Chapter 191

Qin Lide smiled, his attitude unreadable, and praised, "It's a good thing that young people have ambition."

But he didn't say anything else.

Tang Xuan felt a little disappointed and annoyed that he had rushed from the office without washing his face or combing his hair. In addition, he had been working overtime recently and had dark circles under his eyes, so his complexion probably wasn't very good.

Sigh, why does he never groom himself properly when he needs to look good?

This conflicted feeling persisted until Qin Lide finished paying respects to his deceased friend.

The sun was already setting and the sky was getting dark. Qin Lide said, "It must have been hard for you, Xiao Tang, to run around all afternoon. Let me treat you to dinner tonight."

Tang Xuan quickly declined, saying, "How can I let you treat me? You've come to Haishi; it should be me, the junior, who treats you."

The two of them kept arguing back and forth, but in the end, Tang Xuan said he knew a good restaurant and finally got the initiative to treat them.

He was eager to impress, and he showed great thoughtfulness and consideration at the dinner table.

Qin Lide must have appreciated him quite a bit, as he took the initiative to add him as a friend so he could send him some local specialties when he returned home.

As soon as Tang Xuan unlocked his phone, a picture popped up: a person's back view.

The image quality is not very clear; it's blurry and looks like a screenshot from a surveillance camera.

Qin Lide was stunned for a moment.

Tang Xuan swiped over the image, returned to the system page, and explained, "It's a case we're currently working on. A colleague sent it to me, and I opened it before I had a chance to log out."

He tapped the scan button and said, "I'll scan yours."

Qin Lide didn't move, as if he had been hit by something.

Tang Xuan tentatively called him again, "Grandpa Qin?"

Qin Lide snapped out of his daze, his expression somewhat excited, and tugged at Qin Su: "Come and take a look at this picture of Xiao Tang."

Qin Su was feeding Xiaolong discreetly when Qin Lide suddenly pulled him, stuffing a mouthful of hawthorn pastry into Xiaolong's mouth. Xiaolong choked, its eyes widening, and its tail snapped onto Qin Su's wrist.

Qin Su picked up her water glass and placed it on the empty seat next to her, letting Xiao Long drink the water. She then half-stood up, completely blocking Xiao Long from view.

"What's wrong? What photos are you looking at?"

Tang Xuan was still bewildered: "I don't know either..."

Urged by Qin Lide, he retrieved the photo he had just crossed out, enlarged it, and placed it on the table.

Qin Su's eyes flickered, and she pondered, "This person looks very familiar."

Tang Xuan also became serious upon hearing this: "Do you know this person?"

Qin Su took out her phone, searched for news keywords, then enlarged the secretly taken photos and placed them next to Tang Xuan's phone.

"Look, don't these two photos look like the same person?"

The enlarged photo by Qin Su is also blurry. If you look at these two photos separately, it's really hard to associate them together, but when you compare them side by side, you do feel a subtle similarity.

Tang Xuan looked at it for a long time and hesitated before saying, "It does look somewhat like it, but without more photos, it's hard to be sure."

He tapped Qin Su's phone: "Where did this photo come from?"

Qin Su showed him the news: "It was taken by a gossip reporter. This person is suspected of having an affair with the big star Chu Shuangyan."

Tang Xuan was taken aback. After carefully reading the gossip article, he looked up and found that Qin Su and Qin Lide were both staring at him, clearly waiting for him to speak.

He wasn't a dull person; after a little thought, he realized the problem.

It was an ordinary celebrity gossip news article that most people would read and forget, but Qin Su and Qin Lide remembered it clearly. Qin Lide even noticed the similarity just by glancing at the photo on his phone.

Moreover, judging from their attitudes, they clearly care a lot about this person.

Tang Xuan thought for a moment, looked around, and seeing that no one was paying attention, lowered his voice and said, "This isn't some secret that can't be told. I can tell you some things. It's like this, this person is related to a case we've been working on recently..."

It turns out that Tang Xuan and his team have been investigating several missing children cases recently, and they have come to a very difficult situation, which is also the reason for the two big dark circles under Tang Xuan's eyes.

First, while child abduction cases occur every year, none have been as frequent as this one, all concentrated within two months, which has already sparked heated public debate. Second, the timing and location of the cases are highly random, with no clues whatsoever, and the missing children have almost no connection to each other except for their young age.

Based on their experience in handling cases, Tang Xuan and his team all believed that it was the same group of people who committed the crimes. However, no matter how hard they searched, they couldn't find any suspects.

They had to sift through a massive amount of data to see which people appeared at different crime scenes. The person in the photo had appeared at two crime scenes.

To be honest, this frequency isn't high, nor is it anything particularly suspicious. If Qin Su and Qin Lide hadn't seen it today, they might have let her go after checking her resume and finding no problems with her.

Upon hearing the key point, Qin Lide promptly asked, "Have you found out who this person is? What's her name, and what's her background?"

Tang Xuan hesitated, saying, "This is a matter of personal privacy for citizens, and according to organizational regulations, I cannot disclose it to outsiders."

He can reveal some information about the case, which is publicly available information, but he cannot casually disclose a person's household registration and record-keeping information; this is a matter of professional ethics.

Qin Lide nodded understandingly, softened his expression, and said, "I was too hasty; I shouldn't have asked you that."

Tang Xuan breathed a sigh of relief before asking, "Why are you and Miss Qin also paying attention to this person?"

Qin Lide and Qin Su exchanged a glance.

Qin Su poured Qin Lide a cup of tea and said, "Grandpa, please rest. Let me do the talking."

She sat back down, casually flicking her wrist to the side, and Xiao Long slipped in through her sleeve without attracting anyone's attention.

Qin Su asked Tang Xuan, "I wonder how much you know about Xuanmen Taoism?"

Tang Xuan paused for a moment, wondering how the topic had suddenly shifted to this. After a long while, he said, "Only my grandmother in my family knows about this, but as far back as I can remember, she hasn't had much contact with these things."

"In other words, you have absolutely no idea about this, which might seem a bit unbelievable to you." Qin Su pondered for a moment, trying to explain in a way that aligned with the other party's values, "The woman in your photo is a Taoist priest, and she is suspected of having some kind of irregular religious transaction with the male celebrity Chu Shuangyan. Chu Shuangyan himself has also suffered some degree of harm."

"...Cough cough cough." Qin Lide choked and, with a wry smile, tapped Qin Su with his chopsticks.

She spoke of these irregular religious transactions as if they were scientific research.

Qin Su added, "So if this female Taoist priest is also involved in the case you are investigating, she may have some unconventional methods to cover up her actions."

What she meant by "unconventional" was, of course, something beyond the materialist worldview, but Tang Xuan automatically interpreted it as a new type of crime.

He had no doubt about Qin Su's statement and immediately realized: "That means this person might be a cult member and is also suspected of fraud and damaging other people's property!"

"Hmm." Qin Su pondered for a moment, "You can understand it this way."

Qin Lide: "..."

It's a long story.