---
When Tang Ren soaked the electronic compass in glutinous rice water, Su Chen was staring at the British Library's surveillance video. After the library closed last night, a group of human-shaped water mist suddenly appeared in the display cabinet of the Ming Dynasty copy of "The Goddess of Luo River". The security guard claimed to have heard a woman humming the Cantonese opera "The Peony Pavilion". The system compared the voiceprint with the Q organization member database, and the one with the highest match was the Hong Kong hacker "White Peony" who died in the Bangkok Port bombing three years ago.
"Haunted? Organization Q is doing a holographic projection!" Tang Ren poked the compass with his peach wood sword, "It must be the ghost of that street master Bai who is spreading his ghost..."
Qin Feng suddenly thrust the tablet in front of him. In the surveillance video, the mist had clearly left a series of wet shoe prints on the glass, the pattern of which was exactly the same as the Thames silt that Tang Ren had brought from the riverbed.
"You, you got mustard on your soles when you were eating fish and chips last night." Qin Feng magnified the yellow stains on the edge of the shoe prints. "Now in the whole of London... only Wang Kee in Chinatown uses this recipe."
Su Chen stood up suddenly. On the system map, the blue light representing Kiko was flashing wildly in the East End of London - that was the "cyber ghost market" where Southeast Asian illegal immigrants gathered, and the underground black market used AR glasses to trade virtual stolen goods.
---
In the black market disguised as a VR game room, Tang Ren's Nezha-shaped AR glasses kept lagging.
"That way! That digital person in cheongsam is winking at me!" He knocked over three Bitcoin mining machines and threw himself at the floating NFT of "Lotus Goddess's Picture". However, the holographic image turned into smoke the moment it touched the ground, and a huge Bagua array suddenly appeared on the ground.
"The Qian position has turned to Li Fire, it's going to burn our graphics card!" Tang Ren hurriedly took out a handful of Five Emperors' Coins and threw them at the server.
The real deal was happening next door. Su Chen saw through the AR glasses that Bai Mu's virtual image was projecting the painting fragments onto the front page of the real Times. At a certain angle, the lead characters reporting the murder actually spelled out the missing "Wenyu" fragment of "The Goddess of Luo River".
"This is an art crime..." Su Chen murmured. The system scan showed that the scale pattern in the eyes of the fish matched the blockchain address. The Q organization was using classical calligraphy and painting to encrypt the transnational money laundering channel.
Qin Feng suddenly snatched away Wang's glasses. In the corner of the screen, Master Bai, who was supposed to be in the police station, was conducting a brain wave transaction with someone - the snake tattoo on that person's wrist was exactly the same as the photo of Qin Feng's father in his memory.
---
When Tang Ren adjusted the power of the induction cooker to the maximum, the soup from the hot pot just covered up the sound of the current from the eavesdropping device.
"Even the monitor needs to know when to cook mutton hotpot!" She dipped her sesame sauce in the hotpot and blinked at the ceiling. The drone of the Q organization was circling outside the "Wang Kee" hotpot restaurant, disguised as a food delivery robot.
Su Chen stared at the tripe boiling in the pot. The system discovered through thermal imaging analysis that half a Tang Dynasty sea beast grape mirror was frozen in the back kitchen freezer - it was the artifact on the British Museum's stolen list. The inscription on the back of the mirror was covered by rust, but when the soup steam brushed over the mirror surface, a string of binary codes appeared.
"Qin Feng... your father might have been coerced." He finally said the speculation he had been holding back for a day, "Bai Mu is not dead. The data on her brain computer has been injected into the puppet's body. It seems..."
A pillar of fire suddenly erupted from the hot pot. Tang Ren picked up the icy sour plum soup and poured it on the hot pot to put out the flames. The micro signal jammer stuck to the bottom of the soup spoon was also disabled. The drone roared and broke through the glass, and its mechanical claws went straight for the bronze mirror.
"Kanshuilihuo! This is going to ruin my Feng Shui!" Tang Ren picked up a bench and smashed it at the drone, but accidentally hit the mechanism behind the mirror. The laser shot out from the mirror burned scorch marks on the wall, and the pattern formed was actually the origami butterfly that Sinuo left at the bottom of Qin's Feng Shui cup.
The chopsticks in Qin Feng's hand snapped. The wrinkles on the butterfly's wings were exactly the same as the handwriting on the anonymous greeting card he received in his childhood.
---
When the cold air from morgue No. 13 hit his face, Su Chen finally understood why the system prompted "low temperature will accelerate the decay of the truth."
There was no body in the cabinet, only an old Nokia phone. The moment Tang Ren pressed the power button, old text messages came flooding out - all of them were encrypted communications between Qin Feng's father and someone codenamed "Gardener". The last one was twelve years ago:
[The seeds have been planted in CRIMASTER, remember to cut off Lvy when it blooms]
Kiko's emergency call came in suddenly: "Don't touch the cell phone chip! Q organization has applied contact neurotoxin to the case!"
Tang Ren had already sneezed three times while holding his phone.
When Qin Feng used tweezers to remove the SIM card, Su Chen's system suddenly issued a sharp alarm. All the doors of the morgue opened automatically, and the air conditioning condensed into a huge Q-shaped ice flower on the glass. Bai Mu's holographic image emerged from the ventilation duct, and the "Emperor's Concubine" she hummed sounded like a requiem at this moment.
"Mr. Qin, your father volunteered to be the 'soil' of the organization in order to protect you." Her virtual fingers passed through Qin Feng's chest, "Now it's time to let the seeds germinate."
Tang Ren suddenly picked up the frozen barbecued pork bun and threw it at the projector: "You pineapple bun! Do you know how much my nephew's brain is worth?"
In the chaos, Su Chen saw the last ciphertext analyzed by the system - Lvy's true identity was actually the fifth-ranked psychologist on the CRIMASTER rankings.
---
The car chase on the Thames Embankment lasted for three minutes, and Tang Ren finally discovered the brain wave collector of the Q organization hidden in the trunk of the taxi.
"Turn! Hit that bronze statue of a performer!" He leaned half of his body out of the car window and swung the mahogany sword. Qin Feng turned the steering wheel sharply, and the car body drifted past the gold-plated scepter of the statue of Henry VIII. Sparks flew from the antenna of the collector in the friction of the metal.
Su Chen used the system to hack into the municipal traffic network in the back seat. Three hundred traffic lights suddenly turned green at the same time, and the Q organization's tracking fleet was dispersed by delivery motorcycles and tourist buses. Kiko took the opportunity to hack into the car's radio, and Tang Ren's hoarse voice rang out throughout London:
"A street thug from the Q organization! Your grandpa and I are setting up a ring in Chinatown. Are you brave enough to come and compete in Feng Shui——"
The real battlefield is deep inside the network. When Su Chen linked the Nokia phone's data into the system, the CRIMASTER rankings suddenly refreshed. A brand new ID landed at the top of the list:
[Gardener, number of problems solved: ∞]
The rain was pouring down, and Qin Feng held up the SIM card that carried his father's twelve years of life in the rain. In the distance, the lights of Big Ben penetrated the dark clouds, reflecting an inverted Q in the accumulated water.
"The game... just started." A long-lost light flashed in 놛's eyes.