Gamers Are Fierce - Chapter 52

Chapter 52: Shantytown

Catch the murderer?

Chai Cuiqiao, who suddenly became interested, pursed her lips. However, for the sake of her new cell phone, she still got into the Soul-Attracting Flag that was disguised as a black umbrella.

The prerequisite for the Soul-Attracting Flag to nourish the spirit was to absorb Yin Qi. In the past few days, Li Ang had visited the cemetery with the black umbrella and even bought a few bunches of small plastic flowers as a disguise.

“I wonder where the police officer monitoring my safety is…”

Li Ang murmured to himself, took the landline phone to the door, and installed the voice-activated components. He programmed it to automatically call his cell phone as soon as 70 decibels were heard in response to police officers possibly knocking on his door.

Then, he put on a hooded night jacket, gloves, rain boots, and a Face-Changing Mask that looked like Lord Guan’s red face, strapped an ax and a dagger around his waist, and put a black umbrella on his back before he got out through the window.

In order to avoid everyone else who also had Spiritual Sense in Yin City, Li Ang did not immediately call out Chai Cuiqiao. Instead, he used his fingers to hang on to the gaps in the wall and stepped on the air conditioner unit before climbing up floor by floor to the rooftop of the top floor.

The wind on the rooftop was cold and strong. Li Ang pulled his collar up and took out his cell phone.

If he wanted to catch the murderer, he naturally had to collect evidence first. Although most pieces of evidence had been more or less collected by the police, some pieces of evidence were still present.

“The bicycle parking shed down the stairs from Unit 2084 and the surveillance cameras used at the supermarkets by the community entrance are all 720p waterproof cameras produced a few years ago.”

Li Ang scrolled through his cell phone and said to himself, “Most modern surveillance cameras have networking capabilities. The surveillance cameras in shops, communities, office buildings, private rooms, hotels, and roads all run the risk of being exposed. As long as the public IP is exposed, anyone can scan webcams whose firmware or system has not been updated in a long time, whose interface has not been closed, or which have no protective measures. They can even directly export surveillance data and watch the surveillance footage in real-time.

“720p waterproof cameras with ‘free hardware’ as a selling point have caused maximum insecurity. Every single one of these cameras that is sold to a merchant at a very low price will even monitor and broadcast the live monitoring screen. One does not even need to hack. One only has to log in to the live platform to watch the recorded broadcast.”

No matter how mentally damaging the 720p waterproof live platform was to the consumers’ interests, it made it more convenient for Li Ang to collect clues. He directly played the surveillance footage of the past six days in the bicycle shed down the stairs from Unit 2084 at 10 times the regular speed on his cell phone and fast-forwarded it. Very soon, he found an anomaly.

In the past six days, whenever Zeng Weiming or Wang Fangni had walked out of the building and thrown the black garbage bag into the trash can downstairs, a fat man wearing a yellow sanitation uniform and a mask had dragged away the entire trash can within 10 minutes and put the empty trash can back in place a few minutes later.

He was… collecting rubbish?

Li Ang frowned a little. The suspect clearly possessed extraordinary ability and could easily kill ordinary people like Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni. Why had he collected household garbage? To find out how they were living? Was this a vendetta?

Li Ang continued watching.

The man, who had been collecting the household garbage of Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni for six consecutive days, sometimes pushed a muddy cart to carry the entire trash can.

“He appeared every day within 10 minutes after Zeng Weiming and Wang Fangni threw away the garbage. This indicates that he could monitor them in real-time. He might be very rich and have a lot of free time, he might be jobless, or he might work night shifts.

“The place where he stayed to monitor them is very close to Unit 2084. Every time he appeared, he would walk out of the iron gate on the west side of the building. The cart was covered in mud, and the new boots he was wearing today also have fresh, wet mud on them, which indicates that he has walked through the unpaved path on the way to the building.”

During the 10-minute walk on the pavement that was in the process of being constructed, he could push the small cart and carry the garbage bag in and out without standing out…

Li Ang recalled the terrain around the building very quickly in his mind and very soon zoomed in on an area.

It was the village in the Southwest District next to the construction site of the open parking lot…

Li Ang exhaled and ran down the stairs. He rode the bicycle that he had placed long ago in the gap between the two floors, which the surveillance camera could not capture.

The weak presence of the Face-Changing Mask was activated. Even if he was dressed like a serial killer, he would not be noticed by pedestrians passing by. As long as he avoided the cameras along the way, he would be invisible in this city.

Li Ang walked faster and faster. What he found was also information the police was aware of. Since the murderer, who had not left any traces, had dared to keep the surveillance footage instead of deleting it, either he was confident about moving before the police found him or he was already so crazy that he was not afraid of being chased and maybe even wanted to face them…

Regardless of which possibility was true, Li Ang, who had a quest right now, did not want to see any accidents happen. He walked through the shadows of the street lights as the wind howled through his ears and arrived at a shantytown.

He was standing before a fairly low-rise building with a maximum height of two to three floors. The building was old and impoverished, the pipeline was a mess, the drainage was poor, the garbage was atrocious, and the streets were narrow and as crowded as a cage.

Compared to the surrounding modern, brightly-lit, high-rise buildings, this shantytown was like an isolated island that had been forgotten by everyone.

The people living in the shantytown were literally lower-class residents.

Cleaners with masks who went out early and returned late, retired construction workers with physical disabilities, small workers who delivered goods to supermarkets, elderly people without children…

Li Ang parked his bicycle by the side of the road, looked up at the line of single-story houses standing close to each other, and sighed before he stepped on the muddy, dirty pit. He walked past a pile of plastic bags full of garbage, smelled a rotten odor, and entered the place.