring me here to admire a woman's bedroom, did you?"

"You still have the mood to joke around?" Chen Jianguo kept a straight face, glaring at me. "Kid, you'd better answer honestly when I question you, or I'll make you regret it."

"What? Are you planning on using excessive force?"

"That depends on your behavior." Chen Jianguo shoved me toward the vanity table. "This morning, the apple of the Jiang family's eye, Jiang Fei—daughter of the Jiangjin Real Estate chairman—went missing."

"What does that spoiled woman's disappearance have to do with me? I don't even know her well." It was utterly absurd. I said in irritation, "If you want my help solving a case, I can help. But if you're going to arrest people without evidence like this, I'll see you in court."

I talked tough, but in reality, I was calculating the severity of the situation.

The Jiang family had two sons and one daughter. Although Jiang Fei was arrogant and willful, she was highly favored by Old Master Jiang. With her missing, the old man would definitely leverage all his connections to tear the city apart looking for her.

Let alone the fact that I hadn't done it, even if I had, I could absolutely never admit it. The consequences would be too severe.

"Why do you suspect me?"

"Why? See for yourself." Chen Jianguo pulled a diary from the drawer and flipped to the most recent entries. They all revolved around one man.

Unfortunately, that man was me.

"Jiang Fei has a flamboyant personality. She has almost no female friends, and she looks down on every man she meets. Yet, for some reason, she harbors special feelings for you. You could even say she is utterly infatuated."

"You're just a gray-market worker running an adult store. Compared to Jiang Fei, you're worlds apart. It's highly abnormal." Chen Jianguo was blunt. The fact that a total loser was being pursued by a high-society goddess meant there had to be a hidden motive.

"Furthermore, she always keeps to herself. We reviewed the neighborhood surveillance cameras. Jiang Fei went out alone late last night, and the only person who had contact with her yesterday evening was you."

"Me?"

Chen Jianguo brought out Jiang Fei's phone. When he turned the screen on, it showed an unfinished text message. The recipient was me.

"No, she was texting me. I didn't reach out to her. Why does that mean her disappearance has anything to do with me?" I could only offer a bitter smile. Jiang Fei's intense interest in a washed-up, third-rate detective like me was entirely due to that Red Cord of Marriage, but who would believe that if I told them?

"I know you were once a police academy student, so you're good at handling police interrogations. That's fine. We'll head back to the station first. I have plenty of ways to make you talk." Chen Jianguo firmly believed I was the suspect. After collecting the evidence, he escorted me back to the Public Security Bureau.

It wasn't until the afternoon, when Wu Meng returned to the station from working a case, that I was finally cleared of suspicion.

"Gao Jian was with me all night." With several officers who were on duty last night vouching for me, Chen Jianguo couldn't say much. Even though he disliked me, he ultimately released me, ordering me to stay home and be ready for questioning at any time.

Returning to Ting Tang Road, I paid little mind to Jiang Fei's disappearance. Instead, I focused all my attention on tracking down the black magician.

I didn't do this because I hated Jiang Fei and liked Jiang Shihan, but because Jiang Fei had a wealthy father who could mobilize the entire city to look for her.

Jiang Shihan, however, was just an ordinary person. No one cared about her death. I was the only one who could clear her name.

I called Blind Liu over. The moment he walked through the door, he threw out a warning, "Gao Jian, disaster is about to strike you again."

I was long used to his tone. "Yeah. I just got back from the police station, covered in bad luck."

"You should avoid government offices in the future. They attract trouble." Blind Liu leaned on his carrying pole. After a few days unseen, he looked much more haggard. "I cast another hexagram for you on my way over. Tomorrow night, you will face a life-or-death tribulation. I advise you to drop everything and take shelter in a Daoist temple or a shrine."

"Tomorrow night?" I narrowed my eyes. Tomorrow night was another Underworld Live Show live broadcast. I had been so busy these past few days that I almost forgot about it.

"Can you give me the details of the reading?"

Blind Liu shook his head and simply said, "The hexagram points to great misfortune. Ten parts death, zero parts survival."

I talked with Blind Liu late into the night, discussing many issues I'd encountered in my cultivation. Throughout the conversation, I tried to subtly pry about the hexagram, but he kept his lips tightly sealed. It seemed the reading was so perilous that he couldn't even speak of it.

After seeing Blind Liu out, I watched his somewhat frail figure vanish down the street, suddenly feeling a chill.

'The Underworld Live Show broadcasts get harder every time. Can I survive tomorrow night?'

It was late into the night, but I had no desire to sleep. I documented all my previous broadcasts on the computer. 'Red Luan, Yuan Chen, the ten evils... what will I encounter next?'

...

When I opened the shop the next day, plainclothes officers were lingering outside. It looked like Chen Jianguo still suspected me.

Since I was being monitored, I couldn't casually go out. I stayed obediently in the shop and practiced the Profound Truth Mental Method, only taking Bai Qi out to eat at mealtimes.

I waited until past six in the evening before the plainclothes officers finally withdrew. Seeing them leave, I breathed a sigh of relief. With an Underworld Live Show live broadcast tonight, I didn't want to expose my identity.

The sky darkened, and night enveloped the city.

I locked the shop door and sat quietly in front of the clock.

"Eight o'clock."

The Large-Screen Phone on the table lit up with a cold glow, looking like a maliciously grinning ghost face.

I silently picked up the phone, accepted the call, and pressed it to my ear.

"Hello?"

No sound came from the receiver for a long time. Frowning, I asked again, "Who are you looking for?"

Almost a minute passed. Just as I was about to hang up, the person on the other end finally spoke. She only spoke a single sentence, but it made me jump straight up from my stool.

The familiar voice drifted through my mind; even the intonation was exactly the same.

The person calling me was Jiang Shihan. As if leaning right against my ear, she whispered,

"Do not close your eyes when the sky turns dark!"